With the frenzy of that first, all-important feeding dying down, the hierarchy of draconic needs can inevitably advance. Bonded for life, check. Food, check. And with many of the others who are keen on getting back to sleep, Majel and dark Dyxath investigate the immediate interior of the weyrling barracks, choosing a suitable area to call theirs for the duration of their training. To be sure, the little blue trips tail-over-paws and goes sprawling before he's quite reached the nook he most wants to examine, but they otherwise make it there without incident. The couch looks to fit something between a green and a brown, to which Majel approves, "A logical choice."

K'ane is settled right in the thick of things, seated indian-style on the ground and directing the dragonets that occasionally come up to mill around him at eye-level off gently. This one towards the oil, that to the meat, the other back to his rider. His blue eyes shift over to Majel and her blue, a half-grin on his face; but he doesn't move to rise from where he sits.

Yukie — not as unaffected as she normally is — presses her hands in abject horror as Inayalinaeth clumsily winds her way through the barracks to the bucket of meat provided. In this process, another bucket nearly gets knocked over and an oiling paddle skitters across the stone floor. "I…" Her horror is clearly at the sight of that beautiful, seafoam-glassy hide getting dragged across the ground. As if the greatest of paintings were… "Wait. Wait — did you." The smear of green is almost like the paint scrap of a passing vehicle cut too close to the corner. Nay, it is fresh, glistening ichor. "Wait, wait. Yes, I realize the hunger eclipses everything, but…" Broken words that come with the quick press of clean cloth to the pierced perfection of her hide. She sends Majel a harried look. "They are clumsier than I expected. Does yours bleed?" Lifting away the white-cloth, dark-dark ichor is stained. Meanwhile, Inayalinaeth waits in utter, and still impatience.

« I survive without ichor, of course, » Dyxath answers dryly for himself, muzzle questing hither and thither before he decides that yes, this spot will suit him just fine. Up goes Majel's eyebrow, followed by a small grimace for Yukie. "It would only make sense for him to bleed like everyone else, " she says sensibly, "although I do hope I won't be finding that out for certain for at least a few hours. Or days." There's an openly happy grin for K'ane somewhere in there, right before the woman's frame gives a nearly imperceptible twitch; she frowns, absently reaching around to scratch at her lower back. Twitch, goes Dyxath's tail, before he emerges into full view again with another puzzled tail-flick. He can't reach that funny, prickling sensation between his wings.

K'ane furrows his brows at Inayalinaeth's BLEEDING, hefting himself belatedly to his feet to wade past a few greens — what do you call them, when they are all together like that? A frolic? — to grab a kit and a bucket of meat, heading towards the greenling to hand over both. FOOD and MEDICINE here have some. Before he can say anything to her, or do more than return that grin to Majel, though, he's being pulled off by a brown weyrling with a panicked look in his eye.

"I mean easily," Yukie's concern is settled into the concise patterns of the healer. K'ane's assistance is taken with a grateful look but as the bronzerider is pulled away she turns to frown at the green. Something in the shared expression shivers a deeper darkness, leashed from devouring the world. "The skin of," Inayalinaeth patiently provides, "Dyxath's hide isn't… thin?" Already she's learning that this is something different. Once the flow of ichor is stemmed, Yukie feeds the green in little bits.


"I don't know about thin, " Majel concludes after a few moments, "but it's definitely dry. Itchy. Definitely itchy." And Dyxath twitches again, as if to offer up concrete evidence as he fumbles his way toward the nearest supply of oil, his weyrling trailing in his wake. Once they're settled on the floor, she begins a liberal application, first to that spot between his wings, then up and down the rest of his back, methodically using fingers to massage where a paddle might be too blunt for soothing. His gradual relief eases the little frown in her brow, too.

Inayalinaeth's head slowly turns to regard Dyxath as if finally seeing the blue for the first time, a subtle play of darkness whirling in the blue-green serenity of her eyes that match the beauty of jade. "I think it is just her," Yukie concludes quietly, perplexed as she does a very non-healery thing and presses her fingertip gently into the the soft tissues of Inayalinaeth's hide. "I will ask the weyrlingmasters about it later, for now there's hunger to be fed." Despite the intensity of a gaze that lingers, the baby green is more than willing to be fed chunks of dripping meat, uncaring if rivulets of blood splash her muzzle in gore. Inherent beauty flows, a masterwork of long, serpentine curves. "Dyxath? How are you," she grunts when insistently pushed for more food, "holding up?"



Oh, hunger. Dyxath has more of that, too. As one need is satisfied, another takes its place, leaving Majel to retrieve a bucket of meat and tug it close to where they're seated so that she can feed with one hand and oil with the other. "Dyxath, " she confirms for Yukie at length, expression pleased. As for how she's holding up? "I don't really know yet. All of his needs are so immediate." There's a yawn between movements, however. "If anything, I'm still tired." Or maybe that's the dark blue's eyes starting to lid as his feeding slows again, bit by bit.


"It — They are." Yukie's quiet voice exudes a growing thoughtfulness that yields these first awkward steps into her new life with Inayalinaeth. "I am exhausted," she finally admits to her fellow weyrling, feeding the last of the meat bits to the young green before she must clean the blood off. Yet for that instant between the final morsel and the removal of blood, the essence of Eternity rests in the cold gaze. Life, death and everything in between is hung on a moment before time resumes. "Majel — you're still Majel, right? I am grateful my name is still my own." Yukie is still Yukie, see. No crazy changes there. But her own eyes are drooping and the tiredness is straining the lines of her posture. "I think we pick our own couch…" Never is the healer this flustered. Inayalinaeth is already choosing… and Yukie has little to do but follow. "Good-night," she whispers back with a tired smile, gentle at its edges.


"I would have no other name, " Majel says decisively, but there's a little smile for the healer and her green as they find a place to rest. Soon thereafter, she and Dyxath follow suit, curled up within a hand's reach of one another. She'll no doubt awaken later that morning with hands and robe still sticky and pressed with sand, but those are all secondary concerns. For now, they dream.