#21 - aycs demongel AU prototype; a living angel

Sayo was surprised to see a bat circling the entrance of clinic that afternoon while she swept the entrance. The uni-horned devil with long turquoise hair took the bat on her palm, watching it as it transmitted the message.

Usually, devil would send bats as replacement of birds for giving out messages, since birds would not get close to devils. Every bats used would give a message with ultrasonic signal before they left, which might be inconvenient for a very secret message, since nearby devils might ended up hearing the signal.

“Emergency, Shirasagi-san’s cabin, bring surgery equipments …” Sayo deciphered the message. “Hina, can you be the one who go?”

Sayo yelled to the lounge just beyond the sliding door. Hina, her twin sister and also the physician of the clinic, was busy with her distillation equipment and mortar behind the medicine counter.

“I’m sorry, Onee-chan! I’m doing the prescription from grandma in the third block!” after awhile, Hina answered.

“Well, then. I’ll go. Do tell me if it’s getting crowded by the evening, okay?”

Surgery equipment? Sayo thought when she produced her bag and her needed tools from her room. Devils had their magic, it shouldn’t be hard to repair everything unless it isn’t fatal with magic, or the patient wasn’t devil to begin with. As far as she knew, that blonde herbalist who was coming from the bigger city wasn’t affiliated with animals or even other beings cohabiting the land like Dream Demons, or Werewolves -

- she should be prepared fully, Sayo nodded to herself. The physician then grabbed a red camisole and draped it over her white kimono before she departed.

x x x

Arriving at the cabin, Chisato kicked the door open, not bothering to put away her shoes. Searching for a better place to lie the angel on, she thought of her bed, instead of rocky texture of her sofa. The blonde devil carefully place the angel on her bed, not to crack the wings more than necessary. Chisato removed the clothes, checking the place where the wounds located by the body.

“Such large bruises … maybe her ribs are broken, too …”

The blood had dried, though the black and blue bruises and lacerations remained as she checked the torso and stomach area. No trace of live left there, but Chisato found that her lips has yet to change color.

“Is she still …”

Chisato tried to dip her head down, pressing her ear to the chest. She also palpitated the angel’s wrist again, seeking for a minuscule of a beat.

There was something – a faint, weak thump.

“Shirasagi-san, your front door is open …”

Chisato answered. “Please come in, quick.”

“What’s—oh my god, what in the world.”

Chisato didn’t pay attention to Sayo’s line of shock she proceeded to search blanket and some new clothes in the drawer.

“How’s the condition?”

“Her left wing is ripped, and there seem to be several broken ribs, injuries on the head …” Chisato explained. “I don’t think we can fix it with our magic so I called you in. I thought she was dead.”

“Then, you want me to /stitch/ them?”

“Only logical conclusion until her own magic flow is back, right?”

Sayo took a tray out from her bag, filling it with two scalpels, a thread, and a vial contained green-ish liquid with an injection. The physician chanted something to the thread. After the light died down from engulfing the thread, Sayo checked whether the strength and flexibility of the thread fitted her liking.

“I’d like your help to keep her in place.” Sayo asked. “Although this … ‘gel’ Hina invented might make her feel numb, I don’t think it might be enough to withhold the pain of stitching – not to mention it will burn as the dark magic come in contact with light magic.”

“Okay.”

“Here goes.”

x x x

After hours of struggling – stitching angel’s wings, and then stitching the broken ribs were much of a challenge. The speck of magic they used making the inflicted area burned, scorching hot that made the patient writhed – a sight that Chisato didn’t want to see as it’s painful. The rest of wounds were already cleaned and patched up.

“Maybe she needed to be administered with your painkiller herbs, and it would be better to apply some to the wounded areas when you changed the bandages too …” Sayo went on. “Anything else you want to ask, Shirasagi-san?”

They were sitting on the floor of the room, the said angel is tucked inside the blanket now that her condition is stabilized. It was late in the evening when she checked the time. Chisato let Sayo to rest a bit there and said she would pay for it later, in which Sayo quickly declined, telling that ‘it’s an emergency’.

The operation was tiring, and Sayo worried a lot because it’s the first time she operated on an angel.

“The anatomy of the wings are different, huh?”

“Yes. I thought I stitched it on the wrong joints at first,” Sayo sighed. “There’s still another three months until Divine Messenger’s coming, she should already be healed by then to explain what’s going on … I mean, angels won’t buy what us devils explaining that it wasn’t our fault, right?”

“It still irks me to know that there’s a chance for angel to /fall/ from up there. Those wounds looked like she has fallen and hit something.”

“That’s a high probability, Shirasagi-san.” The physician devil agreed. “For now, let her rest. We can always talk to her when she’s feeling better.”

Chisato turned to the devil on her bed, the whiteness she would rarely witness. Bandages are covering her forehead, her arm, and her wings become unevenly-shaped because of the stitching and patching. It was more than surreal to know that she had saved an angel – a devil, saved an angel from the death door.

“Hopefully, she’d wake up soon.”