A/N: This scene can be blamed on one Hannah Min, who used me as a guinea pig for her evil Korean foot book. I'm not entirely sure it wasn't a torture manual, but I don't imagine torture manuals to be light blue or have drawings of happy-looking people. Also to blame was a bad mix of bubble-gum pop music.

the best medicine

"Lolah Lolah lay--!"

The physician, Lolah, was frustrated with the check up. In fact, she was verging on shrieking for one of the toughs the teahouse employed to protect and enslave the entertainers it thrived on. The young man, famous throughout Dancer's Gate for his exotic beauty and grace, had happily made off with their drunken bard's guitar and was serenading her instead of allowing her to grasp his slender feet.

"Lolah Lolah lay--!"

If one could call his repeated cries of her name a serenade. His fingernails were plucking at the instrument's strings in time as his finger pads pressed them down. The 'song' was extremely up-tempo, lively, and playfully moronic.

The proverbial stick in the mud, Lolah was anything but impressed by his performance. She was more inclined to gag him than cover her ears. It didn't help that the few words other than her name were in a language she could not understand. It sounded like he was singing gibberish, except she could detect some structure and repeated particles of some sort. She was certain the laughing face and twinkling red and green eyes meant the popular entertainer was laughing at her.

"Shadash," she growled, planting weathered hands on her hips, "don't think I won't call for help."

In response, he jumped to his feet amongst the pillows and flashed a smile that was a slash of white in his chocolate face. "Lolah Lolah lay--!" Guitar singing a more complex tune than his lips, he began to dance in complicated rounds, his feet a blur of intricate footwork and his hips churning like a spoon in tea.

"Nasoos!" Lolah shouted the name of the beefy guard that had been flirting with her for two years. Shadash didn't pause despite her call for assistance. In response, he jumped off the barred window seat and backed up to her, pressing his shoulders to her back as he continued to sing.

Lolah rolled her eyes at his antics, wondering if perhaps the youth had gotten extremely high in the hopes she would not discern some illness. It didn't seem likely a patron had hurt the boy or passed him a disease; the men and women that used the entertainers were charged exorbitantly for medical treatments and healing potions. It wasn't likely he picked up a sickness from seeing somebody on the side, either; Shadash wasn't the type to give away something for nothing.

Fortunately Nasoos came in to rescue her from the bundle of energy dancing and singing ("Lolah Lolah lay--!") with her, though she remained stock still, rooted to the floor. She was determined to be more immovable object than Shadash could be irresistible force.

The boy ducked Nasoos' initial attempt to snag him, by keeping Lolah between them. He continued to dance and play his borrowed guitar, but he was soon laughing too hard to sing. Instead, he simply shouted 'Lolah Lolah lay!' to the beat he was playing out on the instrument; now and again using the sound box as an effective drum.

Sighing, Lolah finally did the smart thing: she ducked low. Nasoos' hands shot out over the woman's shoulders, one grabbing the boy's neck, the other seizing the seat of his white pants. Rather than give up completely, Shadash continued to laugh, but held the guitar at the ready, to save it from damage as he was hoisted into the air.

Firmly, without gentleness, Nasoos dropped the boy onto the window seat and pressed his dark face into the pillows to muffle the positively insane laughter. Lolah noted how the boy made sure to nestle the guitar among the pillows safely above his head. And then she seized one of his smooth feet.

At one time, Lolah could have said a simple prayer to learn the dancer's condition, anymore she resorted to mundane means learned wherever she could. Her preferred method with humanoids was a surprisingly effective, but obscure, art that revealed the condition of the entire body through corresponding points on the feet.

"Is he getting high lately?" She inquired, firmly examining the boy's tough sole with equally tough fingertips. "I've never seen him quite so... stupid."

Nasoos shrugged his massive shoulders. "He is like this after a private party and before the party he is smoking enough hashish or opium to drop a camel."

"Ah," the physician murmured, suddenly understanding the situation. "How many at the party?"

The guard shook his head. "I wasn't there."

"I wasn't either!" Shrieked a laughing Shadash. "But my body was, and he says if it is men, it doesn't matter how many there are, just how many times they can get it up! What a crude body he is!"

The physician released the boy's foot. "Shadash, I need you to calm down so you can tell me what hurts when I press on your feet and what feels nice. Will you do that?"

Abruptly the laughing and squirming ceased. The sudden hush as noise abruptly fled the room was startlingly uncomfortable. "I thought laughter was the best medicine," the boy whispered, but this time there was no joy, no laughter, just the honest cracking of a whore's voice when he's too tired to hide the misery.

The woman was too inured to suffering to feel much sympathy at the boy's tone, but in combination with the words, she felt her heart constrict slightly. "It helps," she replied steadily, "but medicine helps more. Do I need to keep Nasoos in here or are you calm now?"

An emerald eye peaked out from the velvet and silk cushions, while a brilliant chuckle was a precursor to a smart remark. "I'm calm, but Nasoos can stay. He likes you. He has me recite poetry before you visit."

Nasoos shoved the boy's face down into the pillows once more, perhaps thinking to smother him to death and use the corpse to cover his embarrassment. "Death cures everything, boy."

A sigh blew Lolah's black bangs from her eyes as she dug skilled fingertips mercilessly into what she knew where sensitive areas on anyone's feet. "Shadash, what Nasoos likes is always obvious and right now, I think he likes popping boys' vertebrae into their own mouths."

Shadash's muffled shrieks of laughter were punctuated with childish whines of agony and accusations that she was being needlessly cruel. He was right: in this way both Nasoos and Lolah finally found the first hint of sadistic appeal in the entertainer's dramatics.

Next scene: jewel in coffee grounds.