It was a good thing that it was only 9 years lost. "My lady, I was brought here to tackle your illness. You seem to have memory loss and lost the use of your legs. We want to try our best to get your memories back and allow you to walk again." She said "I guess it's about time. The duke has been a bit cold to me since I woke up." She sounded sad and hurt by it. "Seeing as your station far exceeds mine, I will leave the inspection of your legs to your son and Lady Swiftheart." I looked at Herman. He looked at me skeptically. I scoffed. "C'mon Sir Killroy. With all of you training you should know what heathy leg muscles look like. I want you to examine if they are fine or have they atrophied due to not using them." I said before leaving the room with a worried Fabien. "Does it look like you can help?" he asked me when we closed the door behind us. "I honestly don't know. This is all going to depend on her and her son. It took them 15 minutes. Herman said "The muscles are almost gone. I can barely feel them." "Almost gone or gone? This is all important." "Almost." he confirmed. Not so good.
Now, I looked to Lady Swiftheart. "You are a noble woman of similar rank. The muscles of such a person will obviously be a lot less that a champion fighter's legs. Have examined her legs?" I asked her. "Even compared to mine it was... concerning." She looked really out of place and upset. I looked at her apologetically. "I'm sorry you are having to see this." I said. Turning back to Herman, I said "If there is muscle left, we can save it. Just like any warrior know, if you don't use it, you lose it. That is true for both mind and body. We need to constantly be working at exercising her legs and giving her things to entice her intellectually." Herman looked at me. "How can we do all that!?" "It might be a bit early for walking at this point, but massaging the muscles to increase blood flow is a start. Focus on raising the legs and bending them. About 3 sets of 30 to begin with." I got down on the floor and demonstrated all the different exercises I wanted her to do. "As her son, I expect you to help her at first. These will be hard on anyone who has not done them before. Your mother is a woman of means."
Whether she could do it was really up to her willpower to get better. "As for her mind, we will need to keep her thinking and experiencing things that make her think and feel. Whether it is books or art or music, keep her from a life of dull, idle time. That tends to rot the mind faster than meaningless gossip. Even if it is only gossip, that will at least allow her to process new information and have some companionship." I advised "And her missing memories?" he asked. "Those might return. They also might never return. We can try to bring them back up to the surface, but as I keep saying, you have to be prepared to accept that your mother is only human. Things may not work out perfectly." I told him. Herman frowned. I looked at Lady Swiftheart. "I am sorry to ask so much of you, but this is important to help us search for her memories." I said. "Yes. I don't mind. Ask away." she said, looking at the noblewoman on the bed. Smiling I said "The year is 1352. What do you remember of that year? Natural disasters like famine, drought tremors of the earth? Cultural fads that were really popular?"
Racking her brain, she tried to think of something. "Hereford is a month's travel from the capitol. I don't know if anything I remember will be something she experienced." she said. I nodded. "That is true, but 9 years is a long time to pass in a kingdom. Even if it was not at the same time anything might have diffused across the land. That's why I asked about cultural fads and natural disasters. Word of something like that would definitely spread within a year." I turned to Herman. "What was your mother like in the year 1352? What things did she like? We will all start there and move forward a year until we get to the present. Something will bring up a memory that we can use to help her with other things." I then blinked and added "You were at her side so Lady Swiftheart's question applies to you too if you think there is something that strongly affected her in those years." There was not a lot that Lady Swiftheart could think of other then the drought currently affecting the south. Surprisingly, that seemed to resonate. "My cousin has a home near where it began. She left with her husband to flee."
