Neve was up before anyone else.
He packed the needles into the inner pocket of his linen wrap carefully, one by one, the way his medical memory told him to — flat, protected, nothing pressing against the tips. The gloves went in next. A small cloth. Two vials from the kit that he slipped into the fold at his waist where they wouldn’t show.
He stood up and looked at himself.
’How the hell do I explain any of this?’
He thought about it for a moment, but nothing came to mind. He had no answer when asked. This was a beast world and these things with him are something that are used in the distant future.
’Well, I don’t have to say anything,’ he decided. ’I just do it and if anyone asks I’ll say I learned it from someone somewhere. The details to be determined when it really happens.’
He picked up his things and walked out into the early morning.
.
.
Day One...
Gideon was already in the cave when Neve arrived. He looked at the things in Neve’s hands assessing the unfamiliar tools.
"What are those?" he asked.
"Needles," Neve said.
"What?" Gideon looked closer. "That silver, thin thing is actually a needle? I have one that was carved from bones but they aren’t as thin as that. Where did you get them?"
"I had them."
"You arrived here as a red fruit with no belongings."
"I had them," Neve said again, with the specific tone of someone who was not going to elaborate.
Gideon looked at him for a long moment.
Then looked at Soren, looked back at Neve and sighed.
"Fine," he said, like someone who had decided to be professionally flexible about this one thing.
Neve pulled on his gloves and crouched beside Soren.
"What I’m going to do," he said to Gideon, "is find the points along his body where the energy is blocked and clear them. Slowly. One session at a time." He held up a needle. "These go into specific spots. Not deep. Precise."
Gideon was quiet. "That sounds like something my grandmother used to describe. Ancient practice. I thought it was folklore."
"It’s not folklore," Neve said, and pressed the first needle in.
Soren didn’t react. Neve hadn’t expected him to. Not yet.
He worked for two hours that morning. Mapping, probing, and placing needles at the first set of points his medical memory had identified along Soren’s left arm and shoulder. The primary blocked node near his elbow. The secondary one at the base of his neck. A third at the top of his spine that took longer to find and longer to access correctly.
When he was done he sat back and looked at his work.
Eleven needles which were barely visible, glinted faintly in the cave light.
"What next?" Gideon asked.
"Now we leave them for a while," Neve said. "And then I remove them and we see what changes."
"What should change?"
"Well... his temperature first," Neve said. "Slight warmth in the left arm by tonight. If it works."
Gideon looked at the needles and looked at his brother.
"And if it doesn’t work?"
"Then we adjust tomorrow," Neve said simply.
By evening Soren’s left arm was warmer than his right.
Gideon pressed his hand to it and didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he looked at Neve across the mat.
"Slight warmth," he said.
"Slight warmth," Neve confirmed. "That’s good."
.
.
Day Two...
Neve arrived to find Gideon had brought food.
Two portions, laid out on a flat stone near the entrance. Cooked meat — slightly overdone but genuinely cooked, which meant Gideon had learned from the other day’s village session and had been practising. Fruit on the side. A water vessel.
Neve looked at it.
"I noticed you didn’t eat this morning," Gideon said, not looking up from where he was checking Soren’s pulse.
"I was going to find something later."
"Later is not a meal schedule." Gideon finally looked up. "Cael would be upset if I let you work all day without eating."
"You’re doing this because of Cael?"
"I’m doing this because you’re going to need energy for whatever you’re about to do to my brother. Cael’s feelings are simply a bonus consideration."
Neve sat down and ate.
The meat was slightly burnt on one side and perfectly reasonable on the other. He didn’t say anything about the burnt side. Gideon was clearly aware of it already from the way he kept glancing at the food with minor professional dissatisfaction.
"The left arm has more warmth this morning," Gideon said while Neve ate. "Right side slightly less. And—" He paused. "His fingers moved. Last night. I was sitting here and his left hand slightly moved. One finger."
Neve stopped chewing.
"One finger," he said.
"I thought I imagined it." Gideon looked at Soren. "But I don’t think I did."
Neve finished eating faster than was probably dignified and pulled on his gloves.
Today he worked on the right side. Mirror points to yesterday. The equivalent node at the right elbow, the secondary at his right shoulder, the difficult point at the base of his ribs that his medical memory flagged as the central compression — the place where most of the blockage was originating from and spreading outward.
That one took forty minutes to find properly.
He pressed the needle in at the exact angle his memory indicated.
Something shifted in the room. Just a quality change in the air, like pressure equalising somewhere.
Gideon looked up from across the mat. "Did you feel that?"
"Yes," Neve said.
They looked at each other.
.
Outside, at some point in the middle of the afternoon, Neve heard something burning.
He excused himself for ten minutes and went outside to find four men standing over a fire that was the wrong colour, meat on spikes that were too close to the flame, smoke going in the wrong direction and general chaos that was somehow simultaneously everyone’s fault and nobody’s fault.
"Distance," Neve said, walking over. "All of you. Move it back. You’re charring it, not cooking it."
"We thought more fire meant faster cooking—"
"No. It means faster burning. Less heat, more time. Move it."
They moved it.
He fixed the angle of two spikes, showed one man how to read the colour of the meat as it changed, told another to stop flipping it every thirty seconds because it needed time on each side to develop properly, and went back inside.
Gideon looked at the entrance. "Everything fine?"
"They burnt it," Neve said. "It’s fine now."
"You left in the middle of a treatment session to fix someone’s cooking."
"It was a ten-minute break." Neve pulled his gloves back on. "The needles were already placed. Soren wasn’t going anywhere."
Gideon looked at him for a moment.
Then looked away with an expression that might have been the beginning of a smile.
"Fair enough," he said.