Ancient born

Archie has been summoned to council daily for the entire week, to defend his reasons for assigning me a patient after graduating from the healing academy. I graduated a few months ago and still haven’t been able to claim a patient for myself. The natural process was to have the clients approach you and formally ask for your expertise. You could also be assigned a patient by the head of the family you belonged to, or the head of the 1st healing family. But it had been two months since I graduated and no one had asked for my expertise. While my colleagues were getting their request cards filled up, mine remained empty. Archie then took it upon himself to transfer one of his patients to me. It was the 5th prince of the 8th royal family, Prince Luke the third. He had been sick for the past 8 years and had shown no signs of improvement. As an apprentice of Archie, it was within his rights to hand over one of his patients to me, but considering my history, his parents felt I wasn’t qualified to treat their son and accused Archie of trying to kill him.

Being at the centre of the drama, which was becoming a norm at this point, I couldn’t fault any of them. Archie was only trying to secure my career as a healer. If I proved I could handle the patient, there wouldn’t be any problem taking up more patients in the future. I just needed to start from somewhere. With that being said, I also couldn’t blame Princess Vivian for wanting to protect her precious son from me. I didn’t even have confidence in my skills as a healer. What right did I have to treat a patient?

Curing the prince of his infirmities was out of the question. After all, Archie hadn’t been able to do it for the past two years. Even the previous healers who were assigned to him couldn’t. I could only hope to keep him alive, at least until he was assigned to someone else.

Sitting by my drawing desk, I picked up my paint brush to continue the piece I had been working on. Painting had become a therapeutic experience for me ever since I stopped physically ageing last year. 23 wasn’t a bad year to stop ageing. I get to look youthful for eternity, but it was still too young. The average age was 30-35 for males and females, irrespective of whatever sect they belonged to. This law didn’t apply to parasites though, they aged naturally. If they lived long enough to be a century old, they looked a century old. Only the ones assigned to wealthy families who took care of them lived this long.

I just had to stop ageing 10 years earlier, drawing more attention to myself, like I hadn’t done enough of that already.

Maybe the abrupt stop of my ageing process was caused by the hormonal imbalance I went through 2 years ago. I cried, laughed, and flared up at the tiniest bit of provocation or excitement. Most times, I couldn’t even explain the reason for my outburst, it led to chronic depression.

At the time, Archie refused to put me on any medication. He insisted that I would stabilize slowly with time. He was right. I got more stable in the subsequent months.

This was one reason why my time at the healing academy was so horrible. Coupled with the fact that I wasn’t making any progress with mastering the use of my gifts, I was sickly, depressed and way too sensitive. I got so depressed sometimes I refused to go to the academy for my lessons. Archie had been left to do the damage control every single time. He filed for all the prolonged leaves I took and settled all the victims of my emotional outburst, financially or otherwise. Everything that needed to be done to keep me out of trouble and out of the news was done.

Staring at what was supposed to be the painting of a beautiful scenery, I sighed deeply. I couldn’t figure out what it had turned out to be. All I saw were dark, angry lines all over the board. These unpleasant memories are ruining my artwork.

Suddenly, the door to my room crept open slowly and Archie walked in. He looked exhausted, which was nothing new. He always seemed exhausted, like the entire world rested on his shoulders. He walked over to my bed and quietly laid down beside me.

“Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” I asked.

He sighed. He had been staring at the ceiling without saying a word. “Well”

Another deep sigh was the response I got from him.

“What did the council say? Would they be letting me treat Prince Luke?” I inquired further.

“Yes. You can go see him tomorrow.” He replied.

An uncomfortable silence followed his response. I would expect him to be happy considering he won his case in council, but he still looked so depressed. What else could be bothering him?

“Thanks, Archie, I don’t know what I would do without you”. I said, to lighten his mood. I sincerely appreciated him and would eternally be grateful to him for what he had done for me. He bothered himself so much over my career that I just wished he would stop. I didn’t even care for it as much as he did.

Having a royal client wasn’t necessarily a goal of mine. I just wanted a client, and anyone would have been fine. He could have handed me any other client of his. Why did he have to insist on it being a Royal? He wouldn’t have to go through so much trouble if my client was less prestigious.

“Two of my patients died today.” He finally admits.

So this was why he looked so sad. It’s no wonder he’s so depressed. His patients mean a lot to him.

“I’m really sorry”. I reached over to him and held his hands in an attempt to console him. He smiled weakly and closed his eyes. We lay silently listening to the sound of the birds until our eyes was heavy with sleep.

Rolling over, he bade me goodnight and retired to his chambers. Tucking myself in, I welcomed a much-deserved sleep.