THOTH & MORVEREN
Thoth shrugged, which was a mistake. A jolt of pain spiralled down his chest and made him inhale sharply and grit his teeth.
The fact that he’d survived the misadventure at all was testament to the doctors’ prowess more than anything else. He’d returned from Apeliotes Island with one leg broken in several places, a broken arm, a broken wrist, one broken and two cracked ribs, four broken fingers, three broken toes and a cracked collar-bone. One of the leg breaks had been ripped open and became infected, and the leg and arm both proved difficult to set because they’d been ‘out of place’ for a long time. His head had been bleeding where it had hit the ground when the pirate dropped him, and he’d had scrapes, scratches and bruises, some of them bleeding, all over his body. Frankly, he was most grateful that he hadn’t broken his nose. That would probably have marred his face forever.
Still. Only a matter of time, right? It seemed he only had to knock against a pillow to shatter a bone.
He quirked his eyebrows as Danny pulled his own copy of A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian out of his medical bag, surprised for the second time in as many minutes. Thoth wasn’t aware that anyone at the academy or the castle taught the ancient language, and there weren’t many ‘teach yourself’ books available. He had most of them himself, hoarded in his bedroom. As well as giving him pause, the sight of the book stirred the sense of abandonment he’d been feeling since he’d lost his magic. Thoth was, had always been, a lonely child; he had given up trying to make friends amongst other fairies at around the time he gave up on the good nature of people, and when he realised that his own likeability was zero. The necessary social bonds required by fairies (which were, after all, pack animals by instinct) he forged with animals, who had now all gone deathly quiet in the absence of magic. His inability to communicate with his friends, at a time when he was being continually isolated from society by being hauled back into hospital whenever he slipped on a stair, left him feeling more cut off than ever.
In spite of the pain, he shrugged again when Danny spoke. “I can sleep when I’m dead,” he responded flatly. After a moment he added with somewhat more affability, “you progressed from birds to people quickly.”
He was vaguely aware that Danny was different, somehow, but couldn’t put his finger quite on what. Thoth never noticed how other people looked and wasn’t socially adept enough to understand complex facial expressions. He did, however, sense that something was wrong. Perhaps it was an affinity with the type of wrongness. Thoth shifted slightly in his bed, not quite sure whether he was supposed to do something or what he should do, or even if he was misinterpreting what he was seeing. He understood Tristan’s emotions and what to do about them, but not really anyone else’s.
“That’s Morveren,” he told the tiger when he snuffled the little aqua-fox, for lack of knowing what else to say or do. “She’s my familiar. You didn’t meet her before. Try not to wake her up because you’ll probably regret it if you do.”
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