Closed We Don't Know // But Don't Know Why

[Sophia Sunshore]

26, Spring, 519

"Speech"

Today would be the third morning that Sophia had coughed herself awake. She roughly drew a hand across her eyes, wiping away the tears that had accompanied this particular bout. With an undignified groan, she turned over in her bed in the hopes of returning to sleep, only for the movement to cause another fit of coughing, her whole body shaking with the force of it.

At least she didn’t have to go up to work at Uta’s today. The previous afternoon the botanist had shooed her back home, practically shoving Sophia down the steps with a long stick, complaining that she didn’t want to catch some weird rainforest disease and that Sophia should go and see Jansen. Of course, the Svefra had instead rolled her eyes and crawled into bed instead. Disease, pssh. It was just a cough, right?

Sophia sighed and rolled onto her back, feet tangling in the gauzy mosquito nets she had draped round her sleeping area. She pushed herself up to untangle them, reaching over to grab at the material. When her gaze fell on her outstretched arm, she froze. What was that?

The Svefra’s brow furrowed as she inspected her arm, eyes tracing over patches of raised pinkish-red skin that snaked up to her shoulder. Clearly it was not just a cough after all. She quickly untangled herself from the netting and scrambled out of bed to inspect the rest of herself. The rash seemed to be only on her left arm, on her chest near her left shoulder and it felt like there was some on her neck too. And just to top it off, now that she had noticed the damn thing, it was starting to itch.

Her breath started to come quicker as panic bubbled up to the surface and this set off another round of coughing. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Frustrated, she kicked at the raised area she slept upon. Sophia never got sick. It seemed it was time to pay Jansen a visit after all.

She dressed quickly in a dress made from a floaty lemon-yellow material, belted round the middle with long loose sleeves that covered the rash down her arm. Ankle-height boots made of soft brown leather went on her feet, and she left her hair how it was, slightly disarrayed from tossing and turning during the night.

The Panacea was a short walk away, just past the City Core. The sun was hot this morning, or maybe it was this illness, the back of Sophia’s neck prickling with a light sheen of sweat. She averted her gaze from anyone she passed, hoping that they wouldn’t notice the angry rash on her chest that peeked over the top of her dress. She muffled coughs with her hand as she went, picking up the pace when the familiar shape of the healer’s clinic came into view.

As she drew nearer, Sophia noticed that there were more people milling around than she usually saw here. Her ears caught the familiar sound of coughing, and she stopped down on the path below near the steps. There were maybe half a dozen others inside, and as she squinted up the steps, she noticed a rash visible on some of them. Clearly, it wasn’t just her who had gotten sick. What was going on?

[Quzon]

26th Day of Spring, 519 A.V.

The thought of being ill weighed down on Quzon like a winters blanket. One that when partnered with the heat of the season, just made the man want to walk out into the ocean and drown in its cooling embrace. At least then he could court Dira by tempting the Whiptail to attack him. He could use it as a selfish attempt to meet his end like a warrior by taking the damned creature with him to the grave, while also not having to deal with the physical nature of being ill after.

Quzon felt that way because the cough had given him a particularly stressful night. He had not gotten any sleep and he doubted, at this point, that he could unless he saw to the coarse nature of the cough that now plagued him. The thoughts of dying to escape his current situation were swiftly forgotten once he reached the waters edge

A spray of cold water splashed across Quzon’s face as he decided to wade waist deep into the Suvan. It felt like a gentle reprieve from the jungles humidity. Although, what swiftly followed that peace amounted to a reality waking bristled cough. Quzon couldn't even have that little moment of victory. It led him to sigh deeply as he looked down at his right arm.

The rash that ran down his arm was the most worrying thing. He wanted to wait out the cough, but the rash seemed like his body was telling him to seek aid. The bodybuilder at least knew to listen to his body when it told him to rest, so made his way back onto the shore to retrieve his backpack where it laid on the sand, then held it in hand to make way to the Panacea after putting on his boots.

Quzon wasn't the most fashionable man, so was only dressed in his trusty loincloth with the set of boots and a sheathed dagger tucked into his right boot for the journey. He did not don any of his other weapons or armor, but kept them in the pack in case they were needed.

Once Quzon made it to The Panacea, it was quite obvious to any onlooker why he was there. He wore his rashes as openly as his tattoos that covered his right arm and general chest and back areas. The coughs. Those he tried his best to repress, mainly to try to keep his pride and seem like he was managing the cough better than most. Although, managing and succeeding were two different things as he found himself coughing while standing around the base of the clinics steps.

Quzon's emerald colored eyes glanced to his immediate left to examine the woman standing there. All he could see was a smallish woman with shock white hair woman with streaks of black running through it. Being color blind now made identifying specific things about people much more difficult, but her hair was the Same as Duncan, and the Svefra pod who first brought him to Syka. That at least gave him some place to start gauging her possible background.

"Female. You know. How we get sick."

There was a question in that statement somewhere, but Quzon's curt way of speaking and lack of common made them seem like he was questioning her innocence in not starting epidemic.

[Sophia Sunshore]

"Speech"

The Panacea had barely enough room for another person to enter, even one as slight as Sophia. She was still loitering around the steps when she noticed someone hovering nearby from the corner of her eye. As she turned her head to look at him, the coughing noise he made immediately informed her that he was another unfortunate resident who had picked up whatever was going around.

Bright blue eyes met his for a brief moment before dropping to note the angry rash that covered his arm. It would seem that the two ailments were not mutually exclusive, and Sophia surmised that they must both definitely be related to the same illness since so many others had both symptoms.

Sophia was about to turn and head up the clinic steps in an attempt to squeeze in among the other patients for some help or even just some advice, when the man spoke to her. She quickly flicked her gaze back to him, pausing for a moment to take in what he said. He spoke abruptly, his words almost accusatory. The Svefra hadn’t seen him around before, and she took a second to gauge him. She could tell he was Isurdian from his arm, a fact that she would have remembered if she had met him before. His tattoos were distinctive also, yet another thing she would have recognised. One in particular seemed familiar to her, some sort of dagger pattern. She had met another man previously here with much the same tattoo which she had learned was a gnosis mark, though she did not know who it was from.

Perhaps only a second had passed since the man had spoken. He appeared to be waiting for her to speak, and she realised that he had been asking her a question. Sophia took a breath to answer, mulling over how to word a response, for his way of addressing her led her to believe that the common tongue was not one he was overly comfortable with. That, or he was incredibly straightforward.

“I do not know.” Sophia shook her head and raised one shoulder in a shrug as she spoke. “I started to cough three days ago. The rash came today.” She peered up at the people gathered in the Panacea again as a thought popped into her head, prompted by his words. How did everyone get sick? What thing did they all have in common? Sophia had not been in the sea recently. She had been in the jungle, and she had eaten some fish from the Tidepool. She frowned and looked back over at the man.

“Have you been into the jungle?” She pointed at the trees to emphasise her question. “I go in the jungle, maybe it is something there that makes us sick?” Rashes could easily have come from a plant, for a lot of them irritated the skin as a defence. But the cough too? It must have been something else, though what exactly Sophia couldn’t tell at the moment.

She kept flicking her gaze up to the clinic, trying to catch Jansen’s eye in the hopes that the healer could answer some questions or help the pair. It looked like he was handing round some sort of balm, though whether it was to cure or simply soothe, Sophia couldn’t tell. “When did you get sick?” She turned back to the man - perhaps they could at least work out when this might have started as they waited for the crowd in the clinic to clear a little.

✧✧✧I hope I gave you enough to go on - let me know if I need to add a little more!