"Bloody hell".
The Doctor tried to turn around. He reckoned that he was lying on the floor. He must have fallen out of the bed. Too much tossing and turning, he assumed.
He rolled to one side and moaned.
He wasn't used to sleeping with his legs untied.
The Doctor looked up. No, that was wrong. That wasn't him. That wasn't...
Even the cool floor had to admit defeat against the rising body temperature of the Doctor. Afraid to burn a hole in the ground he got to his feet slowly and tried to crouch back into bed.

"Is everything alright?"
A voice. There was a voice behind him. The Doctor's head sank into the cushion.
He knew the voice. He'd known the voice. He just couldn't recall...

"What's wrong?"
The familiar voice.
"Did I miss something?"

Koschei.
I turned my head to him. It was Koschei.
Koschei. I had forgotten about Koschei.

He'd been missing.

I had lost track of time. And hadn't stayed in touch with him likewise. But there he was, back again, right in front of me, as always.
Koschei.

And I just stood there and was unable to speak.
What should I've said anyway?

I knew that Koschei must know what had to be said.

And he did.

"Ms. Reprics sure is a fine one to talk about manners."

I nodded approvingly.

I didn't have to know what exactly he was talking about. I never did. And I guess he knew it as well. But that was alright for Koschei. He didn't care. As long as I wouldn't contradict him...

He smiled. "But I mean it. She reproved me for disrespecting her authority."
"Well, what did you do?" I replied. It was strange. The conversation had started without me noticing. And it just went on. I didn't even think about what I was saying. We talked.
Just like we did it in our childhood.

No asking. No remarks stating that we hadn't seen each other in years. We didn't need it.

We knew each other too well.

Well, at least Koschei knew me.

"Nothing" countered Koschei and folded his arms "I said nothing. I just stood there, stared at her and gave her a smile."

"Well, I guess for you this is a way of showing your disrespect." I chuckled.

Koschei smiled and shrugged.

"Long time no see."

That was all. Koschei would never waste a word about that time again.

And to me it even seemed as if we'd always been together. Nothing had changed.

Koschei was the same. Still the same old Koschei.

Koschei was mad. But I guess he didn't even try to hide it. And I had to admit that I appreciated his honesty.

It sure was nice gaining back a friend. Though Koschei disagreed with me about that. In his opinion you had to lose something for good to regain it. He said he'd never left me. He'd never let go off me. We'd always been together.

Somehow.

Like already mentioned I seldom knew what he was thinking. He had a twisted mind. Somehow inside out or upside down or with a knot in it.

I'd never know.

And that didn't change either.

But it didn't scare me; not even a little bit.
For a start I knew that he was mad. He'd always been this way. So it was not really a big surprise.

And besides I knew that you had to accept things you couldn't change.

And I'd always back down.

That was probably what Koschei liked about me the most.

I was careful not to speak about anything that could displease him.

You never knew with him.

Well, on the other hand...

We talked about everything. All we did was talking, actually. Every time. Everywhere.

As if we belonged together.

In a very unromantic way.

It had nothing to do with a partner relationship whatsoever. Really. It was more like...

We were soul mates but didn't fit together.

We knew each other too well.
I could divine his innermost thoughts.
But I didn't, most of the time. I didn't like them.

Koschei thought in a different way, which I would learn soon. He looked at the world around him with different eyes. Inconceivable deep, wide and bloodshot eyes...

Love.
Those would be one of the words I wouldn't have used to describe my relationship with Koschei. We didn't love each other, though it was more than simple liking.
We belonged together.

Like Siamese twins.
Let's face it: I was stuck with him. I didn't know how or why it happened. He'd always been there.

And not only around me; he'd always been there for me.

We were synchronized, in a way. We grew up together. And like it was with Siamese twins it would have been unimaginable painful to separate us.

Love. I didn't care much about love back then. Not even in a childish way.

And that was what I like about the reports of Dr. Neakahla.
Every explanation in his wise script resulted from unbiased scientific work. Everything was in a neutral way; no description of any poor or unsightly creature was devaluing; no thesis was built on dubious, questionable or hypothetic speculation.

No, Dr. Neakahla had been a real scientist. Everything he had wanted to know he'd tried on himself.

Therefore the title "Collected wisdom of Dr. Neakahla" described it accurately; it was all about Dr. Neakahla.

The time I didn't spend with Koschei I spent in my room with Dr. Neakahla.
Figuratively.
Though I guess sometimes I'd have wished that I could have made his acquaintance. His works were everything to me. Sometimes I think they still are.
But when you grow older you're forced to lose some of your thirst for knowledge and try to forget those things which made you shiver all over when you were young.
And I shivered a lot.

There was something about the style of Dr. Neakahla... It was simply written in true words, true wisdom summarised in one true book. Well, it was actually more of a script. Well, I hadn't been able to transport a whole book out of a library. Well, not with a book jacket with an electronic surveillance system. And the book had been bound badly anyway...

But in my room I treated the book with care. And with confidentiality, I treated it with a lot of confidentiality. I kept it my little secret. It was definitely one of the books I couldn't tell Koschei anything about. It was just too...special to me?

I didn't know. And I don't know now either.

Maybe it was because of those parts in the book.

Those passages, those chapters which made me feel different; in fact, not about myself; they really changed me. I knew that I'd encountered something. I just didn't know what it was.
It was those parts in the book were Dr. Neakahla reviewed the personal development; he'd even use words like physical evolution or bodily advancement. Simply the changes you're forced to undergo.
And what could change on your body. Or would change.

As a child you're fascinated by your own body. A left hand is more than you need to keep yourself busy for a day. You plainly don't understand your own body; you don't know how you're triggering movements or cause bodily reactions.
When you're starting to grow up you don't know either. But you learn to forget about your own ignorance.

Dr. Neakahla tried to keep some kind of childish naivety, or sometimes even curiosity; and that was what I admired him for.

Nonetheless it was intriguing to read everything about a body. Simply everything. And my fascination had nothing to do with comparing; it was plainly of interest to me what others would describe as normal. What he had expected to be normal.

There's a lot to be found under the designation of normal. And Dr. Neakahla made clear that terms like "normal" weren't some kind of personal decisions; though he wasn't pleased with it. But that was it. You could be pleased or displeased. But you couldn't disagree. "Normal" was about acceptance.
And you had to accept it when you weren't normal likewise. You couldn't claim that you weren't.
I knew that this closing-my-legs-at-night-and-tying-them-together-tightly thing wasn't normal, of course I knew. But I couldn't help it. It had to be.
And I wouldn't have denied it if someone would have asked me about it. I figured it to be nothing to be ashamed of. My father had told me so; and after all he was a wise men.
And I couldn't have known that he was wrong, just this once in his life...

But it didn't matter. I did it with personal conviction, and some nights, without it. But I did it nonetheless.

And I thought I started to understand what it had been about, the closing-legs thing.

Reading the book of Dr. Neakahla changed me. Though it didn't change my vision of the world. I had a clear vision on anything. But the scripture taught me to feel as well as I already saw.

I noticed bodily reactions when reading the more exciting chapters of the "Collected wisdom of Dr. Neakahla." Blood rushed down into my pelvic region; I experienced strange sizzling in my lower abdomen; and there were things in that book which made my skin tingle.

Not that the descriptions or drawings were arousing or possibly even stimulating.

By the way: I wouldn't know what arousing meant until the age of twenty-two or so.
I mean, of course I KNEW what it stood for or implied.

That was the trouble with me: I saw the words and I knew their meaning; mostly I even understood them. But I didn't feel them.
Too bad that you couldn't gather sensations from dictionaries or other books. I would have been an expert.
But I wasn't. And I didn't care about feelings.
I didn't feel like feeling any feelings at all. My body never showed any sensual emotions at all.
At the most I had dreams; I dreamed about sensations. I dreamed about experiencing differences. There weren't even words for what I dreamed.

But I remember that there were nights when I dreamed about what it would actually feel like to sleep with untied legs, to be able to move your ankles and roll over in your sleep without having to worry about the rope cutting off the blood supply of one leg. But I would wake up horrified and check on my legs again nonetheless. If I was too scared I'd even tie my knees together, to make sure that there couldn't come anything between them.
Though I hadn't to worry about my legs.
I was worried about Koschei, most of the time. And worrying for him the rest of the time.

He was teasing; he'd always been teasing me. But he'd never been offensive, or aggressive or insulting. And he didn't annoy me.
But he loved to annoy others.

Ms. Reprics would never lose her temper unless Koschei was around.
And he was always around. He was with me, most of the time. And I guess the time I spent reading alone he spent with observing Ms. Reprics. He teased her.
He simply would never leave her alone.

And, worst of all: he enjoyed it. And he knew how he had to treat her.

She could reprove him; she could call names on him; she could be impertinent; and she'd still be confronted with him smiling and grinning like a Chester cat.

Koschei was nasty, but it was subtle enough that she wouldn't even notice.

Oh, there were so many ways to annoy good old Ms. Reprics.

She needed not to call him anything. The pronunciation of his name was enough.

"You're mispronouncing it, ma'am" he used to disabuse her "It's Koschei, pronounced as in 'Koschtschej'."
And she turned to him again and gave him a disbelieving glare.
"You're mispronouncing my name" Koschei would explain, "That's all I'm saying."

"Koschei...!"
"It's 'Koschtschej'" he repeated firmly.
"That's not even your name" snapped Ms. Reprics "you were given that name, it's not... it's not even your real name!"
"You're mispronouncing it nonetheless" countered Koschei and smiled at her, he smiled at her all the time, giving her the creeps and things she probably wouldn't dare to speak of.

I didn't bother about him teasing others, whether they were our age or not, whether they were students or savants. I never worried about others going mad because of him.
I worried about him going mad.

He was mad.
It had always been this way...