THOTH & MORVEREN
Mallos had escaped again. Or, at least, that's what Thoth had assumed had happened. Various people – mainly guards and nurses – had been running in and out of his room in various states of hysteria all morning, and using phrases like 'search party' and 'poor dear'. The poor dears tended to be coming from the nurses rather than the guards, who mostly looked either bored or irked by the entire situation. A few of the more good-humoured ones looked quite impressed. Thoth couldn't blame them. Mallos had now successfully made it past four soldiers given the specific task to guard him, and an entire hospital ward full of people, unseen, on no less than about four occasions. Not only that, no one had ever successfully found him when he'd run away, either; he always seemed to stroll back in when he felt like it. It was the most exciting thing which ever happened in the infirmary.
The fuss was already dying down by mid-morning. Thoth went back to his book about the age of Augustus and assumed, when the door opened next, that it was just another guard coming in to check that Mallos hadn't returned. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Danny set the bag down on the chair beside the bed with a thump.
“Uh-uh?” He grunted by way of greeting, closing the book and dumping it down on the beside table. He eyed the bag, hoping that Danny had packed his mould carefully. “Who's 'them'?”
He glanced up to look Danny in the face for the first time, and was hit with the realisation almost as soon as the words had left his mouth. His eyes raked over the other boy's messed up hair, his split lip and the dirt on his face. Danny was a medical student – he'd never enter a medical facility dirty on purpose. Thoth had enough personal experience with bullying to connect the dots at lightning speed.
“Who was it?” He demanded to know, feeling the old anger beginning to rise in his chest again. When he was bullied he accepted it as a fact of life, but he'd never had a friend who had gone through the same ordeal before. Nobody in their right mind would try and touch Tristan. Danny was only what, ten? Eleven? What kind of sick fairy would beat up a a little kid? Thoth's expression clouded over and his eyes darkened with rage. “Who was it?” He repeated with a little more force than intended. “Were they hanging around outside my lab?”
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