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Despite his rather militant upbringing Illuga Nikitovich liked to think of himself as widely read.
After all, the bookshop in Nasha Town was home to various classes of literary flotsam - as varied as the people perusing them and the crimes they were plotting, committing, or currently on the lam from. Having never been a picky eater Illuga devoured them all, a few chapters before bed served to dilute either the tedium or the horrors of the night shift, and now this diverse array of literature proved surprisingly useful in categorizing the thing that gave his life both an ominous companionable variety and the occasional tension headache. Namely Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins.
For example the Snezhnayan literary tradition loved long doorstopper sagas where the character roster always had room for some charming yet superfluous man who had suffered a deadly blow of existential ennui that had left his manners intact but his manner of living strange and incomprehensible.
Natlan’s translated scrolls spoke matter-of-factly about shamans and spirit-talkers which would make Flins’ tendency to talk about the ghosts in his cemetery like they were fond neighbors seem almost normal.
Fontaine’s detective stories had pretty much invented the archetype of the Inscrutably Deadly Dandy and though he might steadfastly deny himself as a man of fashion, Flins, and his custom spats and his silk shirts under his ragged leather coat with its melted down samovar’s worth of silver buckles definitely counted.
And of course Liyue had the concept of the eccentric but absent-minded martial arts master who might slaughter miscreants with elegant footwork and then forget to eat anything other than morning dew in their quest for higher cultivation.
Which seemed just about right when Illuga came by the lighthouse and discovered the cabinets were mostly bare again, since Flins had a tendency to quietly redistribute those rations that he did not seem to enjoy (largely all of them). Even the jerky he’d found in the drawer was probably being saved for that damn dog. Seriously! Did the Lightkeeper’s current highest clearance soldier truly run off of nothing but vodka and smoked fish?
It was certainly very Snezhnayan of him.
Not that Flins was looking especially haggard today, flitting about light-footed as usual around his long table with its stacks of rock-weighed overdue reports but Illuga still had concerns dammit.
“Humor me, Sir Flins, did you eat anything I brought last week?”
“Of course, my dear young master,” answered the object of his scrutiny smoothly, batting his midnight blue eyelashes for extra effect. “I quite enjoyed the tea. Besides I’ve been known to sometimes subsist on moonlight and Miss Columbina has been most obliging lately~” Flins finished with an impish expression, as if he was already looking forward to his scolding.
Illuga breathed heavily through his nose. Now he felt a little less bad about the plan he had come here to execute. Sure it was ambitious, trying to pull one over a guy who had cunning coming out of every invisible pore, but he wasn’t the youngest squad leader in the Lightkeepers for nothing.
“OK, you know what, I give up.” He said with a sigh and a smile that he strategically let slip into fondness. “It’s still light out, mind if we take a walk?”
“Oh? I had thought you've had enough of walking today young master.”
“The way here has more rowing than walking and you know it. Come on, look at the sky, the sunset’s shaping up to be pretty.”
Flins looked up at it - crepuscular rays were slanting picturesquely through the blush-pink clouds over Paha Isle’s distant beach. He inclined his head towards them as if granting a courtesy bow to nature’s majesty and said “Why, so it is” in that refined melancholy way that would have been unbearably pretentious on anyone else.
They set off. Illuga tried not to wiggle his toes in his boots.
The trap was sprung.
---
Look, he was doing it for Flins’ own good, really.
Whenever he brought new Orioles to the lighthouse for a rest and restock he felt compelled to say something beforehand like “Look, Sir Flins may look intimidating but he’s mostly harmless! He might cheat at cards or tell you a long winding story about his gem collection, but really, he’s an excellent Lightkeeper and a good man...” This was regrettably necessary since to fresh eyes the cemetery was, at best, atrociously fucking spooky and with Flins’ bad habit of popping out from behind gravestones like he’d been lying in wait, it was only a question of whether the new recruits were going to whimper in terror or outright shriek.
It had begun as an innocent attempt for Illuga to introduce his men to a potential resting point (and a… friend) but even he was forced to admit that it had become perhaps the closest thing the Nightmare Orioles had to a hazing ritual.
Even at Piramida and in broad daylight, Fins’ advent was an event to be prepared for. Veteran snipers jumped as if startled, callow country recruits scattered like flocks of starlings, and an especially blunt frontliner had once described her fellow Ratnik as ‘look, just imagine a passably handsome and very cordial freshly-drowned corpse.’
Now this, Illuga felt, was an unfair assessment. For one, there was nothing passable about it.
Two, Flins didn’t look drowned unless you caught him in a downpour, though even then he would be elegantly misted at most. It was true that he was very pale, and sort of perpetually windswept. But that’s just what happened when you lived inside a rusting tower on an abandoned island of everlasting twilight and eccentrically kept a mane of long princely hair by the windy shore. He did not look like a barrow-wight or a draugr or a vampire. That was just silly. The most Illuga was willing to cop to was a brooding poet or maybe the lead of a Mondstatian gothic.
Still. Maybe something was a little off with his health. Even when gloved his hands were often cold. His yellow eyes did look a little dull in the daytime though it was definitely not enough to count them as jaundiced and they came alive in spectacularly unsettling lenticular fashion at night. Sometimes in the heat of battle you could see dark blue veins in the gap between his sleeve and his glove (not that Illuga let himself get distracted by this) but perhaps he was simply a trifle dehydrated. Or anemic.
Probably a vitamin deficiency. Whatever you couldn’t get from vodka and fish.
The fact of the matter was that there was currently a mobile clinic set up on the plateau above the Nothing Passage and Illuga was carefully steering them towards it in the name of ‘getting some elevation for a good view.’
It had even been the Starshyna’s idea! Something meant as a courtesy to those who were stationed on the southern island. It helped that the head doc in charge had been old man Nikita’s even older drinking buddy and had agreed to do the thing for cheap. When he’d first heard about it over dinner Illuga had immediately blurted out that it would be a great opportunity for someone to finally check over Sir Flins and then his father had wounded his youthful pride by laughing so hard he’d sprayed crumbs of cornbread all over the table.
“Son, you’d have better luck teaching a cat to read Sumerian!”
So the gauntlet had been cast down. Nikita had quipped that Flins had been upright, mostly breathing, and late on his reports for longer than Illuga had been alive and had about as much use for a doctor as a Frostknight Hera had for the ferrier. Illuga had honestly taken a little offense at the old man’s casualness. Of course this was how many of the older Lightkeepers were with each other - joking about frostbite, footrot, and death-by-claggy-ration-buiscuit before the Hunt could even take its pound of flesh.
But wasn’t it the new generation’s job to improve the culture a little? His determination to have his colleagues take their health seriously had only grown.
‘Our cheeks are pale, our hair does flutter, our eyes burn bright as flame’ was all very well for the Oath of the Order but now someone was finally going to check Sir Flins for early signs of tuberculosis.
Because it was a little too on the nose.
And anyway, Illuga was pretty sure that Lady Nefer’s cat could read Sumerian.
---
Now they had almost reached the top of the plateau but not quite the crucial bend in the road and Illuga knew he had to act quickly.
“Sooo, remember last month you said that you owed me for those extensions on your reports?”
Beside him Flins drew himself up short. Illuga had a vague idea that just before he said that he had been about to elegantly disappear into the shrubbery. In fact his eyes gave a brief sideways glance towards the cliffside as if a five hundred foot drop was just another convenient and possible venue of escape.
“Ah- what a rare indulgent admission on my part. I do recall that, yes.” he said at last.
Illuga looked up at him more aggressively than usual.
“Well. I’m calling it in.”
A microexpression flitted across his face but too quickly for Illuga to parse it.
“As you wish, young master.” he said with an ironic little bow “Should I be concerned for my evening? I must warn you, only boons of equal value may be exchanged safely and one should be careful not to overestimate the value of thirteen and a half reports.”
Damn, he’d really kept track of them.
“Come on now, it’s not like they’ll torture you! It really shouldn’t take too long. It’s just a routine checkup.” Illuga tried to be gracious in his victories but he was so elated that the plan had worked that he found himself striding forward with a childishly energetic bounce in his step. He had an absurd thought of taking Flins’ hand and swinging it between them.
“Ah~ And you will be joining me, of course. Doubtless you were planning to lead this health-conscious initiative by example.” Flins said dryly behind him.
Illuga stopped.
Actually, he hadn’t considered it.
Shit. And the medical tents and their jaunty red flags were well in sight now.
They were going to carp at him about staying on the patrol roster with his shoulder, weren’t they. It had just been a little sprain! He was technically staying off it, he had his pack strap on the other shoulder and everything. It would be fine!
Illuga shivered, he’d always been better at lying to his men about bad odds than to himself.
Over that selfsame shoulder Flins’ smile had the slightest suggestion of a knowing edge.
He even gave Illuga a cheeky push over the crest of the hill, his large cold hand hitting the exact spot where his jacket was thinnest and his back was not covered by his sweater.
---
There was a gathering of Ratniki in front of the tents but without anything as orderly as a line, more like an informal camp where the self-declared Protectors of Elysium smoked and chatted and waited fatalistically to be plucked away into sterile Valhalla by a nurse with a clipboard.
Hard sinewy veterans with their many medals clanking against the worn purple velvet of their uniform vests sat in some makeshift iron chairs playing rounds of durak over an upturned rain barrel.
The fresher dewier rookies with their over-shined lamps and their shinguards only spattered with local mud perched on an ancient stone fence behind them like a row of blackbirds, some smoking, some reading newspapers fresh from the press at Nasha Town and the rest gossiping about latest spats with the Fatui. A few waved at Illuga but their enthusiasm to call him over seemed to wane when they caught sight of what was behind him.
At the edge of this lively gathering now loomed Flins with his undertaker’s coat and antique elaborate spear and his personal cloud of mellow but insistent silence. The sun was sluggishly sinking towards the horizon and in the encroaching twilight it looked like he had come trailing his own personal snatches of evening fog. Illuga had a sudden thought that the weather on Final Night Isle loved him so much that it had followed him.
By daylight Flins looked gently shabby, like an overexposed antique Kamera shot.
At the fulcrum of encroaching night he looked like something out of a storybook that was perhaps correctly shelved in the ‘horror’ section.
For a moment the fence chatter faltered but one of the older ladies at the card game looked up, smiled showing her several gold teeth and imperiously waved them over.
“He got you too, did he, Comrade Flins? Now this should be good!”
Flins bowed to the card game as formally as the noble ladies in his court stories bowed to the Archduke’s hunting party.
“Salutations and good evening, all. I do believe young master Illuga has become concerned with the state of my health. Though truly I can’t imagine why.”
For some reason this made them all laugh.
“Bahaha! Like you’re not outliving all of us.”
Flins gently demurred and was saying something polite and vaguely creepy like “I should fervently hope not, even as I do prepare for that unfortunate possibility, there is plenty of room in the graveyard and I have chosen excellent views for all of you-” but Illuga had tuned him out and was strategically shifting position to use him as a shield.
A flap to one of the tents gaped open and he’d just spotted some unhappy soul getting their mouth checked with one of those newfangled Sumerian zoom lenses. Shit. Fuck. They might miss the ever-so-slightly-sprained shoulder but he just remembered hadn’t exactly been keeping up on his flossing. If some fancy Snezhnayan doctor was going to find mandragora bits in between his molars, like the frontier hick that he was, he might just as well die of embarrassment.
---
As if sensing this thought a well-built woman with sensible clothes and a nurse cap emerged from the main tent.
“Next!” She called out briskly.
A crowd of people who had volunteered for decades of night shifts fighting hordes of the restless undead resolutely pretended that she did not exist.
Illuga, hidden where he was, breathing in the scent of old leather and frostlamp flowers, drowning in a river of cold gossamer hair, followed their lead.
His bulwark, however, seemed determined to avenge himself.
“Madam, if I may? My colleague and I are ready.”
People had already begun subtly edging away from them and Flins, as the tallest thing left in the landscape, gave an airy little salute to his comrades and stepped forward.
There was a round of clapping and some scattered cheers. To be fair, no one appreciated self-sacrifice like a Lightkeeper.
“That’s our Sir Flins, first into the breach!” huffed one of the oldsters around the mouth of a hip flask.
“Check him for hooves!” yelled a red-faced boy on the fence apropos of nothing but was then hushed up immediately by his squadmates.
“Sorry Mr. Flins, he’s scared of needles so he’s drunk off his ass!” one called out. Another hit him with a rolled up newspaper. “Oh my god, Sasha, you can’t just say that-”
On his way to his fate, Illuga gave the rookie a long steady look that did not seem to do his complexion any good. It was true that Flins and Miss Lauma had always been on friendly terms but there was no need to speculate.
Actually I don’t think I’ve ever seen his feet…
The thought carried him grimly through the row of tents and then into one that served as a triage slash waiting room. Technically this was the part where he ought to leave Flins alone but that’s exactly when he realized that he absolutely couldn’t. Not if he wanted an actual thorough screening.
On his own Flins would defer and redirect and bury the medics in flattering bullshit and not take this seriously at all. Besides, these were strangers!
It seemed deeply wrong after years of visiting him and hearing his stories and attuning to his uniquely mystifying personality, to just hand Flins off to someone else. He’s mine… my responsibility. Illuga had practically inherited him! When he was a kid his old man had told him the stories of the Longest Night and Mayakov and the rise and fall of Sumrak. The tales had treated Flins like he was some sort of holy relic of the Lightkeepers, their last resort for stubborn infestations and broken tideseals, at once indestructible and somehow fragile. Illuga had volunteered to visit this mythical personage as soon as he could solo a patrol route, his pops had said ‘yeah alright, you might do him some good’ and that had been that.
How would a bunch of up-country civilians even know how to handle him, how to withstand his reflexive deflections? How to notice his rare genuine signs of discomfort?
Illuga felt himself take a flankling position between Flins and the flap of the tent before he knew what his body was doing. It was reflexive, really. Flins went into battle and Illuga was right behind him.
The intake nurse, however, was not impressed.
“Excuse me, are you his… commanding officer?” The look she gave Illuga was incredulous.
Was it so hard to believe? Actually, probably yes. I mean he did outrank Flins, technically. Even though the senior Ratnik’s clearance rate should have had him promoted years ago.
“My Sargent-Major is regrettably no longer with us.” Said Flins smoothly in the face of the nurse’s confusion. “Squad Captain Illuga is the closest I have at present.”
Which was a huge lie, actually.
Working for the League Illuga had tried to get a pulse on the political landscape in Lempo and found out that they still hadn’t formally reassigned Flins. It seemed like the remaining Sergeant Majors in Nasha Town had their hands full with newbies and were reluctant to take him. More likely they were afraid of their brittle authority shattering in the face of Flins doing whatever the fuck he wanted as usual.
The matter of Flins’ actual functioning rank was maddeningly unclear. As far as he was concerned the chain of command might as well be cobwebs. Flins wandered in whenever, kept one-on-one councils with his pops, took secret missions that would have tied up multiple squads like some kind of shadow-Starshyna. And the entire old guard knew and no one talked about it.
But the nurse didn’t know all that and had clearly hit her limit of caring.
“Right. This way.”
They were promptly led to another tent with a different, less steely-looking nurse.
Sir Flins, Illuga had noted, had a certain effect on women. Mostly of the demure and feminine set, though even the hard-edged Lady Nefer seemed to regard him with some favor. At least once while holding a temporary court in her booth at the Flagship she had declared ‘Well he certainly knows how to dissemble, but I wouldn’t call his conversation dull. That’s a leg up on most men I’ve met in this country. Hehe and if you run into him in a dark alley, well, at least it’s a pleasant final view!’ Everyone had laughed along with her sinister chuckle, though Illuga felt it was mostly because they were drunk and afraid of her.
Anyway in this case a young lady with a fraying braided updo was looking up and up and up at Flins and brandishing her stethoscope like a novice climber unprepared for an especially dizzying ascent.
“Ummm could you please sit down.”
Flins sat, elegantly. The difference was still insurmountable.
Illuga had sort of gotten used to their height gap, namely talking to the lower buckle on his capelet when he didn’t feel like straining his neck. At least he was pretty sure he could drag him somewhere in case of an emergency if not lift him outright. Seeing Flins next to a short civilian was honestly pretty jarring. He really was a tower of a man.
“If I might ask you to remove your jacket?” She seemed unsure of the question, the premise, and the action itself.
“Oh, whatever for?” Flins countered in his usual airy way. His eyes, already sleep-cast, went even more half-lidded.
“Err, that is, the measurements… it’s too thick-” something about her line of thought seemed to fluster her especially.
“Or for Solovei’s sake! It’s to listen to your heart and lungs-“ Illuga interjected.
“Well then, I hope this might prove fruitful.”
It seemed there was some hidden meaning there. Illuga frowned. Cagey thing might be hiding an arrhythmia, he was wan enough for it. There were a lot of long extremities to Flins and the polearm was a demanding weapon for the cardiovascular system. Or maybe it was early onset rheumatism, his island was certainly damp enough.
Meanwhile Flins slowly unfastened his capelet, and then his overcoat, which pooled darkly around his hips. Then he carefully unbuckled the straps to his antique gorget with the dangling purple gem with an air of ceremony and was left in a dark plum dress shirt whose fine weave rippled in the slight breeze. With a vague tenderness Illuga noticed that the cuffs of it were slightly moth-eaten. He’s probably spent his seasonal bonus on trinkets instead of a seamstress. Or maybe he’d gotten the shirt off an obliging corpse.
It suddenly occurred to Illuga that he had actually never seen that much of Flins, observing him clad either in his all-concealing uniform for patrols or, with cherished rarity, in a cable-knit gray woolen sweater in a more domestic setting.
He had bony wrists, though they were surprisingly thick. Not even a hint of tan. All over he was that exact same semi-translucent pallor. It should have looked ghastly, like the scaled underbelly of some deepwater fish but instead his exposed skin seemed to glow in the waning light like moonlit snow had been spun into thread and woven back into flesh.
Illuga realized that he was staring.
Maybe I haven’t thought this through…
After all, the surprisingly sturdy wrists were still attached to long gloved hands that had briskly unbuttoned a second and even third(!) button, whereupon the shirt fell open silkily revealing his well-muscled neck and what was suddenly a romance-novel-cover amount of long pale throat-
The nurse seemed to teeter at the brink of fainting. Swaying closer himself, Illuga figured he couldn’t blame her.
“Th-that should be enough!’
“Oh, that’s all for the best then.” said Fins, drawing the overcoat close to his chest in a fair attempt of maidenly modesty. “In my carelessness I have accrued a number of scars and I would rather not display them so flagantly.”
Goddammit Flins!
‘Flagrantly’ was not the word to say in this situation! Especially with that half-lidded expression!
To torture them further an errant breeze teased strands of his unmanageable hair to flow strategically over his shoulder and the shirt flapped dramatically as if to remind all assembled of its openness.
Illuga felt his fingers curling into fists at his side.
Wait, so he has scars too? Why doesn't he talk about it, why haven’t I seen them?!
At least he’s not as starved as I feared.
Even without his layers Flins had a rather solid shape to him, though with the expected extended proportions. He really had to be a spear man, since any other weapon would probably look like a child’s toy in those long corded arms.
The nurse, in what now seemed to be a trancelike state carried forward on pure professional habit, put her stethoscope to the plane of his chest.
Her eyes grew wide. Illuga, sensing her unease unconsciously began to chew the inside of his own lip.
(And now we must step outside the narrative because what she hears and what our fair hero cannot be privy to, is that instead of regular beats and the gentle thrum of blood flowing through a human heart the instrument detects only the faint crackle of flame.)
“Excuse me for just one moment, I-I think I need a second opinion”
Flins looks meditatively at the ceiling, appearing maddeningly completely unbothered. Illuga starts frothing himself up into a rant.
Outside the young nurse flies into the attending physician’s tent and turns to him with a look of mute pleading and no small degree of horror.
“I’m so sorry Mihail Sergeevich, I- umm, that is-”
The situation is explained. The old man sighs.
“Allright, move on Sveta. I’ll handle that one.”
---
As Illuga’s rant gained steam and a vague coherence and he was about to release it into fruition from behind his already chewed lip Goddamnit Flins! Don’t tell me something’s actually wrong with your heart- an elderly doctor entered the tent, sat down heavily and unwound his older, much more scratched stethoscope from around his neck.
He placed it against Flins’ chest, listened, and leaned back with an expression that was somehow both incredulous and slightly impressed.
“Bet you think you’re clever.” He said to Flins for some reason.
Instead of bristling, Flins gave him a serene close-mouthed smile.
“Oh no, good sir, my concerned colleague pressed upon me quite urgently to come here. He is my Starshyna’s son so you must understand, I dare not refuse the young master’s request nor make light of his concerns. Also, as he so graciously reminded me, I owed him a favor.”
The doctor looked at Illuga in a way that seemed incredulous and slightly judgemental and then once again some innate professionalism took over.
“Right. So what’s the story with this one then?”
Illuga stepped forward. He’d been preparing for this.
“Sir Flins is one of our longest-serving and most dedicated soldiers. He has a remote posting with frequently poor weather limiting the window for supply deliveries and limited local dietary options so I.. dragged him here, I suppose. Beyond the issue of climate he has a truly impressive clearance rate but the frequency of frontline combat must surely be taking a toll on his body. As his current supervising officer my primary areas of concern are nutritional deficiencies, old injuries and errr.. Possibly early onset arthritis?” Illuga finished in a rush. He resisted the vague urge to salute. What was it with old guys and making him feel twelve again?
“Ah, you’re the famous fellow with the cemetery. Now it is making sense.”
But Illuga had picked up steam.
“-and gods forbid I make him eat anything! He barely touches my damn soup and everyone in Piramida loves my soup. I’ve never seen him drink anything but alcohol and tea! He could have rickets. Or tuberculosis! Please check his lungs for tuberculosis.”
Flins chucked in his seat. “All that?”
“Now now, Squad Captain let me talk to the patient directly eh?”
Chastised, Illuga shut up.
“So, how old are you supposed to be here? Twenty-eight, thirty?”
Illuga tried not to lean in. This was intel he would hate to miss. Like everything else about him, Flins’ exact age was hard to pin down. He had a childlike avarice for trinkets paired with a world-weariness that spoke of too much painful experience. When they’d first met Illuga had considered that perhaps the shadows under his eyes (sleeplessness? Sumerial khol?) were employed to hide fine wrinkles and then other times he could have sworn that his face was as smooth and ageless as the Eternal Moon.
“A trifle more than that, I fear.”
So he was older than thirty? Yeah, it made sense, still, the thought squirmed uneasily in Illuga’s insides, a decade or more was a vast gulf between them.
“You’re well preserved, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Thank you most kindly.”
He took out a penlight and shone it briskly over the ratnik’s face. Flins’ eyes did what they always did with a sudden overabundance of light and reflected it back.
To his credit the old doctor only flinched a little. Everyone in the room politely pretended that he hadn’t. He made a thoughtful hum though it did not seem to be one of concern.
“Don’t get much sun on that island, huh?”
“The currents commonly create a fog.”
“You have trouble seeing when it’s bright out?”
“Not as such, no.” the flat yellow eyes crinkled conspiratorially. “I will confess to being more comfortable in the dark.”
“Oh I bet. How’s your sleep?”
“It is… not my favorite activity. I overindulged in it once and now it evades me as a courtesy.”
“I thought that was all those restless ghosts you got. Everyone says your posting place is haunted. Is it?“
“My, is that an official medical line of questioning? The rumors are always a touch too fanciful, I will say that I have no complaints as to my neighbors.”
“What do you do to not go batty then?” The elderly physician furrowed his impressive eyebrows much like an owl would adjust its wingspan. “That is an official medical question by the way. Scaring back the horrors every night plays merry hell on the psyche - every last one of you fellows needs a hobby that isn’t drinking.”
“I read, I collect small gems and I make artful little puzzles out of bones. Lately I’ve been drinking Mondstatian wine which is at least a variant on the traditional hobby.” Flins’ eyes cut sideways to fix Illuga with a warm look. “And I cherish the young master’s visits, of course.”
“Sounds about right for your lot. You’re from up north then, by Snezhnograd?”
It didn’t seem to be a question.
Though it was still amicable, something in Flins’ expression shuttered shut.
“I did live there once, but that was long ago.”
This seemed like the perfect launching point to one of Flins’ long meandering anecdotes about Snezhnayan architecture or theater or his rather more fictionalized tales about the old court. But not a word was forthcoming.
Illuga frowned.
Maybe he only tells those to me. The thought was a comfort and an ember.
To his credit the old man didn’t seem offended by the stone he himself had thrown in the conversation. “Fair enough. Everyone’s got a right to a fresh start. This is the place for it.”
He flourished the penlight again, bringing a clever lensed contraption over his eye that had previously been hiding in the fur of his beaver tricorne.
“Let’s see the teeth then, got any chips?”
“Not any that I have noticed though I do wonder if they’re getting worn down, one can’t be too careful given the fine and hardy qualities of the ration biscuits-”
“My good fellow, quit stalling and open up.”
For the briefest second Flins looked discomfited. It was so much easier to tell without his high collar.
Illuga knew he should really step back, but Flins had seen him in some compromising places so many times tripping over stones on patrol, squirming in the hot seat when Miss Aino asked him to recreate a circuit, getting scolded by his father. Why shouldn’t he have a measure of it back, with his partially unbuttoned shirt and his slightly messy hair Flins was the most flustered and human he’d ever seen him.
Until he opened his mouth.
Bloodless lips stretched around the darker gums like a predator on a taxidermy table, their pale pink fading to a purplish tinge where they met his teeth. His very white, very sharp teeth. Sharp across the whole front row and only fading into something that vaguely looked like serrated molars at the very corners of his mouth.
Oh. Okay. Holy shit. That’s… really scary actually.
The doctor’s hands shook as he wielded a small silver pick and tongue depressor. Illuga’s heart fluttered.
Is that why he only gives people little close-mouthed smiles? Is he self-conscious about his teeth the way I am about my scars?
Unfortunately a half step closer (wait, what does his tongue look like?) got him noticed.
“Right, off you get now young master, give your elders a bit of privacy eh? Three’s a crowd.”
Illuga left the tent in a slight daze.
Okay but what the fuck is wrong with his gums? Was it a dietary issue?
Paha Isle’s beach was already red from the concentrated khuuvaki in the sand, urchins and jellyfish everywhere. Had Flins been eating the sea urchins? He was an enviably capable fighter but an occasionally unlucky fisherman. It would be entirely in character to one day find him eating a jellyfish, tentacles and all, under his collar because ‘it paired well with the wine.’
Or it could be hereditary. What was Flins by blood volume anyway? Snezhanyan for certain but that could account for any sort of ancestry. He seemed on good terms with Lady Lauma and had a surprisingly in-depth knowledge of old Hyperborean legends. Come to think of it, of course he could have weird teeth. There were all sorts of strange bloodlines in Nod Krai. Illuga’s own eyes with their red rings were a little odd, as was the eating mandragora without throwing up. They’d left his tongue yellow for days.
Lacking anything better and frankly dead-set on avoiding his own exam Illuga hovered outside the tent door like an honor guard, torn between being bitterly disappointed at not being able to overhear anything and thankful not to have the temptation.
After what could have been five minutes to half an hour the doctor walked out at which point Illuga strategically blocked his path.
“How is he?! Did you find anything wrong?”
“Hah! No more than what’s expected at his age. He’ll outlast us all probably.”
Why did everyone keep saying that?
“Surely there was something.”
“Right, how do I put this?” The old man rubbed his forehead. “Get him out to some nature, anything other than his usual haunts. Something scenic like Hiisi isle, the Eye of Krati, Lake Amsovar in a pinch if you can stand the damn ambient humming. They all do well with that sort of thing.
As for diet adjustments I’d recommend more dairy - milk or heavy cream, whichever. But here’s the trick, you have to buy it for him.”
“Yes, yes of course he’ll be too stubborn about it otherwise. Thank you Doctor, thank you so much!”
“And he’s… mildly allergic to iron.” the old man sighed heavily and pulled a ragged half-smoked cigarette out of his pocket. “I’ll put it with the discharge papers. Good luck, young man.”
Illuga was about to step briskly through the tents and onward to duty, freedom, and a bright future of unfairly alluring colleague-wrangling when a nurse briskly blocked his way and insisted that the dentist was ready.
---
When he was finally released (with a sling for the shoulder and year’s supply of fluoride paste for his own toothly sins) the horizon had just a fading orange glow and the sea breeze rifled pleasantly though the blue grass.
Illuga found Flins sitting on the crude stone fence that bracketed the road kicking his feet like a child. The lighting made his hair a cloak of midnight and turned his many buckles into stars. He was feeding a curl of what looked like magnesium ribbon into the open top of his lamp.
“The good doctor said it might aid in my constitution. What a peculiar prescription! But then again I have no choice but to submit to my marching orders-“ the crackling flame wavered in a way that for some reason reminded Illuga of a restrained belch “-and the sensation is most agreeable.”
“Torchforger’s sake-” Illuga muttered under his breath. “And an iron allergy of all things? Not like HQ isn’t covered in the stuff. What am I going to do with you, Sir Flins?”
“What indeed~”
Take you back to town and make you buy bread. Illuga thought. At least your famous smoked fish could do well for a sandwich.
But still. If no alarm had been raised and Dr Ahmatov hadn’t spoken to him beyond giving him an impenetrable look and directives to take Flins on nature walks and buy him dairy then his father had been correct not to worry too much.
He’d been too fucking right about the vitamin deficiency though. And it was going to be up to him to fix things. By gods he was going to make Flins drink so much cream he could swim in it.
They went into town. They lingered by the darkened front of the regrettably closed antique store where Illuga was feeling indulgent and shone his lantern into the display window so that Flins could pick out his next victim. They stopped by the blacksmith where Illuga dropped off his chipped boot dagger. At last they went upstairs to Katya’s to buy the last of her fresh baked bread and Illuga found himself strangely compelled to swing by the Flagship and get Flins a bottle of Fire Water, like a sugar sculpture for a well-behaved child.
Demyan also passed him a bottle of milk under the table.
On the way home to the cemetery Illuga tried to think of a diplomatic way to tell Flins that he was sorry he’d dragged him to the clinic but also that he wasn’t sorry at all, that he didn’t mind the serrated horrors behind his soft thin lips, and that he could smile whole-heartedly in his presence. Illuga tried to picture such a thing, maybe in the sunlight by the shore of the Eye of Krati, Frostlamp flowers swaying gently in the breeze. He promptly tripped on a rock.
“Sir Flins.” he said at last, when the pink sands of Paha Isle were clinging to their boots.
“Yes, young master?”
It felt down to the wire and he’d tried to think of a clever way to put it but all that came out was:
“I like your teeth, you know. So… I wouldn’t mind if you smiled wider around me.”
There was barely a break in Flins’ normally even stride but he was sure both he and the moon saw him trip over a nonexistent rock.
~