Copper Kisses

[Nathandiel]

Nathandiel's gums were bleeding.He'd brushed them down past the first layer of tissue.

Compulsive much?

He grimaced and pulled his lips back from his teeth to reveal two lines of white enamel awash in bubbles in a ribbons of bright red. He turned his head from side to side as he watched himself in the mirror, his right hand still up and gripping the pink toothbrush. He stuck out his tongue and leaned forward to examine it. He could still taste copper.

One little kiss from one little elf who felt the need to nibble on human bits and now I'm stuck with the taste of people in my mouth.

Maybe that's what he got for an act of secondary cannibalism. He could taste his own blood now, but it wasn't the same as the underlying taste. He cursed and jammed the brush back into his mouth and resumed his relentless scrubbing, the sound of the brush moving over his teeth loud inside his skull.

He wandered away from the mirror and scratched at his bare stomach as he left the wash station behind and approached his desk. His fingers moved over a filing folder, the index one moving to caress the name on the patient tab: Kerala. She wasn't' a patient, none of the files in that pile belonged to his patients; they were all Grim. He hooked the edge of the cover with his index finger and opened the file.

Kerala had made a spectacle -albeit an unoriginal one, but a spectacle none-the-less - of her inquisition trial that night. Nathandiel couldn't remember which stage of her inquisition she'd been in and he wasn't terribly familiar with the process; he'd only been required to do the first one. He switched hands and picked up his pen and began to scribble his notes while he brushed.

The Grim who'd gathered at Awatu's overblown establishment in Frostfire had all partaken of the hearts that Kerala had removed from her line of victims. He winced internally as he recalled her extraction technique and detailed it in his notes. Inefficient surgical techniques annoyed him but he'd come to find that Hordelings were particularly fond of doing things with about much as finesse as they used to empty their bowels.

He wasn't sure what the eating of the hearts had been intended to mean. Blood for blood's sake seemed to be a practice the Grim were fond of. He supposed he could inquire further with Drinn when she arrived. They were off harassing someone somewhere in an Alliance city and he couldn't risk being seen there in the event that they failed, so he'd gone home.

Drinn.

He stopped and looked at his toothbrush; the pasty bubbles pink now. She'd sliced out the cartilage from the bit of heart that she'd gotten a hold of and she'd done it expertly. She'd offered it to him but he'd declined. He wondered if that had disappointed her at all. He would have to make it up to her. When she got back she'd be full of stories about the things that had happened on their excursion and positively bursting with energy from all the fighting. He'd have to diffuse her anyway if he planned on getting any sleep, he'd make it up to her then.

He finished his notes on Kerala and stashed the folders amongst the genuine patient files. He headed over to the bed and sat on the end, staring at the fire as he continued to brush, pressing back to reach the molars now.

Soft and warm things curled around his ankles and he looked down to find he two wolf puppies; Castor and Linna, looking up at him. He lifted a brow as he paused in his brushing and both pups stood, their tails wagging and their eyes on the brush.

"Yeah it's blood." he said in the higher-pitched tone he used when speaking to his and Drinn's puppies. "I think at this point it's more Daddy's blood than anyone else's."

Their tails continued to wag.

His eyes narrowed, and out of pure curiosity he extended the bush down to the tiny dogs. Miniature noses flared and then slender pink tongues licked at the bristles. Castor shook his head and made a scoffing sound. "Minty isn't it?" Nathandiel asked. The pups continued until Linna snatched the brush and hurried away with it, Castor padding awkwardly after her.

Nathandiel's shoulders began to quake, the laughter coming on slowly. He wiped his mouth as the giggles became involuntary and laid back on the bed. "Where the hell am I?" He asked and closed his eyes, wincing, he could still taste peoplein his mouth.

[Nathandiel]

<<WARNING - Just in case.>>

The screaming got old. Adults were like babies, they could just keep screaming.

Shut. up. He thought, sneering. "I'm trying to work...." He grumbled, turning over another page in the parchment deck, the sheaves rustling and adding a note of punctuation to his request.

"Khaz. Khaz-al-a-khan!" The human male screamed. "Khaz-al-lakhala-Khan!"

Nathandiel rolled his eyes, and for a moment, buried his face in his hands, exasperated. He pulled his palms down his face, stretching the skin, and then turned, his eyes narrowed and fixed on the man who laid supine on his table. The man shook his head from side-to-side, his large, full lips wet and his saliva foamy in some places. His dark eyes were focused on the ceiling of the dank chamber as he recited that demonic nonsense.

"Really?" He asked. "Really?" He stood, his lab coat had become stiffer in some places and it softly crunched around his elbow joints.

"Khaz-al. Khaz-al-a-kahn!" The man decried with all the fervour of a street-corner prophet.

"Khaz-ala-blah-blah-blah!" Nathaniel cried back, holding up his hands, fingers splayed and waggling as if to offer some razzle to the man's demonic dazzle. He hissed at the man who continued, but was grateful that he lowered his volume. Nathandiel drew himself up as he approached the table, gesticulating smoothly with his hands like a time-seasoned academic lecturer. "You would think, that with all the human meat that comes through this place that I would get one that actually spoke my mother tongue." he said.

The man's dark eyes flickered towards him, his long lashes wet, and his chants became more like prayers as the eyes flicked away.

"Yeah. I miss the sound of these words." Nathandiel said slowly, letting the syllables slide off his tongue, the contact with his palate natural and free from the need for him to assert conscious attention. "Cellar door." He said. "I had a literature professor once that said that was one of the most beautiful compositions that we can say; cellar door." He closed his eyes and drew himself up straighter, his hands lowering easily to his sides as he basked in the aftermath of the spoken words.

"Khaz-ah-" The man continued in a hushed tone.

Nathandiel opened his eyes, his mouth curling into a down-ward horseshoe of disgust. He turned to look at the man slowly. "...really?"

He was at the head of the table in a flash, pulling a metal cart up as he reached above the man and adjusted over-head light. Tools and vials clattered in their metal dishes as he lifted his mask to cover his lower face with on hand and felt for the tools he desired with the other, making sure they were all there. He tied the laces at the back of his head as he spoke. "You know, I don't often try to have conversations with the poor saps that end up on my table - most of you don't have anything interesting to say." At this he let out a clipped bray of laughter. He leaned over the man and looked down at him past the upper edge of his mask, their images inverted to one another. "And you know...that's really my job here - to get you to talk and say interesting things, things the upper tactical minds are interested in."

"Khaz-al-a-khan-al-kah..." The man continued, but his dark eyes were focused on Nathandiel's.

"I don't really believe in demons." Nathandiel whispered to the man, as if this were a secret. "But I do believe in the divine and if I were you, where you are now...." He gestured with one finger to the man's general state before snapping on gloves. "That's who'd I'd be talking to, not Khaz-allah-ballah-wan or whomever you are appealing to. Demons ask you to do a lot of bullshit to gain their favour. As I understand it, the kinder deities usually just ask you to acknowledge them and then reward you with all sort of good things like eternal happiness and forgiveness."

Nathandiel tilted his head in the opposite direction, eyes widening slightly as the man became silent. Nathandiel was also silent, only blinking, one hand hovering over the tens-blade on the tray next to him. They regarded eachother like that for some time, Nathandiel's breathing slow and deep, but his heart rate quickening as the anticipation grew. The man was going to say something and it was going to be profound.

"Khaz-al-..."

The shriek of frustration the rose from Nathnadiel drowned out the man's pleas as his face contorted behind the mask. "Raaaaaaaggggggh!" The sinew of his jaw stretched and his lower lip split on the surface where it was dry as he pulled his lips taut over his teeth. He brought his free hand down on the flat of the table next to the man's ear and the blunt sound of flesh on metal, contrasted by the sting, was paradoxically sharp in the silent room. He shook as he looked down at his fare - who no longer looked at him - and tried to calm himself.

"Fine." He snarled. The man had resumed his chanting prayers - if that's what they were.

He got up and wandered to the phonograph. He plucked a sleeved record from the nearby basket, turned it over and lifted a brow at the title. Elven script was flagrant and ran together. It was far more visually appealing than effective, in his opinion; it was a bitch to learn. He slid out the large disc and set it on the turn-table. "I've always liked music." He said slowly, guiding the needle to surface. He wasn't really talking to the blabbering fanatic on his table anymore. This was his time; when the occupants checked out mentally there was little else to do but amuse himself.

He held his hands together loosely at the level of his belt as he watched the record spin and the needle find its groove - much as he did for himself. The man's chants were not at all of the same cadence as the music. He didn't mind classical Elven music, some of it was very powerful, some was hypnotic - both characteristics that he valued in the ambiance of his workplace.

He moved back over to the table, calm now, and smiled down pleasantly as his 'patient', taking on the demeanor more of a physician than an interrogator. "I think you're just playing me." He said gently. "I think you're pretending to be a devout patron of whomever you're praying to and that you've committed to a role that will lead me to underestimate you."

The man continued and gave no indication that he was listening.

"I can understand that." He said. "My training was the same. People always say 'expect the unexpected,' but really they never do - you can't. That whole motto is a fallacy. 'Expect nothing,' at least then you're never disappointed. " He sighed as he looked down the form of the man; he was still dressed in his prison greys.

Nathandiel reached over him, their bodies connecting a moment, as he stretched his arm for the bandage scissors on the tray. He began to cut at the crucial seams of the patient's pants. The gown was fine, but the pants, those would get in the way.

"I'll tell you a story." he said. "I've always appreciated the interrogators that told me stories. I mean I didn't ask to meet you and you didn't ask to meet me, and I can at least entertain you while we get down to good stuff." He punctuated with this with a tear of one pant leg, pulling the fabric up and away as he cut. "It's my job to do more than just cut you." He stopped and looked up at the man with a pitying smile. "Too bad for you." He popped his brows for effect.

The man's prayers had become more silent and his hands balled into fists at his sides, shaking his restraints.

"I know these people." He started. "Decent but mediocre people. And with them, I'm just silly." He explained as he bared the man below the waist line and tossed the tattered sections of fabric that had made up his pants away. "I play the part well, I play it to a fault, and the only one who knows it's a 'part' I keep in line through more creative measures. You see, I don't want to hurt these people, that's not my task, so I simply am around them and I am a certain way - a way that wont alarm them because it shapes their expectations." He moved around the table so that his tray was within reach and pulled the patient's IV pole closer so he could adjust the flow rate.

"No one expects the village idiot to be the one to bring it all down." He said slowly, surveying the pale landscape of the man's thighs. "And no one thinks twice when the village idiot finally leaves."

He ran one gloved hand up the man's legs, his pupils dilating as he felt the skin pucker under the barrier of synthetic material. As his hand travelled he didn't realize that all he heard then was music and not the man's chants - they were gone. His hand found the man and there was an instant reaction of fright. A smile spread across Nathandiel's lips and his eyes move up to the man's face.

The man swallowed and no protuberant apple bobbed in the neck. The neck wasn't the only place the 'man' was missing round objects - or objects all together.

"Clever girl." Nathandiel said slowly.

Either the nurses had missed it or he'd read through the file too quickly, either way the patient nearly passed for their opposite gender. Her dark eyes found him finally. "Please." She said, her voice deep and gravelly. "Please no."

It's not just a disguise for this one. This one's caught between the poles.

"Please. Not that." She begged and swallowed again, and now, he could see the largeness of her eyes and the fullness of her cheeks. He could see it was a 'her'.

"Don't flatter yourself, honey." He said as he took his hand away and pulled her gown down her thighs. He picked up the tens-blade, tossed it expertly from one hand to the other and then buried it in her thigh, through the fabric, pinning it in place and sealing off her modesty as an instant tattoo of red stained the fabric and the table below.

She screamed.

"See." he said, surveying her again and deciding where to begin. "Expect nothing. You won't be surprised."

[Kerala]

(This character is SO interesting)

[Tenrilaux]

[ Nath is a great character. It's like the one thing I miss about being Aquizit: interacting with him. :/ ]

[Khorvis]

[[ Make her look like one of your Thalassian girls. ]]

[Nathandiel]

The bass was throbbing, the ladies were bumping, and the wine was flowing.

It's my party and I'll do what I want to. Nathandiel thought.

The young thing on the stage before him bent over, pressed her prized parts together and he favoured her with a ten-bit note. She blew him a kiss and resumed her acrobatics. The young thing on his lap smoothed a hand down his chest and nibbled at his ear-lobe. "How old are you now?" the thing on his lap asked, shouting over the music.

"In your years, I'd be thirty-seven." He replied, shouting just the same.

"Oh, an old man!" the young man teased.

Nathandiel brought his cigarette to his lips, inhaled and then blew his smoke in the face of the dark-eyed beauty. Young, trained things, they were taught to be sassy.

"Get off of my lap." Nathandiel said with a polite smile.

The young man giggled, seeming to think that Nathandiel had been kidding.

"Now." Nathandiel said sternly, clipping his teeth at the youth's ear. The young man's demeaour of flirtatious comfort melted and he quickly scrambled away. Nathandiel swatted his bare rear-end as he beat his retreat.

Nathandiel drank and smoked and enjoyed the pretty things that danced for him. Private party rooms were the best places to be. They were meant for actual parties, of people, but he preferred to be alone with his entertainment. He received several invitations to partake of complimentary services on behalf of the house, but politely declined each; he had a date with a special lady later and had decided to save himself for her.

When his blood flowed comfortably through his dilated veins, his sinews awash in warmth and the kind of chemicals that made a man content with his plight, he shooed the pretty things from the room until he was alone with the music. He vaulted onto the stage and stood for some time, just listening and enjoying the sensation of his own heartbeat. Each contraction sent new waves of delight through his tissues, from his scalp all the way down into his toes.

He took to the pole, regarding it with hesitation and suspicion at first. He was alone and it was inviting. He followed the rhythm around him and got lost in the bars and chords of artists whose relevancy wouldn't survive the decade. He moved, and the faster he went, the easier it was to let go of the life he'd lived so far and the worries that consumed him about the one he still had yet to lead.

Birthday's were sometimes best when spent alone.

[Nathandiel]

"This is going to look really, really bad on us." Nathandiel said as he guided his razor along the contours of his jaw. "Neither one of us even ranking in the scalp hunt."

Behind him, in the bathtub, Drinn did not answer. He spied her reflection in the mirror and smirked for a moment. She was submersed in the still bathwater, her nose and heavily-lidded eyes above the surface. She reminded him of a crocolisk, lazily waiting for prey to wander into it's path.

"I know you can't take the title -- tactician and all -- but I really did like mine." He dipped his razor in the wash basin and shook off the accumulated cream that was peppered with fine, back hairs. His bride-to-be was not fond of facial hair, and neither was he really.

"They've all been in the battlegrounds, hunting and maiming and raking in the tally numbers. What have we been doing?" He posed, dabbing more cream on his cheek. "Fighting and fucking and...good Gods...cuddling." He frowned at this; it was very un-Grim.

"Shhh." Drinn said and he heard the water become disturbed. In the mirror he watched her emerge from the tepid water, placing her arms along the side of the tub and resting her chin on one wrist. She motioned with the forefinger of her other hand for him to come to her, curling the slender digit as she grinned salaciously at him. "Bring me the blade."

He lifted his brows at this and then turned to face her. She had that look in her eyes again that said she didn't care about whatever he was jabbering about and that she had her own plans. "Oh alright." He headed towards her and deposited the blade in her hands. "Maybe next hunt."

Screw hunting, they had better things to do.

[Nathandiel]

Nathandiel's eyes had been drawn to the leather-bound notebook on his writing table many times as the day had moved from morning, to the peak of the afternoon sun, to the fading time, when the lamps needed lighting. But he'd ignored the book, opting instead to turn over this way and that, to snarl at Castor when he got too rambunctious, and then to feel immediately guilty for having snapped. The wild wolf need running, he needed to stretch and he needed attention. He'd been domesticated and Nathnaidel had done that -- he needed to care for the pup and the way he'd made him. But he hadn't. He'd just turned over again.

He and Drinn had become more than just a sordid affair, and he thought that they had both been surprised by it. But then she'd pulled away, and he'd lashed out, and she'd gnashed back...and now they seemed to be done. She'd promised to meet him at their favourite summit in Hyjal after a long separation due to their duties before Winterveil...she hadn't come. She'd had reasons out of her control, but she hadn't come. He had cried.

He hated that he'd cried.

And then they'd fought. They'd made up, but then they'd fought more. She'd promised to spend time with him so they could repair, and she'd spent a little -- but then her duties had taken her elseware and the general dissatisfaction and distaste with the state of his life and where he was had wormed back into him until the many-tentacled beast of depression held him firmly in it's inky, black-armed embrace.

Castor jumped on the bed and nosed at him. "Stop it." Nathandiel grunted.

The dog continued.

"Stop it!" He hissed, sitting up.

The clever pup took the opening and slid under his arm, flopping onto his side and beating his tail against Nathandiel's belly. The stupid, tongue-dangling face of his dog, who despite all the hurt, was happy just to have cuddles, made him smile.

"Fine...." he groaned and laid back down. In time he fell asleep, putting off the book for another day while he dreamt with his wolf pup -- the one his Drinn had given him. If she didn't love him anymore, her gift still did.

[Nathandiel]

He was thinking about going home. Just leaving the whole thing and calling it quits. He'd only come for work, but he'd let himself fall for a girl and now the work was still there -- it could even still be good if he got back on the horse and back to it -- but the girl had used him.

Used him good. He was sure of it. Atticus; that was who she was probably with. The familiar and the first were far more alluring that the new and next. She talked tough, but he wasn't sure was.

Promises, promises.

Castor brought him back the ball they were throwing and Nathandiel smiled. "You're a silly dog." he said and the beast backed up, head down and tail wagging. He chucked the ball across the snowy courtyard and the wolf took off.

Castor made him smile. He watched the silly thing lose the ball in the snow, and then run around in circles looking for it, dropping his face into the banks for scoops of the white stuff every now and then. Nathandiel laughed and called the dog back to him. Castor tackled him and he fell back into the snow, laughing as he was showered with affection.

God, he missed affection.

"You're ridiculous!" he cried, but the dog just licked his face. "We'll freeze together if you keep these kisses up!" He wrestled his dog and they laid down together, his enthusiastic scratches becoming affectionate pets. He looked up at the white sky while his dog nosed into the front of his coat for the snack pocket.

"I knew it." Nathandiel said. "You just want me for the tasty bits." He took out the treats and fed the pup. "Kinda like her, I guess." he added sadly.

The dog was nice to him, so he gave it extra bits. He knew he should focus on moving past it all and maybe --just maybe -- finding a new girl. She'd been a nice a experience with love, and as much as it hurt right then, he thought he'd like to feel love again.

"Love. But not puppy love." he told Castor, tipping up the dogs snout to kiss him back. "Puppy love makes only unwanted children, and morons. Thank the Gods I only landed myself a moron."

Thank. God.

[Nathandiel]

Nathandiel looked around the darkmoon faire and exhaled slowly as he watched the carnies clean up discarded wrappers and boxes, torn teddies and kiosk prizes left behind -- things once shiney, and prime candidates to be loved.

All the prizes stood in lines, and people approached, pointing to the ones they wanted to take home, to give love to, and to hold as a special moment of fun, love and happiness. The pretty girls that the boys won the teddies for, tossed them away, once they'd gotten what they really wanted -- the boy.

Girls are bad. Girls are really, really bad.

Syreena was bad. She wouldn't even be friendly. She was an ugly girl, but he liked her anyway. She was smart and quick and cunning and he wanted to be friends. But she didn't like him.

Hateful, cold...but at least consistent.

Shaelie was bad. She was aloof and dismissively, snooty and overrated. He'd thought she was smart, but she was just self-absorbed. He'd reuqested her help once, a desire to utilize her skill, and she'd assumed he'd wanted to utilize her ass.

Arrogant, awful, self-flattering woman.

Lillianna was bad. She made fun off him and laughed off his attempts to be friends. She was cruel and dismissive. Sh was an evil woman. She made his brows furrow when he thought about her.

Two-faced; ditzy and dumb, but smart enough to hurt people to feel cute.

A pink teddy bear, still clean and fluffy was plucked from a rubbish bin. Castor mewled at the same time that Nathandiel sat up, head perked at the sight of the bear.

"Don't toss it!" He called, scrambling off the bleachers when the carnie looked up. He hurried down the benches and ran to the bin, snatching the bear from the Carnie.

"Geez, if it's yours, just say so. We get these made for coppers...." But Nathandiel wasn't listening. The pink bear had a small stain, sauce most likely, on his belly, but that was all that was wrong with him -- certainly not enough to invalidate him and sent him to the rubbish fires.

He glared at the rubbish bin and clutched the bear to his chest, brows deeply grooved. Some girl had thrown it away he was sure. It had gotten sauce on it, probably because she was stuffing her fat face, eating the food that made her lie about her weight, so she'd thrown it away.

He hunched up his shoulders as he walked away and looked down at Castor. "Girls. Bad, bad girls. Liars, manipulators, mean mean mean cunts." Castor made a noncommittal noise. "There's nothing wrong with this bear, nothing at all that cant' be fixed." He insisted. Castor's tongue hung out of his face as he looked up at his master.

I don't even know what's wrong with me and Drinn threw me away.

The thought was sad and it lanced his heart. She'd left. Drinn was mean. She'd been honest about being being mean, but that she had been so mean as to leave him without a word, after she'd pretended to be so excited about getting married.

Maybe I've got sauce on me.

This made him giggle, and giggle he did, all the way into the treeline where he hear young, mean, bad girls giggling. When he was done with them, he was the only one giggling.

[Nathandiel]

In a way it felt good to be abused, especially by people he regarded with respect. It confirmed for him that he was all the things the Mean Voice said: ugly, foolish, stupid . . . unwanted. Hope was the worst hurt; because it kept one from accepting the facts. Being attacked and ganged-up on by Syreena and Leyujin and Lillianna had stomped out the small ember of hope that had begun to glow again.

Thanks guys. He thought, as he drew the cotton swab over the split in his lip. It stung and he tongued it, the taste of ointment was bitter.

"What did you expect? They don't take your seriously and they never liked you. They put up with your because of her." The Mean Voice said. Nathandiel's shoulders slumped. "Without her you're just annoying. "

He finished cleaning himself up and went back to the bedroom. Castor waited for him in bed, but even his dog couldn't make him smile. "At least Aderlee tried to help." he murmured into his pillow.

"And now you look stupid and weak." the Mean Voice said, perching itself on his shoulder so it could whisper to him. "Stupid, weak, and useless. You know Nath...the roof is adequately high, the poisons adequately strong, the bullets adequately--

"Shut up!" Nathanidel snarled.

The Mean Voice was quiet for a little bit, and Nathandiel was able to sleep.

[Nathandiel]

She tasted like salvation; like a reprieve from a pain that had been endless. She felt like velveteen on sensitive new skin, warm and soft; a covering to wrap up the things most cherished. She smelled like home; the only place he could really be as the Gods had made him.

"I love you...." he whispered against her flesh, kissing down the centre-line of her taut tummy. "I love you so much."

He felt her fingers in his hair, the tip of her pinky-finger cutting a gentle path through the shorter hairs at the back of his neck. The way she cut him there was far gentler than the way she'd cut his heart. His hands moved over her body as he placed his kisses, using his mouth to love her the way he intended to once they were ready for the main affair. His fingers splayed over her ribs, when she inhaled he blunted them into claws that moved over bones likes piano keys.

She gasped, and the fingers of her other hand curled in the length of his forelock and tugged.

"I was lost without you." He breathed against her skin, the tip of his nose drawing its own line down her body. "I was so sad when you were gone."

He kissed passed her navel, and bit softly at the very slight bump that ladies had between the navel and the promised land. He felt her shiver and then pull more forcefully at his hair. He lifted his head and looked up at her, his chin just above her "below." She looked down at him with something like impatience, punctuated by the way her toes curl next to him.

"Don't leave me like that again Drinn. Please." He pleaded. "Please...please...." he lowered his mouth and kissed her there. When she gave her approval he took his communion, and finally, found peace from his heartache.

[Nathandiel]

Nathandiel was hurting, the stages of grief were not stages at all, they were more like a matrix, a table that one jumped around like a ricocheting bullet. Acceptance started to come, but then the denial was there; the panic came, and then bargaining began.

He was beyond weary.

The Grim member had been kind to him, speaking to him in confidence and allowing him to speak words he'd feared too deeply to even write down. The Grim regarded him as a clown, and they took delight in torturing him, but that one had treated him at least as a person. He was grateful.

He was in the acceptance box right then of the broken grief stages, sitting with his drink, his quill in hand and a cigarette burning abandoned in the tray. Castor was curled at his feet, gnawing on a rope toy. Linna still sat by the door, waiting for her Drinn to come back. Nathandiel didn't have the heart to tell the pup that he didn't think she was, and he brought her supper plate to her so she didn't have to leave her vigil at the door.


But she might, so I can't allow the pup to lose hope. He thought as he took a sip of his wine. He wold polish off the bottle, taking double measures of water for each finger of wine before he retired for the night. I can't allow myself to lose hope either.

This time it had been his fault, regardless of any injustices she had borne him. He had been cruel to her and she'd gone -- rightly so.

Love is patient, love is kind, love is fucking cruel as glass in a fresh wound. . . .

He worked on his notes. The raid for "wreave" had won The Grim samples, or rather it had won Nathandiel samples. He'd hidden vials in Castor's collar sleeve. The preliminary laboratory results from the Undercity had come in, and he distracted himself from his anxiety by delving into the numbers, pulling apart the chemist's qualitative analyses, and looking for holes in the data.

He took another sip of his wine and then reached for his drug compendium. He flipped through the large tome as different drugs and semi-licensed subsntaces came to mind. He skimmed through the monographs, looking for something that might have been the mother of what they were calling "wreave."

The liquid seemed to be a suspension, and it wasn't clear to him yet how it was intended to be ingested. He had ordered a series of test subjects to find the route of administration. His suspicion had been that it was an intravenous drug, but the scant reports from the field said that multitudes of alliance were using it, and the supposed demographic of users were not the kind that he felt wold have the technological know-how to deal with intravenous administration.

So why then is it suspended at all? If it can be ingested as a solid it could be a powder, and that offers far more avenues for administration let alone convenience in trafficking. So how do they take it?

He held up the vial he'd taken against the lamp's light. The colour was not quite discernible to him, but he suffered from a degree of colour blindness. It was a dark colour though, rich, and he suspected that his sample had been a stock sample, not a diluted unit meant for distribution.

Nathandiel was no stranger to drugs, he enjoyed them greatly and he was, after all, a modern physician -- he didn't care for magic, he cared for science. He set the vial down.

The laboratory reports had lead him to suspect that "wreave" was a derivative of something that could already be found on a shelf in a modern physician's drug cabinet, or at least on the shelves of a chemist's closet.

Nathandiel was somewhat out of his depth, he knew. He had come to the Undercity to work as a surgeon, but he had been a practicing paediatric psychiatrist back home with his own people. His cover story had called for a man of the knife though, and he'd never been bad in a body cavity.

As a psychiatrist though, my off-the-head knowledge of drugs is restricted to those of abuse, and those of the psychiatric -- a tiny drop in a large pool of chemicals.

He was no longer convinced that the precursors of "wreave" would be so obviously found in those categories.

He needed to know more about "wreave" if he wanted to satisfy his curiosity, and perhaps lend any assistance to The Grim with it. No one had asked for his help, but he was confident that he had a way of approaching such things that the shamans and the voodoo priestesses did not.

"Cold, hard, factual fucking numbers, baby. That's what I got." He mumured.

At this Linna yipped, and when he looked at her, she was facing him, her tail tentatively wagging as if unsure she could be excited. He smiled and slouched, holding out a hand to her. "C'mon girl . . . c'mon to me."

The wolf pup came and she sniffed, then licked at his hand. He pet her. "It's okay girl. Even if she doesn't come back, it's not because she didn't love you. I will love you. You have a home here with Castor and I." He knew then that he would keep the female pup.

"Your Drinn left again because of me and my awful, cruel mouth. But she loves you, she just had to go, to get away from me. I sent word to every place that I know she could go where she could receive it, begging forgiveness. She might come back. . . ."

When he finally put his books away, resigned to waiting for more data, he crawled into bed and slept between two pups, warm and as safe with them as they were with him. They would tackle the world again in the morning.

[Khorvis]

[[paediatric psychiatrist! An executioner as well. Oh boy!]]

[Nathandiel]

Keeping his mind off of Drinn had been an excruciating task in itself. Drugs, drink, and the company of strangers had helped though. Staying busy had given him breaks between his painful oscillations between telling himself it was over, and telling himself why it might not be. People had helped the most as something to be busy with, so he'd forced himself to spend time with them.

Strangers. Some of them are quite nice though. Funny how when you're in love, your social circle collapses around a single person. Then when they go away, you've got nothing at a time when you need people more than ever.

He looked at himself in the mirror, inspecting his features, holding back his hair in search of greys and pulling up his face to assess the lines. He didn't look bad, not really. His ears were a bit short and his face a little long, but he wasn't ugly. He opened his mouth wide and moved his jaw to spot the line of three teeth on his lower left row that were crooked -- the rest were good.

Even if she doesn't come back, maybe someone else will want me. Surely I'll want someone else too, even if I can't imagine that now.

He'd been propositioned by a lady named Ophila or Ophinnia -- he could not remember without her card in hand -- to work as a prostitute in her brothel. The woman had propositioned him and a large, well-built Orcess named Shokkra.

He touched the shell of one ear, teasing the mark there. Shokkra had whispered to him that he was hot after touching his tummy and commending him on getting sloshed at a tavern. When they'd bid eachother farewell she'd bitten his ear.

He liked the way it hurt when he fingered it. He let his mind wander a moment, recalling the curves of her sculpted muscles and the smooth-looking condition of her emerald skin. He'd really liked her mohawk, he wondered if it would droop with exertion. What would it be like to be crushed between her strong, supple thighs?

He twitched in his pants.

He turned and drew fingers over his bare shoulder. His alabaster skin had burned a lovely pink in the sun of the Echo Isles. They'd gone swimming, rather he'd gone swimming with strangers. He'd enjoyed himself, and he'd enjoyed all of them, their company.

He opened a drawer and took out a tin of zinc oxide. He circled two fingers in the thick cream and then began to spread and work it into his skin. The burns were bad enough that he thought he'd peel later. He hoped it wouldn't be too unsightly, especially if he met with Ophinnia. Would she still want him to . . . do whatever a male tart did if he was shedding?

As he settled in to the soothing aspect of his own touch, he thought Drinn and his stomach clenched. Why hadn't she written? Surely couples fought and she'd come back. Wouldn't she? Had his actions been so unforgivable?

He caught his eyes in the mirror, a sliver of black bangs along his nose. "Please Gods, please make her come back. Please, please, please."

He started to tear up and forced his fingernails into the burnt skin. He grit his teeth, embracing the physical pain instead of the emotional pain he still waited to develop and immunity to -- Gods knew his exposure had been high enough. Both pups yipped at him and he offered them a hushing command.

"Be still babies, Daddy is fine."

When he finished annointing his body, he crawled into bed naked and embraced the dogs. It took some work, and it took some pills, and it took more wine, but eventually he found peace.