Tadhg considers Jim's last piece of news for a moment before shaking his head. "Others will be able to do more with the drug itself than I can, I think." He nods at the child in front of him. "Whatever this toxin is, its effects lie heaviest on this lass. Whether she fought more than the others, or someone got careless in dosing her, I don't know. But I'll see what I can do."
Sitting cross-legged, he gently pushes the girl's sleeves up first one limp and slender arm, then the other, until he finds something he'd sensed earlier: an ugly bruise surrounding the point where the drug was injected. He lays one inked palm over the bruise and cups the child's face with the other, then takes a deep breath and lets it out gradually in a whispered stream of Fae. Outwardly little seems to happen at first, aside from the púca's breathing slowing down and his dark eyes drifting shut.
Inwardly, however...
Tadhg feels his palms warm as he sends tendrils of his own power into the girl, twining their way along her own pattern of life energies. His senses follow, through skin and muscle, tracing blood vessel and bone. The deeper he sinks into his work, the more he becomes aware of an inner quiet that matches the outer. Instead of the crackling two-way current that should race along her nerves, only the inflow of sensation and information from the outside runs uninterrupted. The outflow, or at least the voluntary part that would normally trigger running, jumping, chatter and all the other raucous expressions of childhood, seems impeded somehow. Dammed at the source, with only selected impulses allowed to trickle through the sluice.
Tadhg's awareness reaches back, seeking contact with the nerves of his own body, attempting to compare one with the other for a better understanding of what the toxin is doing...only to find nothing.
A second, half-panicked attempt snaps his eyelids open (he thinks), but he can see nothing, hear nothing, feel--no, not quite nothing. He can feel the points of contact between his hands and the girl, along with a vague sense of his body's position, but all else is dulled, faint echos that could be illusions formed by his own desperate seeking. With a rapidly-climbing horror, he realizes that something of the toxin's effects has laid hold of him, loosening the anchors that link his awareness to his body.
Abandoning subtlety altogether, he sends a lash of energy back along his patterns, a desperate attempt to cause his body to thrash, his voice to bellow, something. Tadhg feels what might be a slow shudder traveling along his length, but if he makes a sound, he can't hear it.
no subject
Sitting cross-legged, he gently pushes the girl's sleeves up first one limp and slender arm, then the other, until he finds something he'd sensed earlier: an ugly bruise surrounding the point where the drug was injected. He lays one inked palm over the bruise and cups the child's face with the other, then takes a deep breath and lets it out gradually in a whispered stream of Fae. Outwardly little seems to happen at first, aside from the púca's breathing slowing down and his dark eyes drifting shut.
Inwardly, however...
Tadhg feels his palms warm as he sends tendrils of his own power into the girl, twining their way along her own pattern of life energies. His senses follow, through skin and muscle, tracing blood vessel and bone. The deeper he sinks into his work, the more he becomes aware of an inner quiet that matches the outer. Instead of the crackling two-way current that should race along her nerves, only the inflow of sensation and information from the outside runs uninterrupted. The outflow, or at least the voluntary part that would normally trigger running, jumping, chatter and all the other raucous expressions of childhood, seems impeded somehow. Dammed at the source, with only selected impulses allowed to trickle through the sluice.
Tadhg's awareness reaches back, seeking contact with the nerves of his own body, attempting to compare one with the other for a better understanding of what the toxin is doing...only to find nothing.
A second, half-panicked attempt snaps his eyelids open (he thinks), but he can see nothing, hear nothing, feel--no, not quite nothing. He can feel the points of contact between his hands and the girl, along with a vague sense of his body's position, but all else is dulled, faint echos that could be illusions formed by his own desperate seeking. With a rapidly-climbing horror, he realizes that something of the toxin's effects has laid hold of him, loosening the anchors that link his awareness to his body.
Abandoning subtlety altogether, he sends a lash of energy back along his patterns, a desperate attempt to cause his body to thrash, his voice to bellow, something. Tadhg feels what might be a slow shudder traveling along his length, but if he makes a sound, he can't hear it.