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I can smell your health, and heal your ailments. I was Landis Tipton before
Landis Tipton was Landis Tipton. While we gifted him with all of the
Vulnerabilities, mine is the one that he uses primarily, if not exclusively. I
want to make it clear that I did not waste my gift when I had it. I too healed
people. It was at a smaller scale, but you have to understand that none of us
believed that we could announce ourselves to the world. Before Landis was
brave enough to stand in the spotlight, it felt too dangerous to be open to
the public. We decided that we had to be very selective with our clients. Of
course, that didn’t always work out, but we did our best. I think we helped a
lot of people. Everyone we chose was entitled to a healing, but it was sort of
usually considered secondary to the other—more abstract—therapies. People get
sick; it’s a way of life, and I didn’t think that there was anything I could
do about it. It didn’t even occur to us that my gift of healing could one day
be synthesized into a mass-produced cure-all. What people really needed was to
feel better about themselves, and realize their dreams, even if that meant
shifting those dreams to things that were a little more realistic and
attainable. I’m not saying that I was a pointless member of the team, but we
did see our responsibility as being more holistic. On the contrary, my job was
very important, and should not be discounted. You see, healing begins from
within, but physical pain and suffering is real, and it can make it impossible
to feel like your life can get better, even if you’ve not been stricken with
some serious disease. Everyone has something. They have joint pain, or
frequent headaches, or circulation issues. I could fix all of that. Maybe not
permanently, but those first few days after the clients met us were incredibly
vital. It was at least one less thing that they were worried about while they
were trying to move on, and improve their situations. It gave them a new
baseline by which they could judge the things that happened to them in the
future, both good and not-so-great. Healthy body, healthy mind, as they say. I
have heard people ask Landis what people’s health smells like, but I have
never heard his answer. That’s probably because he’s so busy saving the world.
That’s not me being resentful, but it does lead well into the answer to their
question. When something is particularly wrong with someone, their
health typically smells sickly sweet, like spoiled fruit. The disease is
rotting away in their body, creating a build-up of waste, and generating a
toxic smell that anyone would perceive as being wrong, if their noses were
designed to detect the right signals. Poor general health, on the other hand,
is bitter, with metallic overtones, and I could sometimes cure that too, but
generally not. So if you ever meet Landis in person, and he’s a little shy or
standoffish, I can’t speak for him, but that might be why. People just kind of
smell bad all the time, even when they’ve been cured. It’s unsettling, but
it’s part of the job, and I for one think that Landis faces it valiantly.
