thoth
we spend all our time running for our lives, going nowhere

Thoth came to on the battlefield first. Sometime had turned him over after he face-planted the grass and was giving his shoulders a gentle shake. Thoth vaguely recognised that it was one of Tristan’s friends from camp, but his brain wasn’t firing on enough cylinders to identify who.

“Oh good, you’re not dead.” The other kid grinned. “That’d be a bummer, especially since we won!”

Thoth rubbed the corner of his eye, trying to fight back the darkness still threatening to overcome him. “We won?”

“We won,” the other kid confirmed. Alex, was it? He was beaming from ear to ear in spite of the blood trickling down his temple. In the distance, Thoth could hear cheering.

It was too much. The darkness closed in and Thoth passed out again.

When he came to the second time, it was in a place which smelt familiar but looked weird. He blinked groggily, pulling himself up onto one elbow. He was lying on something soft – at least, softer than a ground mat and a sleeping bag – and his vision was mostly white. Apart from that he felt… not bad. Not bad considering he’d knocked himself out in the middle of fighting a dragon, anyway. His head and arm were a bit achey, but otherwise… Thoth blinked several times in quick succession, trying to get his eyes to adjust faster, but the white wouldn’t go away. It took a moment for his brain to catch up with his eyes and realise it was a curtain he was looking at. He was lying on a bed, inside somewhere, and the bed was fenced off by a white curtain. Quiet shuffling and clattering sounds were audible from beyond the curtain, as though someone was conscious of his need to sleep but still needed to get on with their day. The smell… Thoth sucked in a deep breath, trying to place it. It was a clean smell, sterile, tinged with chemicals and the aroma of fresh laundry. It was a smell which, for a long time in life, he thought he’d never get away from.

The curtain pulled back and a young woman dressed in a prim, blue and white dress stepped in, smiling. Thoth stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded.

“Fern?” He asked incredulously. “This is…”

The hospital wing. The hospital wing inside the royal castle. Fern, one of the many nurses who had patched up Thoth’s broken bones over the years, reached out, took him by the shoulders and pulled him into an unprofessional hug. It was over before he really had a chance to react. She stepped back, wiping at the corners of her eyes, and smoothed down his bedsheets.

“Feeling alright?” She asked. “Your temperature, vitals and blood pressure are all fine. Just a fracture on the arm.” She nodded to his aching arm, and Thoth glanced down. She’d already put it up in a cast while he was asleep. “Now you’re awake I can sling it for you, but you’ll have to give me ten minutes or so.”

She bustled out, pulling the curtain back behind her. Thoth blinked at the space where she’d disappeared for a minute, then sat up fully and reached over to pull the curtain back. The rest of the hospital wing slid into view like a half-remembered dream, filled with nurses and doctors and patients.

“Hey,” Thoth called after Fern, “can I go?”

“After I’ve done the sling,” she called back, “give me ten minutes.” She vanished round the door, heading off into another ward.

Little had changed in the hospital, except it was busier than usual. Thoth spent a minute eying a painting which hadn’t been there last time he was here before glancing round the rest of the room. His eyes fell on the boy of about the same age in the bed opposite, causing a frown to crease across his forehead. After successfully avoiding Grayson in camp, it was an unpleasant irony to find him only a few feet away. Thoth turned his head away pointedly, watching the door Fern had gone through and willing ten minutes to pass faster.