Request: If in the future a new chapter looks like it got tossed in a blender because I forgot to check that it saved correctly, please leave a review or PM me to tell me so. It takes about ten seconds and is very helpful to me. Do not assume someone else will get to it first, because everyone else thinks the same thing. (Free psychology tip there, can be applied to other settings as well.)

Felrion and Kilvara were often woken by frantic knocking in the middle of the night, but this time when Felrion opened the front door, expecting news of injured elves returning from a patrol, he found his sister-in-law instead. "No, not again... Kilvara, it's your sister!"

They'd been doing so well. It'd been many years since Taensirion and the others decided to intervene in Kimbrel and Alagon's marriage, and though there had been a few false starts, things had improved enough that Kimbrel hadn't run away again. Until tonight.

Kilvara appeared a moment later, still in her nightgown. "I should've known... Oh, Kim, I'm so sorry. Come inside, okay?"

But Kimbrel grabbed Felrion's arm. "You need to come! He's—he's really cold, and he won't move—"

Oh! Felrion had forgotten an important clue; Alagon had returned from a patrol today with a bandage around his shoulder where he'd been nicked while clearing out one of the goblin nests that kept appearing down south. He'd admitted his arm was stiff, but since the wound was a few days old, Felrion hadn't pressed matters when he stubbornly brushed off both the healer's offer to look at the wound and the suggestion that he take tomorrow off to rest. "Poison. All right, let's go." It was uncommon for poisons to stay hidden this long, but of those that did, the common ones were all easy to deal with. The "cold" was probably just shivering from a fever.

. . . . . .

Felrion knew as soon as he saw his patient that his job tonight wouldn't be as simple as giving him a swallow of pre-mixed antidote and going home. Alagon's breathing was labored and sweat trickled down his face, and instead of running a fever, he was ice-cold. It was clear he was in considerable pain.

Felrion sat on the edge of the bed. "What hurts?" He figured there wasn't much point in using his bedside manner with this elf, who would probably be better soothed by some nice training schedules to critique.

But Alagon only gave a strained moan.

The healer frowned and looked closer. Alagon's jaw was clamped tightly shut and his pupils were dilated far past where they should have been given the lamp next to his face. "Show me that you understand me."

Alagon made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded more frightened than anything else.

"He's paralyzed," Felrion murmured. "We'd better have a look at that cut."

A strangled whimper slipped between Alagon's clenched teeth as Felrion eased off his shirt—which had buttons, luckily, and didn't have to be slipped over his head—to get at the bandaged area, but he bravely (or stubbornly) stayed quiet as the healer prodded the wound. The cut was swollen and had a bruiselike greenish tinge, a sign of an especially nasty poison, but still not the worst-case scenario. Felrion sat back thoughtfully. "Kilvara, get Tathor," he requested finally. "I'll give him the antidote, but I think he'll need more than that." This poison lost its teeth if the antidote was given quickly enough, though it still made for a very unpleasant half-day, but it seemed this was one of the rare cases that didn't show up for days afterward for unknown reasons. By the time the full symptoms set in like this, the poison was nearly always fatal if drastic action wasn't taken.

. . . . . .

By the time Tathor arrived, Felrion had administered not one but two vials of the antidote even though Alagon's jaw was locked, plus enough painkillers that he was half-asleep, and coaxed Kimbrel into sitting next to him to keep him warm. Even elves who had gotten the antidote in time had been known to freeze to death, since whatever mechanism let their bodies make heat so efficiently was completely shut off, leaving them more vulnerable even than the mortal races. Elves weren't used to fearing the cold.

"I brought the herbs," Tathor said softly, placing a leaf-filled bag on the bed. "Should I boil water?"

"May as well, I don't think a few minutes will make much difference at this point." This poison took at least half a day to kill once it showed its effects.

"Okay. Don't worry, Kimbrel, we'll fix him, I promise."

Felrion nodded encouragingly. If what they were planning worked, Alagon would live, and odds were good that it would. Having two healers was always better than one, anyway, though either one of them could probably manage alone.

Alagon moaned again, but this time (Felrion could tell because of millennia of experience nursing semiconscious elves), it wasn't out of pain.

"Thirsty?"

"Mmmmm."

Felrion took small gourd-shaped object and slipped the tube-shaped end into Alagon's mouth, between Alagon's teeth and the inside of his cheek, then poured water into the hole in the larger end, so that the liquid trickled into Alagon's mouth. Since Alagon, conveniently, had been sleeping on his side, the water went into the middle of his mouth instead of the back. "Swallow carefully."

He did, without much trouble. The paralysis from this poison came from locked joints; the victim's muscles were weakened too, but only enough that they had great difficulty walking. That, of course, was only relevant if the elf had been given the antidote; as with the cold and the thirst, they hadn't found a way to stop the weakness or the severe dizziness. What the antidote did do was stop the excruciating pain and eventual death from symptoms eerily similar to fading, and to ease the joint stiffness somewhat so that it only affected the larger joints of the limbs.

This poison had always unnerved Felrion, especially when it made a resurgence during Sauron's rise after not once being reported since he was an elfling, during the First Age when the original Dark Lord had cast his shadow over the world. Even then, though Morgoth hadn't concerned himself with Greenwood, cases had appeared now and then. Felrion had found green bruising on Sky and Storm's father's corpse hours after his violent death.

Mostly, though, the poison felt unnatural. The way the symptoms fit together didn't quite make sense, and sometimes strange things happened that the healers couldn't explain, like elves screaming in the Black Speech as they died.

"How do you feel, Kim?" Kilvara asked suddenly. Kimbrel and Alagon's friends were still prodding them to work on telling each other their feelings (and naming them in Kimbrel's case, and acknowledging them to begin with in Alagon's).

Kimbrel's reply was quick. "I'm scared. I don't like that he's like this and I want Felrion to make it stop hurting him."

"We will soon," the healer promised.

Soon Tathor returned with the soaked and heated herbs. Just mashing the plants would be fine in an emergency, but this way they'd work faster, saving time in the long run.

"All right, let's do it."

"C'mere, Kim," Kilvara urged. "Don't get in the way."

Her sister didn't budge. "I'm staying here, I don't trust them." She didn't even notice the improper shortening of her name.

"It's all right," Felrion told his wife. "Make sure you hold still, Kimbrel." And then they began.

The healing chant was a mysterious thing. It didn't work if you didn't say the words, but it didn't matter what language the words were in, or even what the exact wording was. Certain other beings had much more flexibility, but for some reason or another this was the spell the Silvans had. Where it had come from, no one really knew.

"May the blessing that was given to me be sent from me to him..."

The thing was, some healers could learn it and some couldn't. Very few were able to unless they learned as elflings, which was why Felrion trained his apprentices at such an young age. He thought he'd gotten a feel for which had the ability to learn, and he'd known very early on that Tathor would pick it up quickly.

"...May he be released from death."

Strange wording. Strange idea that putting your hands on someone and talking would help. Yet it did, at least where poison was involved, or when an elf was close to death, though in the latter case the relief was often temporary. It worked sometimes to save elves from fading, at least for a few hours. In fact, the only time it fully worked was when an elf was about to die.

But, something had to be given for life to be received. It was less a loss of energy than of... some inner reserve Felrion couldn't quite describe. It was only temporary, but it was enough to keep the spell from being effective when there were a lot of wounded.

Strange spell. Strange poison.

But after only a few minutes of tense waiting, Alagon twitched—and tried to scramble up, nearly knocking his head against Kimbrel's in the process, only go give a sharp cry of pain.

"Easy!" Felrion said quickly, pressing him firmly back down. "The poison's gone, but you'll be stiff for a while yet, and if you move, you might damage your joints."

"But he'll get better?" Kimbrel confirmed hesitantly.

"Yes, he'll get better."

. . . . . .

"You're not allowed to come in," Kimbrel insisted, blocking Felrion's (and Taensirion's) path.

Her brother-in-law huffed indignantly. "I'm a healer, of course I can come in."

Kimbrel's reply was much more... hmm... petulant than it'd been the night before. "He said not to let anyone else bother him. Especially not Taensirion."

The blond advisor looked hurt.

"Kimbrel," Felrion pointed out in exasperation, "I have to make sure the poison's all gone and he doesn't need any more of the antidote. You have to let me in."

"No. He's fine and he's grumpy and you don't need to make him more grumpy. Go away."

"Now look, Kimbrel—"

The door opened and Tathor poked his head out. "Don't worry, Felrion, he's doing okay. He keeps saying he wants to go to work though."

Felrion's mouth dropped open, even more so when his former apprentice moved out of the way and Tathor's mother took his place. "C'mon, Kim, Felrion will only be here a minute," said Caliel. "Alagon's already as grumpy as he's going to get."

"I highly doubt that," muttered a voice from inside.

"And Taen will be sad if he doesn't get to come in. Making Taen sad is like making Tathor sad, it's like kicking a kitten. You wouldn't kick a kitten, would you, Kim?"

Kimbrel had developed a grudging liking for kittens, especially the smallest and fluffiest ones. "He doesn't look at all like a kitten," she complained, but she let them pass.

Alagon looked like he'd been fussed over a little too much, but not like Sky used to look; he was more likely to stab someone with one of the knives Felrion assumed he had stashed somewhere. He was a bit pale, admittedly, and the fact that Kimbrel and/or Tathor had been allowed to prop him up with pillows and place a tray of tea and cookies next to him strongly suggested that he was still too weak to get up or throw things with remotely concerning force. Still, he couldn't be feeling too bad given his glower and the pile of blankets—all but the covers that had been present last night—which had been shoved off the bed into a messy pile, probably recently since Kimbrel hadn't gathered them up.

"Here's the thing, Alagon," Felrion began, sitting on the edge of the bed where he'd been last night, "you really need to take it easy for a few days. If you don't, my past experiences say you'll probably collapse dramatically and have to be carried back to bed, and your recovery will be reset to where you are now."

"I have a job, you realize," Alagon growled, though somehow he was less threatening than usual, maybe because he was in his nightclothes and looked to Felrion's knowledgeable eyes like he might or might not be able to sit up for an extended period.

"Yes, we all know. And I have a deal I think you'll like."

Alagon's eyebrow tried to lift off his face.

"You know those reports you've always wanted me to write about the healers' procedures and so on? That really long list you leave on my desk every decade?"

The eyebrow went down, and it and its twin pulled together.

"I wrote them all, a long time ago, and I can update each with notes and have a scribe rewrite them all in a few hours. There are eleven. I'll give you one for each day you don't go to work."

Alagon's eyes narrowed. "You... you are trying to bribe me."

"You don't know how long I've waited for this moment." Or how much he was enjoying it, assuming his smugness didn't show on his face. "Do we have a deal?"

Alagon inhaled slowly, then exhaled. "I could have you arrested for keeping those from me."

"I could drop them all in the fire by accident."

The advisor took a cookie and slowly crumbled it in his fingers. "You will give me one each day?"

"That's right."

"If I stay home."

"Yes. And if you stay in bed today and most of tomorrow, I should add." After that, he'd probably be fine, but Felrion wasn't going to let him know that.

"..."

"Do we have a deal?"

"...Yes."

Felrion turned to Taensirion with a smirk; the Sinda was as amazed as Felrion had been when he learned Tathor and Caliel had gotten in. "I owe you dinner," Taensirion admitted to the healer. "I didn't think you could do it."

"And coffee in the next shipment."

"Did we agree on coffee?"

"Kilvara's addicted."

"Coffee it is."