1st of Cylus 720
Early on in his wardship to Sybil, Zemos had proven a bit of a thorn in the student's side. As endlessly patient as Sybil had shown, it was a bit much when Zemos regularly got the urge to tear down the curtains and try to patch together rough-spun wraps from their fabrics. Eventually, after much time spent trying to figure out precisely what Zemos was good for in terms of labor, they hit upon the craft of weaving.
So it was, Zemos was set up with a job at Madame Teviot's shop.
That was where he found himself, on the first of Cylus. Business was good all year round, with Viden being as cold as it is, and people always needing to cover up against the cold. Zemos, for his part, was somewhat resistant to the cold, making do with at least half the coverings of the next person. All he had to wear at that moment were heavy jute rags. The same roughspun that was inherited from his days as an auction house slave. It was warm enough but chaffed terribly.
This day was exceptional, as Madame Teviot had promised Zemos for his hard work to take home a whole bolt of jute fabric, and a few arctic moleskins to use as trimmings for whatever he ended up making. This promise, combined with the fun of labor, drove him toward his task, to which he was singularly focused.
He worked a spinning wheel currently, taking a bundle of raw jute and teasing it out until it formed a long string. There was an absolute simplicity to the act of spinning. However beautiful or cheap the fabric, Zemos found the process calming, granting him moments of meditation that almost made him feel whole. As if he'd been doing this all along, from the beginning of his forgotten childhood.
Yet, when the calm fell upon him, down went his guard. This prompted the whispers to return. Most of the time, they were unintelligible, distant. Of late, the voices had yet to communicate much at all. Since Saun, no views had been forthcoming with any intelligible suggestions.
But there were moments, in deep torpor or else when his mind was calmest, that one voice among the whispers rose to make an intelligible suggestion. Such was the case now, as he spun out that spindle of jute cloth.
A breathy vocalization in the back of his mind buzzed, piercing the clarity of his thoughts in its persistence, "Mmmmmhmmmm, this cloth would make an excellent vector, Ze." Zemos tried his best to ignore it, but it wasn't straightforward with the amount he was focusing in on his task. "Perhaps a sneeze would do it. Just a little bug laid on the surface of that rough cloth..." The voice dragged on his auditory sense, skittering like the multitude of legs on a bug. "It would so multiply if you only..."
"I don't want to hurt these people." Zemos spoke in his native Xanthean, which Madame Teviot didn't understand, talking over the whispers, "Viden has been good to me. Master has been good."
"Ohhh... But when will our little bug return to the hive? Hmm? The signal is lost, but the mound of putrescence is secure." The whispers insisted he returns to something it referred to as a hive. He didn't know what that was but supposed it might have something to do with his past. A past that was locked and out of reach, but for whatever reason, the whispers had access to it.
"There is no hive. Viden is my only home."
"Oh but the cold... Don't you remember the warmth of the balmy south, the festering grounds of the Jungles and Rainforests?"
"No." Zemos said simply, and continued his task. That was the last he heard of the whispers for that moment, as the dominant voice lowered in volume to match the rest of the din, turning to a slight buzzing.
"Hhzzzzzzzzz..." Zemos buzzed audibly as he went about his work, trying to drown out the other voice in his head. His master was wise, and had assured him that it was not something to be concerned about, merely the secondary thought processes bubbling up from his amnesiac state. As he relegated it to something harmless, something that was a part of Zemos' psyche, the Sev'ryn could allow himself to relax. Yet in those moments of relaxation, sometimes it would return full force, if he wasn't vigilant. The bug, as he'd taken to calling it, liked to whisper into his ear.
"Hmmmzzzzzaaaaah." Zemos' buzzing sometimes bothered the other workers in the tailor shop. Yet he paid them little heed. He was here to work like anyone, and didn't require their permission to engage in his strange ticks and predelictions.
Soon enough, the rest of the order of jute bandages was ready to be processed. Zemos took the spindle of thread, and fixed it to the loom. The thread, he stretched through the latticework that made up the warp of the loom, while another associate worried about the weft. Soon enough, these intersections of cloth lines would be meshed together through the magic of the loom, and turned into a viable cloth.
Zemos had been trusted enough by Madame that she confessed she'd be donating some bandages to the local infirmary. There, she had it in mind to send Zemos to deliver the bandages, since he'd done such a wonderful job spinning the fabric.
At first, the slave rallied to the idea of visiting the infirmary with the work they'd done. Yet, as ever, the thoughts returned. Voiceless, yet urging him to go along with this plan, and visit the infirmary. He shook his head unconsciously at the idea of visiting, yet he would if Madame ordered him thus.
And so she did, when the work was done and the jute cloth was prepared. She had him wrap up the various bundles and bolts of jute and lug them over toward the infirmary.
Zemos shivered in the cold air of Viden. His steps were slowed by the constant barrage of cold air, yet he soldiered on. The chittering darkness inside his shell rallied him, filled him with unnatural vigor as he made his way half-clothed himself to the sickrooms of the Viden Academy.
Some of the people there recognized him, as the house slave of one of their students. Thus he was allowed to pass relatively unchallenged as he carried the bolts of cloth through their facility. He made his way down the strangely familiar passages. Icey corridors that reminded him of something elusive, something from perhaps another life. Had he been here before? The blue ice that surrounded him put him at ease, as the color blue had been conditioned into his mind as something always good. While green was always bad. Why was green bad? Zemos' eyes were brilliant green, and he even allowed himself a shred of vanity for that feature.
The sounds of the sick echoed thorughout the halls. Even in this sterile environment, the sickness pervaded, and the miasmatic fog of suffering was heavy on the air. Zemos sniffed deeply of that air, letting it fill his lungs. His insides felt tickled, butterflies flew in his stomach as he let in the air. This was a nice place, he decided, he'd enjoy spending more time here.
Yet, as he went along, further into the storage room where normally they received supplies, Zemos was stared at by several people who seemed to show signs of recognition. They looked at him as if they knew him. That made him feel uneasy, as pleasant as the surroundings were.
Yet, he successfully delivered the cloth that would be used for bandages and supposedly other purposes. He would have left the infirmary then, but something was calling to the back of his mind there. He stopped outside the door to the sick room. A nurse nearby stopped him before he could enter. "You can't come in here unless visiting someone." She said, stopping him with a open palm. He let her hand flesh touch his chest, stopping him there. He gave her a tilt of his head, and shrugged, "Master want fetch word from sick uncle. May go I?" He asked, and after a moment of reluctance, the woman relented.
Zemos entered the infirmary, closely watched by the nurse. He sauntered in, his bulky form filling the aisles between patient beds. There, he felt as a kid in a sweet shop, looking and perusing the various illnesses on display here. He saw one, an old skin condition who looked to be on his last legs. Then there was another, with a nasty and wet cough. So many choices, his inner voice told him of. Then, in a moment of atavistic recall, he remembered something that he could do. He leapt upon the man with the whooping cough condition, and began rubbing his face against the dribblings of snot and saliva, forcing his tongue into the man's mouth to try and harvest the disease. The nurse, alarmed at his behavior, shrieked.
It took a couple men to pull Zemos off of the patient. By the time the authorities arrived, Zemos was infected. They took him to the jail, to spend the rest of the season in a cage for assaulting a patient. But Zemos wasn't lonely. He turned his eyes inward, to the new pet he had crawling around inside of him.
