Midmornings are always a busy time for the infirmary — a time for the sickly and the elderly to be seen, a quiet business that is wholly unlike the mad-hatter rush of threadfall triage. All healers are adequate in the tending of the common ailments, but for some reason Xieli has been sequestered from the group that tends to the hoard of coughs and quavering complaints of gout and arthritic pain. She tends the entrance desk, a ledger in front of her, fine, neat script marking down certain items from a page of fluid notes obviously not in her own hand.

Ksenia enters the infirmary quite like a cat about to make it's foray into a DOG'S LAIR. Hesitant, dragging her ass and looking much like she expects to be drowned amidst claws and teeth and attitude. She cradles her right arm against her chest, the dark cherry of all that long hair hangs in thick tangles around her face and the vibrant colors of the loose pants and tunic set she wears is muddied up one side. She clears her throat delicately — barely heard this sound — and whispers in the tiniest voice towards Xieli, tawny eyes focused on the woman's fingers. "I might need some help but it looks like you are all way to busy and it's just a paltry thing so I'll just be on my way." Gaze flicks up and the only reason why the trader woman isn't FLEEING after this HALF-ASSED attempt at being good is because Xieli is a face she recognizes. "You!"

"Oh, trader," Xieli greets, her smile spreading broadly across the plains of her face. "What have you done to yourself? Come, come on then." She leaves her ledger and the notes to wave Ksenia to follow her to one of the curtained-shrouded slab cubes that the healers do their primary work within. "Have a seat, have a seat." She apparently just EXPEECTS Ksenia to do what she tells her to do. Such is the ego. Such is the… well, Ksenia knows more than most what this little healer is capable of doing.

"Balls," Ksenia curses to herself when she's DISCOVERED. Like a five-turn-old, she drags her feet as she SLOWLY follows the healer towards the curtain-shrouded slab cubes. Ick. She eyes the thing like it might bite her in the ass (literally) before so carefully setting her butt down on it, ooching back with the lift of one cheek and then the other. "Oh, it's nothing. Just a little cut. I fell while I was trying to — " What was she trying to do? "— meander through the jungles." Ksenia feels no need to hide that from this healer. "Really. I am used to binding my own wounds." Except there's a reason why Ksenia has managed to find her way into the infirmary.

"And why did you feel it pertinent to wander through the jungles, where the feline play with their prey?" It is obvious where Xieli thinks Ksenia fits in THAT particular cycle of life. Her eyebrows raise in expectation of an answer, and she bustles to wash her hands. "Show me," she imperatively dictates with a nod to the arm. "I am sure it is worse than just a little cut if you are here."

"The walls of this place get to me," Ksenia mutters, spoken with the natural reticence of a trader who lives in the open land. Truly, the only difference between the wildlings and traders lies in more organization (traders) and less civilization (wildlings); otherwise, there's a lot of correlation there. Slowly, she pulls her arm away from her chest and shifts her hips in the sudden discomfort of having a wound looked at. Tawny eyes roll around the infirmary as if she expects it to gobble her alive. Maybe she has had bad healer visits in the past. Who knows. "See? Just a baby wound." Except not. She's got a long slice up the side of her forarm, bound in stripped cloth, that leaks bright red blood. Not life threatening (I think they'll save the arm), but enough to sting and maybe require sealing with a hot knife.

"Hmm. Well, it could always be worse," Xieli sensibly states. "You could live in the side of the mountain, or below it. Like the Hold." She frowns at the wound, lips curling downward and eyes squinting as she considers it. A sterile pair of scissors is obtained, and she starts cutting down the cloth holding the wound together. "More like adolescent. You will need stitches," she declares as she notices it. "At least it looks clean enough," so grudging, "But we will clean it again." The STING OF REDWORT shall purge your evilness from you, Ksenia!

"Stitches?!" Ksenia all but yelps, hearing nothing but that dreaded word as she almost tries to rip her hand free of Xieli's grasp. The healer better be the Iron Woman. "You are crazy if you think I'm letting you take a needle and thread to my skin!" Xieli, did you THINK you were about to have a willing and easy patient? Think again! "It'll be fine with some… bandages. Yes, yes. Bandages. I like this. Just bandage me up!" Ksenia is a consummate wheedler, and that tone is really good at getting what she wants (usually), if physical extraction becomes an impossibility.

Fingers of STEEL. Maybe Xieli gets this reaction often? Whatever, when Ksenia tries to flail away she is KEEPING THE WOMAN THERE. "Tough titty, trader. You came to my infirmary, you are damned well getting the right treatment." Dark eyes aglitter with a certain curling of humor: this is entertainment? Oh Xieli. "Sure, because you want a scar, you do? A giant jagged slice of scar tissue marring that lovely skin of yours?" Xieli doesn't wait for Ksenia's response, but dowses the wound with redwort. Were you ready for the STING, Ksenia?

"Scar?" Barely is the word garbled out from Ksenia's throat after being HELD DOWN like a feline at the vet is that redword stinging the open wound. "OH MY FARANTH SHE'S KILLING ME! sHE'S TRYING TO KILL ME! THIS WOMAN IS TRYING TO SLICE OFF MY ARM AND END MY SUFFERING!" Xieli, forgive her, for it's a visceral reaction to the sudden and unexpected STING. "What is that?!" This question slips out even though Ksenia does, actually, know what redwort is. Or maybe she doesn't. Traders live a very rustic lifestyle and she's not really a woman that gets hurt often. Until lately, that is. "You could have at least numbed it first!" comes the softer accusation.

"Are you even serious right now." Xieli stares at Ksenia. "It's redwort, you ninny. It cleans it. Numbweed first reduces its efficacy." With that said, she does go about numbing the slice, with careful and tender motions to spread it. "Better?" A dry, dry question for the trader. "If you try to escape I will straight up hog-tie you to the slab." It's half-statement, half-demand, all threat. She's going to fetch something, see, that she masterfully hides from sight with her body and arms. "Redwort is a cleanser. If any infection was in it before, redwort will reduce the likelihood it survives." Oh Pern and their half-assed understanding of biology and science.

"Water and soap did the job before," Ksenia mutters, WOUNDED. Yes, Xieli. She is totally serious right now and that look is one of WOUNDING. "You are terrible," another muttered comment that comes before a muffled expletive at the threat. Xieli — the Impaler — is EYED when the healer goes to get something before making her explanation. "It stings, so I guess it's eating all the bad stuff." Beat. "Or something." She shivers, superstitious about something EATING anything inside her body and so she glances down at her arm like it's going to sprout tentatcles. Ksenia is a smart woman, but she's a TRADER and superstitions are her bread and butter.

"Water and soap. Certainly. How many lives do you people…" Xieli cuts herself off, muttering faintly under her breath. "Does that lady over there not understand that you can't wear pink with red hair? Faranth, it's orange. Someone needs to let her know about all the problems she's bringing onto herself. And that frizz!" She waits STEALTHILY for Ksenia to be distracted by the sight (it is atrocious, some lady in a pink mumu with frizzy orange hair… and flipflops) before sinking the first stitch. With the help of the ample numbweed, it should only feel as a skin-stretch manifest on the mechanoreceptors past the sphere of numbness, a faint tugging feeling.

Ksenia is easily distracted — not unlike a cat, mind — and half turns to stare at the atrocious lady with the hair and the muumu and the flipflops. "What is she — " That distraction lasts until she feels the minutest of strange sensations in her arm. Ksenia drops her eyes from the woman to Xieli and her NEEDLE that pierces her flesh. Instantly, the woman's honey'd skin starts to take on a green cast, unable to tear her eyes away. "Faranth." Wheeze. WHEEZE. WHEEEZE. "I think… I think… My stomach isn't … feeling so good." Deep breath, deep breath, deep breath!

"Don't look. Tell me, is that old lady really wearing a bathrobe and curlers? I can just see her out the corner of my eye." That's right. Xieli is totally endeavoring to keep Ksenia from hurling by baiting her into bitchy mean-girl talk about ALL the people. "She has no idea that Jensen is gayer than that redhead's mumu, poor dear. All that flirting for nothing." She's neatly laying a line of stitches down that cut, surprisingly swift. Or perhaps not surprisingly swift, from an educated perspective: she is a triage healer, after all.

Now, Ksenia could get into some mean-girl talk as her eyes are torn away from the sickening view of her flesh being sewn shut. An inelegant burp slips out as her stomach clenches and rebels. "That's too bad. Why is it always the gay ones," weak is her rejoiner but she rejoins nonetheless, "that look soooooo tasty and are soooooo nice and then you find out that they don't like girls!" Gay dudes make the best friends, though. She shoots a look at Xieli, perhaps to measure her progress, and thinks better of it. Not gonna be sick! Not gonna be sick! "What about that chick over there. You think that top is padded. I could have breasts that big if I stuffed my socks into my top."

"It mystifies me," Xieli agrees. "What on earth do they find interesting about getting it up the ass?" Why wasn't she tending the injured and the ailing again? Oh, right. This bedside manner of hers. Great for life-and-death situations - hardly appropriate for the general populace. "Oh, that girl does not have a rack that big. I'm thinking she stuffed a couple of *tops* into that top to get cleavage that big." She finishes tying off the last stitch and smiles at her work, swiftly moving to cover the stitches with a generous douse of redwort in preventative measure. "Hold still, I need to get bandages sized for this."

"You and me both!" Ksenia finally bursts out, looking a little less green but none-too-steady just yet. "I cannot understand it and I don't know if I ever will." It strikes a little close to home, this topic, but she she just shakes her head and frowns at busty lady. "And yet, every male eye is drawn by such a fake decolletage." Turning back to Xieli, the trader frowns and might surreptitiously eye her own modest collection of goods. Not too big, not too little; just right? "GAH!! Enough with the redwort already!!" Ksenia yelps this when suddenly she's ASSAULTED again. "Mmmkay…" Bandages, she says. BANDAGAES. Ksenia watches after the healer with SUSPICION as to what she will actually bring back. She's betting NOT on bandages.

Look. Bandages. Xieli deftly wraps the arm in a layered swaddling: first an ultra-soft, almost netting-ish bandage narrow over the actual line of stitches, then a heavier, fleecy covering that she sticks down with some mysterious adhesive at the corners. This is finished by two anchoring strips tied at opposing corners, and Xieli makes a FLOURISH as she steps aside to rummage through the cabinets within the cube. "I'm going to give you a herb packet for a tissane that you should drink every morning for the next seven… and directions." She EYES the other one sharply, then, belatedly, "Your breasts are sized appropriately. You have nothing to worry about." It's so reassuring in Xieli's practical tone, isn't it?

So comforting, Xieli. "What is… in this… tissane thing?" Ksenia wrinkles her nose at the MERE IDEA of taking some mystery healer's brew that could leave her infertile and bald. COME ON. It could happen. "Will it… have side effects?" She bites at the corner of her lip while examining the deft and expert job that Xieli has done with the bandages on her arm. "How do I take baths? Is this stuff," she plucks at the material that's been swaddled about her arm — come on, people, she's used to linen-strips for bandages! What is this newfangled mess?! — and sniffs it. "…washable?" Then she gives her arm a questing shake. Not unlike a cat trying to shake off a sticker it doesn't like. She eyes the healer. "Are they symmetrical?"

"It's pleasant, so long as you like mint. It may make you inclined to more frequent trips to the latrines, because it acts as a purge to any water you may have. But on the upside, you won't be bloated at all." Xieli smiles irrascibly to the trader before putting together things. "Don't get that wound wet at all in the next seven," she instructs. "Two days from now, remove the bandage and gently wash the wound, then wrap with.. sterile bandages. If you must use cloth, boil it before, yes?" She has a GIMLET GLARE for Ksenia along with that. "And you will come back precisely in one seven to have your stitches removed, else your skin will grow over the stitches and you will look like a ragdoll for the rest of your life." God, Xieli. She pauses to critically eye Ksenia's chest, and then nod. "I can't see any lopsidedness."

Ksenia looks a little sick at being told her skin will grow over the stitches and she'll look like a freak of nature. The rest of the instructions are tossed out the window (oh she heard, but, she's focused on not becoming something disgusting to look at) while she tries to maintain the contents of her belly. "I'll be back," the barest thread of a whisper that draws past coral lips. "Good. I would hate to have one bigger than the other." She shudders, but really it's all these instructions that draws most of that shudder. Xieli better realize that only one instruction is likely to be followed, okay, maybe two. The whole 'not getting the arm wet' might get followed. "Anything else?"

"So be sure to come back to have your stitches removed so that doesn't happen, you see?" Xieli's gaze is fierce. Intense. Pointed. "I've written down your instructions… Read them and stick to them. Don't make me ask the weyrleader about you." Xieli looks pointedly to the other woman. She KNOWS. "Come back. In one seven. Don't get it wet. Clean the bandages. Take your tea." THIS ISN'T HARD. She offers Ksenia the packet. "Go on, then."

Ksenia suddenly, sharply eyes Xieli. Would she actually ask the Weyrleader about these lame instructions that she has no intention of following. Especially, since they are WRITTEN DOWN. All of Xieli's pointed looks pincushion the trader so that she shifts a touch uncomfortably on the slab. "Mmmmmkay." She does, indeed, take the instructions and the tea and sloooooooowly slides off the slab. Like a feline who's unable to decide if it's safe to flee, she hestitates, hovers, and then is gone like a shot! No one needs to tell Ksenia twice when she can leave the infirmary. Only a hasty, "Thank you," is given — she does have manners. Actual ones, y'know. And then! That is THE END.

"You're welcome!" Xieli calls. She'd probably yell out something like 'your breasts are beautiful' if she had a glass of wine or two in her, but… she doesn't. Therefore she returns to her desk, and it's not the end at all, but just returning to the middle of her most boring work.