Welcome to Gaia! ::

Idhril smiled brightly and stepped into the room, closing the door behind herself and moving to sit in the chair across the desk from Lore.

"I'm doing some research," she explained, making herself comfortable, "so that I can ... wait, did Mama tell you all about Joruri?"

She blinked innocently at her father. After all, what she wanted to ask him wouldn't make much sense if he didn't already know about the strange Second that she had taken under her wing.

"I think...." Lore murmured, "She had mentioned your friend in passing."

Though he didn't know a lot about it, only that this was the reason why Idhril had disappeared for so long. Which had worried more people than probably it would normally have if she hadn't been so young and if the family hadn't already gone through two other disappearances with interesting results.

Idhril nodded thoughtfully. "Well ... he's really hurt in a lot of places," she explained, "and Mama tried to heal him but she couldn't ... Joruri says that since I'm his mistress, only I can heal him ... so I have to know how, so I'm here to learn how I can do that. So I was looking at this book ..."

And she set the book on the desk, face up. It was titled "Human Anatomy for Beginners".

"... so that I could know a bit what I'm doing when I try to help him."

She opened it to the page she was on and flattened the pages, then pointed at some of the diagrams. "And here it shows what makes a boy different from a girl, and I was wondering, why are boys and girls different like that?"

Lore coughed a bit looking at that and wondered if Idhril had seen the other picture that showed the insides as well. She might have, though that wouldn't have explained the... reproduction of majority of Gaians.

"Well...." Lore eyed Idhril for a moment thinking this through, "They are different because they have to be to have children... you remember about natural babies right? Well a woman is different because she has to be able to grow the baby in her stomach and the man is different to help the woman have the baby."

And let's just leave it at that, she was far too young in the technical details of that, which the last time he had heard Seconds were quite capable of carrying out the act, just not anything after that.

He thought... that was a good question... he shoved it away for a moment.

Idhril looked crestfallen at Lore's answer. "But it looks like someone cut out his heart," she said softly, falling back in her chair. "He has a big scar from here" -she pointed at her shoulder- "to here." And she traced a zigzagging line across her chest and down to her opposite hip. She sighed. "Well ... I'll ask him about it and see what I can do," she murmured, sliding off her chair. She reached for the book again. "I just think it's funny ... if his bruises aren't going away on their own ... and Mama can't heal them ... that's just weird."

She looked up at Lore sadly. "Mama's never not healed before."

"Maybe they're not bruises exactly," Lore murmured, "Maybe he just needs to get healthy."

It did sound like the boy had been neglected quite a bit. Though Lore didn't know enough about him to understand exactly what was wrong.

"Maybe it would help if you knew how bruises happen?" Lore inquired.

"But I do!" Idhril nodded vehemently. "They're from his old masters, they used to beat him up! And when they didn't want him anymore they killed him and threw him in the tree, and now his vase is broken, just like him!"

A pained look crossed her face.

"But I can't fix his vase, so I want to do what I can to fix him instead," she murmured softly.

Lore was about to say something killing implied never living again, but decided otherwise. It sounded bad, but he wasn't sure how to help especially since he had never met the boy before.

"I meant..." Lore deciding to take the calm path, "Knowing how bruises are formed on the body. It is more than just having something form on a place that was hit hard."