"Good, now focus on the feeling of the blood within the veins. Can you sense how it flows unencumbered?"
You close your eyes and focus on the sensation in your hands. It's strange. Like you've set your flat palms upon the back of a serpent as it glides smoothly upon the ground beneath, tickling your palms.
But it's only your seidr, glowing blue in your hands as they hover above the young boy's chest, feeling his blood as it flows through his body.
"I feel it," you answer.
"Good," Herkja answers. "Is it warm, or cold?"
Focusing again on the flowing feeling in your palms, you struggle to feel anything but the seamless rush of blood within the boy's veins.
"I...I don't know."
"Yes, you do. Focus."
"It's...It's average. Not warm, not cold."
"Okay, good. Now slowly move your hands up and down his body. Focus on the temperature. When you feel it change, let me know."
You follow Herkja's instructions, slowly moving your hands up the boy's chest towards his neck. The sensation in your hands grows cooler.
"It's losing heat," you say.
"You're looking for infection, pretty one. The blood will grow warmer as you near the source. Try the other way."
Following her instructions, you slowly change direction, and begin moving down the boy's torso, following his hip, his groin, and down the left leg as the sensation once more begins to cool. Traveling back up to his abdomen, you try once more down the right leg, and find your palms growing hot on his right thigh.
"Here," you say, hovering over a spot a few inches above the knee.
Herkja takes a dagger and begins to cut the leg of the boy's trousers off. As she does so, you glance up at his small, fevered face. The poor boy's blonde brow is slick with sweat as he winces and shivers in his unconscious state. He writhes on the thin blanket separating his body from the ground.
"Can I ease his fever? Please?" You ask Herkja.
She glances up at the boy and then nods to you. She had taught you this trick two days before when a young mother had brought her sick baby to be healed, and you had learned it quickly.
Placing one hand over the boy's heart, and one on the ground, you use your seidr to pull heat from his blood, allowing it to flow into you only briefly before releasing it into the earth.
After a few moments, you notice he is no longer sweating, and his shivering has subsided. Removing your hand from his chest, you gingerly touch the grass where you had released his heat. Although you've done this for several patients now, it still surprises you to find the ground saturated in what once used to be their own body heat.
YOU ARE READING
Undaunted (Loki x Reader)
Fanfiction'The end may justify the means, my Valkyrie - but only if there is something out there that justifies the end itself.' With the nine realms now facing a threat far greater than you could have imagined, you and Loki are sought by those once considere...
