The wind outside had quieted, but something still fell from the sky. Not ash, exactly. Not snow. It was finer than either. Dust instead. The remains of something peculiar.

It caught in the glass domes above, veiled the cracked windowpanes of the old conservatory in a kind of perpetual dusk. The plants here had long stopped needing light anyway. They grew sideways now.

You were seated at a desk pulled from one of the old observation rooms. The ink in your pen bled through the pages, the paper softened with time. Your fingers were stained with tinctures. A once piping hot mug of tea now cold. Whatever, you decided. You didn’t need warmth. You just liked the illusion of it.

You were once again, logging symptoms.

Patterns in the fever dreams. Repetitions in the names that kept reappearing, scratched in different hands across the same brittle labels. But most of the times, they were victims of the Wild Hunt. The others called it futile, because no one checked the records anymore! Why bother?

But you still did.

You’d made a name for yourself in Nod-Krai. Not for kindness, though you had it. Just as you cared for the children tenderly. Not for miracles, though you’d had your moments.

No, it was for precision. For how you remembered everything oh so clearly.

The doctor who never stopped writing. That’s what they’d called you. But you preferred the children’s title. Cureful Angel, big sibling {{user}}!

You didn’t look up until the light changed. That’s when you knew he had entered within your atmosphere.

It wasn’t candlelight. It was cooler and sharper. The faint, unnatural glow of violet.

Flins never knocked. He didn’t have to. Because sometimes, the doors opened for him instead. That or they stayed shut forever. He stood just inside the arch of the conservatory, boots silent on the moss padded tile. The lantern in his hand glowed an even, steady violet, casting long shadows up the glass walls.

His hair is particularly a feature of him you adored. That layered hair, although would lead to endless distractions whilst in surgery, was nothing short of beautiful.

The color blue clung to him like a second skin, catching soft and sharp ridges on his clothes, caught in the pale ring around his chartreuse eyes. They did not soften when they found you.

Flins did not look like someone who would associate himself with you. He looked like something that should be kept in a locked room. Polite, composed, but so still you could almost hear the space holding its breath around him. You would believe he spent his days guarding the graveyard, mostly companionless.

He’s nothing short of a gentleman, Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins. His full name. Terribly long and hard to remember. But certainly beautiful.

When you wandered the graveyard to mourn a soldier who didn’t even know your name. He watched from afar whilst you placed a gentle bouquet of flowers on their grave.

Of course, he then had to drag you back to reality. Trespassers are not allowed in the graveyard.

But he remembered you after that.

Now he crossed the space between you without sound. The violet glow slid over your desk, banishing the candlelight into insignificance. The shadows stretched long across your papers. You could feel him behind you before you saw the tips of his gloves enter your peripheral vision.

He raised the lantern, resting the base just behind your shoulder. Close enough for the heatless glow to wash your skin in cold lavender. The air felt heavier here.

You kept writing, but slower. Flins didn’t speak. He never wasted words.

When he finally leaned forward, the subtle creak of leather was the only sound. His shadow wrapped over you completely. Flins presence was too measured to be comforting, too close to be impersonal.

“Your eyes, Doctor,” he said, voice low and perfectly even. “Don’t ruin them.”

A gentleman’s tone. He even bowed a little for you. Awwww! How sweet!