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Siffrin flinches from the touch on their face before they're even consciously aware of it. Their eyes fly open, but it's dark in the tent, and their left eye hurts. They can just barely make out the silhouette of a person over them. The person heaves a heavy sigh, shifting back to give them more space, and they relax. It's Odile. Just Odile.
That's strange. Odile doesn't usually touch people. And nobody touches him, unless they have to, or they're really worked up.
"I'm sorry, Siffrin. I didn't mean to disturb you. I was trying to check on your...your injury. Are you in pain? I can fetch Mirabelle."
Their injury? Siffrin frowns, not quite sure what she means until he blinks again, trying to get his vision to clear because something's wrong with his eye, it feels strange--
His eye. The Sadness. Bonnie--
"It's not that bad," Siffrin says. "Is Bonnie okay?"
"Boniface is safe," Odile reassures, but there's a small frown on her blurry face. "Siffrin, you say it's not that bad, but..."
He keeps blinking. It still hurts, a distant ache. His vision stays half-dark, strangely fuzzy. "It doesn't hurt that bad. Mira already healed me, right? I'm just having some trouble focusing."
"Sif?" The tent flap rustles, and then Isa's voice booms: "Sif, you're awake!"
They can hear Isabeau but not see him, so it's startling when there's a hand on their shoulder. Siffrin jolts, their head turning to focus on Isabeau smiling, beaming, blurry, why won't their eyes focus? The Sadness got them good, they remember the searing pain, but surely Mirabelle healed them already? They know they've been tended to, the blood washed away, and Mira's too much of a worrier to just leave an injury alone.
"Isabeau." Odile's voice is a clear warning, hard and cutting as the gems she swears on.
"Sorry, sorry--I just--I'm just glad you're okay, Sif." Isa's smile soon dims though as Siffrin watches him. "Sif, you..."
His voice is gentler now, tentative. Like he's afraid of spooking a wounded animal.
Siffrin turns back to Odile. "Did Mira get hurt too? Is that why--she didn't heal me yet, did she?" He doesn't remember things too well after the Sadness got him. They tried to stand their ground and protect Bonnie, but it'd hurt so much. They can't remember if they passed out from blood loss or pain--they can't recall much of the fight at all.
Odile looks grim, but she answers him in a matter-of-fact tone. "No, she's fine. She healed you as best as she could, Siffrin. But healing with craft is...it's not a precise science. Eyes are very delicate."
"Oh, I see," Siffrin says, and then giggles because actually, that's wrong, isn't it? But Isa doesn't laugh with the accidental joke. "Well, I'm not seeing very well right now, but it probably just needs a little time."
They don't like the look on Odile's face, blurry as it is. Looking at Isabeau again, he's even more an open book, like one of those tragedies Mirabelle loves. Siffrin lowers their head to not look at either of them, lifts one hand up from supporting their weight, and covers their right eye.
Well. That explains a lot. Their left eye sees only a blanket of darkness with some pinpricks of light. It's almost like looking at stars with a telescope, but they're just a little too blobby and fuzzy.
They have stars in their eye.
Stars.
Stars.
Stars--
"Sif?"
(Breathe. Breathe, breathe, in and out, move your hand to cover that eye and look through the right one instead. That's better. You can still see.)
"Well, that's not great," Siffrin says, choking down a laugh because even he doesn't know what he's finding funny right now, so he can't share the joke with Isabeau and make Odile groan. With his left eye covered his vision seems a little clearer, but now it's clear that the darkness on his left is going to stay for...for a while, probably. "But everyone's okay? Bonnie's okay?"
"They're okay. Still pretty upset about you getting hurt, so, uh, we might want to give them some time to calm down, before," Isabeau says, and Siffrin has an idea of what goes in the blank. And that's fine. He doesn't want to upset Bonnie. "Mira's with them right now. We're more worried about you, Sif."
Siffrin never knows what to do when people say they're worried about him. He wants to say they're fine, but.
But he can't even imagine saying that right now. He's not fine. There's a night sky in their eye, there are stars that shouldn't be there, and no one's saying when it's going to be better and that's because it's not going to be better, is it?
"You said it didn't hurt that bad," Odile prompts. "But it does hurt? Let me get you a tonic."
They nod. A tonic sounds good.
And it does help, a bit. The ache in their ravaged eye eases with both the tonic and no longer trying to look through it, and after a couple minutes of Siffrin covering it with their hand Isabeau asks if they'd like him to make them an eyepatch. They have to breathe again because Isabeau making them anything to deal with this makes it sound! A little too permanent!! But no, no, an eyepatch would just be a scrap of fabric right? It's probably really simple to make, and Isabeau is kind and wouldn't want them to be uncomfortable even for a few weeks. So they should accept.
Then Isabeau asks after a minute if they'd want any particular shade or pattern to their eyepatch and Siffrin's brain shuts off again. "Lightless," he answers, because the point of the eyepatch is to keep any distracting light from the eye and the simplest way to do that is to use plain lightless fabric. He doesn't care how the eyepatch looks if it's temporary. And if it's not temporary then he wants to think about it even less.
Bonnie bursts into tears the second they see them. "I'm sorry, Frin, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--"
Mirabelle, holding a hand on Bonnie's shoulder, looks like she wants to cry too. She can't meet Siffrin's eyes. Eye. It probably looks pretty bad, even with a temporary bandage to hide the worst of it.
Siffrin focuses on Bonnie. The last thing they saw clearly with both eyes was Bonnie frozen in fear, a Sadness racing toward them. And now, even if they only have one eye, they can see that Bonnie isn't hurt. That's good. That's good! They managed to keep them safe. They'd rather see Bonnie smile through one eye than see their corpse with both.
Well, not that they're smiling yet, but that's alright. They'll get there eventually. Siffrin puts a smile on first, to show it's fine! He's going to be fine. "Bonbon," he says. "It wasn't your fault." Because that's just the truth. It wasn't. It's not like Bonnie wanted to be in harm's way. They're just a child. "And I'll be fine! I can still see."
And they weren't lying. They can see! It just turns out. Two eyes come in handy for depth perception? Odile explains that one after the third time Siffrin trips. They try to fight with the others because they're not comfortable with sitting things out or being protected, they're not a child (and even when they were Bonnie's age, they weren't protected) but they overextend when they go to strike the Sadness, knock themselves off-balance, and if Mirabelle hadn't lunged in with her own Jolly Round Rondo, it...might have ended very badly.
The looks Odile and Mirabelle and Isabeau exchange between each other that afternoon put a crater in Siffrin's stomach even before Mirabelle asks if there's somewhere they'd like to stay to rest while the others continue on their journey. Because right now she's asking, and he manages to force a laugh and say no, why would he need that, he'll have the hang of being one-eyed soon, but it's obvious she wanted him to say yes and next time it might not be a request. There's nowhere, nowhere they'd rather be than with everyone.
So they can't hold them back. They have to be able to fend for themself, fight like they could with two eyes. The eyepatch Isabeau made them is nice, and that's enough. They can't accept any more help. It's not even about not wanting to bother the others, it's just--logical? Yeah. If they asked Odile, she'd call it logical. They need to relearn how to do things on their own with one eye because they're going to be on their own again eventually. So asking for help wouldn't just be bothering the others, it'd be holding themself back. They practice during the day, moving around a lot just as they would have before, laughing off the minor bumps and trips that happen with mortifying frequency at first because they're fine, they're fine, this isn't a big deal. They practice at night, because the others aren't letting him take his watch shift right now but he still can't sleep so, why not practice knife tricks?
...He learns why not to practice one-eyed knife tricks with his gloves off. But that just means he means he remembers to put his gloves back on to protect his hands and then practices knife tricks to work on the depth perception.
They practice at night, creeping slowly from camp without being seen or heard because they haven't survived on their own their whole blinding life without knowing how to be quiet until they can stand and risk the noise of a possible crash as they practice running and moving around. It's just logical that they need to practice. They're never going to ask Odile's opinion on the logic of it because she'd murder them for sneaking out of camp without telling anyone.
They just need to get better. They have to, they have to.
They have to.
And they do get Odile's approval, in a roundabout way. "I'm impressed," she tells them one day. "I've seen people struggle to cope with certain injuries, new challenges in their life, but you're adjusting very well."
Bonnie mutters something from where they're cooking lunch; the sizzling food masks whatever they said. Bonnie's been annoyed with Siffrin lately, and he's not sure why, but--it doesn't matter right now. High praise from Odile! Because that is high praise from her. He is getting better at this. He's not going to hold anyone back.
The next time a Sadness attacks, he jumps in and helps defeat it, like he should.