mental link | morning of day :039

[perroquet]

[ The ever present mental music that plays from the bard's end of the connection grows invasively louder sometime after breakfast, and it is rather anxious. The morning has been heavy enough already with packing getting underway, but this is due to something different. While the music in him is clear as ever, his thoughts stumble across the connection sloppily and desperately. ]

( I require a detective... I think. Oh dear, this is quite dire… )

[ He knows of several, but with the situation being as dire as he claims, well... he may need as much help as possible. All hands on deck. ]

( I believe someone has discovered that I am not Carbauschian, and... has poisoned me. )

[ The pauses between coherent thought are more than a bit dramatic, but he's being quite serious. ]

Comments

[perroquet]

( Sounds as though you've done this visiting-a-new-world adventure a few times more than I have. )

[ General details such as these involving reactions weren't exactly covered in the mission brief beyond reassurances of the symbiote being able to take care of them. He's glad to learn from Shepard's experience, or would be if not for the timing. While he's noticed an improvement in his ability to eat more food without bad reactions, this one seems too horrible to be anything but poison - in his mind.

The offer strikes him as strange. ]

( Are you a certified potion maker? )

[ He actually still has no idea what Shepard does, besides burn things and steal. ]

[earthborn]

( No, because outside of nerd conventions, potion making hasn't been a profession for... ) [Shepard makes a rough, unscientific estimate] ( ...two...thousand years? )

[Nailed it.]

( But I've got survival training and an allergen pack in my kit. I know the symbiote's supposed to keep us from dying, but you'd be surprised by what you can live through. Activated charcoal is a good general antidote to a lot of poisons, if you take it soon enough; could save your life. )

[perroquet]

( It is still a respected and necessary craft where I come from. Thank goodness for nerd conventions keeping the art alive... )

[ He'd ask for more details on what nerd conventions are if he thought he had more time. ]

( Are you a doctor then, to be prescribing such things? )

[ Things that sound closer art supplies than anything with healing properties. But perhaps she's a military doctor, with survival training, (and a taste for arson and thievery). Again, he has no idea what Shepard actually does or why he should trust her help. ]

[earthborn]

[You cannot possibly be all that poisoned if you have all this leisure with which to argue.]

( Are you trying to die faster or something? )

[If he doesn't yet know, and won't ask, what she does for a living, then he's at least aware of what she does the rest of the time. Don't test her, boyo. She's trying to be nice.]

( Take it or leave it, Gildor. Unless you've got a better option. )

[perroquet]

( I've magic in place to slow the effect of whatever this is by at least a day. )

[ If he does die from poison it'll be long, drawn out, and extra painful. A price for being cautious now, since he wasn't cautious enough to prevent this from happening. ]

( So I have time enough to scrutinize. Apologies for not accepting your good graces without question - I only wish to be sure I don't take something that could make me worse. )

[earthborn]

( You don't need to be a doctor to know how to treat food poisoning. This isn't cell biology, you eat this stuff and it absorbs toxins. People take it all the time just because they're trying to avoid a hangover, you don't even need a prescription to get it. )

[Unsubtly implied: "you insufferable shit"]

( Anyways, if I was gonna try to get you dead, I wouldn't use a poison. It's not really my style. Now do you want this. Or don't you. )

[perroquet]

[ He bristles at 'food poisoning' and 'hangover' - and all the instruments playing in his head strike a little bit sharper. Though the feeling is fleeting, and a bitter acceptance is settling over him like a decrescendo. He's still prickly about being dismissed so easily, but she and everyone else is probably right. He probably wasn't poisoned intentionally. It was probably his own doing.

But being bitter is better than being embarrassed and wrong. ]

( Fine. )

[ A beat. Then in a better tone, because despite his mood he means it- ]

( Thank you. )