Jaynna (Good things come in little packages)

::The setting was not an unfamiliar one in Dannel’s Pride, the overcrowded community that made up a large portion of refugees from the war shattered Cyre. A small hovel, which the bitter throngs avoided, black paint still glistening with a life of its own weeping down the door, a misshapen X denoting the contagion within. A malnourished cat crouched on the cracked steps in front of the door, mewing piteously, scratching at the battered wood.

Inside, an eye burning smoke hung two feet thick from the ceiling, issuing from several cheap clay lanterns that burned the sickening mixture of fish oil and animal fat in place of more expensive lamp oils or ever burning lanterns. A woman crouched by a cold fireplace, her arms wrapped around herself as she glanced towards a small bed against the wall. She shook, tears cutting clear paths down her cheeks through the grime on her face, muttering charms for blessings in a thick accent. On the soiled sheets of the bed were two forms, both small in the way of human children. One was a young boy, face almost glowing visibly with fever, his jet hair dulled to a charcoal, lank and greasy against his flushed shin. His body bone thin, the clothing that was barely more than rags clung to his skin, soaked in sweat and other fluids. He cried fitfully as the second form held him close. The second was a tiny blond girl, though at a second glance, one noted the gentle upswept ears with the rounded point, the large hazel eyes, delicate cheekbones that looked like they have just lost their baby fat, and the slight swell of her chest beneath her tunic, showing that she was not a child, but a very young halfling woman. Her pale hair was pulled back from her face in a short ponytail, tied in place with a blue silk ribbon.

As she cradles the boy to her chest, she croons a soft chant; seemingly lost in her words she rocks the child back and forth. At first it looks like she is just soothing the child, but as her chant starts to speed up, a faint silver glow infuses her hands.. and then spreads to the boy’s body. Soon, the boy is enveloped in a cocoon of silver light, the young halfling’s eyes closed in concentration. It lasts only for a few moments, then slowly fades away as the child eyes open. They are clear and shining, his face returning to a pale but healthy color. He glances up at the childlike stranger holding him and then about the room, crying out to his mother as his eyes alight on the woman near the fireplace. She suddenly stopped her prayers and sprang to her feet, running over to grab the boy in her arms and hold him tight.. nearly smothering the child in her relief. Jaynna stood, her hazel eyes aglow with joy at seeing the boy and mother so happy, after the boy’s life threatening illness. She quietly removed herself from the bed and headed over to the rickety table beside the fireplace, placing a wheel of cheese, a loaf of bread and a small waxed parchment wrapped cured ham on its scarred surface. Glancing once more over at the mother and child, she smiled to herself and left the one room abode.

Outside she quietly shut the door, her eyes going to the weeping X on the door. She raised her hand and smeared the pain that hadn’t dried. After she did her best to obliterate the shape of the symbol, she took a piece of blue green chalk from her belt pouch and wrote a sigil of her own, that of House Jorasco, the faint sparkle of magic in the chalk making the mark permanent til another sickness graced the hovel’s threshold. She smiled to herself, pulling her heavy hood up to hide her face.. and walked swiftly away, a light spring in her step despite the looming exhaustion that always accompanied such a difficult healing. Places to go, things to see.. Good to be done.::