“...his organs are shutting down and his heart will fail him soon…”

“...there must be something that can be done!”

Jerome could hear voices from time to time as his consciousness drifted between slumber and the waking world.

“Ash?” he called out. But there was no response. Sleep took him once again.

Soon he woke up and noticed he was lying down. “Where am I?”

His voice sounded hoarse, as if from overuse. He swallowed hard, feeling thirsty.

When was the last time I felt thirsty? he thought, standing up with great difficulty and looking around. This wasn’t his room. It was bigger and looked… homely, painted in bright colors. There were two cushion chairs by the side of the single bed, and a reading table and chair were at the foot of the bed. There was also a wardrobe on the opposite wall.

He walked unsteadily toward the window to take a peek outside. My eyes, what’s wrong with my eyes, he thought, blinking repeatedly to keep the room in focus. Opening the dark curtains, sunlight poured into the room making his eyes hurt. The door behind him opened and in walked a stranger. Jerome turned to look at her.

“Good, you’re awake. Come sit,” she gestured toward the bed.

“Who are you?” he said, wrinkling his brows at the sound of his own voice. He wasn’t quite used to hearing his voice sounding so raspy.

“I’m a physician…”

“In black leather armor?” Jerome said, looking pointedly from her ‘uniform’ to her face.

“...of sorts,” she muttered with a shrug.

He gazed deeply into her eyes before sitting in bed. It took a lot to keep her image in focus in front of him but he tried, blinking away the blurriness. He could sense that she loathed him. It was similar to how he felt around Elder Duten but more… restrained.

“How do you feel,” she said, taking a seat in one of the cushion chairs.

“Not good.”

She looked pointedly at him, clearly wanting him to elaborate.

“It’s hard to do anything, even talking is exhausting,” he said grudgingly.

She looked at him askance. Jerome knew that she knew he could sense her dislike for him. So, there was no need to even pretend. He could tell that she wanted to snap back at him but swallowed her words.

Well, you asked. What did I do to deserve your abhorrence? he thought. He looked down at himself for the first time since he woke up. He was in some type of oversized brown shift. It was comfortable, yet left his arms, legs, and sides bare. And he was naked inside it. Only a thin strip of rope held the shift around the waist.

“From our examination, we found out you’ve got a lot of broken bones that aren’t healing. Your internal organs are shutting down due to overwork.”

Jerome reached into the shift to feel the skin above his heart. There was a large scar there. He could tell it was a nasty scar by just feeling it with his fingers. The rest of the skin around the scar was just the same.

Nothing I haven’t heard before, he thought, remembering what it was like to lie on a hospital bed, hearing the doctor report his condition in his previous life. I lived to be sixty in that life, and I’ll live longer and stronger in this one too.

“...are you listening to me?”

Jerome coughed. “Sorry about that,” he looked away from where his eyes had been staring and started to massage his right hand.

The girl glared at him, hugging her chest, and hiding her goods. She probably thought him a pervert now. His eyes were in their general direction — staring at empty space — but his mind was elsewhere.

“Your eyes are also deteriorating, soon you won’t be able to see again,” she said with undisguised animosity. “But I can assist you in getting better. You’d not be in perfect condition — far from it in fact. But at least, you wouldn’t die like a chicken.”

“Layla,” Someone called to caution her of her speech from beside the window.

Jerome felt a splitting headache attack him from the sound of that voice. They both looked startled at the newcomer. It felt like she had been there all along, yet he didn’t see her enter the room. He struggled to hold himself together as the trembling of his body turned into a full-blown convulsion.

“Lie down,” Layla said, going from bitter to concerned in a breath.

“She’s a Sage, so being in her presence can be unbearable for normal Sprouts. It’s probably worse for you,” she said as she helped Jerome lie in bed. The spasms continued for a long while before he passed out from the pain.

~~~

“You’ve got two options. Take some pills made by the Royal Alchemists,” Layla said. Jerome scrunched his eyebrows at that. “Or heal on your own. Which would take a lot longer and hurt a lot more.”

“Forget about the pills, I’ll heal on my ow— ough!” he coughed up blood into a small pale in front of him. This had been going on since he woke up. Ash sat next to him with a worried look, massaging his back as he coughed violently. How much blood have I lost now? My body’s truly shutting down, he thought.

It wouldn’t be long before his heart would give. Jerome reached inside the shift to touch the scar on his chest again.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Very well, let’s get started. Help him lie down, Ash,” Layla said standing up to close the blinds of the window darkening the room with shadows. “When we begin, try to cycle as slowly as you can. This would reduce the risk of pain in the meditative state you’ll be in. Remember, I’m not helping you heal. I’m just going to be creating the perfect environment for you to heal on your own.”

“How else can I help?” Ash asked.

“Help me light the candles,” Layla said.

They took out a few candles and a single match stick with a blue head from a storage bag. Jerome wondered how the strange matchstick would light all the candles they took out.

Layla sat down cross-legged next to him to regulate her breathing and Ash snapped her fingers next to the head of the matchstick, lighting it up. There was no fire, only a glowing blue match head, but he could feel its slight heat, and it was enough to light a candle.

Ash smiled at him. “Cool, right?”

Jerome nodded with a smile.

“I gaped when I saw it too — not that you did,” she said with pretend hurt.

Jerome smiled sadly as he watched her light the candles around the room one after the other. He wished they didn’t have to meet under such circumstances. He wished his friends were still here and they spent time together reminiscing about their time in the slums. Jerome sighed, watching as Ash went around the room lighting the candles.

The match didn’t go out, even after she was done. Another technological miracle of Vorthe. He was sure it used some sort of attributed essence to burn. Essence was the only thing he could think of that would burn without smoke like that. Ash used her thumb and index finger to squeeze the match head and with a muffled sizzling sound, the heat died.

Ash chuckled. “Needs air to burn is what Uncle Kilian says.” Ash glanced at him on the bed, taking note of his ragged breathing. She frowned. “I don’t like the look in your eyes, Jerome,” she whispered to him.

Guilt. He felt guilt. He couldn’t feel any other way when he looked at her. They had a family. A family that had started to thrive and he ruined it.

Ash sat at the head of the bed and cradled his head in her lap. “It’s not your fault Jerome — none of it is. So stop beating yourself over it,” she whispered into his ears. Even as she did, she couldn’t hold back the tremors in her own voice.

Jerome sighed. “But it was, Ash,” he muttered. “I did this. If I hadn’t embarrassed him; if I had intentionally lost. Maybe…”

“It’s okay. Let’s get you better first.”

Jerome nodded lightly. They looked into each other’s eyes for a long while. Ash had truly grown into a lovely woman. How many years had it been? How long would it take for the little girl he once knew to mature into the beautiful lady he was seeing right now? For how long was he gone?

“If you two lovebirds are done, we can begin, right?” Layla said with her eyes closed, and Ash blushed visibly. Layla’s voice sounded serene and coupled with the dreamy atmosphere of the room, Jerome felt sleepy from listening to her. His eyes fluttered as he heard her speak again.

“Take a deep breath, Jerome; slow…and…deep…”

He suddenly but consciously fell into slumber. It was the strangest felling he ever had. Soon, he felt like he was drifting on clouds. From time to time, he felt a spike of pain as he tried to cycle as slowly as he could, but nothing too serious. As long as he breathed as he was instructed and remained in this trance, his pain could be relegated to the back of his mind as he healed.

He could hear Layla’s voice like a distant echo. But his own thoughts were also quite active in his subconscious. How is she doing this? Jerome had never heard of anyone who could put people to sleep and make them forget their pain.

Maybe a Spirit Realm expert or a Sage could do it, but a Sprout? And the aura she manipulates, he thought. What is it? It’s not essence. Not one of the forces either… He decided to find out when he came out of this half-conscious state he was in.

Days passed like this. Slowly Jerome healed. But he didn’t feel like he was healing at all. He was tempted many times to speed up his core but restrained himself. He still remembered all that happened when he woke up at the canyon.

“Wake up, Jerome.”

Layla’s voice reached him again but this time, it was close, not as far away as he’d been hearing it the whole time. His eyes fluttered open and someone helped him sit up.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It’s been a moon since we began. I need to rest,” Layla said. Her voice sounded weak, strained.

Jerome glanced at her, surprised. Her cheeks were sunken and she looked pale. She quickly hid her face behind long dark curls, not wanting him to see her like that.

“Gratitude for helping me out,” he said, bowing deeply. She had earned his respect. He still felt weak and in pain but his eyesight had improved.

Layla took a deep breath, absorbing the ambient essence in the air. “I’ll be back in another cycle,” she said and looked at Ash. “Take good care of him.” Then she turned to Jerome. “And don’t stare at her boobs!” She glared at him.

“I wasn’t staring!” Jerome said, turning red with anger and embarrassment. Ash laughed out loud. She was partly happy because he looked healthier.

“Hmph!” Layla humphed as she glided toward the door.

“Wait.”

Layla stopped and turned around. “What now?”

“I’m sorry for before, but I truly wasn’t looking. I would like to know what aura that was?” he asked.

“Sorry, Jerome. I can’t tell you about it,” she smiled apologetically and left. The door closed silently behind her.

“Ah,” he sighed and looked at Ash. “Got any idea?”

She shook her head, saying, “No, but it makes me sleepy.”

Sleepy, Jerome thought. “Something that makes one sleepy,” he muttered. It confirmed his musings from when he was in the trance-like state. It wasn’t any known essence or force.

“I thought you died,” Jerome said.

Ash sat down next to him holding his hands in hers. His hands, though bony and unattractive, were bigger than hers. There were lots of scars on his arms making for a very nasty-looking skin. Jerome didn’t mind it in the least though. Honestly, he would have thought of it as his badge of honor but he was too preoccupied with thoughts of regret.

“I failed them, Ash,” he muttered. “I promised Doti it was gonna be okay, but he died. I failed them.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Jerome,” she said, hugging him, caressing his back as he sagged into her. “You couldn’t have known.”

“How did you survive?” he asked.

Ash smiled slightly at him. “I don’t know how but when I came to, I was here in the Royal Estate. I was fed and clothed, and it was hard for a while; not seeing my brothers and sisters around me, not sharing meals as we used to,” She took a deep breath again, stretching the silence. “What about you? Where have you been these three years?”

“Three years?!” he asked in shock. Three years?! His heart began to pound hard, threatening to burst. The convulsion was beginning again!

“Deep breaths, Jerome!” Ash said, quickly rushing to sit behind him.

He took deep breaths to keep it under control as Ash quickly began massaging his shoulders. Even though his condition had stabilized a little, he was still far from healthy. Three years? That was a really long time.

“Are you okay?”

“Hmm,” he hummed, breathing heavily. Jerome looked into the distance, lost in thought. He’d been in deep slumber for three years at the bottom of a river?! It was a crazy thing to say. More than that, the world had left him behind for three years. Jerome shivered, feeling lost.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” he said with a sad smile at her. “Even I don’t know if I would believe me.”

“Try me.”

Jerome smiled at her, appreciating her openness. “I was asleep under a river in a canyon a few miles south of Farryn.”