trans_9 | Tools of the Trade

Sharp Tongue has everything she owns spread out in a corner of the Obs Deck, where she's hovering over it jealously and arranging it with loving care as she makes sure it's all in order. The entire contents of her shaman's bag, and the bag itself, are here. Strange pastes and dried herbs and oddly shaped bits of stone, bone, and occasionally metal. Tools. All the mixtures and some dry ingredients are contained in various ways. Glass bottles are frequent, most of these in still-usable pieces with the few that are whole and stoppered containing some kind of mysterious liquid. Also common are things that at least appear to be the round bowls formed by the insides of broken skulls. Something whitish and about the consistency of cold butter is held in a sizable sea shell.

The bag itself is designed to hang across Sharp Tongue's back and against her left side, it's made of thick brown triceratops hide. Strange sigils have been apparently branded into it, usually in three claw slash motif. There are smears of paint in similar markings across it, in yellow and white and red. Hanging from the edges of the bag are teeth, feathers, and some claws. The biggest of these are two velociraptor hunting talons near the front.

It's a grisly assortment of things and doesn't smell all that great, but they all clearly seem to have a meaning to Sharp Tongue.

She's muttering to herself indistinctly as she goes over them, occasionally growling or hissing. She appears to have restored her body paint, having drawn long white and red slashed up and down her sides and legs, and a few across the muzzle for good measure. They're not sacred paint and they weren't done by Narrow Face, but they will have to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...how do you heal people with no thumbs?"

It's not derisive, genuine flat up 'dude, how do you DO that?' curiosity.

Unfortunately, thumbs are a little bit of a sensitive area with Sharp Tongue. "I do not need thumbs," she hisses with clear disdain. (Actually, she'd kill for a set. Multiple times if necessary.)

Sharp Tongue picks up one of her tools in one three-clawed hand. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be a heavy if unadorned salad fork. There are some suspiciously red stains on it, which suggest it's been put to far less savory uses.

"See?" She turns it over in one hand with remarkable dexterity. Sharp Tongue seriously would benefit from thumbs, though.

"Huh!" The Doc leans down all interested. "You can almost SEE how your one finger is trying to be thumb-like. That's fantastic. I imagine you don't do much surgery though."

"It is not," Sharp Tongue denies. Even though it is. "I do not know the meaning of this word, but I have never heard it before and so it must be of little importance," she says.

Raptors prefer to live by "if you can't pull through mostly on your own, you're a wuss and should die anyway".

"Surgery. It's cutting into someone's body in order to do internal repairs. You knock them out with a gas or a drug so they can't feel what you're doing, go in, fix stuff, sew them shut again."

He nods seriously. "It's what I specialize in. Very useful."

"You take one that is already injured and make his wounds wider?" This is MADNESS. Sharp Tongue headtilts, trying to figure out if the doc is messing with her or not.

"What? No! It's like..." he sighs, trying to think of how to explain. "Lets say someone stabbed you in the side with something long." Doc holds his hands apart by about a foot.

"I could sew up your outside skin, but inside where the end of that stabby thing went maybe it tore open one of your organs. Surgery involves me reaching inside and fixing your organs first, THEN sewing up your wounds. Otherwise I'm just stitching a hole in your side shut and then you bleed to death anyway because your insides are still cut open."

She snorts a little. "If your organs are cut, then you are dead. It is that simple. Poking around in it just makes them bleed out more quickly. If they live, it is by the will of Scravis. If they die, they were weak anyway and a drain on the tribe."

"Besides." Sharp Tongue taps her big hunting claws on the floor. "It is an insult to the warrior's pride. Do you know how that feels for one of them, to know he owes his life to the shaman who is not a warrior? If there is hope, heal them. If there is none, do not look for it. There are usually others you could be helping with the time."

Tools of the Trade

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