epidemiology | Closed: Eye eye baby baby eye eye

Entry tags:

Closed: Eye eye baby baby eye eye

CHARACTERS: Evan, Laedo, and Sieglinde
DATE: A day after Laedo's return to Oska
WARNINGS: Possible discussion of disfigurement
SUMMARY: Evan's been promised a replacement eye and he's gonna collect

The most upsetting part was that Evan was growing used to his situation. The patch went on every morning and stayed on till he had to bathe or sleep again, and he no longer really felt it. The mess of scar tissue that ruined one side of the eyelid underneath was well healed over, and although it was still pink it was no longer tender. There were times, solid hours at a time when his missing eye wasn't a consistent backbuzz in his mental processes. More than anything else, that was disturbing.

Generally Evan was the sort to politely step back and wait rather than impose upon a person, particularly for a favour as serious as the one he was leveraging from Laedo, but the dragon wasn't back a day before Evan had pinged him about it.

They'd set the time for the next day. Of course, that had lit the young man up in a tizzy of nerves, which he had spent the day trying his best to ignore with limited success. When the appointed hour came, Evan was waiting in his room, the spot that Laedo and he had agreed upon as a place with some privacy where Evan felt safe. He had slept badly, but just then he barely felt it, abuzz as he was with nerves. He'd tidied his room, laid away some provisions that would keep until tomorrow, and brought in a small pile of books from the library, expecting to have to den up for a couple of days.

There was one last thing to do, and Evan was feeling a little like he was regretting the offer he'd made to have Sieglinde come along and watch. What if it hurt? What if he embarrassed himself in some form? He'd have to hold it together particularly, for even if his twelve-year-old audience was particularly mature for her age, she was still twelve.

Still, he'd made the offer and he'd make good on it. He pulled up the network from his wrist bauble, keyed in Sieglinde's username.

"Hey," he started off, a little quick with nerves. "If you still have an interest in observing how Laedo's healing magic works, um, he's due to show up at my room in about ten minutes. I'm on the top floor, three doors in from the back staircase."

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Laedo hadn't expected to run into Sieglinde on his way to Evan's room, but he knew she would be coming around to watch the demonstration. For months in Nalawi, the askan had lent his time to help her retrieve plants and roots from places difficult for a cane-wielding girl to reach, and in the meantime they'd had passing conversations about magic--Laedo's, mostly, though he was under the impression that Sieglinde used her own brand of magic to brew her concoctions for the deer people they'd been tasked to protect. He liked the prospect of showing his own work today, especially for something as challenging as a working eye. Though he had not mentioned a single lick of uncertainty to the poor human, Laedo could admit to himself that he'd never tried something quite this complicated before. He knew he'd manage, however; if there was one part of his faith in his goddess remaining, it was that she'd provided him with the tools he needed in all things in life, even if some of them had a slapdash feel of magical duct tape. He'd make it work.

When he spotted the girl attempting to navigate the stairs, he'd immediately offered his arm for a perch. It wasn't a habit that had had long to solidify in Nalawi, but having helped Sieglinde around the buffet in Oska, Laedo had learned that he didn't mind offering if she didn't mind accepting. It was more expedient, yes, but it meant that when they arrived at Evan's door, there would be no waiting and awkward conversation. He'd had too many of those, lately.

"This may be a time consuming process," Laedo warned the girl--probably not for the first time, "with little to observe at first... but with your skills as a witch I assume you have some understanding of that. I suspect that more than anything, Evan will want the same confidence you showed the Nalawi." They'd reached the human's door, and he set her down so that he could rap impatiently to be let in.

Stairs. Sieglinde's mortal enemy.

It was a good thing the askan came along when he did, because at the rate she was going, cane, bound foot, cane, other foot, balance, next step, she definitely wasn't making it to Evan's room in the ten minutes he mentioned. It was far easier to acquiesce to Laedo's offer- she trusted him enough with carrying her after their time in Nalawi, and she was looking forward to seeing this feat done with her own eyes.

After all, as she'd told Evan on the island of the Dakal when she treated him... Regrowing an entire eye. That was impressive. She had considered herself potentially able if given time to research, but time was rarely on an ALASTAIR recruits side. She would watch how Laedo did it, and see if she couldn't utilize similar spell work into her own repoirtoire.

When sat down before the door she nodded, readjusting her crutches and pulling out a crimson ribbon embroidered with lions, pulsing with a mild enchantment, moving to tie it in her hair- preparing.

"Of course. Please proceed as if I were not even there."

She would be watching like a hawk, but she knew the importance of not interrupting a healer at work. Though...

"Should the pa- Evan need a distraction, however, I am willing to provide."

Evan had been fretting about the room while he waited, in turn gazing out the window and rifling through his piles of books and peering without thinking into the ALASTAIR wardrobe. He went to get himself a cup of water from the adjoined little bathroom, only to discover he'd done the same already and forgotten the cup on the counter. He had to scoff at himself then. Oh, but he wouldn't be a disaster much longer, he hoped.

When the knock came Evan was at the door in moments, having basically been holding his breath for it. Surprised to see both of them there he exclaimed, "Oh! You found each other. Ah, good, um, come in."

He stepped away from the door to let the mismatched pair in. The room came with a desk and an antique carved wooden chair, but Evan had apparently rustled up a couple of more from adjoining rooms and had set them out. Maybe it was overpreparation, but what if Laedo wanted him to sit while he worked? Or wanted to sit himself? And surely Sieglinde wouldn't want to stand...

He smiled at both of them, his nerves apparent. "Thanks for coming. I have tea." And in fact he had set tea, and three cups, out on the desk.

Laedo glanced from the nerve-wracked human to the simple little tea set, then glanced down at Sieglinde. A stray thought wondered if she was going to pull some of the ale she liked so much to cut whatever Evan had procured, though this might be because the asandus had no idea how beer worked. At least for once he kept his thoughts to himself.

"Apologies for the wait," Laedo begged off, "returning to the chaos of what the full thrust of ALASTAIR's... staffing... has been draining. I know you want this done with as soon as possible, and I can understand that." Evan didn't look good with a patch... but that too was a thought that Laedo kept to himself.

"You'll want more step-by-step instructions, I imagine?" he meandered himself over to the tea pot and took to pouring for both the patient and his fellow magic user like he'd been the master of pouring for half his life. "Like I told you over that series of unfortunately spaced notes, first we'll need to scan your healthy eye, and then use that as a model from which to build the replacement. That should not take long, though because it is a far more complicated organ than the usual muscular tissue that tends to get damaged on the field, I'd like to take my time." He offered the first cup to Sieglinde, and the second to Evan, before holding the last to his lips as he leaned, one-handed, from Evan's table. He didn't sip yet, but rather let the steam waft up across him.

"From there, I'll be building the prototype. That you can watch, if you want; before it takes its final form it's not at any risk of decomposition or stray damage--the state between potential and physical makes magic works difficult to manipulate unless you can get a hook into the under-pinnings. Re-attaching it will be the tricky part, as I'll need to anchor the eye in your socket while healing the scars you've already got. It will be precision work and you may wish to be sedated for it." Finally he sipped, though he made a face; his mug was much hotter than he'd expected. Burning his tongue did not bode well.

When Evan opened the door Sieglinde gave a small, above-the-hips-only curtsy... Which was really sort of a bow, one supposes, letting herself in after Laedo with a murmured "good day" in greeting. She most definitely didn't like to stand, and the floor was acceptable if not questionable, so she did appreciate the chair, making her way to the nearest one immediately and clambering into it, leaning her crutches against the side and arranging her skirts as Laedo spoke and poured the tea.

What a fascinating procedure it sounded to be... Thankfully she had some experience with bedside manner, or it would be a bit rude, likely, if how excited she was to view this from a scientific and magical research standpoint showed on her face. She kept it under control, mostly, reaching for the teacup offered her with murmured thanks, blowing on it a bit before she took a careful sip.]

"And you may pretend as if I am not even here, if you wish. It is up to you, of course." Supplied helpfully, even as she pulled a small sheaf of parchment from her satchel and ink and quill, by all accounts prepared to take extensive notes on this entire thing.

"Oh, well, no, I mean, I look forward to you being here," and he said that because it was true enough, even if he was also feeling flightly about her being here. "I'm excited to hear an outside perspective on the whole matter. It sounds as if there'll be plenty for us to observe, doesn't it?"

He fretted his way into the third chair, picking up his tea on the way, and cast a look to Laedo, trying hard to keep his anxiety off of his face and only succeeding marginally. "Laedo, is there anything we need to do to set up? Where would you prefer me to sit, or should I lie down for the, the scan?"

"You may sit. It won't take long, have no worries." Laedo cast Evan what he hoped was a sympathetic smile, blew on his tea, and took a sip. It didn't occur to him in the moment that the tea was piping hot despite the fact that Evan had nothing in his room that would suggest a heating spell, or a more conventional hot pad. There were small details that Laedo took for granted, and this hint at Evan's true nature might have helped to guide him...

Inconsequential detritus to get bogged down in, surely.

"Sieglinde, we'll commence by examining Ev--the patient's eye. This involves a mundane examination combined with an echoic scan of interstitial surfaces." Gesturing for Evan to sit, Laedo put his tea down and held his hands, palm up, for both to see. They briefly flashed a bright white, as Laedo explained, "when working with the living, it is important to pulse a transformative spell, if you're capable of one, or a cleansing spell if not, to prevent infection. A mundane human could likely equal this effect with soap, but in the field such is not always available." The way he said that made him sound mildly disgusted--with ALASTAIR, with the state that mundane bodies could get to when they worked up a funk. Different topic of complaint, though, not currently up for debate. The other two would know these basics, but Laedo liked to put on an officious air, and he so rarely had a captive audience.

He stepped around Evan so that the girl could clearly see, then, with a 'may I?' for the man. Settling his bare fingers across Evan's brow and cheek, getting a feel first for the shape of his patient's skeletal framework before he pulled back Evan's eyelids to have a clear look at what he would be replicating. "You may blink as necessary," Laedo muttered, distracted. "The patient has fine bonework and musculature, good responses, and--" he snapped his free fingers, causing a brief spark of very bright light before Evan's face, "no apparent damage to the existing oculus." Pulling back, giving Evan room to blink the brief blinding off, Laedo focused between his hands now. He was putting extra effort into giving his spell a ghostly overlay so that the others could watch him work. The orb of dim light that formed between his fingers, not much different looking from their holographic network devices, was melding itself into a perfect, hollow half-sphere. "I'm about to commence the interstitial scan using an echoic recording spell. Any questions?"

Sieglinde was a bright girl- a genius, by her world's standards, and she wasn't one to waste the intelligence, either. Learning was something she couldn't give up, even leaving her world behind, the fake little world that had been built just to convince her to create.

As Laedo worked, she watched, her eyes not even looking down at the paper she was scribbling fast-paced notes upon, a half-sphere sketch that was surely the diagnostic he was performing now. She may not know the words from familiarity herself, but she had a good grasp of languages, and she could connect the dots.

"I will reserve most of mine for later." She'd have too many to count, and she ought not hold up the process, both to observe it when done naturally and for Evan's sake. As much as she wished to observe and catalogue, she knew very few patients appreciated being treated like a test subject.

That holograph-like image both fascinated Evan and made him leery. It was process made visual; he wondered what would happen when it intersected with his flesh. Nothing bad, to be sure, right? Still, after the light manhandling to examine his good eye, and having to blink away sunspots, Evan was feeling a little off-balance.

"Will it... should I feel anything while you scan?" He corrected himself, one question substituting in for another at the last moment. He curled his fingers against one another in his lap, steadying himself by stilling his own urge to fidget. "Is there anything I should be worried about feeling?"

The askan didn't scoff at Sieglinde's honest answer, but he knew what kind of flood-gates could be opened when she wanted to know every last detail. He supposed it was better to have to answer one hundred and one questions later, rather than while working on his spell.

To Evan, he turned with a finished little cup, still ghostly but looking quite self-contained, otherwise. "You shouldn't," he replied, "though you're not composed of magic... if you were, you might feel a slight tingle. Not unlike a feather-touch."

Attention fully on Evan as though a patient, Laedo held the cup up and added, "I'm placing this over your functional eye. It will examine and record the shape and density of its form, along with a number of details about the connective tissue necessary to link the new construct to your brain." As he spoke, he acted, not giving Evan much room to fuss. If Evan was the sort whose elemental abilities were quite acute, he might feel a delicate press of something barely tangible pressing around his skin. Cooler than fire but definitely with a tingle of energy exchange, it would begin to feel like someone was placing gentle waves of pressure through the right side of his head, centering somewhere behind the lens of his eye.

"You may blink, but try to hold still," Laedo was adding, as all of this went on. One of his hands, iridescent and pink where his toe-beans would have been in dragon form, was splayed lightly near Evan's temple as though Laedo was looking to make more tiny adjustments. "If anything feels out of the ordinary," he adds, "speak immediately and we will desist."

[Science and magic were barely indistinguishable from each other, if they were done well enough. Or, so Sieglinde had heard. Her own world's science was not as advanced as some others', most people claimed theirs had more than 1889 years to it...

But she was taking notes, because even if she didn't understand it now, that didn't mean she wouldn't later. It would be difficult to tell, considering that not only were her notes in High German, they were in quasi-shorthand, not straight, circling around diagrams and sketches... but she took down almost every word Laedo said.

Her look was fierce, focused... but also, excited.]

The sensations were gentle enough that Evan was legitimately not certain if he was imagining them or actually feeling the pulses of pressure around, through and behind his eye. Visits to the optometrist had been more unpleasant than this, if he were honest, but the stakes were so much higher here that he sat stock-still, on alert, his heart pattering away behind his ribs.

"No," he reported to Laedo, uncertain, "it all feels alright. You don't need me to... to look anywhere? Move it around at all? I don't know if it matters, but I still feel... I guess, muscles moving in the other... socket, when I move the eye that's still there." His lips pinched into a straight line as he admitted as much. It irked him to talk about his injury, foolish and miserable thing that it was, but what good did silence do him now?

"It isn't necessary, though allow me to do some adjustments to capture fluidic densities," Laedo allowed, a faint grin quirking one corner of his mouth. He wouldn't want to discover that an asandus-appropriate eye would bulge in the weakened muscles of a human eye-socket.

Once this was all done, he pulled back and actually sat himself, just as the eyeball template pulled away from Evan's face, a ghostly echo like a 3D X-ray hovering above the asandus man's hands. Laedo held this diagram to Sieglinde for a few minutes as she furiously scribbled. "This kind of imaging is useful for the student," He explained, "and for the warrior. We occasionally make examples of our enemies, looking for weak points throughout the body--but it is vastly more useful for the practice of healing."

He gestured for Evan, as he held the hologram steady for Sieglinde. "More tea, and find something comfortable to do for roughly half of an hour. I will be building the construct to within a few fractions of being done before we solidify it within your socket and ready the receptors to connect with it."

"Do you want to be left alone while you work or can we observe?" Given permission, Evan was already standing. His nerves suffused him with a kind of effervescence, one he did not much like, and he immediately bustled to the teapot. Tea generally could be fetched from the kitchen, but Evan, accustomed to long study behind closed doors, had prepared his own stash. He had a small tin of teabags and a larger metal pitcher of water on a coiled mat: after fishing out the old teabag from the now-empty pot and dropping in a new one, he picked up the pitcher and held it between his hands.

Heating the water to boiling took about thirty seconds, all told, although from outward observation very little could be divined of what he was doing until the water began to steam. He poured, lidded the pot, put the pitcher back down on its mat; all told the operation took a little less than a minute, but it let him have a moment of breath.

He turned and leaned against the desk rather than sit again, looking with his good eye between his guests. Sieglinde's notes were fascinating things, and despite the holographic projection having been a clearer representation of what it was showing, the sketching and note-taking was beautiful in its own way. He exclaimed. "What language is that? I almost recognize it."

It actually took a moment for Sieglinde to realize she was being addressed, too deep in the world of observation to think of being spoken to. But she did finally notice, a beat or so too late, lifting her head from a very detailed sketch of his eye in Laedo's scan form.

"Ah- This?" She looked back down at her notes, then right back up, blinking a bit owlishly.

"High German. I am told it is a more antiquated form." To her it was normal, but... she'd had difficulty with those who spoke "modern" German, so it seemed only fair to say if that is what he might expect to see.

"And this is Theban." The language of witches, used mainly in quick labels around the sketches.

"Hm," Laedo grunted. He was well into the process already, full concentration taken up on the foundation layer as he considered solving the problems inherent with mating non-natural material to what would be a very complicated nerve bundle. It was either an 'I don't mind if you stay' or a 'leave me alone', though if things were so dire he probably would have spoken up more thoroughly.

Casting about for the new cup of tea without looking for it, he finally fumbled it to a grasp and then, forgetting to drink it, held it to his chest. Neither German nor Theban meant anything to the askan; he was running into some issues with his own experience in such complicated operations and he did not want to lose face with either of these clever people. The only saving grace here was that neither seemed to understand the process entirely.

In any case, after about five minutes of intense frowning, one hand extended as the hologram faded away, Laedo gave a hiss of understanding--a problem with how to anchor the foundations of the physical aspect of the eye while it was still in progress--and set his cup down on the edge of the desk. Cupping both hands together, a spark of light radiated out from his loosely clasped fingers, and as he drew his hands apart, something like a small glass stone hovered between his pinkly iridescent fingers. Around it, seeds of the eye he would eventually insert into Evan's head began to take form, veins of light dimming as they formed and lost the luster of half-formed magic. Something was looking wrong with it, however: he had not filled the eye with fluid yet.

The retina and its encasing flesh were sagging, the iris barely visible without aqueous humour to puff up the cornea. Laedo had begun a low, measured hum as he worked, like he was spinning a thread and needed a rhythm to keep his intricate little gestures well synced. "Evan," he eventually gestured. "Find a comfortable place to lay. We should begin the operation."

"I'd love to look at them again later," Evan admits to Sieglinde. "I don't read modern German either, but your sketches are fairly telling themselves..."

But when Laedo begins to work on the eye proper, Evan's attention is implacably drawn back to watching that distressingly vivid process. It sends fingers of fascinated disgust to know that he's seeing from the outside something that will soon be inside his body, hopefully permanently... hopefully as a part of him.

He does not realize, as Laedo works, that his shoulders are coming further and further up with tension, that he's biting the inside of his lower lip hard. When Laedo instructs him to go lie down, though, that tension comes to a head and Evan slowly pales. There's no escaping what's to come, and Evan is still in no way convinced that this won't hurt as badly as getting the eye removed had. That sagging, empty shell... he's caught by vivid imaginings of how it's going to have to slide between his ravaged eyelids, how it's going to have to re-inflate inside his skull.

The process has gone from fascinating to terrifying.

He stands, taking delicate care, and his look to Laedo is agonizingly uncertain in a way he can't quite conceal. "Alright," he says, nervous speech at best, and heads to his bed, fingers fiddling with the fabric of his pants. He lies down on his back, and immediately feels about ten times more vulnerable. "Alright. How's this?"

"Acceptable," Laedo had been watching the human pace, and now that he had most of the trappings of the prosthetic finished, he was free to note the mounting anxiety he had spotted. Looking to Sieglinde, thinking of her brusque, careful diagnoses of the Nalawi that he'd been fortunate enough to see training with her--or more importantly, seeking her for aid--Laedo waited for a moment or two until she'd finished up the brushing lines of the newly constructed eye.

"Would you join him, please," he suggested. "The notes will have to come later. I may need your help as I will be focusing my efforts on the connective process. He will need distracting." He had briefly considered putting Evan under for this, or some kind of numbing spell... but it was too important by far to ensure that he was connecting the eye to the socket. He needed the feedback, and not in a 'better or worse' sort of way.

Cupping his hands around the prosthetic, Laedo approached the bed and, looking down on Evan, gestured with his chin. "Pull up some pillows, elevate your head. Sieglinde, bring that chair for me, please."

[Access to her notes Evan could have- for all that they would be unreadable to most people, (she had yet to meet anyone yet who could speak her native tongue beyond the Servants, who were aided by a magical fluency), her drawings were indeed detailed enough to belong in an anatomy text.

At Laedo's call, though, she reluctantly left them behind, sliding carefully from her own seat and onto bound feet, taking a moment to balance properly, holding onto to her chair arm before her distinctive swaying, unsure gait took her to the chair the askan wanted, awkwardly pushing it over in short spurts. She might have trouble with stairs but she could do this much, jilted as it was.

Sieglinde took a position at the bedside, ready for directions, but also with eyes glued to the artificial eye itself, memorizing what she could by sight.]

He felt a spike of reflexive embarrassment at being referred to in the third person as someone who would need distracting, shame that magnified itself as he knew the assertion was probably valid. Wide-eyed, he fought back a grimace and mostly succeeded, busying himself with pulling one of the pillows from the wide bed's other side to prop himself up.

Though he opened his mouth with every intention to ask if he should take the eyepatch off, Evan found his throat try enough that the noise did not come easily. It was a stupid question anyways, he reasoned, and with a careful, too-careful hand he reached up and slid the patch of leather from his face, pulling the cord up and over his head. It ruffled his shaggy hair upon removal, and he clutched it tight in his palm as he settled back against the pillows.

God, he was going to get out-composed by a twelve-year-old. Laedo was too daunting a prospect to look at just then, standing there tall and golden and gorgeous with that looming prosthetic floating above his hands, so Evan flicked his abbreviated gaze to Sieglinde, offering the girl a very nervous smile.

"So, so how does it compare to a sea serpent eye? I mean, so far?" It was a poor attempt at grim humor, but it was what he could manage.

"One should hope it is decidedly more human," Laedo quipped. "Thank you," he added, noting Sieglinde's efforts despite her bound feet.

Sitting over Evan, he kept the unfinished eye out of the young man's immediate sight for now, instead suggesting, "take several steadying breaths. I will be scanning your injured eye--that should feel much like the scanning of the healthy one. Would you rather know when I begin the second half of the procedure, or not?"

Don't worry, Evan. This twelve year old out-composed a lot of people, it wasn't just you.

"Most definitely far more human. Your view will not be nearly as wide, nor as curved, I am quite sure." The large lens of the sea serpent accounted for quite a fish-eye, though perhaps the water could be blamed for most of that.

But that was beside the point. Her gaze continued to flick slowly between the other two, jotting things down mentally to be recorded later.

Evan grins unsteadily at Sieglinde's assessment. He'd been fully prepared to volley back a dose of sass, but nothing comes to his tongue in the face of Laedo's impending procedure. So he bites the inside of his lower lip, nods, and slides his gaze back to the healer preparing to scan him again.

"Um," he says to the question. "Um, I guess." In all honesty he isn't sure the answer to that question should be yes, he's not sure he wants to know in detail what's going to be happening to his face as it's happening, but he's not likely to get another chance to learn about this procedure, right? Getting squeamish now would be a sign of weakness, right?

Clinging hard to the idea that he can do this, despite the cold pit opening his stomach, Evan begins to take those deep breaths. They only relax him marginally.

"Very well," Laedo replies, taking Evan's half-answer for what he thought it was worth. He casts Sieglinde a grateful grin, hearing the particularly dry sense of humour behind the literal qualities of her response, before he steadies his hand. "This should be over with sooner than later," he attempts to soothe, though in truth that might not be the case. Whenever he's had to mend his own wounds he's often been in such a dire state that he's in no place to complain about the feeling of knitting flesh and bone.

The scanning, at least, takes very little time; Laedo is only getting a feeling for how and where Evan's eyesocket has been damaged. Aside from some fatigue of the muscles and the obvious damage where the eye had been pulled, he's unable to find any onset of infection. "Sieglinde, you work here was quite thorough; I am impressed," he speaks with some distraction, while Evan might feel the ghosting pressure of Laedo's focus as it probes around inside his head. For a moment he goes quite quiet, then he casts a second, precise little spell for cleansing--a light flashes from within Evan's ruined socket.

"Nothing should interfere with the settling in of the new eye," he justifies; "I've just ensured that stray bacteria are removed from the equation. Evan, we'll begin the next part of the procedure shortly. If you find yourself uncomfortable, give me a rating from one to ten and we can pause as necessary." Not that Laedo is likely to pause or remain especially gentle, but he can see the way the redhead's practically bugging out from his remaining eye and that, he thinks, is not going to help anyone. "Just think of the benefits of being whole and healthy again," he adds, knowing what a blow such a dire injury can be.

"My work is never anything but, of course." Sieglinde had her share of pride in her work, and though she could be humble about her other capabilities... healing and magic she certainly could crow about.

Even that which she'd performed with no magic, with limited supplies, and in a dank, foreign bacteria laced island.

But that's all she says, much more focused on watching Laedo's work, fairly humming in interest even as she absently gave Evan a pat on the shoulder.

Steady on, man.

At the very least, all of Evan's deep breaths seem to be doing something. The young man doesn't feel much calmer, but in some cases knowledge of autonomic functions comes in handy: his worries may not be alleviated, but he at least can acknowledge that his body is reacting as it mechanically should to the calmed breath.

The flash of light is a strange experience and he winces, and it takes him a few more breaths after that to get himself back in order. Sieg's pat barely registers at first, but he does glance at the young woman and nod when it finally sinks in. The sight of her focused interest, oddly, does help; it's all the interest he'd be showing if this wasn't so damndably personal.

"Okay," he says, voice tighter than he'd prefer it to be. "Okay, I, I think I'm ready. Let's get this done and over with." It's more bravery than he feels, but at the very least the last part is true: he really wants this to be over.

"Very well," Laedo replies, sparing a glance for Sieglinde and her true determination, and for Evan and his feigned bravery. If he had any hope in the world to remove and replace the Zenite-sodden eye he struggles with, himself, Laedo would have been in Evan's place... but a curse is a curse. In some ways he'd seized the chance to perform this procedure to live vicariously through his gift, and that may not be a healthy reason, but it makes the asandus very determined, himself.

The procedure itself is time consuming, moreso than the dragon had let on. The replacement eye slips into the ruined eye socket without much trouble, though surely the sensation could not have been comfortable. It is when Laedo begins to fuss with filling it: creating a swelling bundle of magic that puffs up before it settles into a clear, jelly-like liquid that marks the beginning of a very uncomfortable experience.

The first nerve connection between the eye and Evan's own body is like an electrical zap. Laedo had preemptively placed one hand on Evan's forehead to keep him still, the other hand moving in a complicated cat's cradle that the magically gifted would see as a complicated bundle of magical knots and surges of light or perhaps pressure. The rest that follow are just as uncomfortable, but there are many of them... and in fact, Laedo's magic does not play as well with Evan's hidden fire-elemental nature as the spell-casting would have worked with a human. It's not long before the askan's own brow is beading with sweat--this is much more complicated than he'd expected. "Do not move," he orders, "we're almost through here... any major movement will require us to start again!"

From the first moment the uninflated eye begins to slide between his ruined eyelids, Evan knows his bravado is entirely false. It evaporates, and he turns slowly as white as a sheet, the blood draining from his face as he tries as hard as he knows how to try, to ignore the awfully wrong sensations happening within his skull. General anaesthesia, why couldn't they have looked into general anaesthesia?

Silently repeating over and over to himself that this is worth it, this is worth it, two eyes, no eyepatch, this is worth it only goes so far as a mantra. The sensations are too invasive to ignore, and the best he manages is kind of a sightless staring and a frozen stillness.

It's a good thing that Laedo puts his hand on Evan's forehead when he does, even if it makes the young man's anxiety spike, because that first stab of sensation makes him yelp. His hands fist in the blanket and his pallid complexion positively greys. Laedo's admonition hits home and Evan goes positively rigid, good eye fixed forward, thankfully missing the strain on Laedo's expression and saving him an even worse spike of anxiety. He opens his mouth to speak, but the words will not come: he snaps his mouth closed again and quietly hyperventilates through his nose as those nasty zaps continue.

"Deep breaths, human," Laedo adds, distracted as ever as he finally seals up the last of the bonds. They're delicate, over-sensitized things, these fresh magic connections that are forming into the semblance of human organic instrumentation. They're not tailored perfectly... but finally, they're in place.

Laedo keeps the flat of his palm on Evan's forehead for a moment or two longer, waiting for the man to realize what he's seeing. Then he says, "what are you seeing?" He has some initial adjustments to make, ones that will have to be further refined in a couple of days. Evan isn't the only one whose expression has gone a little off hue.

Evan actually lets slip a whimper as the procedure carries on, unable to quite hold in all of his distress, and he does not for several moments realize Laedo is done. It still feels strange, wrong, bizarre to have something in that socket again, almost as wrong as it had felt at first for the socket to be empty, and so the end of the procedure isn't quite the sense of relief that he had hoped it would be. Had he ever noticed before that he could feel his eyeball all the way back into his skull? Had he ever been able to before?!

He gasps when Laedo asks the question, because it's only then that he does realize that he's seeing -- he's seeing something from the missing eye, some warmth of light through his closed eyelit. His optic world had been flashes of light and the static of intense distress to the point that when the vision in his new eye had begun to blink in and out he had taken it as a doubling of vision more than new input: his brain, unaccustomed to the doubled vision, had been tricked. But now he carefully, oh so carefully blinks.

And then he hisses as the light from the room, even so dimmed as it is compared to daylight, stabs into his skull like an ice pick. Still, with that stab had been vision, had been a watery and blurry impression of the room around him.

"Oh, god," he says, voice high with stress and with excitement. "That -- I mean, I could see!" Not, strictly, useful information. He gasps, bringing his hands to his face, touching his cheek and around his eye socket, not quite able to bring himself to touch the newly filled eyelid again. "Oh, god, it hurt, was it supposed to hurt? Is that bad?"

"It was never going to be comfortable, if that is what you're questioning," Laedo replies, loosening up for a moment or two in his amusement at Evan's spouting. He glances from the man to Sieglinde for a moment, then back to his patient. "I need to make some adjustments. Can you see out of it still? Is it dark, or bright? How are colours coming through?"

If you had asked Sieglinde if she'd ever anticipated being able to witness something as interesting as this, she wouldn't have said yes.

She probably should have been better at comforting Evan, and she did manage a good pat or shushing hum of comfort, but... it would be wrong to say she wasn't primarily focused on what Laedo was doing.

Reconnecting nerves... if she could do that, then theoretically she could possibly repair the dead nerves in her bound feet, if she ever chose to-

Sieglinde forced herself to stop right there. To instead hold up her hand in front of Evan's face and begin helpfully holding up fingers to provide a sample of something to see.

"And your perception of motion?"

"It's -- ahh." Having the both of them there, hovering over him, was deeply off-putting and Evan took one glance and then closed his eyes again. Only, however, long enough to shake his head like a dog ejecting water, and rub at the aching muscles at his temples and forehead. "It's really, really light-sensitive."

Admitting that lets him gather himself enough to try again: he opens his good eye, and then very slowly cracks the bad one. He hisses again at the light, but presses on. The pupil's dilated, only slowly constricting, and the eye begins to water for the brightness. "Ahh, um, I can see motion fine. And... and colour, though it seems blown-out, I guess."

Putting that together felt like a valiant effort to the shaky redhead.

"Hm," was his only response, at least from the askan. Laedo placed one hand at the back of Evan's head again, then, other hand coming up over the human's new eye, he spread his fingers out to place delicate fingertips at brow and temple, thumb over the center of his forehead. He gave another little sweep of a gesture, barely enough to bring his fingers over the eye properly, then a twist, as though cracking a safe. All that, and Evan might feel something twisting faintly, dimming the vibrant fizz charging between eye and brain. If he needs it again, Laedo will make another minor adjustment, but ultimately he says, "it will take a few days to adjust. Try what you've been given for forty-eight hours, and unless you are given to splitting headaches or a sudden loss of vision, we will convene again."

He then looks over to Sieglinde, finally finding it in him to grin, if tiredly. "I apologize if I wasn't outlining that as I worked. It has been a while since I last performed such a complicated operation. Do you want to adjourn to the library for more paper? I can talk out what I did, in time."

What did a new eye feel like? It wasn't something Sieglinde could easily imagine, having never lost a limb. She had always tried her hardest not to think of what it would be like to regain such things, because it tended to just remind one of what was lost.

But it must be a strange one. Curious, Sieglinde kept watching Evan's reactions closely until Laedo addressed her directly.

"If Evan will be alright alone than I would appreciate the chance, yes-"

After all, her rather detailed note-taking was at the moment cut off midway, and they hadn't even gotten to the good part yet. Notes were something of a formality for her, considering her capacity for memory, but it helped cement them better when she put them down in her own hand.

"Evan, are you in need of anything? I've pills for dizziness if you need."

"I'll be alright," he quickly answers.

In all honesty, having the two out of his room sounds like an incredible relief just then. Turning off all the lights and hiding under his covers is about the only thing that Evan legitimately wants to do just then, but not even he's enough of a wuss that he'd admit to as much while they were there.

He shakes his head, and then regrets it as his eye aches so strangely. "No, go ahead, I'm just, just going to take it easy for a bit."

"In that case, rest now, and contact me over the jewel network if you feel anything suddenly change," Laedo reiterated. He brought Seiglinde's crutch near, but, thinking better of it, offered her an arm as well. "Let us retreat to the library... or perhaps the kitchen. I'm half-starved from all of that..." But, making no lies about allowing the human to rest, he was already ushering Sieglinde from the room, hopefully to give Evan the respite that he needed to adapt and endure.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Closed: Eye eye baby baby eye eye

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(Feel free to see this as a time-skip; if you guys want to chat a bit that's cool!)

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everyone down for an endcap here?