For daemonmuses. Week 2.

[acts_of_gord]

While I wouldn't trade Sati for anything, there are times when I wish she'd settled on something else. Even one of the insect forms she used to pull when I was a kid would be okay, just as long as it was- well- bigger.

No, it's not like that. Put the jokes away.

She settled when I was twelve. Grandpa Ron was diagnosed with heart disease when I was thirteen. He spent the next eight years of his life in and out of hospitals, mostly in. Baasima, his daemon, used to curl up on his head and tuck her nose under her tail. There's not much to recommend a hospital room to a squirrel daemon, I guess. There's not much to recommend a hospital to any daemon, actually. Ever watched them? They're all worried. The patients' daemons're worried about their humans, the visitors' daemons're worried because their humans're worried, the doctors' and nurses' daemons're edgy because of all the things weighing on their humans' minds...

... and each and every single one of them, without fail, will turn away from anything short of an imminent death to stare at someone walking through the hospital with no daemon anywhere in sight.

Sati's pretty loud when she wants to be, but you can't exactly walk through a hospital with your daemon yelling at everyone who doesn't know she's there. You're supposed to be quiet in hospitals- not to mention that even if people hear her, they still can't see her. The one time we tried that I wasn't just an apparently daemonless freak, I was an apparently daemonless freak with an angry disembodied voice following him. That didn't go well at all.

After a while the doctors at Ballard Community Hospital asked me not to visit Grandpa Ron by myself any more. If I was walking with Jay or Mom, I didn't stand out so much. Visiting by myself? That bothered people. Apparently there was a rumor going around that the skinny kid with no daemon was the Angel of Death in disguise.

Irony so thick you could splatter it with a crowbar, I'm sure.

Comments

[vance_prime]

I have to admit, it kind of freaked me out when I first met you. I mean, Dr. Kleiner warned me about Sati ahead of time, but when I first saw you, I thought--

For a second, I thought I'd gotten there too late. That those bastards on Civil Protection had killed you.

[acts_of_gord]

Sorry about that. If it helps at all, you aren't the first person to make that mistake upon finding me unconscious.

[vance_prime]

Now, that sounds like a story waiting to be told.

[acts_of_gord]

It isn't all that big of a thing, but- well. I used to ride in downhill mountain bike races in my spare time, back when I was younger. I don't know if you know bicycling at all, but downhill mountain riding involves a lot of protective gear- flak jacket, leg protectors, extra-strong helmet. This is because you're usually taking unpaved, narrow trails with steep slopes at around forty miles an hour on a bike that weighs around forty or fifty pounds.

The summer between my junior and senior year at MIT, I competed in the Pacific Northwest regional championships. I was doing really well until my final qualifying round, when I lost control of the bike on a bad patch of trail and went over the handlebars at forty miles an hour. The bike went down the trail without me. Sati was all right, since I had her test tube under my chest plate, but I got knocked out on impact. Gave the paramedics who got to the crash site first a hell of a scare.

[vance_prime]

Yikes. I hope they figured things out quickly. Waking up in a body bag would seriously suck.

[acts_of_gord]

I got lucky. They started taking off my flak jacket first, and one of them spotted Sati moving around.