Well, this is what not protecting one’s sleep looks like. My apologies again. I’ll have another update to make up for the missed one later this week. Tomorrow is my birthday. There’ll still be an update, even if it might be as small as this one.

This is a serial, the first part of which is HERE

Chapter 5: Rather than a bed, a copse

There are people who can perform medical feats. There are people who are employed to do so, who are even given the title of doctor. Yet, can it really be said that is a doctor? Something that has troubled some of those who are called doctors, and troubled those who think too much and have too much free time, is this;

Just how important is it for a doctor to save people from death?

Some are consumed by this question. The uncounted dimensions have many death doctors who bring life to death, rather than keeping life from death. At what point should a doctor allow someone to die? Should they ever?

For that matter, was everyone worthy of treatment? Was it even a question of worth?

Dr. Bones was not really considering these things. He heard a sickly cough, so he followed it. He needed to find the lab, and helping out an ill native of the dimension would probably aid in that. The kind of person who just took things as they came, that was Dr. Bones.

Though, had you asked him, you’d have gotten a scary answer to at least one of those questions.

Dr. Bones was of the opinion that it was never too late to take away a life preserved, but if you didn’t preserve that life, you’d not have the choice of letting death take it. Speaking of life, Dr. Bones found that being one of the undead had made him a lot more sensitive to life than before.

It was like smelling raw flesh, or seeing a shining torch.

He pushed through the grasses and came to a copse. The trees were arranged quite like a basket, they weren’t the more common blue leaved trees of the windy lands Dr. Bones was in. No, the snowy brown trunks of these trees fanned out into a lattice of white branches, and on these branches were creamy white leaves that were more like cushions than anything else. The leaves were densely packed forming a bed.

Indeed, these trees were among a type that appears in many dimensions. Slumber trees. Dr. Bones was familiar with the breed before him. The Cauliflower-bed tree, so named because the tops look quite like a cauliflower.

There, lying feebly atop the trees was a spirit coughing out what looked like rose petals.