Sorry for no upload yesterday, I'm still only about 60% and slept for like 14 hours on some sweet cold+flu medicine 😅 apparently the likely explanation is I picked up covid some time around new year, and it's just been hanging around/long covid ever since

The specimen jars clinked and rattled in the back of the wagon, swaddled in blankets and tucked cosily into the narrow bed. The organs did not like the cold. Nutritionally, the preservatives could store them indefinitely, but this far north Vivian had already lost two toes and three noses to frostbite. Not to mention a priceless wyvern tail.

Seated up front of the Travelling Graftsman, Vivian guided the horses into the mountain town with the reins held between his knees, freeing his hands to knit a tea cosy for a spleen. He pulled the wagon to a halt and ducked into the back, pokering the small stove back to life. The firewood was getting low, and frost was spreading across the outside of the glass containers. He rubbed the frozen jars between his hands to warm them, knowing it was mostly futile. The entire batch was nearly spoiled. He would have to sell the heirloom trollknife. His family would be furious. If they ever caught up with him.

Positioned in the centre of the huddle of jars were the limbs and hide of a fire mephit, but its briny liquid was no longer bubbling. The edges of the red flesh inside was turning grey. Without a host, the flesh was burning itself out.

What stupid god had decided that fire mephits should grow in hot climates, and ice mephits in cold ones, when the reverse was clearly far more beneficial? He supposed it would not have made such a promising trade route if they had not.

But promising and lucrative were far from the same. Wherever he travelled, his reputation preceded him. People were understandably distrustful of a travelling graftsman whose services literally cost an arm and a leg, and who would be gone by morning, taking with him the faces and voices of all the beautiful maidens in the village, so the tales went. The worst part was knowing he'd have made ten times the profit, with none of the scruples, back in the cities, if only he'd stuck to running the family chop shop, taking apart hopeful adventurers for resale.

A villager poked his head into the front of the wagon.

“If you’re here to steal our body parts, we haven’t got any,” the man warned.

“I’ve more than I can use already,” Vivian snapped.

“You should leave. Your kind aren’t welcome here,” the man said, though so thoroughly unconvincingly that Vivian paid him more attention.

The man was craning his head further into the wagon, peeking with fascination at the flensing instruments. He was wielding a pitchfork, the badge of office of a riotous mob, which was the traditional greeting villagers gave to a travelling graftsman. He lacked the customary flaming torch, however, on account of only having one arm.

Vivian looked down at the mephit flesh. It was likely worth more than this villager would earn in a lifetime, but by morning it would be a lump of dead meat.

"How did you lose that?"

The man looked glumly down at his stump. "I was a lumberjack."

Vivian sighed. “Well, I’ll give you a hot new body for some firewood."