Helping Hands [Montaine]

[Nira'lia]

45th Spring 512 AV The infirmary didn't hold as much patients as it did compared to the first few weeks after the great storm occurred, but there were still more people in contrast to an average days. Lately, those who were coming were there to have their injuries checked up on. There was also the occasional person who came, complaining about stomach pains and fatigue. The medics could do nothing about this – this was caused by the famine, and the only solution to it would be to eat regularly once more. The medics could not provide food for them, just like anyone else in the city. "I'm so sorry, there's nothing I can do..." said Nira'lia to a child who was complaining that there was a painful pit in his stomach. 'There's nothing I can do but pray to the Gods and Goddesses that Zeltiva finds some food soon.' The child seemed dejected, which was understandable. He soon realized that she was right and went on his way. Nira'lia looked around the room to see that the number of volunteers had dwindled as well, she being one of the few who still had the patience to help out. The infirmary was much quieter than it had been during the weeks that followed the great tragedy. Also, she knew that most people preferred to stay home these days, not wanting to waste their energy when they didn't even have the food to replenish themselves. Riots were actually starting to transpire, spreading unease to the streets of the city. The Konti gave a sigh of hopelessness and turned to the next patient – and old man she had attended to in the past. "I jus' needed you to check on this wound, like you said, you told me to come back weeks after," he grumbled at her. Everyone seemed more irritable these days. Even Nira'lia was starting to feel the pains of the famine. It had been days since she last had a proper meal. It took all the strength she had in herself to remember her bedside manners when dealing with patients. Nira'lia examined his arm. Weeks earlier, he had a gashing wound on it, one that Nira'lia had stitched up. She looked at it now and saw that the wound had closed as it was supposed to be. There was a yellowish hue that surrounded it, a healing bruise that said his body was taking care of the problem. "This is good," she told him. "In a month it will most likely be all gone, though a scar would not be a surprise." The old man shrugged and waved her away, complaining that he walked all the way there to hear such nonsensical statements. Nira'lia forced a smile at him and bid him farewell, and then she turned away from him. She massaged her temple, hoping that the next patients would be more pleasant.

[Montaine]

It was a beautiful day. The sun beat down, imbuing everything it touched with a pleasant warmth, bordering on uncomfortably hot but mediated by the breeze coming in from the sea. The balmy days of Spring had arrived in full force to sweep away the hoary Winter weather and yet all around faces were miserable. Famine was not an uncommon affair in the harbour city, lying as it did on the rocky boundary between mountain and sea with so little arable land. Normally they at least had the fish of the bay to assuage their pounding stomachs but even their previously abundant numbers seemed to have been severely lessened by the destructive powers of the storm. The word around the bars was it had something to do with those petching pillars in the bay. Monty had neither the scholarly expertise nor the political clout to discover the truth but maybe he’d ask the fair doctor about it during his lesson. His stomach growled as he made his way up to the university. It had only been three days since the famine had been officially declared but food had been in short supply ever since the beginning of Spring, ever since that shyke of a storm. Montaine wasn’t wealthy. He was on an apprentice wage, which was the boss’ way of saving money in truth. But Calbert had promised him a proper glassworker’s wage, fit to someone of his skills, by the end of the season, what with Joseph’s passing and all. Maybe if he’d had a proper pay before now he could have afforded dinner last night. His stomach grumbled again. Apparently even her ladyship was suffering from the effects of the shortages. When even the wealthiest citizens can’t afford to keep themselves and their pets well fed the situation has gone dire. The glassworker sighed and shook his head. He had to think of other things, things other than food. His work was distracting when he had it, but who had the money to buy, who had the freedom of anxiety to desire glassware in such times of trouble and strife? Calbert had been reduced to canny business offers, reductions in prices and bluntly, basically, bribes. His lessons would distract him from the gnawing hunger in his gut. He hoped they would, at the very least. The fair doctor had promised to help him, to educate him in the ways of the academic. If the boy was ever to become a respectable, respected citizen he would have to be able to read and write. It was not a haughty, self superior goal, he had to assure himself, it was an honest stab at self improvement. The fair doctor would probably be waiting in the library, or perhaps the infirmary, and judging by the sun he was early. He passed into the university grounds and formulated a plan in his head. He would drop through the infirmary en route to the library, and await to commence his literary learning.

[Nira'lia]

'I think I need some fresh air...' decided Nira'lia as she looked at the other patients. There were two people who were not yet being attended to by a medic, but they didn't seem to be in a dire situation. The Konti knew it would be alright to take a step outside for now. She opened the doors of the infirmary and walked out to the sunlight. The sun's radiance cascaded to the ground and to her surroundings, beating warmly against her skin. Nira'lia smiled to herself as she put a hand to shade her eyes as she stared up at the sky. The cloud looks good, and it was evident that there would be no more rain, at least not for now. It was a good contrast to the terrible storm. "Ugh..." she muttered as she heard her stomach rumble terribly. The Konti put a hand over her stomach, as if it could help ease it. Nira'lia decided to take a short walk. That might help ease her mind, she thought. She wouldn't go too far—she had to head back to the infirmary as soon as possible. Nira'lia was here to volunteer her help, not to explore the University's campus. Blinking, she saw two men ahead of her. The two of them were walking towards her. They were in a conversation, and she was able to pick up on it. "...Seriously. The infirmary should have food! I mean, they have to feed their patients, don't they?" said one of the men. He looked confident in his answer as he urged his companion onwards. Nira'lia frowned. Before she could even think about it, she opened her mouth and put up a hand to stop them. "I'm sorry!" she said. "You're mistaken. We don't have food in the infirmary. You will have to look elsewhere." They weren't the first people who thought of going to the infirmary in hopes of finding a bite to eat. The two men scowled at her and might have said something else, but she chose not to pay it further heed. Soon enough, they turned around and went on their way, believing Nira'lia's words. Sighing, the Konti started walking again. She felt bad for what she did, but she thought it best, rather than having them go to the infirmary in a useless endeavour. 'Besides...' thought Nira'lia. 'They didn't look sick or injured. Are they planning to just ask for food?' Nira'lia looked ahead of her. There was another man walking towards her. Was he going to the infirmary as well? She looked at him from head to toe and saw that he, just like the previous men, was neither sick nor injured. It caused her to arrive at the conclusion that he was there for the same reason as the duo before him. "Excuse me, sir," she said to the young man. He was headed to the infirmary to look for a friend, but Nira'lia didn't know that. "Are you headed to the infirmary to look for food? If yes, I regret to tell you that we won't be able to help you."

[Montaine]

Montaine looked up, ‘Erudite?’ No, no this wasn’t the fair doctor he had met the night of the storm and subsequently got riotously inebriated. She was a Konti, that much was sure. There was a light dappling of scales and the tell-tale flaps of skin between the digits on her hands. She certainly bore a resemblance to his friend. She had come from the direction of the infirmary too, perhaps she also was a doctor in training. The glassworker coughed and apologised for his mistake. ‘Sorry, thought you was someone else,’ his stomach growled loudly, ‘An’ sorry ‘bout that too, I’m not here for food, really I’m not. I lived through enough famines and bad seasons to handle a little hunger when it comes our way,’ Montaine smiled weakly. It was true, of course. You couldn’t go a year or two in the harbour city without feeling the effects of the hunger. He’d hear travellers from further inland talk of the paradisiacal qualities of Zeltiva. It hadn’t the crime of Sunberth, nor the zealotry of Nyka, or the oppression of Sylrias. No, it had the greatest seat of learning on all of the eastern seaboard and the bustling marketplace down below. But what those visitors, those newcomers and fresh arrivals failed to understand was that the ever flowing tide of trade was not a boon, not a privilege or a luxury but a necessity. Without the constant flow of food that the ships brought in to the bay each day the city would wither and waste away in a season or two. It was a sadly common and sorry sight to see the starving on the cobbled streets. A true Zeltivan appreciated every meal, ever minor morsel that passed their lips and savoured it for who knew when next you might eat? ‘D’you get a lot of people up here looking for food?’ he asked the doctor’s doppelgänger. It was disgraceful how people could look to take food from the sick. It was disgraceful, but not surprising. It the times of greatest need the worst came out in people all too often. The craftsman would have like to have believed, would liked to have been able to convince himself, that these people were from abroad, sailors and the like, that true harbour boys wouldn’t sink so low as to take food from those that needed it. Unfortunately, the truth was that Zeltivan solidarity, as nice an idea as it was, seemed to escape people’s minds when their stomachs were grumbling.

[Nira'lia]

"Erudite...?" repeated Nira'lia, her expression puzzled. She came to the conclusion that Erudite was a Konti like her, perhaps the other Konti she had seen in the infirmary a few times. It wasn't the first time that Nira'lia was mistaken for someone else from her race. Once she realized her mistake, that this man wasn't here to scavenge for food, she gave a sheepish and embarrassed smile. In the end, she was just thankful that he didn't find her mistake offensive. "Apologies..." she said softly. Nira'lia knew the pangs of hunger. It wasn't uncommon to her. In a way, she felt that she could relate to this man. The Konti had been walking the opposite direction before, but now, she decided to turn around and walk with the man as he headed towards the infirmary. If he wasn't there to look for food, maybe he had a medical problem, and she felt that the least she could do was see what she could do for him. "Lately, yes..." said Nira'lia, answering his question. "The people are so hungry that they're taking chances and asking in the oddest places. They believe that the infirmary would have food to feed their patients, but the infirmary is suffering just like the rest of the city." She paused in her monologue. A frown graced her expression. Sighing, the Konti glanced at the man she was walking with. He looked like a normal person, and he didn't look hurt, and she was pretty sure he wasn't working or volunteering at the infirmary. After hesitating a bit, she finally chose to speak up again. "My name's Nira'lia," she said. "I'm volunteering at the infirmary. Is there something you need help with? I mean... you are headed there, right...?" Nira'lia looked uneasy. She didn't want to come off as nosy, especially since she had already jumped to conclusions before.

[Montaine]

Montaine almost laughed but caught himself. He had spent so much of his youth in bed with various assorted healers and medics and doctors hovering over him, and had even once or twice been to a smaller infirmary down in town that had since fallen out of business and yet now, for once, when so many were falling sick and ill and dying he was heading to the infirmary in all good health. Well, in reasonably good health. Two mornings ago he had collapsed attempting to get out of bed and been confined to the mattress for the best part of a day but thankfully it was his usual ailment and nothing serious. It was something he had grown accustomed to, in fact. Something he was wearily all too familiar with. He instead changed the chuckle into a smile and shook his head, ‘Thankfully I’m as good as I ever am, bit hungry but nothin’ major. Nah, I’m just meetin’ someone up round here, but I think I’m early,’ he paused and looked over the outer façade of the university infirmary as they approached, ‘Would you mind if’n I waited inside? I’m sure she’ll be along soonish, an’ I’m sure you could use an extra pair of hands, if you want ‘em?’ There would have been a certain novelty to caring for the sick and injured that would not be lost upon the young glassworker. Illness had been such a constant companion throughout his formative years that its presence in strangers no longer fazed him as it did many of his peers. Certainly the young novice Fogle reacted very badly to such things, coming as he did from a class of citizen who so rarely came into contact with the diseased. He wouldn’t have been able to do it day to day, of course. He wasn’t quite strong enough for that. As used to sickness as he was it was would have been a whole different kettle of fish to deal with them day in day out. The duty of holding others’ lives in one’s hands was so great and the craftsman simple couldn’t trust himself was such responsibility. It was due to this that held a particular reverence for those in the medical profession, like the fair doctor, like this woman. He rubbed the back of his neck, ‘I’m Montaine, by the way, but most just call me Monty,’

[Nira'lia]

The Konti shook her head. "I don't mind at all, and I'm sure the others won't either. You can come inside and help, yes. Do you know anything about medicine? Oh... what do you do for a living?" She assumed that he was not a medic like her for the reason that she didn't see him around the infirmary. Nira'lia didn't mean to pry, but she didn't know anything about him. She didn't know what his job was, or if he was a University student – she didn't know anything aside from his name and the fact that he was not here to look for food. "Hello, Monty," she said simply, just for the purpose of repeating his name. "That's a nice name." As they walked, Nira'lia wiped off sweat from her forehead. The weather was scorching, and she could see why he wouldn't want to wait outside the infirmary. "Here we are..." she said softly when they approached the doors of the infirmary. The Konti opened them and gestured for him to enter, and once he did, he would find that the establishment wasn't as busy as it was during the storm and the days that preceded it. In one corner, there was an unattended woman who was clutching a bleeding arm. The woman seemed to be able to keep the pain in check, which was why she was not an urgent case to the eyes of the others. Nira'lia had no idea what had happened to her, but she saw that the other medics and healers were busy at the moment. "Do you know how to clean a wound, Monty?" asked Nira'lia curiously.

[Montaine]

Montaine stepped inside. The place was quite busy, much busier than any infirmary he had found himself in as a child though perhaps due to the trying times more and more people were finding themselves in need of medical aid. It was disheartening to witness the sheer volume of patients requiring healing so long after the storm had passed and yet its effects struck deeper than simple physical wounds. In desperate times and when food was scarce people often got just as desperate themselves, violence and petty thuggery rose and attacks and robbery were commonplace. The rebuilding efforts led to their own workplace risks of injury and then there was the disease. So many starving souls, confined to beds out of weakness, bodies failing, stewing in their own accumulated filth, men and women and children on the streets and flies in the air. He could smell it. The infirmary was kept clean, as clean as any of the volunteers had time to keep it, but the stench of the sick, of the diseased and dying and ill, was pervasive. It was almost concealed beneath the stronger, more cloying odour of herbs and soaps, assorted perfumes trying to hide the stink that clung to the beds, the patients, the very walls of the infirmary itself. The two contrary scents intermingled, each as repellent to the nostrils as one another, so thick it was almost palpable. Monty grimaced, ‘I can do a fair job, I’m a glassworker by trade, down on the workshop eastwards of the market road, you can see our furnaces workin’ on a clear day, by the smoke, and the amount of times I’ve had to bandage up a cut or scrape from broken glass ‘cause someone wasn’ payin’ attention’s too many to count,’ he tried to smile but his nose wrinkled at the aroma. In another corner of the room a woman lay on an old wooden bed that looked so out of place in the infirmary it could only have been dragged their from one of the dormitories. The infirmary was only designed to hold so many people, but in times as dire as those that followed the great Djed Storm they needed all the beds they could find. The woman was old and thin, she had her hands clutched round her stomach but showed no signs of movement, no signs of life. Her eyes were closed and her skin was pale and Monty found himself transfixed by her sickly pallor. She looked beyond death. It had been so long since the storm, yet still this is what the city looked like. The place must have been unbearable earlier in the season, but at the very least then it would have been largely physical injury, and not the horrors that famine and disease brought about.

[Nira'lia]

"A glassworker!" repeated Nira'lia. What an interesting job. She wondered what this man could create with glass, and she reminded herself to ask about it later on. Perhaps he had a sample with him, and she found herself drawn to the idea of seeing it. He knew how to clean wounds, and the Konti was just about to suggest that he help out the wounded woman. However, her attention was cut short when she saw that he seemed to be focused on something else. His eyes were transfixed on something. Nira'lia followed his stare to see a woman who was not moving. This old woman was someone Nira'lia had attended to the day before. She was suffering from an illness that her body was succumbing to, and the lack of food made it worse. Looking at her now, any person could see that it was possible that her body was now a hollow shell. Sadness swept over Nira'lia's face. Despite the number of people in the infirmary, nobody would have noticed that one woman, the one who made no noise, who would look the same as she battled her sickness in contrast to when her life finally faded away from her. To assure that her doubts were correct, Nira'lia approached the woman and put her hand gently on the woman's arm. The woman's skin was cold, and Nira'lia's mind saw no visions. Her Konti gift only worked on the living. Sadly, Nira'lia turned back to Montaine. "She's gone now," said Nira'lia quietly. She stepped away from Montaine to inform the doctor in charge. The doctor nodded at her and instructed a man about what to do with the body. Perhaps he would call the woman's family, or perhaps she had no family. Nira'lia didn't know the process the infirmary had for the dead. She didn't want to know. Before walking back to Montaine, Nira'lia fetched a bowl of warm water and a washcloth. She held it in her arms as she walked to the glassworker. "Do you want to clean her wound, Monty?" she asked, referring to the woman she had been looking at before, the one with the bleeding arm. If he didn't want to do it, then she'd do it herself. She just assumed that maybe he wanted to keep his hands busy. As she walked over to the wounded woman, Nira'lia glanced over at Montaine. She couldn't help but ask, her tone slow but steady, "What's your philosophy about death, Monty?"

[Montaine]

Montaine struggled to draw his gaze away from the old woman. It wasn’t that she was dead that bothered him so, but that no one had known, no one had realised. Of course it made sense to concentrate on those that could still be helped, in a time of fleeting resources where one such resource was the time itself you could not expect a doctor or medic or healer to waste such a precious commodity on the already deceased. It was a horrible, revolting necessity. He managed to tear his eyes from the raggedy corpse, the human husk for that was all it was now, and meet Nira’lia’s look. He nodded mutely and accepted the bowl and cloth, beginning his work to clean the wound. The woman winced at the touch of water and the rough rag on her broken skin so Monty went a little lighter, occasionally dipping the cloth back in to the bowl. He’d done this before, many times, and yet this occasion was so very different. Back in the workshop it was laughs and petches and mockeries of the person stupid enough to hurt themselves. It was craftsmen being craftsmen and having a laugh at one another’s expense, whereas here, here there was no laughter, no joy or gentle teasing, just misery, abject misery brought about by trying times and desperation. He started quietly, ‘Way I figure it, we all die sometime, right? Jus’ got to do our best to put it off as long as possible, I s’ppose,’ he turned briefly back to where the poor, deceased woman lay, now covered in a blanket, ‘But if’n people die, then they’re dead an’ there’s no shame, ‘cause that’s what’s got to happen, you know, Lhex an’ all that,’ His brows furrowed into a frown but he continued to smile gently at the woman whose arm he was cleaning, ‘If’n they could have been saved they would have, an’ if’n they weren’t then they couldn’t have, even if it seems like it would’ve been easy, if’n they’re dead…’ Monty looked at the wall and an image of the sailor flashed through his mind, ‘If’n they’re dead they’re dead, nothin’ we can do, right?’ Monty had spent so much time wrestling with the concept of mortality. The fact that his oldest friend was to all intents and purposes immortal, when he himself was always just a faulty breath away from death, from that final, fatal episode, had always struck him as morbidly humorous. Perhaps that was why he was so drawn to the man, that the one he cared so deeply about viewed all of his kind as just as short lived. So Monty might only last a few more decades, what was thirty years to someone pushing one hundred and twenty? To someone who could still be around come the next Valterrian? If he still lived, of course. If he still lived.