#justmiqomanthings

I've got you.

Nahte said your bird looked cold so he knit her a sweater!!!

Bonus F'ystran reaction:

When it's been a while since you've seen him.

Licking his lip, Nahte blinked as he wove mana around the aches. It was an art as much as a science. Arcanists learned to manipulate the body’s systems this way in battle, to send spears of pain through foes or miasma into their lungs. Shocks like that didn’t require touch at all, only proximity.

Still, aether had a certain intelligence to it – a desire to form into particular shapes – and so not every student of the art, or even most of them, could enact changes severe enough to be life threatening on their own, like the stopping of a heart. Mostly it was disorienting and distracting, an edge enough to deter violence or create an opening, for those who could learn the skill. 

Nahte had found other uses for it. With help from Lily and the tutelage of her previous master, he’d refined the practice still further. Now he could soothe aches, like F’ystran’s, by lulling the nerves to sleep. Useful in battle; even moreso in the healing that came after, when rest mattered and pain might interfere with mending the hurt it was meant to draw attention to.

-

A breath wisped out of F’ystran’s mouth, eyes shutting for a moment as the pain lifted, eiderdown in a breeze. Not the itch of magic stitching wounds back together, only a numbing. Masterfully precise, but gentle. When he pulled his breath in again, it filled his lungs a little deeper, stretched and eased the tightness in his back and neck.

Such a simple, quick thing, for all the fuss he had made over it.

“Thank you,” he murmured, genuine and with the dry edge fully missing from his tone. He opened his eyes again, looking to where their hands were joined. “You are exceptionally kind, Nahte’to. More than I deserve.”

---

The sparring match got a little more intense than expected.