Chapter Text
His alarm buzzed him awake, a cheery song backing an audio clip of an incredibly irritated Jamil saying, “Wake up. There, are you happy n-” on repeat.
Jamil had agreed to give him two days a week to wake himself up and get himself ready, after more than a month of begging. The first few times it went… pretty well. Okay, maybe he was late to his first period, but he’d never done his own eyeliner before! He just had Jamil do it for him. He had Jamil do a lot of things for him because they were too hard. That was kind of cruel of him, huh?
But not today! Rubbing his eyes, he stretched, his arms and legs flexin-
“OW!” Kalim’s hands shot to his hips, trying to rub the white hot pain from its sides.
Oh no, please, please not today. Seven, he hated it when this happened. It’d been a thing since he was a child - he never mentioned it to any of the doctors. He assumed it was just a side effect of frequently being bedridden around the ages he was supposed to learn to walk. Plus, despite having still not seen it himself, his family would pass his medical chart around like a bowl of candy. All of his aunts, uncles, third cousins and great-great grandparents would ooh and aah at it, but tell him he was too young to worry about such things if he asked. Even though it was his body. Why would he want that put on file?
That was also why he didn’t mention that he wet the bed until 11. He got good at stripping sheets quickly and quietly, at tucking them under the bed and finding the right times to slip into the laundry room and stuff them in with the rest of a load.
He looked out past the canopy of his bed and across his room, ready to whine about how he was tired from dancing too hard yesterday and plead for the day off. But no one was there. He knew there wouldn’t be. Why did that make him so sad?
“Magic carpet…?” He croaked. A rolled up tapestry in the corner unraveled itself, bursting from its resting place and zipping over. Kalim smiled weakly, reaching out to rub one of its silk tassels as it hovered by his bedside like a golden retriever. “Hi, buddy… Can you bring me my clothes? They’re just over there, Jamil folded ‘em for me last night.”
It tipped one of its corners to the side in confusion, then patted him on the cheek a few times. The soft embroidery thread was cool against his skin, though the body of the carpet had a magically endowed warmth when touched.
“I’m okay. Just achy.” He assured, pushing himself up on his palms. His hips screamed as his femurs scraped against their sockets, organs squishing against the oversensitive bone. Marrow no longer produced blood, but poison, stored for years deep in its core. Kalim squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the worst of the throbbing to fade.
It was going to be fine. He knew this because this was nothing new. And he had to go to class today. Jamil would be so mad if he found out he’d skipped on, what, his fourth day being entrusted to get himself ready? He’d scold him for an hour! Plus, Jamil had gone to class with worse; migraines that would damn near knock him to the floor, second degree burns from getting oil on his arms while cooking. Who was Kalim to skip over a little joint pain? A little liquor and ibuprofen, and he’d be back on his feet in no time!
Were they his feet, or the feet of the Al-Asim heir, owned by the bloodline, commanded by politics?
A warm bit of fabric touched his shoulder, and his eyes shot open. Beside him was the magic carpet, hovering a few inches above the bed with a mussed stack of clothes resting in its cradle.
“Oh! How long have you been there?” He asked, a playful bounce in his voice. It didn’t quite feel like a sentence he’d constructed, more an option on a dialog wheel. He’d picked ‘happy’, ‘affectionate’, the option that would increase his positive karma the most. Kalim took the pile with a soft smile on his face. “Thank you for getting me my clothes, magi.”
Now to get dressed. Whoo. He wasn’t going to collapse at all. Nope. And he was gonna go downstairs and cook himself breakfast and not burn the everloving seven out of his hand with sputtering oil this time! Nope!
Today was going to be great!
–
He only ended up collapsing a little bit. The magic carpet caught him and kept knocking him back onto itself until he gave in and changed while using it as a crutch. It was kind of funny, really - even if Jamil had given him a chance to prove his ability to be independent, he’d find a way to get something to serve him. Even a carpet wasn’t exempt from his helpless whinging.
But hey! He got to fly to class on it! Sure, the air pressure shift did make his joints hurt more, but it wasn’t that bad, and he got there way faster than he would’ve on foot. Which was good, because the bell rang all of five seconds after he walked (not limped, he knew better than to limp and he’d gotten good at moving without swinging his femurs all that much) to his seat.
The thin cushion between him and the wooden bench wasn’t nearly enough. Sometimes he wished he could keep a little more fat on to prevent these situations, but, despite not having been told anything outright from the doctors, the whispers at parties when he was younger made things fairly clear - the poisonings had done some sort of damage to his intestines, and, though he ate plenty, his ability to actually absorb those calories was… wishy-washy, to say the least. He still seemed to have a fairly normal physique, though, so it was probably fine! Even though he did lose fifteen pounds on the diet Vil had insisted on while training for the SDC…
But he’d gotten them back, and really it was all about Vil, he could have hurt someone or died - but no one was injured long-term, so it was okay! And on days like these, without Jamil watching him, he could make milkshakes for breakfast and put them in his water bottle, which he figured was a pretty smart way to get in more fats and stuff. The couple glugs of whisky were hardly even noticeable! Which was nice, because the more he could taste it, the more hyperaware of the fact that alcohol was haram he was. Sure, his family normally drank wine at parties, and the liquor was from their storerooms, but…
His grandma had prayed the tasbih with him in the family gardens every morning from five years old to the day he left for the NRC. She would be disappointed to know her years of reciting the 99 names with him had been tossed to the wayside.
Wait… When did Trein start talking about the Fae War? When did class even start? There were already five bullet points on the board! Oh no, he needed to get his journal out, he was gonna miss the notes!
He leaned over to grab his history notebook out of his bag.
Throbbing, swollen pain pooled around the hinges of his hips, concentrated on the inside of his thighs and around his unmentionables. Kalim did his best not to let the sudden spike show on his face, to grab his notes and not let his hands shake enough to make his jewelry jingle. The instinct to massage away the ache was strong, but unfortunately, due to its position, he couldn’t. It’d just look inappropriate, and he didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.
After a moment of rummaging, he managed to find his notebook. He flipped to a blank page, moving as quickly as he could. He was good at ignoring the random creaking of his bones, though, so he wasn’t very hindered. Unfortunately, he’d never been very good at handwriting, and halfway through jotting everything on the board down, Trein picked up the eraser.
“Wait!” Kalim blurted, raising his hand even though he’d already begun to speak. “Can you leave that up for a second please?”
“Asim, we’ve already spent ten minutes on this. Get the notes off of one of your classmates.” The man replied tiredly. Oh, they had? That was a long time… he should’ve gotten the notes down faster. That was his fault. Stupid Kalim!
The magic carpet, aroused by the mention of its owner, unfolded itself and leapt out of his bag, and tried to rush up to the teacher. Kalim squealed in surprise and grabbed onto its tassel, wrangling it back into his bag with all of his strength and zipping his backpack shut to make sure it wouldn’t try that again. When he looked back up to the chalkboard, Trein was glaring daggers at him. He laughed nervously, a deer in headlights.
“Don’t let that happen again. I don’t want your sentient decor becoming a distraction for the class.”
“Sorry, professor…” He looked to the floor, dejected. Trein just sighed.
“...Moving along. Can anyone tell me what happened in the Battle of Briars?”
—
Kalim sat in his bedroom, pushing around a container of reheated chicken machboos. He wasn’t hungry, his entire midsection hurt and unfortunately the alcohol had done little to numb it. More than that, he was alone. Sure, he could go down to the dining hall, but he didn’t know who to sit with. He didn’t want to intrude on others, and Jamil was supposed to be getting a day off, so he had little else to do but sit on the floor and pick at a tupperware.
Well, he wasn’t totally alone. The magic carpet was there, sitting across his lap. One of his fingers idly traced the intricate designs on its body. Its fibers were raised and pushed back by his nail, leaving a trail of slightly darker colors behind.
He sighed. He had class in a half an hour.
He didn’t want to go. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the class - he loved alchemy, it was super fun! - but it required him to be on his feet for the whole period and, if Crewel caught him slacking, longer. That shouldn’t have overwhelmed his brain as much as it did in that moment, but his tailbone was digging into the tapestry under him, and he was nauseous, and his body felt just a little too far away and fuzzy to fully control.
In an unskippable cutscene, his arms rested themselves on the green chest before him, his palms found his eyes. Water seeped into them silently. Unlike most people, whose lips compulsively turned down in upset, his were pulled up at the corners involuntarily. Silk threads brushed against his cheek in concern, but were offered to reply.
The warm silk wrapped around his lower half unraveled itself, surely floating off to somewhere else. Maybe it was bored, maybe it was getting something. His distant body didn’t listen to his requests to check. Either away, he was completely alone in a black void of nothingness and boiling hot pain. If he listened hard enough he could nearly hear the sound of his muscles sizzling, sputtering, popping on the grill of his pelvic girdle.
His food was getting cold. Tears were probably getting in it, too. He still had class and he was wasting his lunch time, he wasn’t going to be able to focus if he didn’t eat.
First world problems at their finest. People would kill to have to force themselves eat high quality food cooked especially for them.
A thunk came from his left.
Kalim’s swollen eyes shot open as he looked over with a jump, startled. Beside him was a small pile of stuffed animals, and a hovering carpet gesturing vaguely at it. It may not have been able to speak, but its insistence as it pointed its corners at the toys was obvious. “Look,” It silently said, “You don’t have to eat alone. Don’t cry.”
He laughed, voice shaky and hitched, and shoved his face back in his hands. He felt a plush doll’s head hit his leg, knocked over by an unseen force. Felt a tapestry wrap tight around his torso.
That only made things worse, made water pour down his face faster.
Minutes passed. He eventually gathered himself, sniffling as he let his arms fall and checked his pocket for his phone. The carpet loosened its grip enough to allow it. The screen lit up with the push of a button, the clock reading ‘12:10’.
He only had ten minutes left!
More tears budded up in his eyes at the idea of having to stand in less than- No! He couldn’t keep doing this, he had to eat something.
He looked at the lukewarm container before him. Then, across the chest, to the empty bench filled only by pillows, to the air past the gilded edge.
His lips wobbled, tried to tug themselves into a frown turned upside down.
Kalim, frustrated with himself and his oasis making eyes, seized the stuffed elephant in his lap and placed it across the trunk with a quiet ‘hmph’. He picked up his spoon. Picked at his food. Lifted a bite of spiced rice.
He didn’t want to eat it. He’d like it, sure, but…
He offered the food to the plush pachyderm in front of him.
“What d’you think?” He asked, meeting the toy’s the sewn on, dead, unblinking eyes. “Could use more paprika? Are you sure? This is Jamil’s cooking, y’know. I have my doubts that it’s underseasoned.”
The inanimate object did not reply. He smiled, dumped the bite he’d ‘given’ to the doll back into the container and picked up a new one for himself. It tasted like nothing, crunched in his mouth because it had grown a tad stale in the open air. This was not the fault of Jamil’s pan nor hands, but the tears that had dripped onto it and sucked the life from the grain, a microcosm of his parasitic nature. The familiar cold, thick sensation of nausea lined his throat. He kept eating, empty as the item across from him.
He was hardly halfway through the container when the bell trilled.
“Mph-”
Startled, and with half a scoop of rice stuck in his cheeks, Kalim’s hand shot for his bag as pushed himself up off the ground in a rush.
And the world went white.
It didn’t even hurt, honestly. It was just white and ringing and thoughtless.
But, as quickly as it had left, reality came back with a blinding vengeance. Bodily sensations pulsed back into his comprehension, hot and tooth gritting and agonizing, pain that had only an origin point, not a home. Aches like that rarely stayed contained to their habitat. He knew it was his hips that hurt, but it was all-consuming. Sight came back second - the ornate tapestry on his floor covered in half-chewed rice spat out he fell and opened his mouth in a silent attempt at a scream.
On his hands and knees, his joints gave, and he tipped to the left, curling up on the ground. Distantly, he could feel his muscles twitch and tremble as he lay there, conscious and unmoving, a haunted doll on a dusty shelf.
The bell tolled for a second time, rousing him from his half-comatose stupor.
“Alchemy class!” Crewel was gonna give him a detention for being tardy! A-And then his parents were going to get on Jamil’s case, when really, it was all Kalim’s fault! But if he explained, then they’d be even more mad, and…
Once again, he tried to push himself up. Where you don’t succeed, try, try again!
A piece of fabric zipped past him so fast he couldn’t make out its features, and when he looked to his door, it was being covered by all four corners of the magic carpet - a panicked attempt by the artifact to stop him from going to his next period.
“Magi… please move,” He mumbled from his half-upright place on the ground, propped up by an arm like mermaids in movies. “I need to go to class, I’ll get in trouble.”
The magic carpet kept itself stretched out as far as it could, blocking all access to the handles. Despite only being fabric, the treasure could be quite strong when it tried to be. In this state, Kalim wasn’t going to be able to pull it off, and he was already late. Was it really worth it to try so hard to keep a tardy slip from becoming an absence?
Probably. If he asked Jamil, the answer would be yes. Maybe he should text- no! Today was his day off! Kalim would be fine on his own. And it wasn’t like Jamil was going to be able to get the carpet to move, anyway. The thing was stubborn.
He sighed, looking to the ground in front of him. There was a mess of rice grains scattered across the floor, cast lots that read “you are pathetic”. He needed to clean that up, before it became Jamil’s problem.
“Where’s the dust pan…?” Kalim muttered to no one, glancing around the room. The cleaning supplies were in the corner furthest away, and there wasn’t even a hand broom. He’d have to stand and use the tall one.
Okay, he can do this! All he has to do is get up and walk ten feet. He tried to shift positions, preparing to stand.
His arms were heavy as lead. He could hardly twitch his fingers, and the slight shift in weight distribution made it feel like he’d rolled his pelvis how one would roll an ankle. The muscles in his core gave out, and he slumped back down onto the floor, too weak to move, despite knowing most of the ‘weight’ on his limbs was just from not wanting to do so.
One of his toes had gone numb. They did that sometimes.
Cheek pressed to the ground, he stared at the rice grains, counting them idly. They were fuzzy from being so close to his face.
What a waste of food. Someone could’ve eaten that.