Mysa/Krakun 1 (Patreon)

There was some discussion in the chat of mysa living inside a krakun's body. I'm not really sure just how that would work, but it did inspire the following scene.

Look away now if you're squeamish...

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Ambassador Krysukkeer groaned and opened his eyes on the third attempt. “Ambassador?” squeaked a tiny voice in the Mysa language. “Are you finally awake?”

The ambassador groaned again and closed his eyes. “Councilman Fleep?”

“Yes sir, it’s me,” she squeaked. “You’ve been restless, and we thought perhaps you were going to wake, so I’ve stayed close.”

Breathing hurt. Everything hurt. He let the air leak out of his snout before drawing another breath. “So groggy… Have I…? Did you drug me…?” he asked, finally opening his eyes once more.

“Oh, yes sir!” squeaked the tiny mysa. “I’ve never seen so much birchmurk used in all my life. You’ve completely wiped out our stocks!”

“What in the…?”

“Oh, be thankful we have!”

Krysukkeer groaned as he tried to get up. “No no no!” peeped the councilman. He could feel her running frantically all over his face. “Don’t get up! Please don’t get up!”

Frankly, the krakun was thankful not to have to try. He felt like he weighed as much as a collapsed star—and burning up just as hot too. “What? Why?” he moaned.

“Well, three good reasons,” she peeped as she scrambled onto his cheek. “First, we’ve assembled a medical tent over you. You’ll shred it if you get up. Secondly, we don’t want you to tear your stitches. And finally, our doctors are still working on you. If you crushed one of them, they’d walk off the job and leave you to die.”

“Doctors?” Krysukkeer gasped. “No no no! You have to get me back to my ship.”

“Sir? We… We haven’t taken you anywhere,” said the mysa. She knelt down on his cheek and stroked his scales in a pathetic attempt to soothe him. “We just built the tent around you.”

Without moving his head, he looked around at the bleached canvas over him and the grass under his head. The ambassador growled, bringing the tiny mysa up onto all fours. “I need to get back to my ship. There’s a radio—”

“No, sir, you don’t understand,” pleaded Fleep. “Your ship … it… All we’ve found are bits and pieces scattered everywhere.” She sat back down and gestured wide with her paws to indicate an explosion.

The krakun groaned. When he didn’t speak, she said, “We thought we’d find the same of you—just bits here and there—but there was a huge pile of foam peeling away, and you were in the middle of it!”

“Yeah, the supplemental suspension system,” said Krysukkeer. “We must have hit awful hard to set that off. What happened?”

“I don’t really know, sir,” said Fleep. “You took off, there was a bang, and a moment later there was all this smoke. Your ship didn’t get far before it came back down.”

“Damn.” He stared at her a moment. “Okay, I need to know everything the doctors have done—”

Fleep moved closer. “Sir? Shouldn’t they be coming for you?” she asked. “They were expecting you home that same day, right? Shouldn’t they have flown back down here to find out what happened to you?”

“They can’t,” sighed the krakun. “You see, that was the only shuttle aboard our ship. And the ship itself was built in space. It’s not designed to land on a planet. Now, I need to know—”

“So … you’re stuck here?” asked the mysa, scooting closer to his eye.

“No,” he groaned, “eventually, they’ll go back and get another shuttle.”

“How long will that take?”

He stared at her a long while. Not that he needed the time to think—he knew the answer—but mostly he needed to get back in control of his frustration. The ambassador wasn’t accustomed to being questioned by anyone other than his boss. “About a month.”

“A month!” she squeaked in alarm. She stood and backed away.

“How long have I been out?” he asked.

“Three days,” she said as she began pacing across his face. “I assembled the doctors as quickly as I could, and they’ve been working in shifts—”

“Fleep,” he said, “I need a radio—a device for communicating over long distances. Do you have…”

She was already shaking her head. “We have telegraphs, but none of the wires lead up to your ship.”

“Of course not,” grumbled Krysukkeer.

“Sir,” the mysa said, “it’s really important that we talk about your health…”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure,” he said, rolling his eyes, “and now is the part where you tell me that you’ve saved my life and that I owe you, but I assure you that our negotiations—”

“No, sir,” Fleep squeaked, “I wish I could say that we’ve saved your life…”

He stared at her, the heart in his throat beating a little faster than the one in his chest. “What?”

She paced in silence a little longer. “Well, from the way the doctors have described it, it would be unfair to say that they’ve saved your life. Perhaps that they’re busy saving your life?” she suggested. “Although it’s still early. When I speak to them, the best they can offer is that they … haven’t let you die just yet.”

“What?” he gasped even louder.

“Please, sir, you have to lay still. They’re still working…”

The krakun closed his eyes. He drew and released a slow breath. “I need to speak to one of the doctors. Who’s in charge here?”

“They’re all too frightened to talk to you, and they don’t understand your language,” explained the mysa, “so they’ve briefed me on your situation so I could explain it to you.”

Another pause. “Very well,” he said. “Explain.”

“Well,” said Fleep, “they said you have a lot of bleeding wounds … that bits of metal have gone through your body. Some went in one side and came out the other and some are still lodged inside you.”

“Shrapnel,” he said for her.

“Yes, well, these wounds are very big, and they bled a lot,” said the mysa, “the doctors are amazed that you didn’t die. If you were to scale such injuries down to mysa size, they would surely be fatal for any of us.”

“Yes, well, you can’t live to twelve thousand years unless you’re very hard to kill,” he reminded her. “What have they done?”

Fleep’s ears drooped. “Are you certain you wouldn’t rather rest?”

“No, tell me now.”

He watched her swallow. “Well, I hired a team of spelunkers—”

“Spelunkers?”

She closed her eyes for several moments before explaining, “C-cave explorers, sir.” When his eyes went wide, she said, “They’ve … ventured inside your wounds a-and secured the shrapnel with ropes.”

“You’re right. I don’t think I want to hear this.” His empty stomach roiled. Mysa were crawling inside his wounds? How much more disgusting could this get?

She knelt down and stared at her paws for many moments.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Get it over with. Who is removing the shrapnel?”

Fleep looked up with a frown. “Everyone,” she said. “Just long lines of mysa who’ve come down to help out.”

Ambassador Krysukkeer closed his eyes, wishing he couldn’t imagine dozens of mysa playing tug-of-war with his shrapnel, but he could—in vivid detail. “Any broken bones?” he asked.

“Quite possibly,” she said. “Not something we can easily judge.”

“All right,” he said, “but you’ve stopped the bleeding?”

“Most of it,” said the councilman. “The seamstresses have taught the spelunkers to sew closed the larger wounds. They’ve been … searing the flesh that is just oozing blood.”

“Ugh, the indignity of mysa climbing inside my wounds,” he groaned. “Are they at least washing them out, so you don’t leave … hairs inside me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Fleep. “We’ve gone through hundreds of liters of alcohol so far.”

“Very well,” he sighed. “I thank you for—”

“Sir? There’s still something more.”

He stared at the tiny mysa, but she refused to look up. “Yes?”

“It’s … your lung, sir. Your right lung.”

Krysukkeer definitely didn’t want to hear this. “Bad?”

She nodded. “I’m afraid so,” she said. “There’s a team with wheelbarrows inside your chest now, removing tissue that can’t be saved.”

He gritted his teeth but said nothing.

“We’re hoping that some of the lung can still be salvaged, but so far, it looks bad.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xil29XUDLbwMT6SJgzARQt_uDGXg35OsZlDLSag6zG8/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?