Rust

Kaguya yawned, sleepily rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she sat up from the corner of the Iron Company lounge. The warmth of the fire tempted her fully into sleep’s embrace, but there was a topic that she had been saving, waiting for the right moment to ask. And her target was right there, relaxed, primed for questioning. 

“Hey Kei, what’s that knife ya got there?”

Kei hummed in reply, reclined on the opposite sofa with a book, twirling a worn knife in her hand. Upon reaching the next page, she spun the handle into her palm and sliced the blade down between the pages and turning over the thin sheet of paper. The unprompted question slowed neither the twirling of her blade nor the scanning of her eyes across the page. “...Do you find some perverse enjoyment in asking pointless questions? You’ve been poking around something all day, just say it already.”

Kaguya’s ears jumped straight up in surprise. "Well, ya certainly know 'ow to read me, don't ya? Well, ya'd be pleased to hear that I saw Morinas's friend, and they fixed my back, so no scars there. But I jus couldn't shake why ya were so insistent of it. It ain't like scars hurt unless they were really bad, right?"

The hyur slowed to a stop, looking across the cozy lounge of the ‘safehouse’. After a moment of silence, her voice cut the air between them with the cold precision of someone who was already tired of explaining this. “Because it’s treatable. Scars are left by wounds that couldn’t be healed sufficiently, and we have the means to avoid that.” She drifted back to her book, flipping her knife through the air. “I'll not tolerate foolishness by allowing people to abandon their treatments halfway through.” 

Kaguya’s tail twitched, thumping behind her as she raised her hands in front of her defensively. "It wasn't like I was intentionally neglecting my back. I jus didn't see it necessary. My back'd jus look messed up. Didn't seem that bad of an issue."

Scoffing, Kei cast a weary glance at the young miqo’te. "Do you want your back to look fucked up?"

 "Course I didn't want it. I jus..." she paused, taking a deep breath "I get we can fix it, but I mean, why treat it like it was almost life-threatening?”

Huffing, Kei snapped her book shut. “Here,” she spat, flipping her knife into her hand and reeled back her arm, throwing the blade at the wall behind Kaguya. The Keeper jolted as the blade sang through the air, thunking point-first into the walnut wall. “Woah, what’d I say!?” Kaguya cried, backing up into the couch.

“Take a look.”

“H-huh?”

“The blade. Look at it.”

Creeping out from behind the cushions, Kaguya gripped the dagger by the handle and yanked it out, looking it over. “This is the one I made ya, right?”

“Well, yes. But never mind that. What do you see on the blade?”

“Well ya sharpened it some...and it’s got some rust on it.”

“What do you do about a rusty blade?”

“Grind it off…? Because if ya don’t, it...will deteriorate the blade's integrity”

Kei nodded her head, setting the book aside to walk over to Kaguya’s side, sitting on the footstool next to her. “Right. And once that happens, the thing’s hardly fit for proper use. We're the same way. Injuries can be small, insignificant, but they add up. There's no shortage of them in work like this." She sighed and loosened her shoulders, a small, warm smile forming on her face. "You're barely over twenty summers, right? If I have the choice to polish or let you rust, what other choice can I make?"

Kaguya ran her hand across the blade, nodding, "Well...would hope ya wouldn't leave me to rust."

"I would hope so, too. So get your damn back fixed."

“Hah, aye-aye.”