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“ I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, an -”
Arthur's poem was cut off suddenly.
"Ow, fuck."
"What is it, Arthur?"
"Nothing, John, nothing. Just bit my tongue, is all. Christ." His hand came up to rub at his cheek. The small circles offered some pseudo comfort even as the copper tang of blood filled his mouth.
"How? You were just talking." John's utter befuddlement over such a simple human trifle would have been funny if it weren't for just how much it managed to hurt.
"Yes, and sometimes that leads to your teeth and tongue coming into contact. Damn, that really hurt." Continuing to talk wasn't very well helping the problem either.
"Arthur," John's voice was soft, quiet. "You're crying."
Arthur exhaled sharply through his nose. Yes, that also happens with facial injuries , he wanted to snap. Christ, hadn't they been over this before? Why did John need to pick now to be overly concerned?
"It's fine, John," he mumbled out, opening his mouth to inspect the damage. Surely it only felt like a long cut.
John's harried questions were ignored as he lightly passed the pad of his thumb over tongue. As expected, the injury was small, though painful. What was not expected however was the scraping sharpness of his own teeth. Cautiously, Arthur drew his thumb along the edges of his top teeth. The front two remained dull, but the rest quickly sharpened to fine points; each molar now four sharp peaks. The bottom row was much the same.
" Arthur!! "
" What, John?" he snapped, arm falling into a clenched fist at his side.
"I said , what. Are. You. Doing."
"Trying to figure out when the fuck my teeth decided they needed to be able to rip someone's throat out, John ."
It was quiet after that. Arthur eventually began walking forward again, the scraping of his shoes against the stone the only sound to be heard. He wiped the tears off his cheeks with his sleeve, scrubbing a bit too hard at the skin to remove the salt trails. He didn't speak again until the pain in his mouth had dulled considerably.
"I'm sorry for snapping, John," he said. "I was just a little unnerved."
"By your teeth."
Arthur wondered what it was like for John when he rolled his eyes at that.
"Yes. I'm used to them a certain way, you know. Dull and flat and not a constant danger to my tongue."
"And yet sharp enough to bite off a finger."
Arthur chuckled. "Well yes, but that has more to do with the correct application of pressure and the inherent fragility of-"
John interrupted him. "But the sharpness certainly helped."
He didn't sound mad, exactly. Not how one would be expected to sound when speaking about someone biting their pinky off. But the tone was frustrated. Like when you were forced to explain a concept you had thought common knowledge and couldn't fathom how someone could reach their adult life without having ever learned.
"What do you mean 'the sharpness helped', John?" he asked slowly. "Are you telling me my teeth were this sharp back in the forest?"
John growled. "Well they could have gotten sharper since, but they were perfectly capable of tearing through flesh then."
"Why didn't you say anything!?"
"How was I supposed to know what your teeth were supposed to feel like?!"
Arthur brought both arms up to his face, but only one hand massaged at his temple.
"Great. Wonderful," he muttered. "The Dreamlands gave me shark teeth. Lovely."
"They could have been like this before we entered the Dreamlands."
"Not helpful, John."
Arthur finished pulling the razor across his throat and ran his hand over the skin, checking for any places he missed. It felt good to be free of the scraggly hairs that had grown in. It felt like a pause, a reset. They'd lost the tempo for a bit but were back to one now. Arthur took a deep breath.
"Think I missed anything?" he asked aloud. "It'll be your fault if you let me go out there looking like a ruffian." He was teasing of course, John couldn't see his face anymore than he could.
"I could check," John said. "There was a mirror in that kit."
"Wait, really?" Arthur reached forward and brought the shaving kit to his lap. "Why didn't you say anything earlier?"
John's hand batted his away from its search. Then he heard the telltale clink of the mirror against the metal closures of the bag as John pulled it out.
"It's rather dirty," John said. "We'll need to clean some of the dirt off first before it can be of any real use."
Arthur held open his hand on his knee. "Here, give me the mirror and then use the edge of my shirt to clean it off."
He held the small square firmly as John did as instructed. While the other worked in silence, Arthur mused on how quickly they had managed to coordinate themselves together in one body. Sure they weren't perfect, and life or death situations required a steep learning curve, but they were quite the team now. Once John deemed the mirror clean enough, he took it back to look over their face. Everything was calm until John suddenly spoke.
"Arthur."
"Yes?"
" Arthur."
"What, John? What? "
"Your eyes."
Arthur huffed, shaking his head slightly in exasperation. There was no sense of scale with John. Would it kill him to explain things first and then freak out so Arthur could at least know if the emotion was warranted?
"What about my eyes, John?"
"They're yellow, Arthur." And that was certainly a surprise. "The irises are a pale brown around the edges but towards the pupil it turns almost golden. Even your sclera have started to turn."
"Huh," Arthur said dumbly. "That's, uh, new."
"Why are your eyes yellow, Arthur?" John growled.
"Well how am I supposed to know?"
"They're your eyes!"
"Yes and we've already established that my teeth have changed since we've arrived here. I don't imagine I've just developed a spot of jaundice all of a sudden!"
"What?"
Arthur groaned. "A condition that causes the eyes and skin to take on a yellow hue. It doesn't matter! It's just the Dreamlands messing with me."
"Are you sure?"
Why the hell is he so upset by this, it's my bloody body!
"No, John, I'm not sure. But what else could it possibly be?"
"I-" John suddenly quieted. "I don't know."
"Then let's just ignore it for now," Arthur sighed. "It's not affecting our vision any, is it?"
"No," John admitted. "Not that I can tell in any case."
"Then it's fine."
"But, Arthur-"
"It's fine , John. We have bigger problems right now than what color my eyes are."
"Alright."
John didn't bring up the color change again after that. But he did make a passing comment about how it was easier to see in the caves than it had been before. Arthur ignored it. There were only so many changes that he could reasonably handle.
John’s description cut off abruptly.
"Arthur."
"What now, John?"
"It's your hand, or rather my hand."
"What? Are you hurt?"
"It doesn't feel hurt."
"Then what's wrong with it? I don't remember getting my hands too injured when Yellow was here."
"It's blackened. Dead looking. The black veins where wood met flesh have clearly grown. It covers the whole hand now, dark and wrinkled. The veins extend past the wrist, almost reaching the elbow. They're thick and raised, as if your blood has become black water. Small capillaries branch off like lightning, fading back into the skin."
Arthur forced himself to breathe. "Is, is it all turning to wood?"
John hummed and Arthur could vaguely feel his shoulder move as John twisted the arm around.
"No," he finally said. "The pinky finger is very clearly the only wooden portion of the appendage. The skin of the hand is now a dark, nearly black, gray. But it still looks like skin. The veins stand out, but if it wasn't for that it would only look like you'd been handling coal."
"Are we sure that's not just from the tunnels?"
How John managed to glare at him with thought alone, Arthur would never know. "The black veins are clearly unnatural," he said slowly, losing patience. "Your other hand certainly is dirty but not to the extent of the one I control. And the black coloration ends too cleanly at the wrist. It fades out like smoke back into your skin tone, but it's still too sharp of a transition to be natural." John paused before adding, almost an afterthought, "and then there's your fingernails."
"My fingernails? " His voice suddenly sounded too loud in the empty room.
John hummed an affirmative. "They're longer, all pitch black, even the one growing from the wood. They curve slightly at the ends, talon-like."
"What the hell , John."
"This is definitely new, then."
"Of course it's fucking new! Yellow would have said- I would have felt- someone would have pointed this out sooner, surely."
"Surely," John mocked.
"If it doesn't hurt then just ignore it," Arthur bit out. He didn't want to think about this. First his teeth. Then his eyes. And now his arm? When had the change happened this time?
Was it when The King had sent him out of the Dreamlands? Or had Kayne changed it when he placed Yellow in his head?
Yellow hadn't mentioned the blackened arm, but it wasn't like Arthur had asked what he looked like. Yellow hadn't had anything to say about his eye color either. Had those changed back or were they still that eerie gold color? He knew Yellow had seen both his eyes and hand. The lack of comment on his eye color could be ignored, but the lack of comment on his hand meant something. Arthur thought back to when John had come back. He'd shaken his hand. It hadn't felt wrong. Certainly he hadn't felt claws.
He did now, however, as John moved his hand to lightly brush against his arm. Arthur took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
"Let's just keep moving, alright? We can try and figure this all out later."
"Alright, Arthur."
"Right. Big room full of pictures you said?"
"Yes, the walls are all-"
Arthur concentrated hard on not only John's words but the cadence of his voice, allowing the familiar lilt to ease his nerves further.
Promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep, he repeated to himself. Miles to go before I sleep.