Guro Challenge #25: Organs
#25 of 33 Day Guro Challenge
Please excuse my use of a magic AU and a cheesy manga trope.
Blaggut supposed Slipp was right, he was an idiot; a clever beast would have asked what the word "quarantine" actually meant before going to find out for himself. Of course he'd been caught and thrown out, amid many curses from the healers (he didn't speak their language but he got the gist), followed by many more curses from Slipp (those he did understand). By then it was too late, and many months later he was still living with the consequences.
The ward had been full of young lads and lasses, mostly delicate of build and pale of ear and nosetip, thin from their sickness. They languished gracefully and sighed and swooned, and he was sure they were holding back the worst of their coughs even though bringing up the suffocating matter in their lungs could save them. Blaggut did not. He had tried, would hold it back as long as he could, and he could hold it for a while because it came in bursts. But the filth collecting inside him hurt and sooner or later he would have to force it out in great hacking coughs which buckled his knees and shook his body and tore his throat and left him spitting bloody slime. The stink of compost lingered in his breath under the peppery sweetness, and he grew to hate the colour orange.
When the captain called him stupid, his throat tingled. When the captain hit him, he coughed and swallowed back the mess. When the captain left him alone, his hammock shook with his coughs, and he felt a little sorrow as he threw the result away and lay awake, waiting for his lungs to stop burning so he could get some sleep.
Now he leans over, paws resting on the bedside table in their borrowed room, hurting from throat to gut. Tears mat his fur, and he glances over at Slipp's empty bed, so close to his own. The door opens.
"Hey, wotcher doin' in 'ere in the middle o' the day? Here I am slavin' me paws to the bone over those damn pots, an' yore lazin' about! Wot're you even doin'?"
Blaggut looks at the wilting marigold floating in the washbowl, thick globular strings of saliva ruining the pure water, and picks more petals off his tongue. "Nothin', Cap'n. Nothin' at all." The captain snorts and leaves, and Blaggut's lungs hurt less than his heart.
Hanahaki Disease is an illness borne of one-sided love, causing flowers to form and grow in the lungs.
The Language of Flowers declares marigolds a symbol of cruelty in love.