THOTH & MORVEREN
“My mould,” Thoth informed Danny brightly, buoyed by the curious expression on the other boy’s face. Most people actively tried to stop him from elaborating on subjects or headed him off rather than quizzing him for more information. He launched into a long, verbose explanation while Danny checked his leg, absent-mindedly lapsing into the long-winded manner he had had when he was younger but had since mostly ditched. In his youth, he had got into the habit of taking breaths at unconventional places in sentences in order to prevent others from predicting when he was about to pause so they couldn’t interrupt him. He talked at great length about penicillin, reciting accurately large chunks of texts from books he had read years ago, and described his experiments in great detail. Thoth had only found two books with references to penicillin in Shaman and had had to base all his research on that; so, effectively, he’d had to start from scratch when it came to actually producing the antibiotic. Given the unreliability of animal experimentation, he’d mostly experimented on himself, to the horror of the hospital staff. “…I haven’t tested the latest batch,” he regretted verbally at long, long last, having just reported on all of his research, results and data analysis to poor Danny, “Dr. Gupta won’t let me, he says room for experimentation pre human trials needs to expand before I go any further. He says we just don’t have the facilities or equipment to support that level of drugs research… but Fleming didn’t exactly have it either.”
That his medical treatment didn’t seem to be working was no great surprise to Thoth, who considered all treatments ineffective compared to the holy grail of penicillin. He just nodded, unconcerned, when Danny spoke and left him to his musings.
More interesting than Danny’s diagnoses was Solarius, who was thoroughly taken in by the dramatics. Thoth was used to people regarding Morveren oddly, since as far as he knew she was unique in Shaman and didn’t seem to resemble any normal animal, but the tiger’s reaction was particularly hilarious. As if he could be threatened by something so small and, well, harmless. Thoth snorted in amusement just as Morveren lifted her head sleepily and peered through half-closed eyelids. Typical. She didn’t wake up with all the shuffling of the bed, but she did when their empathic link brightened because he was laughing.
Morveren took one bleary-eyed look at Solarius and stopped being so bleary-eyed sharpish. Without hesitation she leapt a foot in the air, squealing, and started running around the bed at top speed, leaping against the bed posts and the wall. She did about four laps, making Thoth feel dizzy watching her, before diving under the sheets. Two large, green eyes peeped out from under covers, staring unblinkingly at the tiger. She inched forward until her face was out, then reached out and batted his nose with one paw, before diving back under the sheets again. Thoth poked the Morv-lump with his finger, eliciting an excited squeal, and the vaporeon started running under the sheets across the bed. Because she couldn’t see where she was going, she fell onto the floor accidentally before long, but recovered swiftly and leapt onto Solarius’ back instead. She ran up and down the length of his spine twice before taking a seat fearlessly on top of his back legs and batting his tail. It all happened in the space of about a minute.
Thoth shrugged at the tiger as if to say told you so.
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