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He behaved and spoke as if he knew well what was going through her mind, easing her fears though Thyone refused to lift her hand away, placing her then free arm protectively underneath her chest in a defensive motion. Not in dread of him but of her, and what she had only by accident learned of her new body at the cost of taking the life of someone who had entrusted their well-being to her.
It had been awful and she had to close her eyes against the memory as if that would provide a bulwark against the familiar pain and shame of having both failed in her duties and of having been an instrument of death for someone who had not deserved it, who had never seen it coming. All because she had been careless with an athame, a double edged knife utilized in the Orgies, and cut herself.
Both she and the initiate standing beside her had been surprised, staring at the golden liquid that ran down her wrist, as with an unthinking twist of the athame she had sliced open the fleshy base of her thumb. The pain had not even registered, only the wetness of the bizarre liquid that had looked like the purest of honey on her dark skin. Thyone had barely been able to breathe at discovering such an alien thing about her own body, as it drove the point home that it was not the body she had known in life. It was something else entirely.
It was not until the young girl reacted far more swiftly than Thyone did that she learned exactly how different. The initiate had ripped loose a portion of her brown pepplos and reached out to wrap the strip around the goddess’s hand, mien expressing genuine concern and worry. To that day Thyone still did not know what the girl had been about to say as the strip of linen was looped around her hand and a drop of blood landed on the initiate’s bare arm.
Thyone shuddered violently and opened her eyes, focusing again on the present rather than relive the agonized scream, the smell of burning flesh. He was gone. Startled, she turned her head in a circular searching pattern then spotted him, apparently himself in search for something at ground level. That was so unexpected that she forgot the nightmare long enough to tilt her head in curiosity, watching as he encountered what he sought and then returned to her.
The strong, sweet scent of chrysanthemums filled her next inhale but those were not the familiar flowers with their large, multilayered petals. She did not immediately recognize what they were but he was grinding them in his large palm, turning them into a makeshift poultice. That was clear enough. Thyone breathed in the scent again deeply, finding it pleasing. When his eyes met hers, questing mutely for permission, she only hesitated for a fraction of a second before lowering both her arms, letting them hang loosely at her sides and letting him do as he planned, tilting her chin up a notch since he was so tall. If he could feel her heart beating at an elevated rate under his fingers, he kindly said nothing about it.
“Oh.” Yarrow. Not a very beautiful name for such a lovely flower. He was also right; though the scratch barely hurt to begin, the burn ebbed and then ceased as the poultice was applied. That might have had something to do with how careful he was, apparently accustomed to some degree to the work. She searched his face for signs of agony, any tell that would confirm her fears about the effect ichor had on other gods. Even ones not from the same pantheon. She could detect none. Relief swept through her veins. Nothing to worry about. A silly, foolish premonition of doom that had come to naught. Few times had she been so pleased to be wrong.