Four coppers.

You could take the ferry across Moon Lake for four coppers. You could see a show in Spire city or enjoy a few beers for four coopers.

Serinya’s hands were covered in blood, the man on the bed before her gasping and howling. Somewhere nearby, his wife was sobbing, her body blocking the view of their two young children.

A handkerchief for a loved one or a box of freshly baked sweet rolls cost four coppers.

The village was a small place, boasting an occasional festival intended to bring in the farmers around the area and draw any travellers to its quaint but cosy streets. The flats had been freshly painted and window boxed planted with small but tenacious flowers. Two inns sat at opposite ends of the main road, the festival held but not contained between them. Outside the window, the sounds of music and the aroma of food soaked through the floorboards and curled through the room. But just now, no one was paying any attention to the festival outside.

Serinya forced him to drink another vial, one knee pinning his shoulder while she pinched his nose and poured the mix down his throat. He coughed once, his eyes widening, then vomited the entire contents of his stomach. Serinya cursed in a silent-but-deadly string. Her hands returned to press the blood-soaked wad of bandages across his stomach.

And to think, she had come to the festival hoping to buy a new scarf or dance in one of the drum circles.

One of the children was screaming now, howling in fear for his father who continued to spill his life’s blood across the once clean sheets.

A child’s toy or a bag of nuts cost four coppers.

Serinya gave up on sedating him. She would have to do this the hard way – or club him with something heavy – but she always hated resorting to that sort of brutish technique. She was frowning down at the man now, steady fingers threading a needle. There was blood and dirt and other questionable smears across her face and arms, her once blue sari was soaked with blood. Dark hair was bound haphazardly atop her head and her pack sat open and waiting on the nearby table.

A plate of fresh fruit cost four coppers.

Serinya knew this because it was browning downstairs waiting for her to finish it. The Inn was a simple enough place, all old wood and older stone, a bar at the far end with a kitchen tucked behind it and rooms upstairs. Serinya had paused in her scarf and drum hunt to sit and enjoy some fruit.

Three men burst through the door of the otherwise peaceful Inn, two of them bearing the third between them. Behind them crowded an already sobbing wife and two dirty and terrified children. Everyone was talking at once, the woman begging for a healer while the pair pleaded with the Inn-keeper for a bed to lay the injured man on. Serinya forgot about her fruit, forgot about her drums and rose, already flowing towards the injured man. She hissed a bit, demanding a clean towel from behind the bar. The woman was saying something about a robbery, about men in dark clothing catching the family in an alley they had no business visiting. About the man born between two others, his clothing tattered and his face pale, who had blatantly refused to surrender his coin purse. The flash of daggers, the sounds of screaming lost at first beneath the heady festival that ranged across the town.

Laid out on the bed, still thrashing now and again, Serinya hissed at the man whose name she did not know to lay still. She was working to stitch him up from the inside. It took only moments to see the dagger had done its job well. Stitch by stitch, Serinya worked to put the still howling and cursing man back together, but she already knew the reality of the situation. He was not going to survive.

So why go on?
Why keep fighting?
Because Serinya had never once given up on a patient; had never walked away when there was still breath in their body and a heart still beating. And she wouldn’t start now. Serinya finished her stitching and cleaned up the man as best she could. He wasn’t howling anymore, having worn himself out with pain and fight, so she tried again for the vial. This time he drank it down and kept it there before lulling into an uneasy sleep. Afternoon had turned to evening which had given way to night and in the intervening hours, both wife and children and settled with their backs to the wall to wait. The children had fallen asleep, sprawled across their mother’s lap while she sat grim faced and pale. Serinya moved away from the bed for the first time in hours and sat beside her, still filthy, still bloody, and bone-tired.

“He isn’t going to live, is he?” The woman answered. She sounded tired and beaten – resigned. Any other day, she might have been pretty, with a joyful expression across otherwise plain features. Today, however, she looked like a woman who had already given up.
Serinya spoke softly, calmly. “I haven’t given up on him yet – but I’ll be honest with you. He is not doing well.”
The woman stroked her fingers through the tousled hair of her son, his face pressed against her knee. “I don’t know what I will do if he dies,” she whispered finally.
Serinya shook her head softly. “You will mourn, you will cry, and you will go on. For yourself and your children, if nothing else.”

It was a difficult night, as many difficult nights had come to pass. Someone was born and someone died and the circle went on. But for Serinya, something had changed. She scrubbed her arms clean the next morning, frowning into the bowl of once clear and now red water, listening with a hole in her heart as the wife and children sobbed over the body of their loved one. Men carried him away, wrapped up in the bloody sheets he had died on and the family was gone.

Serinya sat heavily in the chair across from the empty bed, taking in the silent room. It was early enough that the festival hadn’t started yet. No music crept through the floorboards, no sweet aroma of exotic fare soaked through the walls.
On the nightstand beside her still open pack, the man’s coin purse lay waiting. It was impossible to know if it had been left on purpose or simply forgotten. Serinya wasn’t sure what to do. Moving towards it, she hefted it carefully, the small brown pouch seemed very light. Her slender fingers, still tinged slightly with the tint of blood that wouldn’t wash away, pulled the drawstrings open.
Four coppers.

Serinya laughed softly. There was nothing humorous about the sound. Four coppers.

She left it on the nightstand, pouch and all, and gathered her things.

She would have been able to buy her scarf for four coppers, or tip the men who drummed while she danced. But Serinya didn’t feel like shopping today, nor dancing, nor staying for another moment at the festival that was just starting to warm across the town’s main thoroughfare. She couldn’t think of anything anyone could buy with those four coppers that would account for their true worth.

A man lost his life today, for four coppers.

The woman with the bloodstained hands had been in that room all night. Deiva knew, because she too had been sitting in the bar since the man was dragged in, bleeding and crying out for help. She had watched silently as the woman had taken charge leading the man and his children into the room upstairs. And she had sat there as his and his children's screams echoed through the floor and the abandoned bowl of fruit grew more and more brown.

Deiva had heard her fair share of grief in life, and this was no difference. First the crying and wailing and cursing the heavens, and then came a quiet acceptance that nothing you, or anyone, could do would bring them back. Others may have cried at the emotion radiating from the first floor room, but Deiva was past that now, past caring if someone lived or died. Did that make her mad? To some people, probably. But nobody ever noticed her anyway. Nobody glanced in her direction long enough to see the person. All they saw were the scars that tore her face, the pink swathes of tissue, all that remained as a reminder of that fire so long ago.

The woman came out of the room in the morning, her face twisted in a grim half-smile. She also didn't notice Deiva, sitting in the corner of the tavern, face half covered by her hood. She made her way out across the festival, seemingly numb to everything around her, the drummers warming up for the day, the scent of freshly baked sweet rolls and the colourful scarfs that floated around the thoroughfare.

Well, might as well see if the woman had left anything. Sneaking into the room, she noticed a leather pouch on the nightstand. Prying it open she found... Four coppers. Well, money was money, didn't matter where it had come from, only where it was going. Pocketing the pouch, she sauntered back out of the room, heading towards the festival.

She didn't make it far before seeing the woman again, on the other side of the festival. She debated going up to her, telling her she had heard the events in the tavern, or perhaps giving her the leather coin pouch. No, she wouldn't give up that money. She turned to go, but as she turned away, she stumbled and fell into a pile of crates for carrying stall tents. They crashed onto the ground, the trays inside ringing on the cobbles. Dammit.

Serinya hadn't wanted to stay at the festival. If anything, she longed to leave behind the gaity and celebration that felt over-bright and false compared to the events of the evening, night, and morning.
But Asilaria might still come. Mikhail and Lorali also typically visited the festival to sell the weaving they made on the road.
She might still find her kin here, and that was incentive enough to stay.
She didn't partake in the variety of food or drink on offer, didn't pause to enjoy any of the street performers singing or juggling, dancing or playing strange and exotic instruments.
The makeshift stalls of books and cloth, trinkets and jewelry didn't catch her eye.
She was on the opposite edge of the festival, passing a vendor who sold strange and colorful fish when a crash behind her caught her attention.
Serinya spun, her silks a flutter of motion to find a figure sprawled across the street.
Without hesitation, she approached.
"Oh goodness," she offered with an accent laced with exotic spices. She crouched, unconcerned, in the street, offering a hand down to the unfortunate stranger. "Are you alright?"

Deiva looked up. It was the healer woman from the tavern. She was crouched down beside her, looking slightly concerned. Oh no. Her hood hadn't fallen off had it? Checking herself, she was relieved to find that it was still securely on her head, fastened with the golden clasp at her throat. Good. So then, why was the woman looking like that? Her head was outstretched, colourful scarves floating around her in the slight breeze. Her accent was the same as Deiva's own, and the warm scent of spices hung in the air around her.

Deiva looked suspiciously at her outstretched hand before getting up on her own, wiping her hands on her dress. What was her game? What did she want? If there's one thing she knew, it's that someone always wanted something from you.

"That looked like a rough fall," Serinya offered, rising and sliding a simple step back as the woman rose without assistance.
Around them, the crowd of happy revelers didn't seem to notice or care about the exchange.
"Are you alright?" she asked again.
Bright eyes narrowed as a simple shaft of light hinted against a few of the scars edges, otherwise hidden beneath the stranger's hood.
The healer's eyes widened so slightly, but she didn't say anything further. They were obviously old scars.
There was nothing to say about them.
"The way you fell, I was worried you might have hurt your leg…"

Deiva looked into the woman's eyes. She seemed genuinely concerned about her. But why? What reason could she possibly have for helping her? She saw her eyes widen slightly and realised that her scars must have been showing. She reached up to tug her hood down, covering her face once again.
"I think I'm alright, thank you."
She drew herself up to her full height - which, admittedly, was not very tall - and made to stride away. But as she stepped forwards, a sharp pain shot up her left leg and she gritted her teeth. Looking down, she saw her skirts had ripped and there was a gash in her thigh. Some wood or a stone perhaps had caused it, tough right now she didn't care. She sighed and turned back to the woman.
"Fine, I admit, I could use a healer right now."