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The two of you are very young the first time you meet, from memory. Not so young that you’re limited to the caverns, but young enough that living is an issue to consider when you’re separated from your lusii.
She swears that she will be fine, that she’s been hunting on her own for the last sweep, and well, despite your urges to not give in so quickly to such filthy acts of violence, you don’t outright tell her that she can’t do what she desires. Perhaps, you think in hind sight, it was more than just a little selfish of you to not order her to refrain from giving in to her silly whims of wanting to see you.
She was your moirail. Even you held those whims of wanting to meet her for the first time. After all, it wasn’t even a true moiraillegance if you didn’t meet, right? It was what you rationalised to yourself when you didn’t tell her to not come.
You spent many a day up, sleeping very fitfully as you waited for her pawing at the door of your hive. You were worried, not that you would ever admit it. Your lusus tries to calm you with glasses of milk, but your strength is heightened by your anxiety and more glasses are broken than milk consumed and it sends you into a rage.
Aurthours skin bruises like a peach when he catches the errant swing of your milky wrath, but he brushes it off with nary a grunt. He can detect your worries. Though his meandering (in your opinion) pace frustrates you to no end, he really is the best lusus you could have asked for and you appreciate his efforts.
Three long days later and you hear a curious pawing at your front door, just before the dawn crests over the horizon. You had been preparing to head to bed when the sound graced the shell of your aural sponges and your blood pusher leaps into your throat as your excitement and anxiety peak. Trying to keep your cool, you push yourself away from your recooperacoon and head towards the front door.
At your feet sits a tiny troll, lips curled into a smile similar to that of a meowbeast, atop her rather inoccuous hairstyle are two horns placed in a manner that also resembles a meowbeast. Not that there had been any doubt in your mind before now, but it was most certainly her.
ArsenicCatnip. AC.
Nepeta.
Your moirail.
“AC looks up at the stranger in front of her with a curious look gleaming in her eyes. ‘CT?” she asks.”
Even now, the silly girl roleplays. You will have none of it, for even though you are thrilled that she sits on your stoop, roleplaying will forever be beneath you.
“AC, stop with your silly antics this instant.”
Though she normally frowns and fights against your reasonable requests that she not continue to humiliate herself with needless roleplaying, this time she leaps upon you.
A pounce, as she calls it.
The move catches you off guard, and despite your immense strength, this tiny girl knocks you to the floor in a incredible hug. Your face flushes blue in your state of being flustered, and you reach up without thinking to pat her on the back.
You realise too late the mistake that you’ve made when you feel the bones in her back snap. There’s not much more than a gasp from her before she falls limp. Clearly, she passed out from the pain. You are immediately wracked with guilt.
Before succumbing to your own selfishness once more, you check to see that she’s still breathing. She is, thankfully. You hit her between her shoulder blades, just below her neck. You haven’t killed her, but you’ve rendered her unable to move on her own.
Aurthour trundles along after you’ve shouted for him and gently plucks Nepeta off of you. You instruct him to take her to the room in your hive where all of your robotics take place. He does so, and you follow him, trying to get your thoughts straight. Being remorseful can come later. You need to asses the damage to see if you can even fix your mistake.
Even if it would be easier to just cull her. Killing her, or leaving her outside for the light of day, or the vicious beasts of Alternia to finish her off would be the right and expected thing to do. The thought to end her life never occurs to you and perhaps you have failed in your position as a high blood to do so.
She is your moirail.
When you make it to the robotics lab of your hive, Aurthour places her down on the workbench like you instruct. You assess what you can while Nepeta is asleep, poking her with needles and watching her utter lack of reaction from the bottoms of her feet to her finger tips to her shoulders, where she twitches and you sigh with relief.
The next night, Nepeta awakens. You are next to her when she does and despite it all, she smiles at you. When you break down and flood her aural sponges with apologies, she shakes her head and tells you its okay, that it was an accident.
You promise to make her better.
She believes you.
With Aurthour’s assistance, you complete your assessment of the damage. Not only is her spine from her mid upper back completely shattered, but the bones of her shoulder blades are broken, as well.
Fortunately, she can’t feel the pain when she lies on her back. Still, to prevent further damage, you instruct Aurthour to keep her on her stomach at all times. Carefully, you take the measurements of Nepeta’s back. When she asks you what you’re doing, you repeat that you’re going to make her better.
For a week, you spend all of your free time constructing a new spinal column for her. Aurthour, when not assisting Nepeta, aids you by taking the brunt of your frustrations and bringing you milk.You pour over text books, taking bits and pieces of what they mention and making your own ideas up along the way. None of your books on anatomy and robotics mention construction of robotic parts as replacement for broken or missing limbs.
But you read and you build, steadily, carefully, theorizing and putting equations together, lowering yourself to begging that disgusting mustard blooded fool TA to develop a code that would translate the impulses sent from the think pan of a troll into machine language that would allow the robotics to move. He laughs, but accepts the challenge and within a day has the code to you.
You make several copies and store them in numerous places just in case.
At the end of the week, you’re exhausted and you smell, but a dip in your recooperacoon and a quick shower rid you of both of these inconveniences. Today is the day that you will see if Nepeta is doomed to a life of being kept here under your dutiful watch, or if she will function as normal.
You explain to her the procedure as best as you can, trying to keep her ignorant of the fact that you really don’t know what you’re doing and this is a crap shoot, at best. You have confidence in your abilities in the art of robotics, but when it comes to mixing it with trolls, well…
You put all of your newly owned medical equipment to use, having ordered it during the week, and paying out the ass for overday shipping. It was all for her, so the amounts were negligible to you.
You hook her up to monitors, making sure fluids are dripping just right, and everything is as sterile and clean as it can be.
You slide a mask over Aurthours face and begin the arduous task of opening up Nepeta’s body.
She’s face down on your workbench-slash-operating table, which has been disinfected and covered with a plain, clean sheet. You begin to work, taking a deep breath as you press the cutting device to Nepeta’s skin. With barely any pressure, it parts under the sharpness of the device. You make two long, clean cuts along her spinal column, sighing heavily when it’s done. You’ve made the first step without fail.
Aurthour neatly wipes your brow and you are thankful for him more than ever because you are sweating quite badly. Every towel in your hive is being used for this. You’ll need them, you know.
You ignore the fact that her olive green blood coats the gloves covering your hands and you work as quickly and carefully as you can. You slice through the muscle and skin covering the actual bone and place it to the side for later reattachment. Aurthour suctions and cleans with bits of gauze, the clopping of his hooves being muted slightly by those silly blue surgical cloth shoes you had to put on him.
You see the shattered bone with your own eyes and swallow thickly as you stare at the damage done. Pieces of bone have punctured the cord, severing it. You push your mind away from the damage and raise a surgical saw. With light pressure you saw through the bone of her spine stopping where the damage stopped, and detatching the bottom from her pelvis.
You hand the length of spine and cord to Aurthour, who clops off to dispose of it before returning to your side. While he was gone, you were carefully cutting away more bone from the uninjured part of her spine, so that the cord is openly displayed the way you need it to be.
When every stray nerve bundle is exposed, you start the repair process.
It’s long, and arduous. You use long sets of gripping tools and something that a heating machine to seal up vessels. You work with the smaller nerve bundles first, carefully threading them into the robotic device that you’ve built for her, sitting perfectly in the hollow that was where her column used to be.
Hours pass before you finally, carefully, press the top of the column to her exposed cord. It fits perfectly, and you seal it with ease. Before you can make the nerve connection, however, there’s one more thing that you have to set. A gift to her.
Nepeta had that silly meowbeast lusus, and thus had grown up with her life surrounded by all things meowbeast. She emulated one to the best of her abilities and had always lamented the lack of functioning tail, even going so far as to admit to you that she tied bits of rope around her waist and left it hanging from the back of her pants just to feel that weight, even if it was dead weight.
No longer would she have to resort to such childish antics. At the base of her new spine, where the end met the pelvis, there was an extra length that currently rested at her feet. You had added a tail, and you were making sure it was located properly in regards to her anatomy.
You give a nod to Aurthour, signalling that it’s time. The nerve-to-robotics connection would be taking place.
Hopefully, it all worked out.
You make your way over to your covered computer, and bring out a bundle of plastic coated cords, thicker than normal. You had custom made these for the sole purpose of this project, with, once again, the advice of TA. Carefully, you plugged the cables into several important jacks built into the delicate circuitry of Nepeta’s new spine.
You release your breath, not realising you were holding it once all cables are in place. It was now time for the moment of truth. You turn back to your computer once more and press a few select keys before running the program that TA wrote.
Nepeta’s whole body seizes tight for a few seconds before falling limp. You can only hope this means success. Quickly you work, detatching the cables from their ports and leaving Aurthour to set them back neatly as you close the surgical steel covering of Nepeta’s circuitry.
The rest of the surgery is a blur, as you put her back together, securing everything in place with thick, surgical screws. You clean her and yourself up and instruct Authour to carry her to a much more comfortable resting place.
Your recooperacoon.
- -
You are unable to sleep as peacefully as Nepeta does, sitting with your back resting against the walls of your recooperacoon. You’ve done several things to pass the time, but none of them seem to be working very well. It’s been twelve long hours since the surgery ended, you check on Nepeta obsessively to make sure that her vital signs are stable.
Eventually, she awakens, and the first thing you see is her little hand resting on the edge of your recooperacoon, tightening as she yawns and stretches. She blinks at you and, in her half asleep stupor, gives you an unaware wave with her hand, which had been useless this whole week.
You’re utterly thrilled.
Your experiment was a success. Better yet, you were able to keep your promise.
When Nepeta becomes fully aware, she’s just as pleased.
- -
Nepeta stays for another few weeks as you an Aurthour help her adjust to her new spine and her new, much loved, appendage. You cover it with blue fur taken from a beast that you hunted for a celebratory feast prepared by Aurthour. The tail, while much loved by Nepeta and highly appreciated, actually was more of a bonus than just for the sake of appearance. It helped with her recovery from the surgery, aiding in her balance when it came to her body adjusting to having wiring instead of a long cord to translate impulses from her think pan.
For the last week, just to make sure she was alright to go home, you hunt with her.
She doesn’t really need your help.
When Nepeta finally leaves to return to her hive, you find that suddenly everything is just way too quiet. You fix yourself at your computer and settle in for another three nights of worrying until Nepeta returned home.