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Eleazar is a devastation upon the body and mind — the effects are even more of a scourge once the miserable, ink-shaded scales form around joints, the chitinous plates restricting movement.
Today’s worse than others, Tighnari thinks, her condition exacerbated by The Withering and her mood worsened by fools who should have learned not to touch others without their explicit consent. Her misery fills the room like a flood, and she trudges through both the motions and the dregs of her sour mood, bogged down by the weight of it all.
(and he is fully aware of some of the rangers’ disdain for collei, it was inevitable that those sorts of prejudices and biases take root and start their proliferation in healthy soil like weeds. macocious, petty; aggravating. the only reason tighnari hasn’t drubbed each and every single one of them was because collei had wanted to take matters into her own hands, and dedicate her time to plucking superstitions from the root. those hands are covered in scales, now.)
She struggles with a latch on her overalls, and he waits patiently for niloutpata’s to distil into vapour as he connects the opening of the glass tube to an atomizer, and lets the thin liquid fill into a transparent bottle; it drips quick and then congeals — the same shade and texture as honey — before settling back into a thinner, brighter liquid.
If Collei needs his help to get undressed, she will ask him.
“The symptoms have been rapidly progressing,” he states absently, and Collei stills but doesn’t flinch. “Maybe you should take it easy for today.”
She continues to pick at her clothes after a moment, and he notices her right pointer is stone in her endeavour to undo her buckle — a ring of black around the second segment of her finger; ridged epithelium cutting into her skin, laying heavy around the joint. Tighnari needs to stop his face from twisting unhappily, from running over to her and cradling her—he’s been a bit harsh on her today, there were so many things happening at once. Babying her just might make everything worse.
(she had looked at the traveller's face like they were the inexorable answer to all her problems; she had looked after them tirelessly. she had smiled brighter than she has in months.
when they were asleep, she reached for their hand and gently laced their fingers together [unexpected touch is nightmarish, it sets every nerve to a needlepoint, makes her panic, makes her think of doctors looming over her as they laugh and laugh and laugh at her sallow skin and the way her ribs greet the air {there are so many touch receptors in the hands, each fingertip has more than three-thousand corpuscles reacting to tactile stimulus just under the skin; innocuous touch or not, her mechanoreceptors blare panic every time someone comes at her without warning} and it curls in his stomach with cold-rage every time he thinks of barnabas and dottore strapping her down to prick needles in her skin] but it had taken her exactly six months to touch him first.)
He exhales through his nose, calms himself, and clears his cluttered head. Collei has successfully loosened the buckle while he was lost in his head, waiting for him.
“I can still do my work,” she says, voice weary and wholly unconvincing, “I can — Master Tighnari, you know I can handle it.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” he says, inching forward until he meets her at the edge of her bed, his hands hovering over her skin, and she looks him dead on. He’s allowed to touch her today. As he slots between her legs and kneels, he continues, “It’s for my peace of mind.”
Eleazar is not a cutaneous disease, but one birthed from a mutation in the blood. Iron hard scabs form randomly under the skin, each the size of a bead, then burst through the flesh painfully, which then solidifies onto the dermis like a casing to give the appearance of scales. Spraying her medicine on her will loosen the plates by dissolving the dried blood clinging to her skin. It’ll soak into her system after it gets rubbed directly onto her body and start prying apart internal clots.
“I’m not a bird you can keep in a cage,” she bites out, before she reels back at the sound of her own voice. “I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t know why she’s apologizing, Tighnari is fully aware she’s having a hard time. He knows being bright and cheerful doesn’t come naturally for her — is it ‘fake it until you make it’? — a feral cat can not always be tamed, no matter how docile they may seem to the untrained eye. They’re alike in this way, he thinks; a fox isn’t geared for domesticity either. Tighnari and Collei are best suited to be here, surrounded by the proof of their archon’s grace, away from sneering professionals and trapped in stuffy rooms.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” she says again, louder when he cups her hands in his, “I hate when I get like this.”
“I know,” Tighnari says, thumbing over the dramatic change in texture from skin and scale, testing how hard the plates are. It’s the thickest where her wrist is supposed to bend, dorsiflexion of the joint near impossible; it smatters over the slanting creases on her palm, creeping up like a vine — she couldn’t grab travellers medicine because she couldn’t close her hand, then; and, of course, the coarse ring around her first finger. He can feel bumps on the thenar eminence, scales forming in the ball of her hand, about to break through skin.
“I want to help people, but I can barely even act like a normal person,” she warbles, and Tighnari decides he hates the traveller in that moment, and it solidifies in his stomach like geo crystallizing a flame.
Her hand is the worst today, he determines, but scales slither up her iliac crest and coil around her collar too. They gather on her upper arms, squama splotching on the epidermis of one of her thighs. There’s a singular dark mark kissing her throat, and Tighnari wants to cover it with his mouth.
“You do fine,” he says. “When you finish your training —“
“‘If’”, she corrects.
“When you finish your training,” he continues, stubborn, “you’ll be well enough to do what you wish. You’ll be able to climb and jump all you want. You can run. You won’t be in pain.”
“I won’t be in pain? So I’ll be dead, then,” Collei snips at him, a sardonic sneer briefly exposing her teeth before her expression crumples. It’s irritation borne from anamnesis but Collei doesn’t apologize for this one. He presses down on already stressed skin when he tightens his grip unconsciously; he flinches when she does.
He wants to apologize for hurting her, but there are way too many thoughts running around in his head.
“Do you want to die?” is what escapes his mouth.
“Not before I see Amber,” she responds, and maybe it’s a bit selfish to be envious, he should be glad she has a reason to wake in the mornings — but he’d like for her to live for herself too, to live for them.
“Even if you wanted to,” Tighnari says, “I’m not as generous as to let you do what you please. You’ll stay here until you start to love yourself too — until you love yourself more than you love her.”
It startles a laugh of disbelief out of her. It rattles through her chest like it’s preceding a sob, and she buries her face into her free hand as her eyes start to water.
“I hate myself,” she confesses, and he lays dry lips over the sore spot on her palm. “So that’ll be a long shot, it’s hard to love something like me.”
It’s hotter in the rainforest, her scales collect heat and burn his lips as Tighnari kisses her wrist, as he mouths every line of her palm, whispering adoration onto every joint of her fingers.
“I love you,” he says, sure as the sun rises in the day. “I found it quite easy to do so.”
“I can’t do anything right,” she hiccups, and her arm twitches, it turns and brushes the curve of his cheek — not quite a caress but a pale imitation of the gesture.
“You do,” he insists, and surges upwards; his breath warming her shoulder, planting his affection on each blight marring her skin. He trails up, and roots his hands on her waist to steady them both as she shudders from the force of her own sobs. He ascends to her tear-stained cheek when the hand blocking her face moves to pull wet hair from her face. Tighnari kisses the soft under her eye once, tasting salt, and then shifts slightly to whisper in her ear, “you do more than you think, and what you can’t do, you try harder than anyone else to make an attempt when you put your mind to it; that’s more than most can say.”
Her hands lace around his shoulders, cradling the back of his neck as his teeth brush her jawline, “I’ll probably die before seeing Amber again.”
“You won’t die before me,” he assures, and the tip of his aquiline nose skims the column of her neck when she tilts to make room for him.
“That’s so selfish. You’re selfish,” she says, lightly, and he hums in agreement as he presses his lips to the lone scale on her throat. “But thank you.”
They both jolt then still when there’s a knock on the door, Collei tugging him closer as his bare hands wrap around her back. When he frowns, he knows Collei can feel it — the traveller’s asked about Collei, they want to know if she’s okay to meet with them, the messenger asks. Tighnari’s ear flicks, metal clinking in his annoyance.
Collei squirms under his hands, shying away from him, and he releases her from his hold once her body language starts to stiffen at the thought of a third party noticing them in this position.
He catches her gaze once they detangle from each other and she shakes her head.
“Collei is resting,” he calls out, and he sees their shadow rock, once then twice, before acquiescing and moving away.
“The traveller didn’t do anything,” she says after a moment, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her chest. “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s wrong. It’s because my head doesn’t work right, Master Tighnari.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he replies, eyeing the tincture of her medication, raising to his feet once again.
There’s a lull in their conversation as he reaches for a cork to the now-ready bottle before she says, “Master Tighnari, can you do me a favour? I want to tell the traveller about my condition.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” he says, not missing a beat.
“They know Amber,” she says, then, with more conviction, “Amber trusts them, so I trust them too. They’re just as nice as her, they said we were friends.”
The cap squeaks as he twists it on, and when he turns back to Collei, he can see that subtle determination reinforcing every sinew, every nerve. She looks anything but fragile. He knows her well enough to understand won’t win this argument.
Tighnari exhales, and accepts his loss.