"If you take off my finger, I'll tell everyone it was a dragon."
He won't tell anyone. Must presume Strange knows, must hope she will impress the importance of not committing tonight to record. If Isaac keeps his own,
Frame the pieces, mend the break.
Strange could walk her through this. Heat blazes against gum. Tiny vessels burst, pool, clot; calling bodies. Osteocytes, and t-cells, and neutrophils, and so many other unseen spirits. Deep, drawn from pulsing marrow, they hear it. They come.
Strange could tell her that story. Explain the abstractions that guide his hand, the metaphor of his understanding. All magic requires one –
Isaac's threads another shape, a familiar wheel. Wind death about and you'll unspool life. Around, and around, into growing callus; cartilage beginning to string for the days' journey. This would heal, without him. Not quickly enough. Not nicely enough. His thumb braces, shoves. It's quick. It isn't nice.
Pressure intensifies, magic probing past the reach of than stubby nails. He is trying to focus. He is trying not to think of the wide things folded at her back, blood pumping along eager new vein. Her body wants its own shape. By excruciating degree, it finds one.
Scar knits. Bone bridges bone. Teeming cables draw taut, and at once, the spell smears away. Isaac sinks back, and wipes the saliva from his hand. A moment to find his breath, heart too hard and fast in his chest.
(Energy need travel somewhere. Couldn't chance it sending it out through her skin.)
She looks herself. She will look herself, given rest and time. Only Gwenaelle might ever notice a difference, and she'd be hard-pressed to put a finger upon it, save to put her fingers upon it: A bump of tissue, worn away over the slow-coming year. Pull upon life and you'll find death, too; the body eats its own bones, a steady erosion of osteocytes.
no subject
He won't tell anyone. Must presume Strange knows, must hope she will impress the importance of not committing tonight to record. If Isaac keeps his own,
Frame the pieces, mend the break.
Strange could walk her through this. Heat blazes against gum. Tiny vessels burst, pool, clot; calling bodies. Osteocytes, and t-cells, and neutrophils, and so many other unseen spirits. Deep, drawn from pulsing marrow, they hear it. They come.
Strange could tell her that story. Explain the abstractions that guide his hand, the metaphor of his understanding. All magic requires one –
Isaac's threads another shape, a familiar wheel. Wind death about and you'll unspool life. Around, and around, into growing callus; cartilage beginning to string for the days' journey. This would heal, without him. Not quickly enough. Not nicely enough. His thumb braces, shoves. It's quick. It isn't nice.
Pressure intensifies, magic probing past the reach of than stubby nails. He is trying to focus. He is trying not to think of the wide things folded at her back, blood pumping along eager new vein. Her body wants its own shape. By excruciating degree, it finds one.
Scar knits. Bone bridges bone. Teeming cables draw taut, and at once, the spell smears away. Isaac sinks back, and wipes the saliva from his hand. A moment to find his breath, heart too hard and fast in his chest.
(Energy need travel somewhere. Couldn't chance it sending it out through her skin.)
She looks herself. She will look herself, given rest and time. Only Gwenaelle might ever notice a difference, and she'd be hard-pressed to put a finger upon it, save to put her fingers upon it: A bump of tissue, worn away over the slow-coming year. Pull upon life and you'll find death, too; the body eats its own bones, a steady erosion of osteocytes.
Of the wheel, turning.