Tonsillitis

Mallory had just finally fallen asleep when the door to her room creaked open and a stripe of light fell inside. At once she was awake again, which meant the pain in her throat was back. Although Mallory was a well-behaved child as a rule, she forgot herself a bit and tried to tug fire out of the air around her. Fortunately there was a medicine in her IV to make her not able to do that, set up for just such an occasion. She was an ordinary little girl and entirely helpless.

A small figure slipped into the room and Mallory saw that fire wouldn't have worked anyway- it was Dust. The whole reason they were roommates back home was because Dust couldn't be set on fire and usually made everything she was touching fireproof too.

Mallory had never been happy to see Dust before. She would have screamed 'hello' if her throat had let her.

"Hey Mal," Dust whispered, closing the door behind her without a sound, and pit-patting closer. "Cantcha talk?"

Mallory shook her head.

"Most people like you better that way, I bet."

Mallory raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry," said Dust, "I forgot you can't talk and can't get me back for that. It's not fair. Hold still a moment, okay?"

She was right beside Mallory now, looking down at her. The bed was very low because a lot of the doctors here were elves, and that let Dust be tall for a minute.

She laid the palm of her cold, soft hand on Mallory's throat. Dust had tiny round little hands that looked almost like paws.

Mallory usually did not trust her roommate, but she knew instinctively to be still and quiet. Dust closed her eyes and the air around her got cool and damp. A numb chill spread through Mallory's neck.

An alarm shrieked. It seemed at first to be coming from everywhere, but it was coming from the bank of monitors at Mallory's right hand.

Dust went for the window. She ran immediately, without wasting a moment to react to the alarm, and from that moment on Mallory secretly, deep down, respected her, even though her family was rich and she was obnoxious.

"Go, go!" Mallory hollered, finding that she could holler again.

The door crashed open as a bunch of white-coated people exploded inside and started checking absolutely everything, and poking Mallory all over, and asking questions- some of which were pretty stupid questions, too.

Mallory insisted that a big human in a trenchcoat had come into her room and tried to ask for her wallet, but she found out soon afterwards that Dust had gotten caught right outside the window, and she refused to talk about how she had gotten punished.

Apparently, she could have frozen Mallory's throat, or exploded her jugular vein, or given her blood poisoning, and no one cared that she'd managed to heal her tonsillitis instead.

But Mallory cared.