Who | |
What |
If Neryk is not back when the sun goes down, Someone goes to get him. Tonight Baezyl gets to trek out to whatever hole Neryk has tucked himself away in this time and get him home. RP-TAG - Talk of Suicide, Talk of Death, Depression, Baezyl being Cool Healer and Neryk being Down |
When |
It is dusk of the fourth day of the sixth month of the eleventh turn of the 12th pass. |
Where |
Downstream Igen Weyr |
OOC Date | 13 Jul 2017 07:00 |
Downstream
Deceptive is the path that leads through the shallows along the western rim of the aquifer, the rainbow striations that peer out from the river-carved rock beckoning temptingly above the knee-depth of the tranquil roll of the underground river around the bend. Here, however, the current suddenly becomes far less friendly, funneled tightly through the small maze of rough stone tunnels. No deeper than waist-high on an average man does it ever become throughout this span, nor impossible to navigate if the current is anticipated - but precautions might be wise, all the same.
Eventually, the river splits into two broad forks; one veers left to vanish beneath the lip of the pale mouth of the Water-worn Cave, while the other bends north toward a broad, dark portal that seems to lead to another cavern. Though clearly formed by a great amount of rushing water, the current leading this way seems…oddly sluggish, as though something further downstream stands in its way to slow it. A short yet challenging trail of hand and footholds allows passage from the lip of the Water-Worn Cave down to a gravelly stretch of bank at the water's edge…but it's a path best left only to the most sure-footed.
While Baezyl is happy enough to explore all the nooks and crannies Igen Weyr has to offer, this is probably one of the last places anyone would expect to see the healer journeyman. But here he is! Carefully picking his way along the narrow lip of the underground riverbank, trying to keep his expensive looking boots, and his glowbasket from an unexpected dunking. "Neryk?" He calls, as he has done periodically since he descended into the bowels of the earth. There is a sigh that follows as if he expects only more echoes for an answer.
Only more echos is what he gets. Tucked away in the darkness, Neryk sits with his back to the rough wall of the tunnel, eyes closed, knees pulled up to his chest and arms cocooning his head. A little offshoot from the already, inhospitable path. The bright flicker of the bronze firelizard returns to the healers, chirping at Baezyl with an erjency not usually seen in the animal. Pollux darts around the healer, then flitters off again into the darkness, only to return a moment later, the human and his simple two legs were simply not fast enough. The chirping starts again, darting toward slower waters and vanishing beyond the lip of the tunnel. And then he is back, returning, only to spin and dart into the darkness the way he had come. However, perhaps a pair of coos might be heard, the blue firelizards refusing to leave their master.
Baezyl isn't dumb, he wouldn't be a healer otherwise. But he is slightly confused at the chirrups in the darkness, and for one heart-stopping moment he slips even as he raises the glowbasket in an effort to use the feeble light to push back the black. On one of the firelizards fly-bys Baezyl catches sight of the creature and murmurs reassuringly into the gloom. "I'm coming as fast as I can, flitterby." Well, as reassuringly as the healer is capable of. Eventually he manages to pick his way closer to that alcove that the dragonless rider has found. Perhaps not as fast as Pollux would like, but not that slow at all. "Neryk?" He healer questions gently, reaching a hand out to brush those curled arms.
Though Neryk himself does not move, the blue Castor launches forward hissing, wings up and out in a wide protective arch, head high in hostility. The second blue only coos, curling all the tighter around Neryk's neck while Castor's stance widens, as if trying to not only drive Baezyl back, but shield Neryk from view. Pollux swoops in, circling the little group with a never-ending energy and panic. NO! He'd brought a Healer to HELP! Castor was pretty sure that all the help Neryk needed was right here. This was Castor after all, he fixed all things just by being there. One hand slowly uncurls, fingers brushing the blue and slowly Castor closes back, relaxing, though still on the edge of aggression.
Baezyl gives a quick little frown at the posturing blue, safe enough given that Neryk hasn't lifted his head yet. "Shush you silly thing." It is said with a gentle impersonal tone. "I'm not going to hurt him." He has taken an oath and everything. "I'm going to assume from that little display and this charming location that things aren't so good for you right now, Neryk." He continues still gentle and quiet, doing his best to lessen the lonely darkness with words alone. "Anything you care to talk about?"
As the bronze finally lands at thier feet, Castor pulls back to perch on one crook of Neryk's arm, eyes locked on the Healer with an unveiled distrust. Neryk is quiet for a long moment, finally head pulling away and leaning back against the wall with a doll-like jerk, "It's getting harder and harder to find places when one does not want to be found." Empty eyes shift to Baezyl, his tone soft and flat, face flushed from tears that are no longer present, "It was for a while it was good for a bit. But then it is not good again." He pauses, eyes shifting to the bronze firelizard, "Nothing to say really, it's always the same. Sleeping is bad, not sleeping is worse. All of it. It is all not so good."
Baezyl is just going to shrug, even as he finds a space for the glowbasket at his feet. He's crouched and not at all comfortable, but he's not really letting that get to him. "Oddly, it's almost like we get used to having you around, and worry when we can't find you." It's exactly that. "Add to that the fact you've a couple of… you've got some minds that keep you in mind, getting lost is simply not an option for you young Neryk." Baezyl does have just enough decency to sound a little sheepish about that. "Unfortunately all I have to offer you is book learning, which isn't nearly the same as actually living it." Baezyl concedes. "But you're not so alone as you think you know." Not that anyone really compares to the dragon lost.
Neryk looks away, it was frustrating, but on some level he understood it. "Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if there were no minds to help us in the sky. No dragons. No lizards. No watchweyrs. None of them. Do you ever wonder if perhaps that would be good. Or perhaps some good and mostly bad since we would have to fight thread alone." The words tumble out in a rush, still soft, but thoughtless and quick, as if an effort to get the sentences out before he explodes from containing them. "We would live alone, all of us, all of us together in our aloneness and we would die from Thread and that would be that. Do you suppose sometimes that might be better?"
"Aside from the horrible death by Thread, you've just described the entirity of my life." Baezyl admits with a slight hint of gallows humor. "I am all alone up here." He taps his temple significantly. "And if I'm honest, I'm all alone in most things. I don't think I'm the type to form… those kinds of bonds." Love or lifemate, Baezyl will leave unspoken. "But my life is not empty. Far from it. I have my gaps filled by the little loves. Nice clothes, nice drinks. Nice people." All just transitory distractions, but pleasant none the less. "I couldn't say if such a place would be better or worse Neryk. I can only deal with what is before me." Which at this point is a broken former rider and a glowbasket.
Neryk listens silently, unwilling to raise his voice enough to actually interupt until the healer finishes, "I think sometimes it might be better. I never thought alone was bad, but I had never known what alone was." His knees pull up closer, eyes closing, "I try to fill gaps with those things. With stories. With people. With doing things and watching things be done and my little starts help an-and it's ju-just not f-fair or r-right or-" His halting voice finally stops in a choked sound, head leaning back against the wall again. Breath in. Breath out. No more crying. Not now. Keep your head. In. Out.
Baezyl makes a sympathetic face. "Damned right it isn't fair or right. But it is what it is." He issues forth his agreement. "None of us can change what is. But we can learn to live with it…" He pauses, his near-black eyes peering out into the darkness. "And even that is a choice." He admits to the young man in a whisper. "But you keep seeking those little things. Those stories and people and activities. So somewhere, that choice has been made." Of course the healer doesn't point out that choices can be unmade either. "Nothing can replace your Eorannuth. I'm not even going to suggest you try… We just want to help ease some of the pain you carry."
Again, the young man is quite as the healer speaks, motionless, "I try. I really am. I am trying but perhaps if you folks let me use the felis all the time." His words slip away. He'd asked before and been denied. Drugged up and functioning apparently didn't count at the amount of Felis Neryk had been wanting to take. "I don't know if everyone dreams with thier dragon, but I did. We dreamed all the time and I still do, but not with him. It's not nice. It's not good. It's all the bad. Every night. Even if the day is good, the sunlight easy to forget, the people and everything nice, the nights come and it gets harder and harder to ignore and pretend and be okay. It's harder to make that choice when night comes." His eyes open, shifting to Baezyl, "Did you know that Agertha was paying for all of my alcohol? I didn't. But it comes and I have it and I don't have to dream or think an-and I hate the sun setting. I hate the days closing, because then night and all that the day keeps away returns."
"Fellis looses it's effectiveness the more you use it. Sooner or later it would stop helping you at all." Silly healers, with their knowledge of pharmaceticals. "Probably better to stick with the alcohol for a while. But even that has issues. Unless you'd like to die from a diseased liver? It's not pretty." Unfortunately Baezyl has seen that kind of thing as well. "Does it help to know that you are not alone? Many people feel the worse when the day is done and everything goes quiet. Night is a time for thinking. And not everyone has pleasant thoughts." And Neryk certainly doesn't. "There's nothing normal about your situation Neryk. But the way your feelings occur are normal… from what information we've been able to gather from others in a similar situation to yours."
"Normal or not normal or whatever, it still isn't fair." One hand reaches over and strokes Castor's back, mechanical in it's movement as though done without thought, "Liver disease doesn't sound too terrible. Falling is faster though. Or Felis over dose. Or Between. Or someday perhaps you all don't have to come find me." Not that all of Neryk slipping away to places hard to get to and forgotten is to contemplate suicide, but such days come. "Today was not a bad day. Today was an okay day. But now, now is bad. Night is coming again, it always does and I keep waiting. I keep waiting that perhaps he'll be there, just woken up, or just there. To just be there. To see him. Think of that Baezel, just once more. See Eorannuth. See him fly. Perhaps. Perhaps this is all a bad dream and one of these nights I get to wake up finally. It's a nightmare Baezel. All of this. It's my nightmare, but I'm living it."
Baezyl snorts. "Going insane and loosing your voice due to pain that cannot be medicated isn't exactly fantastic either." He's just going to try and paint that word picture. "But I've already agreed it isn't fair. Life very rarely is." He's been a healer long enough to learn that one. "And you're doing the best you can. Perhaps one day you'll stop beating yourself up about that too." About the same time he wakes up from his nightmare sadly. "Again, I can only deal with what is before me… and try not to think about what I can't fix." Because Baezyl is a fixer, that's why he's a healer after all. There is a moment or two where he is silent and thoughtful. "If nights are so bad… have you given any thought to what you could do to fill them? Other than finding the darkest, shittest hole in the ground?" Baezyl isn't going to judge Neryk, but he will judge the hell out of the location.
Castor pushes up into Neryk's hand with a cat-like arch, tail flicking slightly. "I used to walk the weyr, but I kept going home, so I quit." Home. Not home. The Weyr that was once home, but is surely someone else's home by now. His eyes flicker around the area they were in, "This is easier. Safer." Not necessarily, but he saw it that way. "I cann't move back into the infirmary. I can't go home. I have rooms in the terrices now. I just want to fill my nights with things other than sleep." Which he could usually only do a few days before crashing, but he tried, the pain that came with natural sleep was so much more than days of tired and wandering. It was worth it in a twisted way, getting drunk of course, was always an option too. "You have a suggestion?"
Baezyl flicks a brief wink at the younger man. "I am not a saint." He's just going to put that out there. "But, even though you can't live in the infirmary any more, given any thought to helping out about the place? You'd moved out before I got transferred, but I think you know rather more about how it operates than you let on." The healer turns his attention to Neryk with that same soft analytcial expression he uses on most paitents. "I know that I'd appreciate a knowledgeable person about the place. You could do as much or as little as you pleased." Then there is another helpless shrug. "It's not a magic fix. But it could help you find some purpose to your nights. And you might even do some good." That last is totally an afterthought tacked on oh so casually. "Always something going on in the infirmary, as you know."
Perhaps that was a problem too, Neryk could do as much or as little as he pleased pretty much anywhere in Igen. They knew him. Perhaps he was a nightmare for them too. But Igen was Home and he was not the brave of Yspi to leave it. The words are mulled over, the firelizard pet and finally he nods, "Perhaps I will do that. Drop by. The Infirmary." At night? He did drop by the Infirmary occationally. Whenever any of the riders who had once been in Hogback were hurt, Neryk was sure to be there to visit within the first day. He kept track of them, even if the wing was gone. "Perhaps." The casual statement is missed if implications lie behind those words and Neryk falls silent a moment, "I suppose that you want to head back now though. To the weyr?" He didn't know if the healers drew straws on who was going to go find Neryk this time, but he was not one to ask, nor was he one to ignore that babysitting Neryk was probebly not what most healers wanted to do in the middle of the night.
"There is a decided lack of alcohol or friendly women here…or men." Baezyl isn't super fussy who he sleeps with truth be told. "You can tag along if you like? I can teach you a thing or two about…well just about anything really." There is a hint of cajolery in his tone, but it isn't super obvious. "And I did mean it. Learn a skill. It won't replace Eorannuth, but it'll be another distraction until you are no longer in this nightmare." Either from choice or time, Baezyl isn't going to make judgement on that either. "We may not be your dragon Neryk, but that doesn't mean that there aren't people who care for you as much as he did." And with a groan he attempts to straighten. "Perhaps I'll get you to help me train my little beast. I almost had a nice aged scotch, but the thing hatched in my hands during hand-over…" And if Neryk does come with him, Baezyl will gleefully mourn the scotch he didn't get, and bitch about the bronze firelizard he did get.
Neryk does come. His three beloved firelizards sticking close in the darkness and Neryk will remain silent. He has no words for Baezyl that would not be a repeat of things he had said before. Many, many times before. Perhaps not to this healer, but to some healer, and he was sure his file was brimming with it. Today was not a good day. Today was not a bad day. Just a bad now. Neryk tried to live in the Now, but thier now was not the one he wanted to live in. As the healer leads the way home and firelizards are complained about, Neryk will listen and perhaps when the Infirmary is finally reached, Neryk will slip away again to his rooms in the terraces. Retrieved again, another night down.