The Endless Solvent

The hardest thing for her to do was to try not to ‘see’ as it caused her so much pain. There was a baseline pain that Aris found comparatively manageable but if she tried to ‘look’ at anything it would set something off and she would suffer until she passed out.

Her eyelids seemed to be recovered enough such that she could close her ‘eyes’ but it seemed the sight granted to her with the death of the Part wasn’t normal vision. There were strange spots of light in the darkness. She could not focus on studying them as any amount of concentration on them would pain her. So instead she forced her eyelids over the rough patches of where her eyes once were. This also pained her, but the act reminded her to not ‘look’ at anything and act like her eyes were closed.

Doing this allowed her to gradually reach a point where she could string more than three thoughts together that weren’t about how miserable she felt and how she just wanted to die. She still wasn’t able to hold any coherent conversation - talking to someone almost immediately encouraged her to ‘look’ at them. But if she focused on her other senses, she gradually learned of her surroundings.

First, she discovered they were using some sort of cart or carriage to carry her. They traveled sporadically, presumably because it was suspicious for them to be carrying her around. They didn’t stop in villages or towns and frequently made camp in quiet areas of the forest.

Second, there were two other people with Camaz. She was certain there was occasionally a fourth person that visited. This person was a stranger and she would feel hands prod at her; she hypothesized that this was a healer. Unsurprisingly, their visits never made her feel any better. None of these people knew what she did.

Moon-curse it, should she tell them? Perhaps she would die if she didn’t. Would Camaz even believe her? What of the other people with him?

It took her perhaps two, three days of partial lucidity to realize who the other man was with Camaz. She recognized the accent and the clink of weapons and armor when he walked. She wondered why the Sekrelli nobleman was there - he couldn’t have known it was her in that tree that day. He doesn’t even know what she looks like, there was no chance he would go on some wild mission with Camaz to find her. It must have been a strange coincidence he was here.

Then there was a woman as well who traveled with them. She barely spoke but Aris frequently felt her presence along with the flutter of book pages and the scratch of chalk or charcoal against a surface. It seemed she was using some enchantment to keep the pain away. Aris had to begrudgingly admit it was helping, although she could probably write one that took away the pain completely.

She hadn’t considered that killing the Part would result in her becoming blind. There always had to be some sort of catch. Life always took too easily and often you won’t get anything in return if you weren’t careful.

“Here, you must try to eat something.” It was the Sekrelli nobleman. Aris managed to overhear their conversation and recalled his name was Verne. Only he and Camaz ever fed her. “It’s broth. Perhaps you should try the mashed up vegetables too?”

The incremental improvement of the pain in her eyes only yielded to how utterly exhausted other parts of her body were. She could barely lift her arms and so either Verne or Camaz had to lift and prop her upper body up so she could take her meals. Even that was a struggle. She could barely eat more than a few spoonfuls before the focus to stay awake overwhelmed her and the pain took over again. Often it made her dizzy enough to make her nauseous which led to her vomiting anything fed to her.

Aris was beyond embarrassment. If they didn’t want to clean up after her, they would mercifully let her die. A part of her secretly wished it every time they had to mop up after her: maybe they would snap and just strangle her right there.

Take my eyes into your solute and pray to your celestial bodies that you do not die. That cursed thing knew exactly what was going to happen. Aris oscillated between hatred and misery as she lay helplessly on the cart. It was no use hating on Doran anymore either as he was gone - a piece of him was a part of her. Besides, she was too weak to hate. She could only slip into regret and pray that she could sleep a little longer and not face the pain of reality.

There was a very small sliver of time every day when the pain was mostly kept at bay and she wasn’t made to eat. There must be some cover over her cart because during that time she could often feel warm beams of sunlight not present any other time. Aris could hear snippets of conversation to her left and sounds of people moving around.

Verne would often be the one to be near her, presumably to stand guard and to watch over her condition. Sometimes he would be talking to either Camaz or the woman, other times he would be talking to her even though she couldn’t speak.

“We’ll head westward, there is another small village with a healer there that may help us,” she heard him say once. She could also hear the scrape of metal against stone, like was sharpening his weapon. “Then stay for a day or two depending on what the healer thinks. The last one seemed like a quack to me. Hopefully this one will be better.”

“You know s-she can’t answer you,” the woman’s voice was soft but the tone was sarcastic. She also seemed to have a stutter.

“I know. This is why I don’t ask her questions,” Verne said. Aris could hear a smile in his words. “We have a very productive conversation when it is one sided.”

The woman gave a snort that sounded a lot like “men,” and Verne laughed. Something in Aris twisted at the sound. Perhaps in another life she could laugh and joke like that with her peers too. They sounded so normal. She could have been part of their world if things were just different.

But now she was blind and on the verge of slitting her own throat just to stop the pain from taking over again. Aris, Daughter of Moon, rolled over to her side to block out anything else Verne had to say and sank into darkness.