My Luca stared at me with strange eyes for a moment, as if I’d said something he’d rather not been expecting, and he opened his mouth as if he wanted to comment regarding whatever he’d seen of me. Whatever it was that made my family all look at me as if I were deathly ill: I wanted to know, and so I bade him to speak with a tilt of my head, but he soon swallowed down whatever it was with a short shake and provided, 

  “Petyr’s in the back room.”

  I started in that direction, and after a moment’s dawdling with his fidgeting fingers, Luca followed in behind to better inform me of Petyr’s condition.

  “He’s real bad off.” He said to me plainly, before further elucidating, “I did what I could, but he needs a real doctor; real medicine. Lacerations all over, the idiot’s lucky to be alive right now. He's cut up from front to back, but no clear organ strikes. Cleaned him up a bit, but he’s still bleeding more than I’m comfortable; was about to burn the backs before you came round.”

  I’d been gone for so long, and I felt it was strange that my Luca hadn’t stopped the bleeding injuries yet; did he have no thread? With the well gone, and only this house left, there could only have been so many things he’d still had access to, and Lisset wasn’t known for her talent in sewing.

  Still, Bart had a shed, and I would have thought that he would have had something for this, but in circumstances with few resources: the best that could be done about blood loss is to burn the worst offenders, and even then it’s a perilous method to use, for the bacteria might have enjoyed the state of a burned wound.

  “Luca,” I called him to attention as I stepped into the room and saw that Petyr’s still-bleeding form was laid upon a bedsheet, “Bart kept a couple of tarps in his shed; retrieve the cleanest you can find. I’d ask you to wash it by the well, but… well, how much water do we have?”

  I saw him grit his teeth with frustration, and an angry sob almost came out from between them as he answered me, “His shed... is gone, and we.” He took a pause, as if trying to work out the best way to tell me of the dire reality, “We’ve only that.”

  He pointed out the single remaining bucket that we could use, half-emptied already from his earlier efforts. Several clean rags were beside it, and evidence of what he’d already done was nearby: a small plastic washtub dirtied with bloodwater, from which it seemed the… the oddly sweet scent of iron was permeating, at least, it seemed to be iron? To say nothing of how wonderfully pleasant Petyr smelled in spite of his wretched state.

  “Mercy.” I heard my own voice laden with a deathful prognosis, and I couldn’t help but to ask my son, “Luca, is there really no thread? Can’t you dethread a shirt?”

  My Luca groaned so at this, and he cupped his face in his hands. It would seem that he simply hadn’t thought to do it, and I certainly couldn’t fault him for that, because I should have been here earlier. We had so little water that this was going to be dicey regardless of what we did now… there wasn’t even enough for me to scrub away the caked on filth from my hands, so I certainly couldn’t be touching poor Petyr as I was.

  Small hands suddenly wrapped around my waist, and Fredrickson blond hair appeared when I turned to see who was holding me in such a manner. It seemed that Talia was rather upset about the state of her elder half-brother, and so she squeezed me tightly as she begged for me to save him, as if there was any chance that I would give up on Petyr without even trying.

  I couldn’t bear to tell her that I would almost certainly fail, for without water we had so little a chance of saving Petyr, and I certainly didn’t want to lay my disgusting hands on Talia, so I asked my son to detach the crying girl from my waist in my stead, “Luca, would you remove Miss Fredrickson from the surgery?”

  He made to rescue me from the potentially fatal interruption — young Talia was so like her mother already: just determined to put herself in the way of every medical operation that included her family —  but she clung to me with a surprising strength in her fingers, and I was sure they would leave me bruised by the morrow. Being more than twice her size came to Luca’s advantage however, and though she screamed so: she was eventually pulled away from me.

  Her voice rang out at such a pitch that it was giving me a headache, but it was muted with distance. Hunger again nagged at me as I heard Talia being fruitlessly mollified by Alexander, for it seemed that my son had wisely chosen to delegate the duty, and my Luca was surely off to find an acceptably clean shirt. All these things ran in the background, but since I had an impossible problem to solve: I ignored the presently irrelevant.

  My mind mused uselessly that if I'd had a tarp, clean and without tattering as I imagined it then, Petyr might have escaped the introduction of further bacteria. With unrelenting pointlessness, my faculties were cast upon my whole kit; that with all its salves and antiseptics: Petyr’s lifeblood might've stopped seeping, and much of the present bacteria could have been purged.

  Finally, I could endure my own fanciful uselessness no longer, and I complained of my wistfulness to the very air, “I need water! The rest we could manage without, but not water!”

  I closed my eyes, and I breathed deeply to calm myself as I considered the alternatives. The dethreading would take some time, and although ligature would work even without the cleaning, the risk of infection was just so high. Heaven forbid we find any clean tools to simplify the process, and my mind just returned time and again to the damned water, for no matter the solution: it was imperative that Petyr be clean, for there would be no saving him if he went septic.

  My eyes came back open, and as I made the decision that cauterizing the arteries might actually be the better option at this juncture, and turned to tell my son of my dangerous decision: I caught something so absurd that I continued walking away for a few steps before I fully registered what I’d seen!

  A pristine tarp in a blue tone deeper than any I’d ever before observed lay atop a wooden stool that I didn’t believe had been present only a moment ago. That was amazing luck, but it was still something that Luca and me could have potentially missed… unlike my medical equipment, which was there in its entirety! In the room there were such heavy cabinets that I couldn’t have moved them by myself if I’d wanted to, and even the things that I’d seen broken with my own eyes were all in their rightful place!

  Though these misplaced ‘objects’ were fascinatingly realistic: I easily dismissed these illusions as simply ludicrous; but a sign of a sleep-deprived and otherwise-disturbed mind seeking its salvation, and never mind the thirst and hunger! 

  Unfortunately, it was the third and last strange hallucination which triggered something so particularly inconvenient in me that I could no longer ignore these figments of imagination: a dreadfully potent hope.

  A globe of water hovered in the air, and it called my mind to a time long ago, where she and I had first played together; she with her magic, and me with my mind and body. This memory of her broke my reverie with the strange mirage before me, and I turned to see her, but… when I looked: she wasn’t there. 

  Again, she wasn’t there! She was always playing these games with me, but now really wasn’t the time, Rianna! I needed to save Petyr, and although it was selfish of me: I still wanted to see her even in spite of his deathful need! She surely should have read my want for her upon my face? Did she go back to rest after conjuring up this liquid?

  The sloshing water still hovered in midair, I know because I looked, just to be quite certain it wasn’t my mind playing a trick upon me like those other strange phantoms which resembled the tools I’d needed. I almost turned away from Petyr to follow her out at that moment, if only so I could breathe her presence into the empty void I felt inside of me… but what would she think of me if I allowed Petyr to die just because I missed her a little?

  I turned to Petyr, and I got to work. I washed my hands and arms, and I was startled as the gunk water deposited itself in the little plastic tub! What a fantastically convenient adaptation, Arianna! I would have to congratulate her later for it, though I was sure that she was already bragging to Luca about her newest technique! The boy should have been back by this time, and he must have gotten held up by her, which is why neither of them had come back to me yet.

  Perhaps she’d only meant to surprise me? I was thankful though, and I was shortly washing Petyr down with my now seemingly infinite source of water. Although it vexxed my mind to do it: I slid the nonexistent tarpaulin underneath him as I turned him over. I knew it wasn’t real, but I couldn’t help my instincts as a doctor, even if they made me do such a silly thing, and goodness Petyr was heavy… he’d gotten quite a bit older now, and so this was an incredibly troublesome thing to do by myself.

  Luckily for me, my assistant arrived around that time, but I heard his feet stop short of reaching me. I spared him a glance, and I found that he was just staring around the room with one of Bart’s shirts in his hands. He seemed to be lost in something between wonder and confusion… and a strange pallor came to his face when he saw me leaning over Petyr to move him.

  “Don’t just stand there, boy! I’m needing help over here.” I called him to action, and although for a moment he strangely scrutinized me and the recent adjustments to the room: he soon slapped his cheeks with his hands so hard they left a red imprint on each side of his face, and came over to better wash up. 

  Arianna must not have been bragging to him then, so I wondered what could’ve held him up so long, and indeed: why wasn’t she here just to boast to me anyway? She would always come to tell me about her every miniscule arcane breakthrough or discovery, so I didn’t know why she was withholding it this time, but I had more important things to do than to think about it.

  “Finish him up here.” I commanded him as he helped me roll Petyr over, and then I found my feet before my kit. I stopped, and suddenly I felt like slapping my own face in a manner like my Luca had done, because I was about to waste Petyr’s precious time on some absurd phantom imagery! There was precious little time to save him, and I was standing over here, playing pretend doctor like little Talia?!

  Perhaps I would have faltered and returned to Petyr’s side only with self-frustration, but I again heard her voice speaking… inside me it seemed, and it came to shouting at the end. I turned immediately to see her, but again she wasn’t present, 

  “Spare me my patience Mira, and just save the damned kid already! You can’t even call yourself a doctor if you just stand around doing absolutely fucking nothing!”

  Well! That was a rather hurtful thing for her to have said; she’d never spoken to me that way before! Just how stressed could she have been to take it out on me in such a rude manner!? Perhaps she’d learned some strange new sorcery by which to cast her voice around, and… she used it to insult me?! If she cared so much about Petyr, then maybe she should’ve been the doctor, and not I!

  Maybe I was still hallucinating like I’d been earlier, but if that was really her talking: I decided that she would have to apologize! I would make her beg for my forgiveness! My hands absently found my thread, and my tools, and I was so irritated with my beloved Arianna that I only felt my focus come back to me as I was tying off a suture, having long finished with Petyr’s worst offending vessels, so my feet must have found my way back to him!

  My Luca had been applying one of my antiseptics to each wound before I’d gotten to them with my stitching, and he was paying particular attention to the ones I wouldn’t be stitching closed again… the ones where the bleeding and tissue damage was so excessive that I’d had to ligature their veins shut.

  In this manner we worked together in silence, and only my orders for him and his acknowledgement of them pierced that quiet between us. Luca had a mortar and pestle in his hands, and a healing salve was forming under them by the second, and he would soon be applying it to the surface above the wounds, if only to stave off any further attempts bacterium might make at infection.

  I finished my last suture and breathed easier for a moment, during which my son finished dressing the patient, and instead of waiting for my further direction: my apprentice soon had a stethoscope in hand for me. I felt my pride for him just soar, and even though her voice spoke its false congratulations in my ear: I tuned her out, as was becoming my custom. 

  There were more important things to listen to right now, such as Petyr’s heart, which was making such direly rapid sounds that it must have unsettled me despite lacking in murmurs, as that strange feeling from earlier was coming over me again, and although it was hard to put down what it was, it was clear that it was coming from Petyr.

  That feeling seemed to strike at any moment I lacked a strong focus, like some strange hunger, and a thirst, and something else besides? Obviously, not lust, but strangely similar… something for later. I handed the stethoscope to Luca, “Have a listen, I think he’ll make it past this stage, if we can slow that beat.”

  Not that it would be easy, but I had some medicine I could try for the effects of replenishing blood and relaxing the strain on his heart. I left Luca to it and returned to the bizarre phenomenon which seemed to have made my dreams of saving Petyr come true, and I’d really started to believe it was all real, for I’d held the tools in my very own hands.

  I wondered idly just how insane I’d become, for I was taking the reality of this outrageous situation for granted, but for it to fool so many senses of mine at once was a curious thing to experience. I’d read a small number of works regarding the flaws of the human psyche, although I hadn’t found much cause for medically administering for them beyond calming concoctions to ensure restful sleep, and so I was quite dreadfully out of my depth when it came to diagnosing whatever it was that I was suffering from.

  My understanding was roughly that I was agitated, and in terrible need for rest and for food. As I worked, my eyes kept subtly shifting towards the bloodwater and wet discards for a reason I couldn’t know, but something deep within me knew that I didn’t desire to linger my gaze upon them for long enough to find out! 

  In my hands rested a small bowl of medicine for Petyr’s sake, and I brought it over to him, but before I gave it to him: I just had to be sure, so I asked my son to clarify for me,

  “Luca, inform me on what I’ve just done.”

  My boy gave me such a stare at that moment, that I thought something akin to ‘ah, I knew it, surely I’ve gone insane and I’m simply in no state to be doctoring; it was my ego’s fantasy to save Petyr’, but his answer was oddly out of line with my expectations, 

  “You pulled dried hawthorn, garlic, and barberry out from those medical cabinets, Mum, and you mixed them together with some aetherwater in amounts that looked normal.”

  This threw me considerably, because that’s what I’d imagined I’d been doing, and so I had to ask him directly, because otherwise I simply didn’t know how else to ask the question which was eating at me, “Luca, dear... are all these things... real?”

  “Mum, I… I don’t know what you’re seeing, but I’m seeing crazy.” He wearily said to me, and his face made an uncertain look near enough to my feelings. With a helpless shake of his head he continued, 

  “None of this makes sense, Mum; I stepped out for just a few seconds really, and suddenly our water and medicine problems are gone, and you’re in here pulling a tarp under Petyr. If I hadn’t touched it all with my own hands…”

  His voice lingered some over this, but since we both seemed similarly indisposed, I figured that I may as well go with my gut, and so I opened Petyr’s mouth, and I slowly brought him to swallow down all of the medicine. He should feel quite lucky to have been unconscious for this, because its taste was disgusting enough to frighten wild pigs away!

  Luca interrupted my errant thoughts as he filled the fresh bucket up with the water that still defied gravity, “Nobody else needs looking at until Mrs. Freddrickson and Roger are back, so when you’re done cleaning up: you should come see about food.”

  Back? Back from where I had wondered, as well as how they must have been injured to still be wherever that was instead of laid up like poor Petyr here, but I soon concluded that it didn’t matter at the time, and I was struck with a small laughing matter.

  The severity of today’s events actually made me find the thought of cleaning up presently to be a bit amusing, after all, as I mused aloud, “But I’ve nothing else to wear?~”

  ‘Clean up’ he’d told me, and I did rather fancy a proper bath right then, which was convenient since I did seem to have quite a lot of water apparently at my disposal. 

  It’s not as if he’d expected me to strip myself naked in a room with a patient, where privacy was anything but guaranteed, and play around with that magical volume of gravity-defying water without a drainage around, only to then put on my bloody clothing again. But it was amusing to imagine that he'd meant it in such a manner, and it's what his real mother would have meant if she'd been the one to say it!

  I chuckled and closed my eyes, and although he’d surely only meant for me to wash my hands and face: I very much appreciated the humor of my initial misinterpretation, but a sudden series of events took all the humor fast from my circumstances.

  Rather suddenly, I’d been affected with the shock of being sprayed upon by that magic ball of water, completely outside of my control! I attempted to step back away from it, only for the torrent to follow me exactly! I spluttered, and some of the blood I was covered with entered my mouth, which provided only more abnormality for me to process!

  The dirtied liquid seemed to flow into an odd blackness that had appeared in the floorboards… which themselves were shaping up into walls that reached to near the ceiling! I had a suspicion at this point, but it became a wonderful certainty as soon as the walls were up:

  A surprising warmth came through the water, and my hope just soared as I immediately recognized the technique as hers — for she’d spent the entirety of a season on developing it, and for such a silly reason — and so I scanned the ‘new bathroom’ for her… but she was again nowhere to be seen. Why wasn’t she joining me if she was going to go this far?

  It’s not an easy work of magic, it takes an incredible concentration, and early into her advancements it was so draining for her that she’d twice gone into aethershock for her unseemly ambitions. Besides, she’d always prefered to observe the sweet torments she inflicted on me, and I’d never known her to be so charitable as to use her aether unselfishly where it involved me!

  A horrible oozing feeling then arose in me as a black mist wrapped around me, and besides the jewel around my neck: what I wore became as dust, and disappeared into the darkness as if eaten by strange shadows! 

  How could she have… just how long did she waste to discover spellcraft that merely removed my clothes from me? It wasn’t as if I could have saved those soiled things anymore, but the principle still mattered, Arianna!

  As if in answer, her voice cut through to me, “Mmmmn, I definitely like this look on you the best~”, which while under normal circumstances I’d maybe appreciate hearing, but in that moment I was just too worried that she might make me plead for her to give my clothes back to me, and I honestly felt rather threatened and heavy-handled by her!

  But I needn't have worried for those things, for that disturbing blackness appeared just a little ways away, and the delightful red and black dress she’d arranged for me last year suddenly rested in a neat fold on a dry section of the floor.

  The water soon stopped spraying upon me, though not before doing something I was rather unprepared for, and I stood there dripping for a while as I shivered in my nakedness. I considered myriad responses, from strong expletives to shamefully asking for something of her if she was able, until my mind settled on an actually adequate way to deal with my confused emotions: audacity,

  “And the towel, love?”

  Blackness swirled up around my arms, and a pearly-white towel was deposited in them. These bizarre events were absolutely shredding my sanity apart, but I tried to push past them to the best of my ability, after all: I knew now that she wasn’t dead. She’d told me not to cry because ‘obviously’ she was still here, and how else could such an event have happened to me?

  Though it could certainly have been merely my memory made manifest: I ignored that possibility in favor of what all my senses were telling me in harmony. A person can only doubt what’s in front of them for so long, and so I eagerly listened as she hummed lazily, as she so liked to do. 

  No more words were necessary, surely, so I’d thought: the important thing was that we were both healthy enough to play around, and so our dreams could yet come true, despite this terrible setback.

  I’d dried myself, and watched as the towel was taken away by the eerie darkness I knew must somehow be coming from her, and I shook as I thought of it, likely because of the chill that still clung to me.

  As I went to the red and black dress, I was a little irritated that she’d ‘forgotten’ to include any undergarments, all the more so given how many children might try to follow my example if I were to leave it be in this cramped house and an accident of any sort were to occur, so I tapped my foot impatiently until she saw fit to dress me up properly.

  Undergarments appeared out of the darkness where there had been none before, and I was happy that she saw reason this once, for I would not have put it beyond her ken to intentionally leave me underdressed only for her own future amusement. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but now wasn’t an acceptable occasion, and as I was finished clothing myself: the wooden walls sank back into the floor around me.

  Her new might was rather frightening though, for she’d never able to simply claim the clothes from my skin in such a manner before. Whatever strange powers she’d gained was making me feel rather insecure despite being presently dressed! After all, if she could simply will them away whenever she wanted: there was no telling what awkward and terrible time she might employ this new technique!

  Mercy but I hate the effect she can have on me, and only seeing the look on her face could have possibly settled my trepidation right then — not that I was looking to merely stare into her eyes after what she’d just done!

  But it wasn’t to be. I noticed as I made to leave the room that the deadwater and the soiled dressings had both disappeared during my impromptu shower, but I thought little of it, for surely the explanation lay within her new dark powers! 

  I left Petyr to convalesce, and immediately as I entered the main room of the house: my nose was assaulted with the sweet scent I’d noticed in the surgery, or ‘back room’ as it used to be… and it rather stopped me in my tracks as a red haze encroached upon my vision.

  Luca came over to me, and although he seemed rather surprised by my lovely dress and sparklingly clean-feeling aura: he offered me some gruel in a bowl, but I told him I could wait to eat until I’d seen her. I'd made the most terrible mistake I could have then, though I didn’t realize it: I'd asked my son if he knew where my Arianna was.

  Truly, I’d thought that nothing strange could’ve possibly come from that innocent question, but I shortly felt his hand on my arm, and he led me away from that lovely scent — I wonder when a simple gruel got to smelling so lovely, I must truly have been famished to think of it. Starvation really must be the choicest of all spices. — to the master bedroom. 

  Well of course he did, that’s where I’d figured she would be anyway, and I really looked forward to seeing her again… though being led to her by our son was rather awkward, and why was he leading me so aggressively anyway? I turned to look at our Luca, and I tried to search his expression for an answer. 

  He was always so observant, and he must surely have known what fate he was delivering me to… so why hadn’t he simply let me walk there myself? There was something incredibly suspect about the way he was walking, and it made me feel terribly uneasy.

  Goodness he was getting taller these days, he was almost as tall as I was now, and as we entered the… oh Mercy. I couldn’t believe the empty master bedroom in my eyes, and Luca said to me with a watery grimace plastered to his face, “I’m so sorry, M-Mum.”