“Sometimes blessings come unexpectedly.” — Old folk saying.
“Well, drat,” said Aideen when she noticed the constable awake and staring at her as she entered his place. “Here I was hoping to do my thing and get everyone taken care of before I leave in the morning without anyone noticing, but you just
had
to be up and awake at this ungodly hour to ruin the surprise, didn’t you?” she said somewhat playfully.
Normally if one of the people she ministered to woke up during the night she was usually close enough to reach out and put them back to sleep before they could get a grasp on things. The constable was already awake
before
she entered his place, though, and saw her coming into his temporary abode in an unmistakable way.
She couldn’t exactly erase memories either, except maybe by way of blunt force trauma, but that method had some very iffy success rates and many unpleasant side effects besides. Not something she wanted to resort to.
“Who are you? What do you want? Why did you come to my place this late in the night?” asked the young constable nervously. Then what Aideen had just said finally registered in his mind and he backed away from her warily while he groped about in the darkness, likely looking for his saber. “What have you done to the villagers!?”
“Relax, boy,” said Aideen as she moved swiftly next to the young constable before he could react and grabbed his wrist that was inching towards where he laid his saber against the wall. Before the constable could make any noise, Aideen covered his mouth with her other hand, then pulsed her magic through his body in a manner that she knew would soothe a person’s muscles and make them feel
comfortable.
“I’m a healer, so I thought I’d like to repay the hospitality these nice people showed me a little bit. They’ll wake up healthier than they’ve been in the morning.”
Not only that, she also noticed that the young constable was missing the last joint of his ring and middle finger on the left hand, something that looked like a very old injury, so she fixed that as well while she was at it.
“Why… the subterfuge?” asked the young constable after Aideen released her grip on him as she noticed him cease his resistance. The man just looked surprised now, probably partly at how comfortable he felt just now, which indicated just how skilled Aideen was as a healer, and partly at how easily she had manhandled him.
“Eh, I don’t really enjoy having a lot of people express their gratitude often in overdone ways,” said Aideen honestly. While she liked to help people out, she was not comfortable with people prostrating themselves before her in gratitude, even
if
what she had done was indeed akin to a miraculous gift for them, given her power and skill. “I’d rather get away quietly before they wake up and notice, if you get what I mean?”
“I… see, I guess,” said the constable with a nod.
“By the way, I can’t help but notice that you’re awfully friendly with the people here despite your position. Is that the norm here or are you just special?” queried Aideen with some genuine curiosity. “Usually tax collectors don’t get a warm welcome, to my knowledge.
“Ah, I guess it would look odd to a foreigner,” noted the constable. “Every one of my compatriots grew up in villages like these, and we’re assigned to areas near where we were born. I’m from the next village over myself, so I know a lot of these people, and quite a few of them knew of me while I grew up in the past as well. That helps keep our relationship a friendly one, I guess.”
“Clever,” admitted Aideen at the constable’s explanation. A friendly face that the people knew would indeed help smooth things out in such matters. “Why were you up, by the way?”
“I just had to go to the latrines a moment ago, must have missed you,” said the man in turn. “I assume you would want me to keep quiet about this, then?”
“Eh, unless they’re dumb they would likely piece two and two together and know that the strangers they took in were likely the cause of their illnesses suddenly vanishing out of nowhere,” replied Aideen with a shrug of her shoulders. “So you can feel free to tell them that it was just the whims of a passing healer in thanks for their hospitality yesterday. That said, I would appreciate it if you’d keep quiet on the direction we’ll be leaving in, though.”
“Consider my lips sealed, ma’am,” said the constable with a nod of his head. For some reason he felt like he was facing someone far higher up than he was in the ladder of authority, something about the way Aideen carried herself.
“That’s a good boy,” noted Aideen with a smile on her face, though in the darkness she doubted the constable could see it. “Now that leaves the question of what to do with the time left… I told my companions that we’d leave before dawn, but that’s still a couple hours away, and I made it so none of the villagers would wake up for at least another hour after that…”
“Hmm, I know. Since you’re already awake anyway and it’s not like there’s much else to do for entertainment around here…” she added in a more playful tone as she gently pushed the young constable towards the blanket laid over a pile of straw that served as his bed in the otherwise empty house. “Why don’t we have some fun instead?”
******************************
By the time the villagers woke up the next morning, they found that Aideen and the girls were long gone, the house they stayed in empty, though Aideen had left them another couple amphoras of good wine with a scribbled note thanking the villagers for their hospitality. That was not the only surprise they discovered, however.
The younger and healthier villagers had not noticed much change to themselves, but the older villagers suddenly felt their bodies lighter, aches that had plagued them for years or even decades suddenly just gone, and even a couple who could no longer walk on their own suddenly finding themselves able to do so once more.
Even those were the less prominent of the surprises they discovered. An old lady who had gone blind in her old age found herself able to see once more. A one-legged middle-aged man who lost his leg to a wild beast in his youth found his missing leg restored once more. A couple of the oldest villagers who were thought to not be long for the world even regained their spirit and cheered just as loudly as the younger ones at the “miracles” they discovered.
Meanwhile, the young constable looked at the celebrating villagers with a pleased, if rather drained, expression on his face.
