Look, look with your special eyes

After a short wait, the covering to the bedchamber was moved and in walked her behemoth of a husband. Aliana greeted Chimera with a sweet smile in response to his sharklike grin, sliding her body closer to his as soon as he was lying down next to her on their bedding. "I have been," she replied in her usual sweet, lyrical tones, leaning her head affectionately against his in return. Though Chimera was often a hard and impassive brute, Aliana got to see him for how he truly was—a being as complex as he was simple, just like his perfectly bisected fur. Ali lifted one snowy white paw and rested it gently against her mate's chest, letting her dainty digits glide through his fur and over his muscles up his neck until she was caressing his cheek, content to give her king simple tender affections as they settled down for bed.

After a moment of snuggling with her love, Ali lifted her head away from Chimera's so she could gaze up into his eyes—notably into the unseeing hazy white of his right eye. It was how she had always known Chimera to be from the day she had met him. To think that she might now have the ability to give him what he'd been so cruelly deprived of through no fault of his own was an emotional power to hold. Ali's petite paw slid up Chi's cheek to brush just beneath his eye, ever so slow and careful with her movements knowing he couldn't see them, allowing him to feel everything while she considered the precipice they stood on. This could be the greatest gift she could give him, or it could have the most horrendous side effects of any medicine she'd ever made. This wasn't a decision she could make on her own.

"If you were given the chance to receive a gift you could only have once in your lifetime, but the cost was a risk of hurting yourself, would you take it?" It was a cryptic riddle to open this serious conversation with, but it was the ultimate crux of the decision he would have to make. Aliana wouldn't leave Chi in the dark for long before she clarified for him. "Ever since Fenmyre fell, I've been trying to find a way to bring your sight back. I wanted to give you something no one else could, and what better gift to offer you? At the time, it felt like a dream all those years ago. But during our travels, I spent all my time with those many healers that worked to cure your sickness. They taught me things, medicines for the eyes, and I think I might have found a combination of all those lessons that could give you your sight back." Aliana paused here, allowing Chimera to process and really digest what she was telling him. He could be able to see the world wholly as everyone else did. He could be restored in ways he'd never been before.

But before she could let him think there were no downsides, she had to give him the possible consequences. "All of my trials have been on smaller animals, also blind. My most recent subject was able to see. The other subjects before him..." Ali drifted off, ears pulling flat to her skull as she thought of the suffering she'd had to put her earlier subjects out of as an act of mercy. They hadn't all been catastrophic failures, and she hadn't had a major setback like those in some time, but there was always that risk. "There's a chance this medicine doesn't work at all, or it might cause more damage in the long run. We won't know until we try it. But I've seen it work, and I wanted to give you the choice you never got to make. Would you like to have your eyesight back, my Chimera?"

"Aliana & Chimera"