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[tinkertank]

❧Dance ❧With ❧Me?




➷ Pick A Muse
➷ Post a prompt, picture prompt, or set the scene.
➷ Label who you're tagging.
➷ NO REGRETS, JUST LOVE. We can dance until we die, bb.
➷ ...Something like that!

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[fliesonfour]

[He is up and out without any need for saying more, grabbing one of the towels left out to dry himself completely before shuttling carefully back behind the screen to dress again.

It's about when he gets to his cravat, feeling muggy, that the haze of confusion starts to lift and the Questions come out.]

If you're a Grecian sun god, then why are you a French medicine man?

[Let's start with the basics, that he can hopefully fathom.]

[kouros]

Good question with three answers. I'm immortal and I am easily bored is the first. The second is that I have far too many small gems and crystals lying around that I can easily hand off to mortals.

[He starts brewing the tea]

The third is that, Christianity aside, we do still care for the mortals in our own way.

[fliesonfour]

[Finishing with the cravat, he stepped out again, towel still in hand and dabbing at his forehead lightly. Not wishing to be over-warm, he had left the overcoat wayside for now.]

And these gems, they truly are healing, are they?

[he asked not in self-interest this time, but in greater interest. A means of helping severely ill people was a means of doing great good. He should like to know how those worked or could be made via materials here, by men, if this information were at all free to be obtained.]

[kouros]

They are. However, each works only for the person I give it to and no mortal is capable of making them. They need to be blessed by me or my son.

[fliesonfour]

A pity, that, isn't it? It would be a great help, to anyone suffering! Why then only here? Do you travel with them, much like those Gypsy peddlers?

[he can't imagine he's somehow much more deserving than any other! Though he is feeling a bit better, if hotter. Perhaps.]

[kouros]

I suppose it's comparable to that, though I travel all over. London, Edinburgh, Bismark, Madrid, anywhere. Except perhaps America. They're not terribly accepting over there, not of things like this.

[fliesonfour]

Medicine men, or-- [Not Pagan. Right.] --Greek sun gods, that is to say?

[Giving a wan smile, he shrugged his shoulders up a bit.]

Are you generally so free with letting just anyone know you're not 'mortal'? Not going to erase my memory or banish me to a pit, are you?

[kouros]

Anything not Protestant, by my experience, including Catholics.

[He finds all this in-fighting so terribly adorably human]

I'm not, no, and I do have waters from the Lethe should I need them, but honestly I find that humans nowadays either think I'm crazy or knew it all along. And since I'm never in the same place or role for very long, I don't care if they think I'm crazy.

[fliesonfour]

[The Americas are a crazy land, so he can't outright disagree there.

At the second bit, he smiles, still bemused but not feeling threatened in the least. Especially not by someone who could actually cure ills! Quite a treat, really.]

My! But you will miss the French women when you go. And I've very many patients to recommend! Provided they're also not treated by the waters of Lethe. Do you do your good at random then, Monsieur?

[kouros]

Oh, I will be back. I do love France and its people. Much lovelier than the English or Prussian, certainly.

[He laughs]

I do, yes. There are so few willing to give the strange spiritual healer type a chance and there are so many priests who'd rather condemn me that it is for the best that I do my work at random.

[fliesonfour]

Well, obviously! [That was easy enough to agree to.]

Why not call yourself a proper doctor then, and not a healer? A priest might condemn you for being heretically clever at your work, but a healed man can never agree to go against one saviour to honour the other! I think.

[Maybe.

Actually, could be relatively dangerous.]

[kouros]

You seem to be forgetting I lived and witnessed the birth of Christianity.

[Because really now.]

The 19th century is much better about health and medicine than previous ones, but there is that risk that healing someone too much may cause problems.

[fliesonfour]

Then, may I ask-- you have also witnessed the births and deaths of certain diseases, have you not? What decided upon that.

[He's not actually sure he wants to know... but he does wonder if illness is really a godly blunder, or somehow manmade.]

[kouros]

All illnesses come from my arrows. Influenza, the pox, the Black Death, the plague, all of it was my creation. However, once I hit that first person with the disease, it is out of my control. It...it evolves, it changes, it becomes a disease that is entirely different from what it was at first. The Black Death was a simple fever, yet...well, I am certain you know your history. That was a rare moment when I stepped in to remove the illness completely. Humanity has, as a rule, been able to adapt and end many of my creations and I rarely need to take control of a disease back.

[fliesonfour]

[Well, all right, don't get ahead of yourself. Now he's looking well startled, and if his axis tilts away from you a bit... can he be blamed? You invented the pox. He really hopes you didn't give the name to 'the Black Death', at the very least, in order to be redeeming.]

...But why do it?

[Really, it's unfathomable to him; to create that much suffering. If you should know they fall out of control, why continue making them? He'd consign himself to being quite destitute, if it meant doctors were no longer needed by way of lack of fevers and rashes.]

And why should you not remove them, if it's in your power?

[Okay, sorry. He looks mildly horrified now.]

[kouros]

[Apollo supposes he should be mad for the questions but...well, he's never been asked those before. It can't hurt.]

Do you ask a dog why it barks, or a bird why it flies? We do it because we were born to do it. It is as much a part of who I am and my role in the universe, making diseases and releasing them, as healing them is as much a part of who you are. I cannot help that they so rapidly change in ways not even I can predict. That is what comes of dealing with humans, however. They change everything they touch and that touches them and no god, Christian or otherwise, can stop that.

[He runs his hand through his hair]

As to your other question, it usually isn't. I create illness and then myself or my son will grant doctors the abilities to cure them if they can indeed be cured. I'm afraid that blindness and spasms and the like are largely not illnesses but are directly related to the muscles, even if it was a fever that made the person blind. But once the illness is released, I can only curse a city with a plague or remove that curse. I can heal an individual or a household. I cannot remove the illness entirely unless failing to do so would result in mass extinction. When Pandora opened that box, she took the total control over disease from the gods and gave it to the humans. It is up to humanity to rid the world of disease, if they so desire.

[fliesonfour]

Dogs and birds do not speak French quite in the usual manner to be asked, but that would be a trick.

[Metaphor; why agree to it when you could instead take things literally and have a dog that speaks French? Really, by his description, it seemed Man has a bit of a leg up over Gods. Just as he'd suspected, then; the universe meant well, but had its mix-ups, and men had their chances at creating their own destiny by fixing them.

He nodded to the explanation, which was sensible enough to suit him; if not a bit flowery!; but still looked distinctly uncomfortable in the presence of the Creator of All Things Quite Awful.]

Well! We do desire it, I daresay. It can be done then, there's hope yet. [He eyed the God, a little wary, cringing a bit and brows furrowed worriedly, but not with any real malice or fright.] Except for allergies! No one is perfect, eh?

[Look, a joke!]

[kouros]

[He laughs a bit. He can tell that Joly is still wary but...god. He's used to it]

Or the common cold. Even I am not certain where that one came from and not even the gods are immune to it. But everything else is, yes, curable or will be in the future.

[fliesonfour]

If not from the Gods, then from the devils. More difficult, that, but what doesn't kill us--

[Makes us stronger?]

...weakens our immune systems irreparably. So that's quite serious.

[What are joking about the common cold; that's a topic that's never funny, okok.]

[kouros]

Actually, certain illnesses aside, most diseases that do not kill you the first time likely won't should you catch them a second time. There is a reason for that, in here-- [He taps Joly's chest] --but humans are not to discover that particularly interesting part of their humanity for some time and I am not allowed to tell you beforehand.

[fliesonfour]

Well, perhaps not the same, no; but taking to others becomes a bit easier, doesn't it?

[He'd had a particularly distressing case where a flu was recovered from, but the cough stuck by and eventually became a whopping cough.

He is going to try not to flinch when he'd prodded in the chest by the God of Everything He Is Afraid Of. Really. He gave it his best effort. Don't want to be rude.]

You see into the future then, too? Now I know why you're so awfully bored! Most of us cannot even remember what we're doing next Tuesday.

[kouros]

Gods, do they really not teach what you call the classics? I'm the god of prophecy. For example, you, young kýrie, have a young man waiting for you at your apartment.

[The tone says Apollo knows exactly why he's waiting, too]

Without the young mademoiselle.

[fliesonfour]

There's enough to learn as medical college already without also taking on the burden of the poet and the philosopher, and Grantaire goes on so well and long and enthusiastically, that all the Gods and maidens and half-Gods and heroes all become quite a blur, and--

[Wait, what.

A pause, and he stares, before clearing his throat and going to pat some of the muggy moisture from his face agan.]

...Well, the French men are not so terrible either, decidedly. Though the title still goes to its women.

[He can't really bring himself to be overly-embarrassed about their eagle, after all. He was quite proud of their happy trio, in all its parts and breakdowns.]

[kouros]

I do not see why both cannot share it.

[Seriously, he really doesn't care]

Except for the...well, royal families stopped being a good idea centuries ago, if you ask me. At least with all that inbreeding. It may be harmless for gods but for humans?.

[He shudders]

[fliesonfour]

We would share it, my good man-- ...god-- if only we had quite so much hair on our heads as they. Between my boy and my girl, she has twice mine and he less than half. Therefore, the title is theirs.

[It's the gentlemanly thing to do, anyway.]

Royal families are an unfortunate side-effect of the old world! But soon to be gone, I dare hope. There was a good deal of hemophilia passed on among those sorts of families, admittedly.