breakfast in bed :(
Meridian walks past the closed door towards the kitchen with purpose, as he does every morning. It’s one of his days off, so the plan was to cook up a filling breakfast and study some runic tomes for fun. However, as he’s rounding the corner through the living room, he hears some sort of groan of distress behind the locked door. He tilts his head and approaches.
“Vytal? Has some foul beast found your resting place?” Meridian knocks twice, leaning his head against the door. He had to resist his urge to burst in heroically. “I heard a sound of distress. Would you allow me entrance to your sanctum?”
Behind the door, all Meridian hears is another dull moan. Refusing to let a roommate and friend fall to some mysterious entity, Meridian cracks open the door to peer in.
Underneath far too many blankets and looking quite unwell was Vytal. Ey were in eir formal pajamas, black button up long sleeves and silken black pants, and eir pallid skin stood out vividly against the cloth. Beaded sweat collected at eir temples, and Meridian gasped in shock.
“Vytal! It seems you have been hexed…” he says with extreme urgency. “I must do all I can to lift this wretched curse. Tell me, did you make any arcane enemies recently? Who must I strike down in order to bring you back to health?”
Meridian has never been good at volume control, and Vytal scrunches up eir face and tries to pull eir ears down to press against eir head and dampen the noise. Struggling, ey manage to respond.
“No…” ey try.
“It is not the time to take the higher ground, Vytal,” Meridian says. “I understand wanting to avoid violence, but if someone is willing to place such a vile hex on you there are very few options left! Bargaining with people willing to risk bun life like this… It’s not something you can rely on.”
Vytal croaks out some noise again, trying to pull the blankets up over eir head in lieu of responding. When that doesn’t seem to work, ey squint up at Meridian again.
“No…” ey say. “I just want… food”
“AH!” Meridian says, and Vytal flinches from the volume of it. “My deepest apologies. I have made a dire misstep as a roommate and friend, and I will do my best to atone for it. Instead of focusing on revenge and halting the curse at it’s source, I need to first triage the symptoms of the curse! I will give it my all to see you cured Vytal.”
Vytal, having grown more tired than ey thought possible in the last two minutes, shuts eir eyes and tries to get back to sleep. However, it simply isn’t in the cards for em. As soon as the door closes to eir room a cacophony of noise from the kitchen begins to arise. It seems that Meridian has gotten it into his goofy little head that he has to cook some kind of breakfast for Vytal, instead of just getting em water like ey asked. More than likely, he’ll be inscribing useless little runes on every bite of food he prepares.
That one is not great at following directions, ey think. At least the food will be good. Something good amongst this terrible waste of a day.
There are more than a few benefits to rooming with Meridian, even if Vytal likes to internally complain. They’ve been rooming for about 2 years now, splitting the costs in half through a few moves around different apartments. Most people would consider themselves friends at that point, but Vytal is always tentative with that. Ey don’t really… have friends. Ey have people that benefit em, that like to be called friends. Which doesn’t count as having friends, on at least a technicality.
The technicality here today is the reason ey’re getting breakfast in bed when ey feel utterly awful. It’s clearly not a curse, like the idiot thinks, just a common cold. It does feel pretty curselike to em, though. Eir head feels stuffed with cotton and just the thought of standing up makes em feel nauseous. So, ey will stay buried beneath this mountain of blankets hoping it will make the shivering wear off. Ey’re probably running a fever, but ey don’t particularly care to check. The remedy would be the same either way: bedrest, water, and convincing Meridian to go get cold medicine after he finishes carving an upside down ankh into a biscuit or whatever he’s doing.
In the past few years, Vytal can count the times ey have gotten sick on one paw. One hoof, even. It’s just not something that tends to happen to em. Ey take care of emselves, and ey keep emselves removed from all sorts of… possible bacteria. But nothing can be 100% perfect, despite eir best efforts. It feels almost antithetical to eir entire sense of self; to be defeated by a body that should simply be a conduit for greatness. But greatness is hard to argue stuck shivering with the room going spinny at the walls. Ey turn over slightly, trying to pull it together. It doesn’t work, obviously.
The door bursts open, and Meridian emerges with a plate and glass in hand. He still does not make an effort to lower his voice as he approaches Vytal’s bedside.
“Vytal! I have concocted the elixir of life,” he claims, and sets the plate down at eir bedside.
Vytal sits up as best ey can with all the blankets over them, and pulls the plate into eir lap to stare down at it.
Looking up at em is a stack of pancakes, crudely styled into various different runes from scattered mythologies that will never, and have never, actually produced a concrete effect (despite what Meridian believes).
Ey pick up one, and slowly begin chewing on it. Eir head still hurts, ey still feel cold beyond belief, and ey still just want to curl up and sleep. But…
At least this pancake shaped like a weird eye tastes pretty good.
