“Let’s begin with a short test,” Nel said as he brought Misha to another room near the medicine room, which, as far as she remembered, was used only for storage.
In the middle of the otherwise empty room was a large table, and beside it were a large bucket and water jug. Getting closer, Misha could see there was a tray on top of the table, holding a variety of tools. There were three blades with varying lengths and widths, two pairs of scissors, and a number of needles many times the size of regular sewing needles.
“Are these for dissection?” she asked. They were the same tools Ryne had used to teach her how to dissect animals back in the forest.
“Precisely. We’re going to take a look at this parasite of ours. I’ve already done this a few times myself, but it didn’t seem you had the time, so I never invited you. Sorry.”
Nel’s apology sounded like he had left her out of some particularly fun game. Misha wasn’t sure how to respond.
Ignoring her lack of reply, Nel took the cover off of the bucket beside the stand and stuck his hand inside, pulling out a karas. “It’ll be easier with a bigger one, so that’s what I got. After a few tries myself, I believe there are more of the parasites in larger specimens.”
Misha gave a relieved sigh. The slippery creature was the same mottled green and brown she remembered, but perhaps because she was only looking at one instead of a bucket full of them, Misha was much better able to stomach the sight of it.
“I put them to sleep in advance. They are quite slippery creatures, so it is such a pain when they fight back.” Nel gave a wry smile, recalling the circus that was his first attempt at a dissection.
When he tried this previously, the moment he’d placed one of them on the operating table, it had tried to scurry off. Naturally, he had tried to grab it to hold it in place, but it had easily slipped out from between his fingers. In the end, he’d had to work together with the man who had brought the karas in the first place, and they had just barely managed to return the creature to its bucket. That experience had taught Nel that linen gloves were an essential tool for working with the creatures. Eventually, he figured out he needed to sedate the karas and then restrain it with leather straps before getting to work, but it would have been nice if someone had warned him in the first place.
But the man who had brought the karas had an excuse. Usually, since the karas were just prepared as food, cooks tossed flour into the bucket to rob the karas of their slipperiness, used straw to rub off the slime from their skin, and then skinned them all within the bucket. Once the skin was removed, they were hardly slippery, so handling them was no issue. The servant hadn’t expected Nel to try and operate on a living karas, so he was just as surprised when Nel tried to get it on the table. It made sense from Nel’s perspective, as he was interested in seeing what was happening beneath the skin, but it was exceptionally bizarre behavior from the perspective of a local.
“Unfortunately, I couldn’t get small enough gloves for you, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to watch,” Nel said to Misha.
With practiced smoothness, Nel fixed the karas into the restraints on the table, having acquired a pair of translucent gloves without Misha realizing it. They were tight enough to conform to the shape of his hands, but thin enough that each wrinkle in his skin was still visible.
“What are those made of?” she asked.
“Oh, has Ryne never shown you these before? I suppose it’s not that surprising, even as adaptable as he is. You can only make them with tools we have in our village.” Nel spread his hands wide for Misha to see. “It’s fluid from a certain plant mixed with a mineral powder. They are perfectly waterproof and somewhat elastic. We make them to match the shape of your individual hands, so you can still work your fingers with remarkable dexterity. They’re quite convenient.”
Misha watched transfixed as he opened and closed his fingers. “If they’re waterproof, does that stop diseases from passing through as well? So you can treat people without worrying about cuts and scrapes on your hands?”
Misha had been lectured ad nauseam as to how diseases and infections could enter the body through damaged skin, and so she needed to be exceptionally careful when touching sick people. But daily life often left her with tiny scrapes and cuts all over her hands. Keeping her hands and arms perfectly pristine was incredibly difficult. Even scrapes too small to be seen with the naked eye were dangerous, so she was told to always use that antiseptic cream as well.
However, covering your hands with that cream made them extremely slippery, so it was difficult to do any precise work in that state. On top of that, you needed to reapply it every time you washed your hands. It was a frustrating, time-consuming practice.
“That’s right. They are very useful when touching wounds or inside of a patient’s mouth. I carry as many pairs as I can whenever I leave the village.”
“That sounds great. I wish I had some.” Misha made no attempt to hide her envy, earning a cackle from Nel.
“Once you come back to the village, I’ll have some made for you. Anyway, for now, you’ll just have to watch.” With that, he began slicing open the belly of the karas. “From the specimens I’ve dissected so far, I’ve yet to see any oddities in the eyes. Instead, I have found them lying just under the skin or in the mucus on the outside of the skin. For the record, that is unique to these karas. The parasites do not appear that way in the arkles.”
Evidently quite experienced in this kind of work, Nel’s explanation didn’t so much as slow his hands as he cut open the karas. With great precision and speed, he had the karas’s organs exposed.
“Near the abdomen here we have the stomach and intestines. From the samples we’ve observed, it seems the parasite makes its way to the karas through the droppings of the arkles. Either the karas are accidentally sucking in some of the arkle droppings when they gobble up the fish they usually feed on, or those fish already ate the droppings and had the parasite’s eggs inside them. Once the number of parasites grows to a certain extent, it moves into the mucus membranes of the karas and begins laying eggs. It then transfers through the mucus to other karas, spreading throughout the population. At least, that’s our current conjecture.”
“So, there are eggs in the mucus on their skin? On the outside?” Misha asked, staring intently at the karas on the table. With the way it had been opened up, there wasn’t much skin left to see, but she was nevertheless transfixed by what little was still visible. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see any signs of bugs or parasites.