kore_logs | a tisket, a tasket, an angel with a basket?

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a tisket, a tasket, an angel with a basket?

Who: Balthazar, Mina and open!
Where: the library and the outskirts of town
When: Day 109, around nightfall
Summary: Balthazar's promised to try and teach Mina about angelic healing powers, because that can't possibly go wrong. He can also be found inspecting various edible weeds growing around the town and forest eaves.

On the one hand, Balthazar is as content in Kore as he has been in thousands of years. No wars, no bewildering orders from on high, no siblings murdering one another, and on top of that he has both mortal friends and archangels being relatively sociable. If it weren't for the looming fear of things taking a turn for the lethal, he'd be downright ecstatic to be here.

But the food situation is worrisome, and the monster situation is worse. He finds himself racking his brain to think of ways to keep the status as quo as possible. It's not his job, of course. He never signed on to play shepherd to a motley crew of humans and others, and most of them probably wouldn't thank him for worrying about them anyway. Maybe if there was enough alcohol available to actually keep him drunk, he wouldn't bother. Maybe he's trying to keep himself from fretting over how quickly and easily the people he cares about can be taken away.

Times like this, he misses Anna.

And so, he finds himself, circling the outskirts of the town and plucking what plants he can find out of the shadows of buildings as the sun sets behind him.

When it's finally fully dark, he crosses back over to the library, leaving his basket just outside the door. If anyone helps themselves to the plants, that's fine with him. He's not going to eat them, anyway.

He doesn't bother with a light once inside, sitting on a desk to wait for Mina. He can see well enough in the blackness, and presumably so can she.

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Well, given that he hasn't settled in a chair at all, Balthazar's not about to criticize. Her pose is rather charming, actually, although the troublemaker in him can't help but wonder how hard a push it would take to knock her over.

That probably wouldn't end well, though. He's trying to be civil.

"I've certainly never tried before. Honestly, I'm not sure whether the rest of my kin will approve of the attempt, so let's keep it quiet for the moment." There's the chance Raphael already knows what they're up to and doesn't care, of course. Balthazar's just not certain.

Well, that was interesting. Interesting enough to raise a eyebrow. Balthazar didn't particularly strike Mina as the type to especially care about anyone's approval. And that comment certainly made her wonder a bit more about who was really in charge of that family.

Things were always more complicated than they seemed.

Still, she saw no reason to needle just yet. "As you wish," she replied simply.

He doesn't care about anyone's approval...except his family's. Most specifically, the members of his family who could make life here uncomfortable for him. Or nonexistent, but he doesn't think either Raphael or Gabriel would actually smite him to death.

But back to the issue at hand.

"Right. I've never tried to put this into words before, so you'll have to excuse me if something gets lost in translation. You're familiar with the phases of wound healing, I assume?" He gropes for one of the books and flips through it slowly.

"Intimately," Mina replied. And not just because she was a doctor. She'd seen plenty of wounds in her unlife. Kindred had a fascinating way of healing themselves. And their blood could, in theory, heal others. Not a practice Mina much cared for, but that was her own, personal opinion.

She set her feet down, sitting upright, all four legs of the chair on the ground. His medical books were a bit old-fashioned, but then again, so was Mina.

"If you have a hard time putting the words into English, I know several other languages, as well. If that's any easier."

"It's not the language, it's the words themselves." He shakes his head. "This is something that I learned mostly from intuition and Grace-to-Grace communication. I think trying that kind of communication with you would be extraordinarily dangerous."

For both of them, perhaps.

"So let's see how far we get with English. The ability to manipulate a physical body with will, whether you want to call it magic or telekinesis or something else...I'm not sure that aspect can be taught. Do you have any talent there at all?"

That was a very interesting question. "I suppose," she said slowly, "the answer is both yes and no at the same time." She waggled her eyebrows a little bit. "Helpful, no?"

She leaned back again, although she didn't put her feet up this time. "I, personally, have never attempted anything of the sort. I rely on a needle and thread. But." She held up one finger. "But. The Kindred have a wide array of gifts at their disposal. We choose what we wish to be good at. For me, it was a matter of manipulating the mind. But some of my brethren have chosen other fields of study."

The image of Doctor M ripping the flesh from her arm, rearranging it, and putting it back together again was still fresh in her mind.

"There are those of my kind who have done such physical manipulation before. They call it 'flesh craft.'"

He listens attentively, finding himself reluctantly curious about her species. The more she talks, the more it sounds like they're quite different from the kind of vampire he's familiar with. More organized, perhaps, and less driven by instinct. That's intriguing.

"When you say you choose...can you specialize in more than one field, or are you stuck on the one train only as soon as it's left the station, so to speak? Because if you can double-up, I think we're in business."

"Oh, it's entirely possible to learn more than one discipline," she replied. "I myself am quite skilled in both Dominate and Cruac Magic. Admittedly, they're a bit more well known as fields than Flesh Craft."

Which was her way of saying she'd never even heard of such a thing until very recently. Doctor M had rather rocked everyone's world in revealing that Kindred were capable of anything so...bizarre.

She paused before adding, "Certain clans are also more predisposed to certain disciplines. But truth to tell, Flesh Craft is more of a craft than a discipline."

"So you're capable of mind control?" He looks thoughtful. "If I wasn't aware of your sense of medical ethics, that might worry me."

Which might be somewhat hypocritical, given that angels are capable of doing odd things to peoples' minds, too. Maybe he has double standards.

"So, then, you know the stages a healing wound goes through, and you have the power to influence reality through will. It sounds to me like you need practice, rather than instruction."

"As intricately interconnected though they may be, the mind and the body are two very different things," she replied. "I've never been able to heal a patient by force of will alone." She had experimented once. She'd tried to Dominate a patient to heal. It was a last resort. A lost cause. And it hadn't worked. But at the very least, her patient had died free of pain and fear. Which was a small victory in and of itself.

She regarded Balthazar thoughtfully a moment. "You do realize why I want to learn this art, yeah?"

"Well, there may be some intermediate steps," he concedes. "But there's certainly mind-body bleed in most corporeal, sentient beings. I imagine if you begin with the minute details, you may have better luck getting there."

Not like he's ever taught this (or anything else) before, though.

He raises an eyebrow. "I assumed it was your doctorial nature seeking self-expression. Is there another reason?"

Mina smiled wryly. "Yes," she said, relaxing a little bit against her seat. "I'm glad you, at least, understand that. One or two of your brethren was less than generous about my nature."

Oh yes. She was still bristling a little over some of the responses she had received. Particularly with regards to the way that Castiel had treated her. And she had taken a bloody bullet for the idiot.

"It is very difficult to be a doctor in a place without the equipment I need," she told Balthazar. "And I take it very personally when patients die on me."

"It's sometimes difficult to wring generosity out of my family," he shrugs. "We've watched the beings of earth do terrible things to one another for millennia. It creates a certain amount of cynicism. But at the risk of feeding your ego, the last time we talked you impressed me. What you said about treating someone against his or her will being wrong, specifically. Not everybody would think of that part of the Physician's Oath."

He smiles wryly. "I think a lot of people in your profession take death personally. We're operating at a disadvantage here, as far as medicine is concerned. I just hope we don't get hit with disease. I was on the earth working during the first World War. It wasn't pretty."

He slides off the table and stands. "Do you have a knife on you?"

Mina's ego--or perhaps the Queen's ego--enjoyed all the stroking it received. It was always a bit of a problem for her, that pride. But on the very rare occasion when she got her due credit, it all felt worth it somehow.

Although it did concern her just a little bit when he mentioned 'the first World War.' Really, she didn't like the thought of mankind having to deal with a second one.

Pushing that thought aside, she reached into her pocket, removing a scalpel. "I wouldn't be much of a pirate if I didn't have a knife," she replied, turning it over in her hand. "Although I daresay this one is more hygienic than in the old days."

Oops! He didn't mean to drop unpleasant spoilers. Then again, she was bound to hear it from someone here sooner or later.

"A pirate, too? You've just had all the fun, haven't you?" He accepts the handle carefully and looks the blade over with a slight nod. "Right. I'm just going to do a shallow cut across my arm, and let it heal so you can see how it goes. If that seems useful, we'll move on from there."

He glances at her to make sure she has no objections.

"Oh, darling," Mina said with a bit of a smile, "you have no idea." In all fairness, fun had never been a high priority. She'd become a pirate to survive. Bloody survive.

Of course...some fun had, admittedly, been had.

But she dismissed nostalgia for the time being, nodding her assent to Balthazar. She was hardly squeamish, after all. And her scientific curiosity was peaked.

"I might ask for stories later." He almost says 'over a drink', but then he's not sure if she drinks alcohol, and it's in short supply anyway. Stories should be enough excuse for a civil conversation, anyway.

With a faint nod in return, he makes a light cut across his forearm, about two inches long and just deep enough that a doctor might recommend stitches to close it, without really threatening the muscle. It bleeds like any wound, but only for a few seconds. He's trying to rein in his Grace to keep the process slow enough to observe, but it's fast nonetheless. Still, she may be able to see the signs of wound healing slip by in rapid succession: clotting, inflammation, scabbing, and finally restoration to the pre-cut state. What she may or may not sense is the flux of power: energy drawn from his angelic Grace forcing the flesh-and-bone vessel to speed up its physical processes.

Mina watched, unflinching. Actually, she was a bit disappointed. There was something terribly mundane about it all, accelerated though it seemed. And while she was blessed with an exceptional mind, she didn't have exceptional eyes. Not in the way that Jacqueline did, able to see everything.

Well, she as Mina didn't.

But the Queen felt something. Something old. Not quite as ancient as herself. But powerful.

Dangerous.

A low sparkle ran along Mina's skin as she observed. It was unconscious, the Fae part of her nature unwillingly escaping for a moment. "That's your Grace, then?"

He watches the sparkle appear and fade, then answers mildly, "Yes. The power of Creation itself, or so I'm told."

Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he adds vaguely, "I wonder if this wouldn't go better with a microscope of some sort. Alternatively, I suppose we could experiment on a meat animal, but I wouldn't want to make one suffer."

He dabs the few drops of blood he's shed off his arm, then cleans the scalpel. "We'll figure something out before long, I'm sure. May I ask you a personal question?"

"My kingdom for a microscope," Mina mumbled. She was from the 1930s, so she didn't have as high of expectations for technology as some of the others. But it was still frustrating, sometimes, how little she had at her disposal.

Sighing softly, she leaned back in her seat. "Go on. We're making nice, aren't we?"

"If we could just get our captors to be more amenable..." He smiles wryly. They'll need another approach, perhaps, but as long as she's willing to keep trying, so is he.

He leans one hand on the table, twiddling the scalpel idly now. "Who or what is in there with you? I can sense the power, but it's a bit beyond me, and I don't want to get on its bad side if it can be helped."

Mina couldn't help but let out a quick, explosive little laugh. It was a good question. But certainly not a simple one. And back home, she supposed, she would have done everything in her power to get around it, either by wiping his memory or just shooting him in the face.

Obviously, her methods had changed somewhat in Kore.

"A complicated question," she told him, resting her temple on her fingertips. "There's me, of course. Nothing but an old soldier, really. And there's what we Kindred refer to as 'the Beast.' It's the source of every vampire's abilities and bad temper."

Those two parts of her had been married for so long, though, that she'd come to think of them as very much the same thing: Mina. It was the last little bit that was the parasite.

"And," she said slowly, "I don't know how familiar you are with the True Fae, but for the last few months, I've also played host to a Fae title. The Queen, to be precise. I imagine that's the part that's beyond you. I do think she may be older than time itself."

He listens attentively, expression betraying none of his thoughts. Fae are all but an unknown quantity to him. That they exist on his world--or rather alongside his world--is certain. What they want, and how powerful they are, is something he's never been able to get a clear answer on. He'd like a clear answer, but he doesn't want to get it the hard way.

So, for lack of an analogy that better suits his mind, Mina seems to have a being at least as powerful as an archangel stored in her brain. Good to know, indeed. Score another point for their captors in being able to push around beings that are better left undisturbed.

"...yes." He says at last. "That third one was what I was questioning. You're housing this Queen voluntarily, I hope?" Not that there's anything he could do if that weren't the case. "Sounds a bit like a time bomb on the scale of a supernova, if you ask me."

"The True Fae are funny about the idea of 'voluntary,'" she said dully. It was still a sore spot with her, not that that was Balthazar's fault. "Let's just say, from their point of view, it was voluntary. But that wouldn't really hold up in a court of law."

Not even a Kindred court.

And the supernova metaphor was adequate. She never knew when the damn thing was going to go off.

He grimaces. "I'm...sorry to hear that."

But it sounds like they're treading on sensitive territory now. "So I'd best behave myself. Got it. Shall we go back to the healing attempt? Suppose we start with trying to control the dilation and contraction of blood vessels in my skin, around the wound site?"

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