Retta wasn’t expecting the knock on her door. She wasn’t expecting the similar ones from earlier either, but this third knock was… concerning. Looking up from her book revealed exactly who she thought would be there though, as standing in the doorway with a rather sheepish look on his dark face was her twin, Rashidi.
Retta felt her eyebrows furrow on her face. “Are you here to check on me? Again?” She asked.
The sheepish look on his face intensified, the muscles around his green eyes tightening. Well… that answered that then.
Retta heaved a tired sigh and placed her book down on the bedside table. “Just… be quick about it. I was at a really interesting part of the story,” she said as she adjusted herself to be lying down.
Rashidi moved over to stand beside Retta’s bed and hovered his softly glowing hands overtop of her body. Retta watched as the glow around Rashidi’s hands slowly flowed down to encompass her body, letting him see and understand everything, even through the night gown she almost constantly wore. He then closed his eyes and began to mumble softly. With nothing else to do Retta relaxed and waited, letting the soft prodding of her twin’s magic wash over her like a summer breeze.
Retta can tell when Rashidi is finished, as the almost unnoticeable hum of magic abruptly stops, along with his mumbles. When Retta looks up at him all she can see is his expression, the clear relief on his face.
“Did you change the runes?” She asks.
Rashidi’s eyes widen in shock as he lets out a quiet gasp, then they settle into acceptance. “I… I’ve been experimenting,” he says softly, fiddling with the sleeve of his yellow robe. “I wanted to find more ways to… help.”
“Oh.”
Retta felt touched, though she didn’t like that Rashidi had tried to hide changes with her health from her, she appreciated that he had tried to surprise her.
Rashidi’s fiddling starts to be audible, his fingers now aggressively rubbing at his sleeve. “I, um…”
“Thank you,” Retta says before he can worry a hole into his robe. “But, can you tell me what exactly you changed?”
His face lights up, his grin visible even in his eyes. “So, I, uh, mostly wanted to get you… you know… out of bed, and doing that required more magic than I could reasonably obtain from you, as most of it is currently working on keeping your body from degrading.”
“To keep the explanation as simple as possible though, I basically made the runeset keep an ‘Image’ of how you should look and pull in magic from the air rather than you to power the process of pushing your body to match that image. Mostly the process is strengthening your bones right now, though I want to move onto your muscles at some point.”
Rashidi gives me a bit of a glare. “I noticed your muscles are a bit weaker today. You’ve been ignoring your exercises.”
Shame and guilt prickle at Retta’s gut, an appropriate reaction to being told off by her nurse/brother.
“Sorry, I’ve been really drawn into my books.” She says.
Rashidi sighs, shoulders slouching as his face relaxes into something slightly [Word missing].
“Just be glad it’s me here and not Mum, she would probably have dragged out a long talk about how not doing your exercises somehow reflects on the company and how doing them is the only way to keep the company alive by showing everyone that you’re ‘improving’.”
Retta makes a face. ‘Yeah, totally glad it’s not Mum. Her talks rarely make sense.’
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