one last breath

Kassander cringed away from the young man's anger, in hurt bewilderment. You would think that Kass would have understood the anger, and maybe if he'd stopped to think back to his own youth, and his own misguided anger at his own mother's abandonment of him, he would have. But in his pain and confusion he couldn't hold on to those old memories, couldn't understand, and so he cringed away with a shaky whimper. But at the boy's last words his gaze would finally drop to the leaves that had opened between his forelegs, proudly displaying the wealth of natural medicines contained in them. Confused and in pain he might be, but his medical knowledge had always been so thoroughly entwined in his life that he could never lose the part of himself that had always been able to latch onto it despite all his anxieties and griefs. Now as he focused on it his mind automatically recognized and categorized the leaves and the mushrooms that tumbled across the carrying case. Some were everyday sorts of relaxants and pain relievers that he'd been medicating himself with for years now. Others... his gaze jerked to Cassiel's in alarm and more than a hint of fear. "These are..."