Well that was a mistake.
That was my first thought. My second thought was, How the hell did ten thousand bees get into my head and why are they all on fire?
There were no thoughts after that. None with words, anyway. Just the acid, buzzing burn of pain unlike anything else I’d ever experienced. The closest sensation was the therapy done to my feet, but that had at least felt somewhat external. This was inside my skull and I couldn’t get it out.
I wasn’t aware of my legs collapsing until Skallagrim surged forward and caught me. I gasped and half-sobbed, unable to breathe past the agony. With a feral urge, I raised my hands, clawing at my ear, smacking at the side of my head.
Skallagrim lifted me onto the bed and scraped the hair back from my right ear. He roared something – Jolakaia! – but it was a distant crash of sound beyond the furious magma-hot vibration. I thought a door might have opened and closed, but I couldn’t see it as I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around my about-to-explode head.
I wasn’t sure if the buzzing began to dim, or if the words were growing louder and louder.
“What in the river have you done to her?”
“I gave her the webbing from Aeshyr! The one that translates. It didn’t cause such a reaction in me! And Koltar has it too and obviously that self-righteous fool is just fine!”
“She is not our kind! I don’t even know what her inner ear looks like and you’ve gone and shoved a foreign object in there. No! Don’t argue, Skallagrim. You should have consulted me first. We could have done a more thorough examination and-”
The words were cut off as I made a strangled sound. This one wasn’t a sound of pain. It was a sound of Oh my fucking God I can understand every single word they’re saying.
Skallagrim was there in an instant, gripping the sides of my face with frantic hands, his single eye burning even harder than my head.
“Suvi. Little star. Stay with me, now. Stay with me!”
“I’m not going to die. I think,” I groaned. Already, the pain was ebbing, flowing out of my head like pus from a boil, leaving behind a weakened throbbing. My entire brain felt bruised, but as far as I could tell it was still functioning.
Another hand pressed beneath my jaw.
“Her heart rate is very elevated,” Jolakaia snapped. “Even more than when we administered the Mother’s Light on her feet. You have put her body through immense stress and pain, Skallagrim.”
If a green-scaled alien could have visibly paled, I was pretty sure Skallagrim would have. He looked stricken, like he’d been the one to get wrung out with agony instead of me.
I wanted to comfort him. To smooth this all over. It’s fine. I’m fine. Yes, I was hurting, but yes, I think I’ll be OK. Probably. Eventually. I put it in my own ear. I did this to myself.
It was like the translator could bring back the voices of the dead, because Elvi’s voice was so suddenly, shockingly clear that I half-expected to see her standing in the very room.
When other people make you bleed, you don’t get down on your knees and bandage them up.
She’d said that to me when I was being bullied and had wanted to placate my tormentors instead of fighting back. It was right before she’d put me in hockey.
So I didn’t tell Skallagrim it was alright.
I didn’t say anything at all for a moment. I waited to see if the ghost of my sister had anything else to say. I’d suck up everything – every word – even the ones where she was berating me. Because that echo of memory was all I had left.
But there wasn’t anything more. At least, not from her. Jolakaia’s fingers poked and prodded at me, and she shone a tube of light into my ear, making a hissing sound of disapproval that was unnerving.
“What?” Skallagrim said tightly. He didn’t look at her when he said it, but at me.
“It looks like inflammation.”
“Then by the blasted river, give her something!”
“I will,” Jolakaia shot back. “Something I actually know won’t harm her tissue, you moronic stone sky god. I would say that being immortal has made you careless with the lives of others, but even Aeshyr has a lick of sense about him when he deals with mortals!”
“Did she just say... immortal?” I breathed, my throat feeling like scraped-raw even though I couldn’t remember screaming.
Skallagrim’s snout was tense, his eye a burning ember.
“Yes. Though I will not be for much longer.”
My heart seized up.
“Are you going to die? Is that what you needed to come in here and tell me?”
It’s OK. It’s OK. You’ll be fine without him. Mostly fine. Sort of.
He’s the only one you’ve got in this world but even if he’s gone one day you’ll find a way to... to...
To not fall apart.
“Not for a while yet, I trust,” he said firmly. “Suvi, I do not want you to worry about me right now. I want you to rest.”
“I’m not worried!”
I’m just... I’m just imagining being here without you. Living in this far-flung world without the only alien who’s become familiar to me, and oh fuck, I really am worried and what the hell is that supposed to mean?
What am I supposed to do with this? This tangled bundle of resentment and worry and care that gets thorny with grief at the thought of not having him beside me anymore?
“Just lie down.” That soothing voice was Jolakaia’s, not Skallagrim’s. Exhausted, my whole body drained of resistance, I did so. Jolakaia prodded my head to the side and put a few drops of liquid into my ear.
“Keep your head like that for a while,” Jolakaia said. “Let it soak in. And try not to touch.”
My hand had already been lifting to do it. It dropped with a thump on the bed.
“Is anything.... in there?” I asked.
When Jolakaia didn’t answer, I remembered that she couldn’t understand my human questions. Skallagrim shook himself, as if from a deep and terrible dream, and translated.
“No,” Jolakaia replied. “The webbing has completely absorbed and there is nothing left of it to examine or remove.”
I shivered and fought the urge to dig my finger inside my ear to check for myself. How could the stuff have just disappeared into my body like that? It had been completely solid! Did it melt based on body heat? But then there would be liquid left or something. And it hadn’t melted in my hand!
Jolakaia said something about my heartrate normalizing. She reminded Skallagrim in a scolding tone that I needed to stay still, then after a few more checks on my ear, she left.
“How do you feel?” Skallagrim finally asked, planting himself on a stool beside the bed. He bent, placing his elbows on his knees, bending forward so that his face was in my line of sight with my head cranked to one side on the bed.
“Tired,” I said honestly. “My head hurts.”
He flinched, then raked his claws so viciously through his hair that his braid came undone. He didn’t seem to notice. Or if he did, he didn’t bother fixing it.
He hasn’t done that in a while...
“Suvi... I cannot express the regret I...” He took in a ragged breath and dragged his golden gaze up from where it had fallen to the floor between us. “I did not know it would hurt you like that. I am so sorry.”
An achy lump grew in my throat. He’d never apologized to me before. Or if he ever had, I’d never understood him.