The first time you saw him, he had been visiting your neighbour, an older gentleman who had come down with an illness that no one could name.
He was huge, clad in heavy leather, a brimed hat, and a mask carved from bleached bone white wood.
Since then, you've come to know that he actually has a residence not too far from your own, the town's doctor, or at least currently the town's doctor. Whatever the old man you lived next to had caught was spreading, three other families came down with whatever that illness was, and soon after that, it was almost everywhere. Occasionally, households would be unaffected, but most had at least one person come down with what some called 'the wanderers' plague'. The name only caught on after some poor fool pointed out that the infected households had wanderers in them before they got ill.
Now, no one lets anyone new into their homes or their shops.
Buying bread is odd now, you drop some coins in a collection box and wait for the baker to push the loaf you bought onto the small counter they had made by the window of their store. Inside, you can see him, still the same, still covered in flour and flecks of dough as he goes about getting your bread; the only difference is you don't speak to him, not like you used to.
Walking back to your home, you stop and look at the old man's property, he'd passed, too old to fully heal from his sickness. His son came to clean the place up and maybe get it sold, but with how everything is going with the plague, it will be a good long while before that happens, if it ever does.
You're lucky enough that this particular sickness hasn't caught you yet, not that it doesn't mean the town's new doctor won't come to see you still.
"In sickness and in health", he said when he first came knocking on your door, and honestly, you don't mind a bit.
Halfway through cutting the few root vegetables you'd had left, he knocked, calling out to him to enter. You watched as he opened the door, having to duck and turn slightly sideways as he stepped into your home. The doctor is a tall man, the clear and heavy features of his hybrid nature standing out even in the low light of your home, his ears flick and his tail almost touches the ground as he locks onto your position by the kitchen bench, heavy iron shoes making his heavy build seem more so as he walks over, mask tilted towards the collection of dried herbs he had left with you on his last visit.
On one of your benches, he settles his apothecary bag, flicking heavy latches and pulling a few small items from within before gesturing for you to have a seat.
Wiping off your hands, you follow his silent instructions and settle onto your kitchen stool, feeling smaller now as the doctor towers over you, the leather of his gloves warm as he touches your face. The exam is as it has been the last four or so times he's called to check on you, he looks at your skin, checks your eyes, and gently pressed a thick heavy finger to your tongue as he peers down your throat from behind his mask, you could almost think he enjoyed the way your drool onto his fingers when he does this but as soon as the thought comes it leaves.
Each time you are ethos close to him, you find new things to wonder about, the straps around his thighs have both practical use and seemingly none at all, they are pulled tight and draw your eye to the thick, corded muscles that make up his legs, and of course draw attention to the heavy and obvious bulge of his crotch as he moves and twists as he continues his examination of you.
Perhaps when he comes to visit next, you will pretend to have a small fever, or even an injury, perhaps something that will make him linger in your home for a bit longer.
After all, there is much about your new town doctor you'd like to examine in more detail, if he'll let you, of course...
