Good... His breathing was somewhat raspy and a bit difficult, but it was clear, and strong. Steth hurried from the room, down a few corridors and into a room full of books. So many books. Some were yellowed with time, but they were all readable. He looked though them, scanning the titles for ages until he came across the right ones: Knowing the Human Body, and Obscure Illnesses and How to Identify Them. Grinning and showing his sharp fangs, Steth slid out and to Eyre's room, then hurried back to fetch Eyre and settle him onto his bed. Curling around him, Steth first started reading Knowing the Human Body. He didn't, in fact, know the human body, and the various illustrations and identifications, along with information on each part of the body, helped quite a bit. Humans only had one heart, curiously enough. And so many things could go wrong with the heart alone! All the illnesses and problems listed at the back of the book were ridiculous, but apparently, common. Nothing like what Eyre had.

He flipped through the second book, but stopped at once on the first page and began scanning. There were massive lists. Lists of illnesses, their symptoms, and the treatments known to help or cure said illnesses. Steth sighed, resting the lightest part of his tail---the end---over Eyre's arm to make sure he knew Steth was near as he read.

Though he slept still, enveloped in darkness, he felt safer. Something, someone, was right there with him ... Eyre thought it was someone he knew familiar. Too familiar? So warm ... It reminded him of a memory, out of reach. A birth? A first awakening? There was a naga then too, and a sun. Beneath his eyelids, his eyes began to move, looking at things he remembered but knew couldn't be true. Even if they had been memories, the sun and a naga, they weren't his.

Eyre shifted, curled up a little against the naga. With a slightly easier breath. It was as if simply being near Steth helped to ease his heath problems.

Steth, enveloped in his reading, unknowingly curled a little tighter around Eyre. Sweet human, he didn't deserve what was happening to him. Didn't deserve to be so sick, and not even know why. Didn't deserve to be shunned by his entire village to be a sacrifice to a naga. If the foolish humans had simply gotten over their own fear and asked him what they wanted, they could have saved so much time, energy, and food. He doubted the sacrificial animals he let go actually went back to the farms they'd come from, after all. He flipped another page, sighing as his eyes lighted on a drawing of a sun. So beautiful, even in paper. He could almost see it shine. Smiling, Steth scoured the page and found a list of symptoms that resembled Eyre's. Chief amongst them were shortness of breath and inability to breathe (feeling much like suffocation), coughing, weakness, and exhaustion. He didn't bother to read the rest, but went directly to the treatments at the bottom. It seemed a variety of minty foods and drinks kept the breathing problems away. A medication that Steth didn't know of would do the body much better, and eventually work to cure.

Steth sighed. Thank the gods... Something could help him. Something could cure Eyre. He grinned, closing the book and putting an arm around Eyre. "Sleep well... I'll try to find the medicine as soon as I can..." There had to be a book he'd acquired over time that would tell him about this particular medicine. It was called Sun's Elixir. Strong as the sun god, so Steth had read, able to cure any any ailment.

He dreamed now. Dreamed that he lay withing the sun god's embrace. Not quite right. Eyre blinked, shifted so his golden locks fell across his eyes. He was coughing in his dreams, struggling to breathe again! But the god lifted his head, helped him to drink liquid sunshine and he was well again. The pale young man made a soft sound as he slept. He curled closer to the naga, shifting to lay his head against the supporting arm Steth had wrapped around him, all of this unknowingly.

Steth didn't want to leave him alone. Over time he could see---hear---that Eyre's breathing had grown easier and less painfully obvious. He felt he was responsible for that, though he knew it was a foolish thing to think. Carefully, though, he slid a curled blanket under Eyre's head and slid away, taking the books with him and back to his unorganized 'library' like room. He had to find that book of medicines... Had to help Eyre. Steth had no idea why he cared so much. It was a human... He would die so soon. If Steth became too attached to the human, then only heartbreak would be in his future. He sighed, but went on to look through book title after book title. Some titles were rubbed away completely and he had to open them and read through a bit to know whether it was at least close to what he was looking for.

Eventually, he found it. The title was rubbed away, but it listed different forms of philters, potions, and elixirs, rubs, ointments, and applications. It had to be there.

The moment the naga slithered away, Eyre's breathing became more laborious. His hands clutched the blankets as he started struggling to breathe again. It was worse, or it was better this time. This time he slept through it all, unaware that his life hung by a thin thread. Blissful dark, how how it beckoned! Still something held him back, a promise perhaps? Or simply curiosity. Eyre really didn't know, and for some reason that caused him to linger though an endless sleep beckoned.

He felt his way back along, eyes glued to the pages as he flipped them to search for the right one. Sun's Elixir, that was what it was called. It was deep among the alphabetic list, and he had to skip a good amount of the first half of the book to find it. When he returned to Eyre, the noise of painful breathing returned to him. "Eyre?" Steth flipped the book closed but kept a finger between the pages. "Eyre, wake up now..." He pressed on the young man's shoulder, shaking him a bit. "Eyre! I found a way to heal you, please don't..." Die. Please don't die. All the work. The care. For nothing... What would he do then? Before this his life had been so deathly boring. He hadn't known what to do from day to day of his seemingly endless life. Decades had passed with taking things, collecting them, finding them. And now that he'd created a means to keep him warm and awake all winter. How stupid... Stupid, if he didn't have anyone to take away the loneliness and absolute boredom.

The warmth was back. He felt better .. It was calling him. Eyre's eyelids fluttered. There was actually someone calling his name. A pressure on his shoulder, and he was moving though he couldn't really feel any of his muscles straining with that kind of effort. The young man opened his eyes and found golden ones looking down on him, filled with worry. "... Steth ..." The name slipped from his lips before he'd thought about it consciously.

"Sorry ..." He'd made him worry so for no reason at all. It was normal for him to pull stunts like this. He almost wished it would all end. No! That was before he'd met the naga. Now he had a friend. Eyre smiled, a simple twitch of his lips which transformed his features.

Steth smiled. Well, he was okay. Or as okay as it were possible for him to be. "I found something." He said, quickly curling around Eyre and lifting him up, settling in and opening the book. "Sun's Elixir, it's called. I read that it can cure anything... Any ailment. It just... I need to find it... I don't know how to make it..." He read a little further. It was rare to find it, because they needed a priest. A man or woman that could bless the base mixture with the sun god's blessing and make it glow.

"Eyre... Is there a priest in your... what used to be your village?" He was sure the leader wasn't necessarily the priest, but he didn't want to waste a trip to the village if there wasn't. And if they were adamant enough to believe Steth to be a god, then they had to be religious enough to truly be able to have, or at least bless, the mixture.

He settled into the naga's coils. A more comfortable resting place, he never could have imagined. Eyre watched the pages flip by, and tensed when he heard of the Sun's Elixir. It sounded eerily like what he'd dreamed of. How was that possible? The other things he'd seen flashing through his mind's eye returned to the forefront of his thoughts. Just because one thing had some basis in reality, didn't mean the other did.

Eyre's couldn't help but gasp as he realized that Steth was going through all this trouble, just for him. A stranger .. That was what he was to the naga, or had been until recently. "I think there is. No, I'm sure ..." He coughed, voice rasping through the air. " There is a priestess, the sun god's. She ... she's been keeping the old religion alive."

Steth was overjoyed to hear that. He grasped Eyre's shoulder lightly and squeezed, closing the book. "Oh, that's good... So good to hear." He muttered. "I should go immediately... But..." He sighed, coiling a little tighter around Eyre. "I don't want to leave you behind... In case something like that happens again..." Suddenly his worst fear was coming back with the finished mixture and finding Eyre dead. Somehow, or perhaps he was just imagining things, he was able to handle his illness better while Steth was around. Nearby. There was no way he would leave Eyre behind.

"You have to come with me. I'll carry you if I have to, but I can't leave you here while I go... I can't risk that." He twisted a bit, so he could face the human fully. "I'll bring you to the village and make sure that they don't even glance at you if you want that. They fear me, and rightly so---I could easily harm them. But I don't want to... I just want to live here without bothering with anyone... Except you, maybe." His gaze softened. Worry... He hadn't felt it in a long, long time. Worry for someone or something else.

It almost sounded like there was a promise of something else in the naga's voice... And just moments before Eyre had felt like he was dying, still felt like his life hung by a mere few threads. So he did something that otherwise might never have crossed his mind, because he was grateful, because the naga made him feel wanted and accepted. There were those yellow gold eyes, slitted and soft, peering down at him from such a close height. Before he knew it, Eyre was reaching with his fingers, the palm of his hands, to pull that gaze down, nearer his own brown eyes.

Just a tilt of his head, a shift of his body, and his lips were meeting the naga's. Soft feather touch, a breath stealing moment for the youth who'd always been shunned. And he was the one who'd begun it.

Of everything he might have expected, Steth had no idea what Eyre had in mind. Though he let himself be moved, because he trusted the human, because Eyre was so out of it now that he wouldn't be able to do much of anything. But his breath was nearly taken away from the sheer shock. Eyre had to still be in some dream-like state. Had to be caught between wakefulness and sleep if anything else. But he couldn't bring himself to pull back. He'd seen firsthand how Eyre had been treated---rejected, ignored. Pushed to be a sacrifice to, for all the townspeople knew---a violent god of a creature that lived in the heart of a mountain. He returned the kiss, for just a moment, then pulled back. "E... Eeh..." He couldn't quite say the young man's name---his breath was rather shallow.

"We... have to go." He shook his head, brushing back his hair before bending down and scooping Eyre up. "Try to rest a while, okay? Just... don't move much. We'll get you that medicine soon..." Get him the medicine... Make sure he would be well, back to what he might have been had his body not been ruined by illness. Soon enough. Maybe Eyre wouldn't remember what he'd done... Steth slightly hoped otherwise---the feeling that had filled him at the touch had been curiously new, and amazing.

Eyre's eyes fluttered closed, and remained that way as he was lifted from the naga's scales and into his arms. The blonde shifted, huddled into the embrace. He nodded slightly when told to rest, and leaned his head against the naga's shoulder. "Thank you ..." All he could feel was an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the other man. He'd been taken in by the one who had been supposed to take his life. Instead, Steth was doing all he could to save him
him.

The villagers were probably going to react with fear, and awe. It was typical of them to do so, when confronted with things, people, events, that they simply didn't understand. Steth would be able to handle them, Eyre was sure. He on the other hand ... Eyre was an entirely different story. They weren't going to welcome him. They were going to want him dead.

Steth nodded. "Okay, Eyre. We'll be there in no time, I promise." He slid out of the cavern quickly, leaving the light behind and finding the air clear, but rather damp. No rain was falling now, and the clouds were beginning to break up. Mud wouldn't stick to his scales---they were too slick, and let the stuff simply slide right off. He fell into a swift pace, a slight lean forward to make sure he kept completely upright and neither too far left nor right, arms protectively around Eyre to keep him safe from the outdoors. The breeze was warm, and it shifted his pale hair, but he didn't have the power to brush it out of his eyes. He had a ways to go, and the fastest way was along the path around the wooded area that jutted out of the actual forest and hid the village from view.

The farmlands were first. The people in the fields scattered home, gasping and calling to one another and closing their doors tight, as if it would keep him out. But he was headed to the church---the home of the shrines. He didn't even know what religion was alive today, if the old gods were still worshiped---Eyre had said the priestess at the church still kept it alive. But how? Where? It didn't matter. If she could bless the mixture, or if she actually had a bottle, it was all that mattered. As he approached the village, he could see the fountain in the square. Yes, and there, the church. But people had gone. They were all inside, or hiding behind some structure or another. Steth didn't care---he wanted the church. Its doors were closed but he approached it quickly, sliding around the fountain and using his tail to hit the double doors.

"Priest! Open up, or I'll enter by force!" His voice held a commanding tone. It was the only way to get them to react in some form of help rather than cower away.

The villagers scrambled away, giving the large naga a wide berth as he bellowed at the church door. Slowly it creaked open to reveal high arched ceilings, and torch bearing pillars leading up to an altar. There stood the priestess with a smile. "Welcome. What is it you seek?"

Eyre shifted. Sleep, he was half asleep and he wanted to be completely so. This place, he'd never wanted to see it again. There were dim memories of the people there, of their prodding and poking at him when he was younger, as if they thought he was far from normal. Of course that was true, he was ever sick. Where they the reason why he was always so sick? The blond couldn't know, had no idea why it was his health was in such a decline.