I watched them leave, the afternoon sun casting long shadows from the bamboo cottage.
The quiet that followed felt earned—a moment to breathe, to let my mana knit itself back together.
"Great! That means everything's done, right? YAYYY!"
Sienna's voice rang out a beat ago, too bright, too real. Her joy still clung to the air like perfume, but already the silence was reclaiming it.If only it were that simple, my little dove.
I turned back toward the cot.
Eiri, the Geflügel, lay nestled beneath soft linen, her tiny breaths steady and calm. She was safe. Stable.
For now.
But she wasn't the only one in this room: the patient I treated earlier.
My gaze slid to the far corner, where another figure lay slumped on a larger bed. A woven reed screen divided him from the rest—deliberately so.
A man—or something, a creature, that is trying very hard to look like one.
