It had been nearly five days since the Clemmings' startling return to the curse. Clurie was again trapped in the body of a boy, his green eyes empty and filled with despair any time he looked anywhere else but his own fleshy hands, which was hardly ever. He spent much of his time staring transfixed upon his own fingers, waiting somberly for them to crinkle and burn away back to black. He was pale, refused to eat, and, which was even stranger, refused to move more than five feet away from Chauhn's sick bed. For the two Malt boys rooming with them, it was a glaring first that Clurie actually chose to sit near his Grimm, and it was a strange comfort even then to see that Clurie refused to look at Chauhn the entire time. He just sat near him, staring at his own fingers, sometimes flexing them and sometimes falling asleep and thus falling out of the chair. Chauhn, on the other hand, was bed ridden again with the black death, struggling to breathe past the clog of mucus in his bruised and darkened throat. It was equally as hard to get him to eat as it was to stuff food into Clurie's hands, as Chauhn, too, purposefully forgot how to eat. His mouth hung slack whenever his caretakers encouraged him to chew and he bitterly wept instead. Such was the effect of guilt upon the Clemmings, grieving for the mistakes done unto themselves and ultimately, accidentally, one another. It took another five days for Chauhn to rise up from the depths of sickness, and another five days for Clurie to burn back into his rightful form, but it was five days of torment nonetheless. When they returned to better states, it seemed like it was only their state that changed, and not the weight of depression that pulled down at their shoulders. They glanced at one another with the wary eyes of those who wished nothing more for another chance.
And strangely enough, they tried to give each other that very thing.
There were very few mages left after the set of curses, and fewer still who dared to clean up the terrible memories of it all. Clurie and Chauhn, after hearing tell of the effort to clean up the castle grounds of the black birds that had initially brought on the scourge, were more than eager to get onto their feet and shuffle out of their room to aid in the cause. They handed each other their winter jackets, and, without a word, followed in synched step into the courtyard. It was there that they spend most of the day, picking up the broken bodies of crows and watching as stronger and bigger mages carried out the bodies of the dead cultists to be burned in a ditch outside the castle. In a way, Chauhn and Clurie both felt like they were reaching the end of something, hoping that it was the end of the trying time, and in another way, they felt oddly suspicious and defunct in their paranoia now that, supposedly, there was nothing more to be scared of. The Cultists and their efforts to destroy the Fellowship were weakened, it was time to get back up onto their feet after being kicked in the ribs for so long, and yet, still, the Clemmings couldn't help but feel like they were still stuck, stranded in the nightmare. They looked at each other sparingly, but at least, finally, then didn't look at each other with fear.
They carried armfuls of dead crows to the wagon of the deceased, a strange sight to be seen indeed, a wagon filled nearly to the top with battered black feathers. It was there that they turned around to find a familiar someone standing before them.
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