Tiny Raven

“So … you know her?” I asked as Sans and I left the bookstore. I slid my new paperback into my bag as we walked. “The bunny woman, I mean.”

Sans answered with a shrug and an affirmative hum, his expression distant.

“Would you tell me – ”

An uproar of cackles from a nearby shop cut me off, and I pulled my hood up to hide my face. I did not want to deal with my mother right now.

Or ever, honestly.

I cleared my throat, self-conscious and uncertain about asking my question again before opting to let it drop.

“She ran the Snowed Inn,” Sans said as we approached the bollards that marked the end of the shopping district. “Her sister ran the Snowdin general store next door.”

“Wait … Is Snowdin the name of the town or the name of the inn?”

“Yes,” Sans said with a grin, his eyelights sparking back for a moment.

I snorted before thinking about it more.

“ … Which came first? Snowdin the town or Snowed Inn the … inn?”

Sans shrugged, “Who knows? It was named long before I moved there.”

We stopped at a traffic light and I glanced at him in my periphery. His skeletal face was as difficult to read as always, but his tone was lighthearted.

“Where’d you live before that?” I asked, turning my attention to the signal across the street. “I know the Underground wasn’t big … ”

I trailed off as I felt Sans tense beside me, before quickly backtracking. “I mean, if you wanna talk about it. Sorry if that was too pushy or intrusive or so-”

“It’s fine,” Sans said, cutting my babbling off.

The words were curt and felt untrue, but I backed off. The walk signal chirped, indicating we could cross.

Once we were on the other side of the street I pulled my hood back down and shook out my hair.

“… When we were at your sister’s cafe,” Sans said, quiet enough that I had to strain to hear him over the sounds of the city. “Your nephew mentioned she’d eaten cinnamon buns in Snowdin.”

I nodded, recalling the conversation. I did my best to hide my surprise that he remembered it.

“That’s why she wanted to sell monster food at the cafe,” I said with a nod. “I think she hoped she’d come across the same monster who made them by some happy coincidence.

“Her name’s Bonnie,” Sans said. “She’s Lottie’s little sister.”

I stopped in my tracks, unable to do more than stare at him.

I knew the Underground was small …

But what were the chances?

“Lottie probably knows the recipe,” he added. “If you really wanted to find out.”

“Small world,” I said as my brain rebooted and I could walk again. “Too bad Abby and our mother don’t exactly ‘get along’.”

“From the sound of it, your mother doesn’t get along with anybody.”

I snorted, “You’re not wrong.”

An image of Lottie, her arm broken by my mother, flashed through my thoughts, and I wrapped my arms around myself as my gut churned. She was safe for the night, but Lottie would be returned at some point.

Which meant she was going to be facing my mother’s abuse again. Abuse I was utterly powerless to stop.

Rage, grief, and impotent empathy curdled within me, a painful vice around my heart.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, pulling me from my dark thoughts.

“We’re up next,” I said, the words thicker than I wanted. I swallowed hard, trying to push my emotions away. “We’d better hurry back.”

---

My name was being called by a nurse as we re-entered the clinic. She waited a few moments before repeating herself.

“Theresa Navarro?”

I spared Sans a final glance, meeting his hollow, empty eye sockets and giving him a small, encouraging smile. Then I raised my hand and picked up speed.

“Hi! That’s me.”

The woman wasn’t very old – a bit older than Abby. She was wearing pink scrubs and her light brown hair was in a loose, messy bun. She looked up from her clipboard with dark-circled eyes that widened as she took in Sans’ skeletal face. She glanced back at her paperwork before looking up at us with a broad smile, flashing metal braces that sported purple and orange bands.

“Nice to meet you, Theresa!” she nodded to me. “And Sans. I’m Grace. I’ll be assisting Doctor Raymond today. Please, follow me.”

“Thanks,” I said. I stepped aside to allow Sans to go ahead of me, but he refused with a small shake of his head. I frowned, concerned, and flashed a quick “You okay?” at him in ASL.

He shrugged, which was fair enough. He didn’t want to be here any more than I did.

“I prefer to go by Terra,” I said as I fell in step behind Grace.

“I’ll make a note of it,” she said. “Alright, first we need to take some vitals. You’ve had one of these before, right Sans?”

Despite asking him she looked at me for the answer.

I responded by looking to Sans.

He nodded, and I was grateful that Grace accepted that as an answer.

“Excellent! Your previous data should be in the system for us to compare to. I need you to take off your shoes and jacket and step on the scale, Sans.”

“It’s my first time at one of these,” I said as Sans slid out of his shoes. “I’d appreciate understanding what’s going on.”

“Of course!” Grace said. “Everything should be fairly routine. Honestly, it’s almost exactly like a regular physical for us humans.”

Sans’ movements had stalled. He stood in front of the scale, fiddling with the zipper of his hoodie, sockets dark and expression distant.

I was about to ask if he could keep it on – I couldn’t imagine it would add much to his weight, as threadbare as it was. Before I could, he pulled the zipper down and slipped it off his shoulders, holding it out for me to take.

I hesitated, surprised, before reaching to take it. I held it close to my chest, knowing how much it meant to him.

Sans looked so much smaller without it on.

“Perfect!” Grace hummed as she moved the weights to balance the scale. “Forty-two  pounds! Now, Sans, if you could stand here with your back against the wall … stand up straight, please … Great! Just like that! Don’t move, okay?”

As she lowered the slider of the stadiometer to meet his skull, I bit my lip. Something about how she was talking to Sans bothered me, but I couldn’t pinpoint it.

“Wonderful!” Grace said as she wrote down the number. “You can relax now, Sans. If you’d both follow me to the exam room, please.”

Sans stepped away from the wall and I offered him his hoodie.

“Keep it,” he muttered, his voice tight. “They’ll just make me take it off again.”

I nodded, holding it close to my chest again, honored that he trusted me with something so important.

Grace led us to an exam room, oblivious to the exchange.

“Please sit in that chair, there, Sans. I need to check your mana flow and Soul beat. Terra? If you would sit in the other chair, the one in the corner?”

I took the indicated seat and watched as Grace wrapped a cuff around Sans’ humerus. She pushed a button on the machine it was attached to and it began to inflate.

“Monsters don’t have blood like we do, but they do have a vascular system,” Grace explained when she noticed my curious stare. “Instead of a heart, monsters have their Soul – and instead of blood they have mana. This device is based off of a blood pressure cuff, but it measures the flow of mana, instead.

“It’s actually almost exactly the same to measure mana flow and blood pressure. We humans have systolic and diastolic pressure – when the heart beats or when it’s resting between beats. Monsters, similarly, have two different pressures – one for when their Soul ‘beats’ and one for when it rests.”

“The Soul beats like a heart?” I asked, surprised. “Wait … shouldn’t we have mana-flow too, then? We have Souls.”

“We do,” Grace said with a nod. “And we have mana-flow, although it’s much weaker in humans. We don’t measure it because mana isn’t necessary for our survival. For monsters, it is.”

The machine on Sans’ arm clicked and hissed as it released the pressure. Grace looked at the numbers and wrote them down on her paperwork. “It looks like your mana flow is a little weak. You’re gonna want to make sure you’re eating plenty of magic food, okay?”

Sans nodded, his face devoid of emotion.

“On the other hand, your Soul beat is strong and healthy! Congratulations! Good job!”

All at once I realized why she was setting me on edge – she was treating Sans like a child. I frowned, about to complain, when she turned to me.

“Theres- ah, Terra? The front desk gave you some paperwork to fill out, right?”

“Yeah,” I said as I dug it out of my bag to hand to her.

“Excellent! This will make things much easier. Give me just a minute to get you fully checked in … ”

Grace took the paperwork to where a computer monitor and keyboard were mounted to the wall. While she began typing in all of Sans’ information, I looked around the room.

It looked almost exactly like every other exam room I had ever had the misfortune of being in. Half of one wall was taken up by cabinets and a counter, part of another was occupied by the computer monitor and a small table. Large biohazard and trash bins sat near the door. The other walls were covered in anatomy posters and familiar-looking medical devices – an otoscope, ophthalmoscope, another blood pressure cuff – as well as a boxy tablet-looking device that I didn’t know the use for. The exam table itself was the biggest difference, being larger and sturdier than the ones in any doctor’s office I had ever been in.

I wondered if there were different setups for monsters with non-humanoid body plans. I couldn’t imagine someone with a tail being comfortable on a table like the one in this room.

I swallowed, noticing the ball of anxiety that had begun to build in my chest.

I hated doctor offices.

“Alright, could you tell me your primary complaint? Your reason for coming in today.”

“As a necessary sacrifice of my time to the god Bureaucracy,” I said dryly. Sans snorted beside me, easing some of my encroaching anxiety, but Grace just stared at me, her expression blank and clearly not understanding. “Ah, the general physical,” I clarified.

A few heartbeats of silence followed before her face broke into a wide smile and she barked out a laugh.

“Well, that’s certainly one way to describe it!” she said as she chuckled. She turned back to the computer and typed in my answer – the second one, I assumed. “Can I get Sans’ ID number, please?”

Before I could tell her to just check the paperwork Sans had already rattled the jumble of numbers and letters off to her.

Grace gasped.

“You haven’t had a checkup in nearly two years?” she said as she scrolled down the records. “That … That can’t be right, but we don’t have any more recent information … Monsters are supposed to be seen at least once a year – our clinic recommends every six months at absolute minimum.”

“Guess I fell through the cracks,” Sans said, his voice flat and monotone.

“Right … ” Grace said softly. “Well, that means we’ll have to do everything. For a skeleton that means … Samples of your magic, dust, and possibly marrow … ”

His marrow?!

I stared at Sans, only able to see half of his face. I couldn’t read the emotion behind his dark sockets and frozen grin. For all I knew he was emotionless.

“We’ll also need to take a look at your Soul.”

It was only because I was staring at him that I saw the lightning flash of emotion cross his face. Tension pulled at the corners of his smile and sockets, teeth ground together, balled fists clenching in his lap. There and gone in an instant.

“That sounds invasive,” I said as I turned away from him, deeply uncomfortable.

I was starting to understand why he hadn’t told me about this particular necessity.

Grace stepped away from the computer and began rifling through the cabinets, pulling out tools and instruments and placing them on the countertop.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But we wouldn’t do it unless it was necessary.” She held a gown out to Sans. “I’m sorry we have to do so many tests, but once we’re done you’ll be good for another year or more!”

The skeleton took the gown from her with a stiff, wordless nod.

“I’ll need you to take off everything and put that on with the opening in the back. Then hop up on the table. I’ll be back as soon as I can with the doctor.”

And then she was gone.

I stared at the closed door, filled with shock and horror.

“I can tell them to fuck off,” I told Sans. “The mandate says you have to be seen by a doctor and certified as healthy. That’s it. Just say the word.”

To my surprise he shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said as he stood and pulled his t-shirt up and off.

I looked down at my hands with an embarrassed squeak.

“D-Do you want me to wait outside?” I asked.

Sans huffed something that might have been an attempted laugh.

“It’s fine,” he said. His shorts landed on the floor next to his shirt. “S’just bones. Same as all those decorations that were everywhere last week. You didn’t have a problem with those.”

“Sure,” I said. “But those aren’t people.”

I looked up at poster on the wall, an anatomical depiction of a generic monster Soul, with parts cut away and labeled.

Plenty of people didn’t think monsters were people, either.

I didn’t turn back to look at Sans until I heard the crinkle of paper, the indication that he’d climbed up onto the exam table.

The hospital gown was an awkward fit, too wide at the neck, but it covered him well enough. I snorted at the pile of clothes he’d left on the floor.

“What about during the exam?” I asked as I bent to pick up his shorts to fold, having nowhere else for my nervous energy to go. “I can leave-”

“No,” Sans said, cutting off the question before I could answer. “… Stay?”

The word was so soft, barely a whisper. Something between a request and a plea.

Something small and warm and painful bloomed in my chest. I kept my head down, attention on folding his discarded clothes and putting them on the chair beside me.

“Of course,” I promised. “I won’t go anywhere unless you tell me to.”

“… Thanks.”

---

We waited for ten minutes before I handed my phone to Sans and pulled my new book from my bag.

Ten minutes later I took my phone back to call into work, letting them know I might be late and apologizing profusely. I still had more than enough time to get there, but I wasn’t about to be the asshole who didn’t show up without a call, leaving them short staffed.

Another twenty minutes and I started pacing, unable to concentrate on my book. Anxiety had begun to build, a tight snarl in my chest, at both being stuck in an exam room and the worry that I was going to miss my shift at my new job.

Every minute after that my panic grew until I felt like screaming.

Until the doctor finally showed up a goddamn hour later.

The door flew open without so much as a warning knock, admitting a very large man who bustled into the room, introducing himself in a blur of words. He immediately strode toward me, hand outstretched for me to shake, invading my personal space without a second thought.

Already on edge, my lizard brain defaulted into trauma-response mode, leaving me frozen and unable to to do anything but cower away from him.

Don’t doctors usually knock before entering patient rooms?

The thought, too late to stop my terrified flinch, was enough to snap my brain back into gear, and my response went from freeze to fight.

I pulled myself to my full height – a good foot shorter than the doctor – and glared at the man.

“I’m not your patient,” I said, trying to keep my voice low and even. I looked over at Sans, sitting on the exam table with dark sockets.

The doctor stared at me, hand still outstretched, confused.

Then Grace entered the room, breaking the stalemate before it could truly become awkward.

“Here!” she said as she stepped around the doctor, placing herself between us. She held a stack of papers and pamphlets out to me. “These will explain everything you’ll need to know about he procedures we’ll be doing today. As I said before, we’ll be taking samples of Sans’ bones and magic, as well as some of his marrow. We’ll also need to take a look at his Soul.” She turned back to the doctor, and I got the impression she was very deliberately not looking at either me or Sans. “We might need to take a sample of that, as well.”

“Of his Soul!?” I demanded with a snarl.

“I-It’s a fairly standard procedure,” she responded, clearly not expecting my hostility.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said. He had given up on shaking my hand and was now standing at the counter, pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves. “Monsters don’t experience pain the same way we humans do. A small Soul sample won’t cause him any harm.”

I glanced at Sans, and his expression told me all I needed to know about the veracity of the statement. The doctor either didn’t know what he was talking about, or he was outright lying to me. Either way, it rankled against my nerves.

“Right,” Grace said, not sounding very convinced herself. “Anyway, we’ll start with a basic physical, then move on from there.”

The doctor stepped toward Sans before grabbing him by the jaw and forcing him to look into an ophthalmoscope.

“Hey!” I snapped, throwing myself into the doctor’s space, separating him from Sans. Both human and monster jumped away from me, surprised and bemused. I glared at the doctor. “Do not manhandle the skeleton.”

“I am only doing my job,” he said, barely hiding his annoyance. Like I was the one in the wrong.

“You can do that while treating him with some basic respect,” I said.

The doctor frowned, muttering under his breath, before finally nodding in agreement.

I sat back down in the chair I’d been directed to when we had first come into the exam room, watching the man’s moves intently.

“Why are you looking into his sockets anyway?” I asked. “He’s a skeleton, there’s no retinas to check.”

“Look this way,” the doctor said as he returned to his examination. Sans obeyed without fuss. “I try to be thorough with my examinations. The more data we have, the better care we can provide. Good. Now open your mouth. Can you form a tongue?”

I blinked in surprise, unaware that was even a possibility.

I was even more surprised when Sans responded by sticking out a blue appendage and saying “aaaaahhhh”.

“Excellent. The magic looks well-saturated. Nurse, please record the color and quality.”

“Of course, Doctor Raymond,” Grace said, reminding me what the man’s name was.

“How much of a body can you manifest?” Raymond asked as he moved to look into Sans’ acoustic meatus.

“Full,” he answered, monotone. “ ‘Cept my skull, hands, ‘nd feet.”

“Fascinating,” Raymond said.

I was quietly relieved he didn’t ask Sans to show him.

The doctor moved on with the examination, putting a stethoscope to Sans’ chest and telling him to take deep breaths. I could see his rib cage rise and fall with them, and for the first time I wondered how the skeleton breathed.

And why he would need to.

Raymond felt along the bones in Sans’ arms and legs, checked the reflexes of his knees, had him hold his arms out straight and push against his hands …

It was almost exactly like what I would expect if I were to go to a physical exam – which made no sense. All the tests the doctor was doing made sense for a human with flesh and blood, but Sans wasn’t human. He didn’t have lungs to listen to or muscle to check the tone and strength of.

As the appointment stretched on it felt more and more absurd.

And demeaning, as the whole time Raymond ordered Grace to make notes about his observations.

I was already deeply uncomfortable with the entire thing, and I felt sick when I realized they hadn’t even gotten to the more invasive parts of the exam.

When Raymond pulled the boxy tablet-looking thing away from the wall and centered it over Sans’ chest Grace came over to speak to me.

“That checks a monster’s Soul, without the need to summon it,” she explained. “It’s much less invasive. It’s similar to something like an ultrasound or an MRI.”

The machine hummed to life, and I did my best to keep an eye on the doctor while not staring at Sans’ Soul on the screen. Even with the barrier of a digital display it felt far too intrusive.

“This can’t be right … ” Raymond muttered as he fiddled with the settings on the tablet. “Nurse?”

Grace stepped over to assist, frowning as she apparently tried troubleshooting the device.

“It looks like it’s working properly, doctor.”

“Maybe it’s because of its magical composition … Order it to summon its Soul.”

I stared at the doctor.

“What?”

“There is a problem with the scanner’s readings. Order your skeleton to summon its Soul.”

Past the anger I felt at him referring to Sans as “it” I heard the concern and confusion in the doctor’s voice. I looked to Sans, trying to get a read on his thoughts, but he was sitting completely straight and still, looking away from me.

“I’m not going to order him to do anything,” I said. “But, if it’s actually important, you can ask him to.”

“Miss-”

“S’fine,” Sans said, cutting the doctor off before he could try to bully me into compliance. The room was filled with a ghostly, silverly glow as the monster summoned his Soul of his own volition.

I looked down at my hands before I could catch a glimpse of it.

“Right,” Raymond said. I watched his boots turn away from me and return to the exam table. There was the noise of him fiddling with the tablet again, as well as the tapping of someone typing on a computer.

“The readings match historical data, Doctor Raymond,” Grace said.

There was a moment of silence, thick enough to cut with a knife, and then a click.

“You can put your Soul back,” Raymond said.

I looked up again once the silvery light was gone.

“Just get the magic sample,” he said to Grace. Then he turned to me. “Come with me. I need to speak with you.”

---