The doctor laughed at his looking well. Yes, he did look quite dapper – in a dusty, damaged, World War Two sort of way, as he shared. But the thought of the rush was not her language. No – give her healing and saving others, not battling them and causing them suffering. Granted such thoughts did not go through the heads of young ones like Dorian, any more than the thought of cutting into flesh and bone came to her mind when she worked on her craft. 

As he prattled on, she set her hands together, interweaving her fingers as she cupped her heart close. He was dear, this one. She so rarely connected to any one of them, but neither did they continue to wonder as openly as Dorian. He still felt. He still dreamed. It was a rare self which he offered to her and she treasured the child-like stream of words. 

As he took a breath, she laughed and laid her hand upon his knee. “Peace,” she said softly. As he settled under her soft palm, she leaned back once more and gave him a look. 

“His wound first. It is a blade which harmed him. He was stabbed, with an intent it seems, to disembowel him. But whomever attempted did not succeed. I would hazard a guess he was able to either break away or he killed the one who was trying to kill him. You will of course ask him when he is woken. 

“But that is least important,” she smiled softly. “Because yes, my dearest, he is human. I've nothing to tell me if he has some manner of mutation which one might call magic. I cannot tell if he has telepathic abilities or if his brain is capable of making potives and chemical explosions ages before his time. There is no science which will explain how a simple man was able to walk into our hospital, nor how he opened the door. You look for the metaphysical and of that, I have no knowledge outside of my own girlhood dreams of the same.” 

The doctor's eyes crinkled lightly at the corners as her eyes smiled in memory. “I think, if I were in your shoes, it would be hard not to love such a man of magic and spices. Beware, young man,” she teased, then stood and clapped her hands together briskly. “Now, let us assume he is Arab, of one of the tribes, no doubt, from the sands of the great desert. A prince or a raja or maharaja, it would seem. Perhaps a shah, even. There is little history of those peoples, they did not keep written tales of their own lines and did not speak of their pasts. Rather, they lived very in the present. But he shows no sign of British occupation. No gun on him, no smell of powder. Therefore, he is from the time before. How far back, there would be only one way of knowing and it would be to return and go find the rest of the world.” She turned to touch the hospital pale dark skin of the boy in the bed and sighed softly. Yearning for something which was nameless – to live in a time which was, perhaps, that much more simple than her own. 

“I will watch his friend and you must go clean up, rest, and we will call you when he wakens, Dorian.” The mare shook herself and lowered her head to lip at Dorian's shoulder, blowing warm into his ear. “Or,” the doctor's brow rose and she held back the laugh she wished to release, “you could take your friend with you and the two of you could rest in one of the attending physician apartments. You'd be sure to clean up after her, I'm sure.” 

Far from the hospital, in both time and space, a jackal shook herself and sniffed at the edge of a doorway. Her mother, her mother's mother, her maternal lines blurred, kept watch and her watch had been upset. A scent led to their charge, the scent of man and beast. But it did not leave nor did it linger. Instead, the charge was empty but for the light, gentle touch of vestiges in the form of tattered pages under the sands. And beyond the charge lay a dark hole through which scents so robust and shifting from one to another made her sneeze in response. She pawed her nose, shook her maned ruff, then snuffled about in the bones of their charge. 

At times, a story must be told – told again and again, until the spirits which kept it were discharged. Such spirits were lost in the rest of the world, kept hale and hearty by a land which was impossible to breach but by creative means well beyond many men's abilities. Only the most spiritual could live in a world where life lay hidden under silver sand and bone clearing wind. Only the greatest of souls could roam untouched through a palace of raging loss. 

The jackal bitch began to dig.