It was a full day’s work done when my hands began to bleed for the second time. Clouds rolled in from the west, and I could no longer tell the difference in shade between the gorse and the grass. A fall wind with the prick of winter rushed across my bare arms as each finger, in a line through both knuckles, opened up to show its fleshy glory to the world. The trail of blood reached two meters before I noticed it. My fists clenched, painless and determined, I marched my way from the field to the farmhouse.
When I arrived, I passed Garpa in the flower garden pulling weeds. She turned up her face as I passed, and was about to give an order when her mouth dropped slightly. She said nothing. By this time, my eyes had begun bleeding, too.
“I don’t understand why the skin won’t take!” Tyran said to me, hustling from one drawer to the next, looking for needle and thread.
My face was sticky. The trails got thicker past my mouth and built clots on my jawline, as though the blood was an icicle on a roof.
“Let’s fix you up.”
I sat for the better part of an hour as Tyran sewed neat little lines up the inside of each of my fingers. He hummed a little as he worked.