When Noelle wakes the next morning, she struggles to decide if she wants to get up and start the day, or hide under the covers and never come out. On the one hand, if she gets up she'll have to confront the Lady vs Mage situation and start preparations for a full-blown trial. On the other hand, if she stays in bed she can avoid those things a little longer, but she'll probably fall asleep again which could lead to more nightmares.
After much internal deliberation—with a very well thought-out pros and cons list—Recall makes the decision easier by replaying several of her worst nightmares at once.
Waking up to face the day it is.
The addition of a second bed and second set of medical monitoring equipment makes the already small hospital room extra cramped, so the room next door serves as Noelle and Aidyn's closet and dressing room, as well as a private washroom for her.
Recall frequently points out all the ways it's impractical for them to sleep in one room when two rooms are held for their use. Noelle accepts the impracticalities without complaint on the grounds that Aidyn is clearly struggling with the loss of his Healing Bond.
While all other bond receptors mature during puberty, Healing Bond receptors function immediately, automatically activating at birth. While she knows what it's like having a Healing Bond that doesn't work at full capacity, Noelle has never personally experienced what it feels like to not have one at all. She's read about it, though. All the data she's collected about the topic suggests people don't fully recognize the inherent sense of belonging that comes with the communal bond until it's gone.
As Noelle gets dressed, Recall pulls up data from The Healer's Handbook for Handling Bond Breaks about what to expect from those with recently broken Healing Bonds. Of the six most common behaviors, Aidyn frequently exhibits four:
1. A general dislike of being alone, even for those who usually enjoy time by themselves
2. Not wanting to sleep by themselves
3. Craving physical touch: the tendency to stand and sit closer to others than normal, and an increased desire to hug, hold hands, and/or be in direct physical contact with loved ones
4. Feeling colder than usual, even during warm weather—
Her thoughts get cut off abruptly by Aidyn's panicked shout registering from the next room. At the same time, pain and panic also pour into his emotional landscape.
Still only partially dressed, Noelle throws her robe back on and bolts out of the dressing room. In her own panic, she almost collides with the two guards in the hallway, Samm and Wyllson, as she careens towards the doorway of their primary room.
At the threshold, Noelle pauses in shock next to a very concerned Guardswoman Raychell.
Aidyn, who she's only seen cry once, sits hunched on the floor next to his bed, full on sobbing and clutching his foot while GuardMage Gynger examines his big toe with Healing Magic.
Noelle rushes to kneel down next to him. Despite the fact that Recall confirms that he's crying harder now than when he got shot with an arrow and almost died, she doesn't see or register any blood, swelling, or even bruising in his toe.
"What happened?!" she asks, placing a hand on Aidyn's shaking shoulders. When an alert pops up in her vision telling her to Beware of Coerced Affection as a Manipulation Tactic, she confidently dismisses it. That is definitely not what's happening right now.
Aidyn yelps when Gynger carefully prods his toe with a finger before he gasps out a response to Noelle's question.
"I broke my foot!"
Gynger shakes her head. "Don't worry, Aidyn, nothing is broken. I think you just stubbed your toe."
"NOOO," he howls. "It hurts too much for that! It has to be something worse."
Noelle rubs his back in a pattern she always finds soothing, and amends her list from earlier to include:
5.Extreme emotional responses to minor physical injuries
Gynger gently props up Aidyn's foot using a rolled up towel Raychell grabbed from the washroom. "Do you want Raychell to go get a fully trained healer to check my assessment?"
Aidyn nods through his tears, prompting Raychell to exit the room in search of medical personnel. When he shifts to lean his back against his bed, Noelle removes her hand from his back and copies his position. She doesn't feel comfortable offering to hold his hand like the book suggests, but she makes sure to sit close enough that their shoulders touch.
By the time Robyn arrives three minutes and sixteen seconds later, Aidyn's tears have subsided considerably.
"I may have over-reacted…" he admits sheepishly when she asks him to wiggle his toes and he does so without difficulty.
"It's very understandable, Your Highness," Robyn says with a kind smile. "It's hard to judge physical pain responses accurately when you aren't used to experiencing them for longer than a few seconds."
When she finishes her magical examination, she helps Aidyn stand. "Your foot is not broken, although your toe may feel sore for a little while longer."
After she bows and exits, Aidyn carefully sinks back down on his bed. "Well that was embarrassing."
Even from her spot on the floor, Aidyn's expressions and body language, as well as his emotions, tell her he does genuinely feel insecure about what just happened.
What can she do to help him feel better?
Recall provides a suggestion:
Let him focus on someone else's problems.
That's a good idea. He likes helping people.
Recall immediately follows that up by providing a long list of her own problems for her to choose from.
That's kind of rude, but whatever. Two of the problems immediately stand out as good options:
1. The Mage vs Lady issue: She doesn't want to give up her current title, but she doesn't want to make things harder for her and Aidyn by refusing all traditions either.
2. How uncomfortable the Salute of the Strong makes her: Equating strength with being unbreakable seems deeply problematic. Most things actually catalog as Fragile. In her experience, it takes much more strength to put things back together again than to break them.
Noelle chooses the first option, since it feels more practical given their current circumstances.
"What's really embarrassing," she says, "is the thought of me as a Lady."
Aidyn looks down and meets her eyes. "You don't have to do that."
"Good, because I really don't want to." She moves from the floor to the chair next to his bed. "Is there something else we could do to 'realign with tradition' as your dad called it? That seems like good advice in general."
Just as she hoped, Aidyn's confidence returns as he shifts into what catalogs as Leader Mode, leaving all traces of insecurity behind.
"I'm sure we can figure out something. After we eat breakfast, let's brainstorm in The Library."
At the mention of The Library, the magical flecks in Aidyn's eyes shimmer, creating a sparkling effect. This data gets cataloged with the keywords: Aidyn's Eyes, Sparkling, Delight, The Library, and Mage Eyes. Then, the Category System uses those keywords to filter the data into the collections for Delight, Mage Eyes, Things that Make Aidyn Happy, and Aidyn's Eyes, before also adding them to a more specific collection within Aidyn's Eyes called Aidyn's Sparkling Eyes.
Noelle's own emotional data Keywords as Delight at getting to add another piece of data to the Aidyn's Sparkling Eyes Collection. That's one of her favorites.
According to her data, forty percent of Embermoorians develop a magical ability on top of standard Bond Magic. Most of those people pursue a magical education to earn their Mage title, but not everyone does. That means not all mages wear the easily identifiable mage cloak. Thankfully, every mage develops the magical flecks in their irises. The best way to confirm if someone has an additional magical ability is to check for the flecks in their eyes.
What activates those flecks, making them shimmer, depends on whatever emotion a mage relates to the strongest. Noelle loves tracking the things that make mages' eyes sparkle, especially as it changes over time. It's a great way to get to know someone on a deeper level.
Aidyn's "Sparkle Trigger" is delight. Unlike most mages, his hasn't changed once the entire time she's known him. Not only that, but Aidyn's eyes sparkle more often than any mage she's ever encountered. Somehow, after everything he's been through, delight still comes easily to him.
Seeing Aidyn's eyes sparkle now in their hospital room Recalls the queen's voice from the holding cell:
He will die a little bit everyday he's bonded with you! You will do to him what Collan Jaycobs did to you.
Noelle registers the flecks in her own eyes ignite as Defiance crackles within her emotional landscape.
She will NOT be the reason the light in Aidyn's eyes die. And she won't ever allow anyone to extinguish her own light again either.