Quoted By:
That stab wound happened both times, though. The ritual. The stab wound happened all three times. In Gil's manse, too. Four times. If your father is around, Richard around or not, knife around or not, he is stabbed in the stomach. Why? Why? Why? Why? You can't think about that right now. You don't want to think about it. It's not even important to this, here. Richard is important.
"Here!" Gil shoves a roll of gauze in between you and Richard. Richard is breathing steadily. "Bandages! Should I-I-I— does he still need—"
"Do you know how to use that?" you say.
"Y— yeah? Mostly? Uh... i-if you're working with a lot of scrap metal, and bent nails, and bits of... uh... and if you hammer your thumb, you know..." He is jiggling the gauze.
"You don't need to justify...?" Does he think it's embarrassing? First aid is practically required for a retainer. <span class="mu-i">Somebody</span> has to tend to the heroine's dramatic wounds, and it's not supposed to be the heroine. Or a snake, for that matter. "Okay, yeah! Fix him! Richard, let him fix you. You're not gonna just stand there and bleed out, that's stupid."
"Of course," Richard says smoothly, as if he wasn't just certifiably insane. "Thank you for the swift intervention, Charlie. I await your ministrations, Gil."
"Ministrations?" Gil mumbles, and doesn't move until you catch his eye and shoo him onward. With them both occupied, you can safely return to pondering.
What were you thinking about? The stab wounds? No, you're not. Moving on. Something is wrong with Richard, is the whole thrust of the issue. And what's wrong with him? He's nice, which is wrong. Richard is rarely nice, and never for longer than a minute or two. It has been days and days now, and still he's nice. That's Thing One. Thing Two is that his brain's all messed up. He can/can't read the get-well card. He does/doesn't recognize Henry. He spaces out when you ask him about the Wyrm. He vanishes whenever you're not looking at him.
Where does he go when he vanishes? The lady snake said he was probably in a "stasis tank." The card has a lizard-thing in a tank of water. It's a get-well card, so maybe it's the same as showing somebody sick in bed, but snakes don't have beds. They have... stasis tanks. Maybe. Maybe the snake's in one of those, since it isn't around. Maybe Richard's real physical body is. You don't know. That's why he barfed up all that water, though. And that black gunk, too, which you're 99% sure is spooky gunk. Rejection gunk? Whatever Eloise said it was. From rejecting a really big-deal major alteration to your Very Being. An alteration like maybe going from Richard-Who-Is-A-Mean-Snake to Richard-Who-Is-Lottie's-Father-And-Very-Nice-About-It. Maybe.
And who altered his Very Being, again? On purpose? The stabbing wasn't on purpose, but the altering sure was. You didn't think it'd stick.
(2/5?)
