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You awaken with the taste of rotting eggs filling your mouth. Bleary eyes filled with sleep need crust of morning rubbed away to bring the clinic back into focus. It seems that Damien kept you in the cold room serving as his office, while you slept off the khemical meant to aid in diagnosis of your curse. Did it mean to show you the perverse nature of the Arbiter's mistress? Or did her presence interrupt the process before you saw what you were meant to see?
Either way, the left you with a better understanding of the curse mark that crawls up the length of your arm. One that you need to inform Damien of immediately. Your throat is a bit dry and stuffed with phelm, but you manage to croak out, "Damien, are you there? Fiona...?"
"Be there in a moment," Fiona's voice calls through the cold room's door.
A few moments pass, and Fiona steps inside. Her folding plate is packed away in the iron collar about her neck, revealing a rather ordinary woman in a simple cream blouse and baggy blood-red trousers. A pair of suspenders holds them up, with the cuff of the legs tucked lazily into her boots. Her mousy brown hair is held out of her face by a bow that matches with her pants, with large dots that match the color of her blouse. She wears her blindfold around her neck today, like a scarf, revealing striking gray eyes that hold only a thin ring of magenta around the iris.
She is shorter than you by nearly a foot and a half, making her short among most women. Her sleeves are tucked up, and a silver bangle etched with a flock of fluttering robins hangs loose upon her left wrist. In her hands, she had a tray that carries a pitcher of ice water, in which float wedges of squeeze lime, an important part of the Daffodil Kingdom's standard rations. Scurvy knights and men-at-arms are of no use to anyone, and the Duke's own orchards provide his soldiers a generous ration every time he strikes his banners.
"You sound like you need something to drink," Fiona explains, all but forcing a cup of water into your hands. You get the impression that the diminutive woman would have succeeded in forcing the matter if you didn't accept it. "Damien's gone to bully your artificer into lending him use of your sending stone. He was convinced you wouldn't mind, I wasn't so sure."
As she speaks, you drain the cup of water and pour yourself another. It cools your throat and clears it out of weariness and phlegm. When Fiona speaks of Damien bullying Hilde, you snort. "Well, I hope he doesn't lead with that. Hilde gets stubborn when people aren't polite to her."
"That would explain why he's not back yet..." Fiona muses. A slight frown crosses her face. "You think they've been arguing this entire time?"
You take a sip of your drink and hide your face behind your cup. The other possibility leaves your cheeks a bit red, when you say it out loud, "That or she took a fancy to him and dragged him to bed."
