The Angel Lane clinic is several kilometers away from the estate. It is a single-story wooden building, flat and inconspicuous. Renovation of the stone porticals has begun, with bricks and laborers milling about.

By Timo’s side, a sheep bleats, scrawny after a fresh shear. Timo pats the sheep, who’s as tall as armpit level, and tugs the leash. It reluctantly follows, a harness securing its head.

Every so often, the butchery receives special requests. The clinic solicits donations from surrounding estates often. The bossman agreed to send goods as a token of charity and social obligation. Initially the butchers were supposed to slaughter the lamb, but Wiry-Monkey mentioned that "they like their mutton fresh, because it’s good for the ill." Thus they sent Timo to deliver a live animal to the clinic.

One of the construction guys, seeing Timo bumble around, points to the detour. Timo and the sheep cross over sandy arenas, sidetracking the disturbed, red dirt. The side entrance resembles saloon gates, as they do not protect from intruders, but simply mark a boundary. Stealing from religious centers is asking for divine punishment, and hospitals aren’t exactly tourist attractions.

Timo is fascinated by the clinic, which resembles a creaky tunnel. Whenever the wind blows, it amplifies inside the hallway, lapping at his ankles. The sheep clods on the paved stonework.

From the first room on the right, an earthy scent leaks out. The imposing door is shut tight, but has a diamond-shaped hole with metal bars. He stands on his toes to peek inside the dimness. Dried herbs decorate the concrete walls. Bushels of garlic and cloves impart a sting he can almost taste. The cargo: roots shriveling in baskets, labeled jars of seeds on the shelves, and huge clayware pots with cloth lids sitting on the floor.

The left room’s door is a sliding panel left ajar. Behind the desk sits a middle aged woman, and shelves of books and tomes. Timo speaks through the opening, "It's my first time here. I have a delivery."

"Where from?" she responds with an unexpectedly cranky voice.

"Rastincorsa."

Her eyes trace the rope in Timo's hand, and the sheep at the end of it. She rises out of her chair and widens the panel gap, poking her head into the hallway. "Gornius! The mutton’s here! Hurry up!"

An old man, whose eyebrows sag over his eyes and a waterfall of a beard, emerges from the back. Slow, like a tree, he appears out of the fog and beckons. Timo passes the leash, and Gornius leads the sheep down the hallway, exiting through a backdoor.

Timo wanders further into the clinic. One doorway has a grey mantle hanging down to his shins. A strange aura presses from within, striking his very being. Brushing aside the split in the middle, he lifts a flap and peers inside the room, a warm rush of air greeting him.

In every available space on the floor, blankets and mats are crammed. Even the wooden pillars that support the ceiling pose no large obstacles, as nearby patients, in the barest of white robes, clutch and gather around them. Sunlight streams through the only windows in the complex, rows and rows of glass squares, shining and perfect like geometric scales. People lay on their beds, resting, tossing, murmuring. It would be an unforgettable rainbow of pox, gangrene, urine and sourness.

The nurses scuttle amongst the crowd, with their aprons and their polygonal hats and sweatbands. Some are male, some are female. Some wear their sleeves rolled up. Others wear sleeveless robes, shredded to tatters where sleeves should be.

At the far end of the room, a panel slides open with a draggled growl. Most striking of all, when the Angel steps into the room, every head turns. Timo’s head follows in tandem.

Her appearance isn't very special. With a headband and her hair split into two thick ponytails, she looks like a wild village woman. Her apron is thick and weightsome, a stiff frame embedded inside, like the ribbings of a sail. Her robes have two layers, the outer one beige, the inner linen only visible at her legs.

The patients beam their hopes and their prayers onto her. Even if an assistant is handling them, they ignore whoever is at their bedside to stare unrelentlessly at the most important person.

The Angel walks up to a man who suffers from blue lesions on his skin, similar to lichen that covers a tree. He trembles, his breaths sharp.

"I think I’ve figured the problem," she says to him. Kneeling, she unsleeves her arm, revealing the stringed beads and charms coiling even further under the cloth, a hypnotic wave of trinkets, crosses, medallions, and long faces of legends.

"Mercy has come," the man rasps, his robes ragged and sorn, his blue infection already shrinking from his face.

"By the Dancer and the Aegis, the impurities are banished!" She places a hand on his cheek, and he grabs the whole arm. As he sobs, the lesions flatten and smooth, the color fades to skin tone with the burden being carved away.

Timo grips the doorway hard enough for his knuckles to turn white, so enraptured is he.

A female nurse bumps into him, her arms carrying a trayful of supplies. "Sorry, are you new here?"

Timo blushes, feeling more embarrassed than when he had killed the supervisor. Without the chance to see the healing arts to completion, he scurries down the hallway and bursts out of the clinic doors, at which the secretary lifts an eyebrow while bookkeeping. He forgot to pick up the receipt.

Running down the road that returns to the farm, running for his legs to match the rhythm of his pulse, almost tripping over puddles, running out of steam, running until his toes feel numb, everything up to his ankles completely brown, Timo grinds to a halt, panting and sweating.

Back there, he had felt eureka, a pure and distilled elucidation. He saw his future path, a crucial decision for survival, and the only pursuit that Fate would grant him.

How was he so blind, that he had never considered this before? A tinge of regret emerges, for he had wasted his first opportunity at a convent. He couldn't help it, he was immature and the teachers were boors, and they taught the myths slightly different from what Mama told him. Next time will be different.

When the nurse had bumped into him, he felt he had been caught red-handed in a misdemeanor. Indeed, he was salivating at a personal fantasy, forgetting he had no more business there.

He wants to be like that. Someone who could walk into a room and command everyone's attention. Someone who could fix all biological mistakes, and become an arbiter of life and death. People are more useful alive. He wouldn't have to kill anymore. He would have choices.

He could be a healer.