Hug Me and You'll Die

18: I'm beseeching you, please show a little restraint!

At once, Desmia felt like she was the one who had been toyed with.

She wanted to look to the skies and cry out. She had only wanted to tease the younger boy a bit. How did that escalate into her being on the receiving end of such a dreadful sounding curse-like promise? 

Not knowing how else she could react with others still in the room, she ended up shaking off Ferris' hold on her and fumbling for an apple slice to shove into his mouth to prevent him from speaking further.

As she blocked his lips with the slice she stammered, "P-pint-sized crybabies shouldn't be rambling on about things they know nothing about!"

While Desmia hadn't used a great deal of strength to perform this action, when Ferris reflexively bit into the apple slice, there was a faint cracking sound. Almost immediately after this, Ferris felt a dull aching in his oral cavity.

A bit dazed, he took the slice out of his mouth to confirm the niggling suspicion that he had.

When he saw the tiny tooth wedged inside the prettily peeled piece of fruit, he realized that his suspicion had been correct: his loose lower central incisor had finally fallen out.  

Redundantly, he felt for the empty space inside his mouth with his tongue. "It's really gone...the loose tooth...."

At six and half years old, Ferris had already experienced the loss of a baby tooth twice before; therefore, he was fairly calm.

In contrast, Desmia received a second terrible shock seconds after the first one she received from the babbling promise.

In a panic, she pried the small boy's jaws open. When she saw the noticeable gap in his row of pearly whites, her complexion paled. "Y-You're broken..." I knew you were weak but I didn't think it was the point where your body was crumbling!

"Hurry and give me the tooth! M-maybe we can stick it back in!" She thought to herself that in the hands of an excellent doctor, even a severed limb could be reattached like new so what was one little tooth?

Her thinking would reveal that although she had knowledge on medicine because of her interest in elixir and pill creation, she was more of a pharmacist than a doctor. She mainly studied chemical properties and reactions, not human physiology and prognosis.

She swiped the apple slice from his hands; however, before she could get the tooth out, Saffron appeared and took it from her.

"Young mistress, I'm beseeching you, please show a little restraint! You're a lady for gods' sake. How could you be shoving things into peoples' mouthes like this?" she reproached with a darkened expression.

"But Saffron, he's falling apart!" she stressed.

Earl Fairbloom's face slackened when he heard his daughter use the words "falling apart" to describe the condition of child who had merely lost a baby tooth. "Marysol, you have to stop making a scene over such a small matter! It'll cause Lord Ferris unnecessary distress!"

"You said this is a small matter? This?" She pointed to the tooth in a burst of outrage. "The kid just lost a part of his body! If this is a small matter then what would it take for something to be constituted as a big matter? A stab to the heart? A punctured lung? A decapitation?"

With her outburst, the room fell silent. No one understood why this seven year old girl was being so scarily dramatic.

In Desmia's mind, she did not think she was being dramatic at all. In fact, she thought it was everyone else that were being too indifferent.