IN WHICH FENN BUGS a POTION MAKER

[FennWenn]

Fenn seemed to have suddenly been thrust into an upright position, which made him a little more dizzy than before. Bugs still vexed his skin, and he couldn’t quite scratch them away. His hands were too shakey to scratch at all. The potion maker’s words were an indistinguishable buzz in Fenn’s ear. There were shifty hues everywhere that shouted over Nevin and drowned him out. Pale lavender bubbles floated up through a stream of dark green, slashed through with dark blue and grey, and the boy reached out as if to touch the orbs of color. He couldn’t quite reach them. Something broke through the flashings, a smooth surface touching Fenn’s mouth — like the edge of a cup. With a soundless hiccupy giggle, Fenn stuck his tongue into the cup.

Oh! Sweet! Was this more honey?

Fenn lapped it up gratefully for a moment. Then, the cup was taken from him, and… Whoa. His stomach was-

Hrrrrk.

It tasted a lot less sweet coming up than it had going down. Sour, really. Fenn awkwardly wiped his tongue on his arm, whimpered, and collapsed back to the floor from whence he had been risen.

Amid the myriad of colors dancing before him, Fenn realized that his puke was golden. Gold! It was quickly concluded that he was magic. He was magic magic, not merely ice-making magic. The pukes-solid-gold kind. Though, even if he was super-magical, it wasn’t helping him feel very good right now. Queasiness made him reluctant to lift his head. He’d just stay right where he was, on the floor, until maybe he didn’t feel like he had been punched in the gut by John fucking Cromwell.

Within a minute of “staying right where he was”, Fenn had passed out.

~~~

“Auf?”

Daugi pressed her good eye to the window and whined frightfully as she watched her tiny charge collapse. Around the same time the little black bugs had invaded her coat, bumps had shown up on him, already instilling in her a low level of constant worry alongside her cursed scratching and itching. And now — obviously, he wasn’t well. He needed her when he wasn’t well. Was there no trouble he could keep his nose out of?

Peeling herself away from the window, she shot the door a poisonous look. Human architecture was as perplexing as always. Invisible walls, entrances that only opened for the human hand… and she knew they only worked for the human hand, because her teeth had never been able to persuade a door’s knob to open. Entry into human housing took a bit of force. Growling to herself, the hefty beast took a few bounds back, squared her haunches, and bounded for the door.

SLAM!

Daugi was inside the shop. So, too, was the door. All three jagged pieces of it, laid out on the floor. The direwolf shook splinters out of her fur, pleased with her clever entrance. She stared down the alchemist with her one good eye. Suspicion danced in her gaze. Not once breaking eye contact, she padded over and stood over her prone fae-pup.

“Wuff auf,” she barked in the alchemist’s direction, as if commanding him to fix this.