Nia Fontaine

@niafontaine

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The Healer's Burden

His hands are clasped and his eyes are closed and he is holding himself together with the same care he gives everyone else. The young healer kneels against a deep teal void — the color of sterile calm, of hospital walls in a fantasy world — wearing robes that were once fine and are now threadbare. Ochre and amber fabric layered over blue, the materials aged and softened by use rather than time. Silver bracers on his forearms catch the side light. His locs fall forward, partially shielding his face, which carries the particular exhaustion of someone who absorbs other people's pain for a living. The prayer pose isn't religious — it's structural. It's the thing holding the figure upright when everything else wants to collapse. The teal background glows behind him like an aura he doesn't know he's projecting. No mystical effects, no visible magic — just a person who has given so much of themselves that what remains is this: a body at rest, a face trying to remember what rest feels like.