Chapter 18. He Is Not Human. He Is Not Dead.
Meanwhile, back in the Noble District of the Raven Kingdom, Sephora had just finished her shower and stepped out of the basin. Grabbing one of the Doctor's fresh towels from the cupboard inside the shower room.
This was very unlike the large baths that the castle had. A lovely steaming soak in the bathing chamber would have went perfectly to help relax after such a scary fright, seeing the ancient forest have a whole section of it destroyed! Then being covered in blood and wrecking her favourite, normal looking velvet black dress and worse, causing Maven and Donivan a fright seeing her appear in a very worrying looking state.
It had been Maven's quick thinking that sent Sephora down to the Nobles District to find the Doctor, known as Ingram. He sometimes worked on medical calls to the castle, so the younger princess did know him. However, he and Maven were long standing friends and she assured Sephora that he, of all harpy, would help her in such a situation. The house servant also came up with a quick plan in case her mother came down and found the youngest princess in the kitchen – when she should have been at the late lunch meeting the male harpies; one of whom could be her potential future mate, very soon. It would have been an eruption of the Raven Queen's typical anger, plus additional frustration due to the high stakes that came with the political consequences of being mated to another clan's royals.
Ingram had come up at one point, chapping the door loudly enough to be heard over the spray of the water, "I'm leaving some clothes just outside the room for you. They may be a slight size too big for you but I don't have anything else for female clothes."
Sephora had told him that it was fine and with that he had left her to continue scrubbing the blood off and out of her wings; some parts had even congealed and scabbed out side the body. It was really gross and she felt nauseous even cleaning herself off from it. She wasn't easily grossed out and neither did the sight of blood usually trouble her. Though, she had never been in a situation like this where she had so much blood on her from a single source.
Drying herself off, the princess opened the door and looked out and around the empty hallway for the clothes. They had been placed on a table just at the side, by the top of the stairs. Wrapping her towel around herself, covering her most intimate parts, she moved outwards and took them back into the shower room to change into.
She looked longingly at her crumpled and bloody black velvet dress; though it was no longer black but a rusty colour, red-brown and crusty with dried blood. Again this made her nauseous but she couldn't understand why. She wasn't used to nausea from sights related to battlefields. Her mother had ensured that she build up a tolerance to sights that were grim and morbid, as well as aspects of life that were also similar.
That was one particular cultural caveat about the Raven Harpy's. They were comfortable and familiar with the darker aspects of life, which most tended to shy away from or avoid discussing or acknowledging entirely. Bones were common decoration for accent features in houses or for jewellery and treated with the same stature as silver or shining objects.
Blood, should be a non-issue.
Pushing it to the back of her mind she stepped into the dark green dress of some noble woman. It was two sizes too big but it wasn't too big that it looked so entirely wrong and out of proportion, as it only felt uncertainly loose around her chest area; which was embossed with a bronze stitching that seemed to enhance focus on a slender waist and emphasis the chest.
Most harpies didn't have large breasts. It was a species thing. They weren't mammals and their regular physiology was notably different.
If a female raven harpy developed large breasts like some human females had, then there would be a cause of concern among the harpy doctors regarding this. It would be considered an illness and treated as such or a tumour or some genetic anomaly.
There were other anomaly's partial to harpy society, one example that was less common, such as there being around 10% of all the harpies who were born, being born without wings. It was considered a genetic regression to when the wings first developed in historical ancestors. Others with a similar genetic mutation wouldn't have their full wings or may be born with stubs of varying kinds.
This wasn't common among nobles and was something Seraphina and Sephora had never actually seen for certain themselves to be sure that such harpy truly exists, outside of urban legends the kitchen and house staff told them.
Looking at herself in the mirror of the shower room, Sephora accepted that this was as good as she was going to get, for now. The Harpy Doctor had already been so kind, also to allow her to get cleaned up as well as have a look at the corpse she had brought from the forest.
Moving down the stairs of the old house, they creaked and groaned under her weight; which wasn't that much.
Each stressing press alerted the Doctor to her exact position on the stairs and so he hurriedly finished a few additional checks on the patient. He moved over to his desk to make some final notes about the individual when Sephora walked in.
"Thank you for the clothes Doctor, and for allowing me to wash up. Maven was right, you are very kind." The princess moved further over to the doctor and stood just adjacent to his left should and was within eyesight of his notes and lazily tried to glance and read some of them.
He seemed to be aware of this, either subconsciously or consciously, and closed over the cover to his notebook. Sephora mentally cursed but decided to ask anyway, "So…" A sheepish tone, that quite common for the youngest twin, coloured her voice, "What was it that killed this human? What made him into a carcass? It will help when I report the distruction of a large section of the Ancient Forest to mother, the Queen. Hopefully it'll be enough to avert mother's attention from me."
At this Ingram did look at Sephora with a questioning gaze.
She doesn't know? How could she not be aware of the true nature of the "human" that she had held in her arms like that? Could she not sense it? The Doctor gave her the benefit of the doubt. How did he, a noble doctor, and her a Royal… especially being a royal, not be aware of what exactly that "human " was.
Given the unlikelihood of the entire situation, never mind the person who had been subject to his examination only moments ago.
"You…" The Doctor tried to choose his wording carefully here, "You really do not know?"
Sephora shifted her eyes to the operating table that she had placed the human onto; which she had long presumed had died in her arms, before even reaching the kingdom. Never mind when she reached the castle or then flew down to Ingram's house in the Noble's District.
The body had been washed down to get the blood off. Probably to be able to see clearer what he was dealing with, for an easier examination. The blood no longer dripped from the body though, so she wasn't sure what the Doctor meant, "Doctor, is there something I missed or got wrong?"
As she asked, she raked her eyes over the body again.
This time she spotted it.
The wounds had been sealed up and sewn shut. Blue shiny medical wire coiled, pulling the edges of both gaping wounds together tightly. Why did he sew up a corpse? The princess furrowed her brows as she pondered this, as she kept the human as her visual focus.
Ingram sighed, "He is not a human, and he is not dead."