Who

Nick, Katrya

What

Katrya hasn’t quite made good her escape from the Infirmary; Nick makes another of her customary daily visits to entertain (oh, and lecture) the sulky invalid.

When

It is morning of the eighteenth day of the fifth month of the twenty-first turn of the 12th pass.

Where

Infirmary, Southern Weyr

OOC Date 20 Oct 2020 04:00

 

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There’s no need to hammer home what has already arrived.


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Infirmary

Sterile and scoured, the surfaces of the infirmary, well-tended and beloved by the complement of Healers due a weyr of Southern's size. Soothing tissane simmers at the large hearth, while comfortable chairs circle that particular feature in a waiting-room of sorts. Tables of dull-gleaming oldtimer metal lie as examining slabs, neatly lined in rows with pull-curtains enabling full privacy as needed. A low wall separates the southern half of the room from the rest, and those practicing the apothecary's trade can be seen compounding medicines under the watchful eye of the posted Master.


When it was decided that Katrya would stay a whole extra seven after she was breathing without issue, the scrappy young brownrider screamed and cried and pouted with no results before setting up a melancholic vigil for her freedom. At the very least, they moved her out of the "critical care" section to a slightly more hospitable doorway-curtained den; it even has a proper bed, which one or another of her well wishers saw outfitted with her own frilly duvet.

When Nick decides to stop by, it's right after morning rounds. The invalid is propped up on pillows (real pillows!!!) reading yet another scroll smuggled out of the archives for her when the fellow brownrider arrives. Her morning toilet has already been seen to; she's wearing a fresh embroidered blouse tied at the neck and her hair is much tidier double braids than the day before. Katrya puts her reading down on her lap to give her visitor a brilliant smile. Much brighter today than previous visits, she greets enthusiastically, "Uncle Nick!"

The history of High Reaches didn’t last long, and it’s the only book Nick owns.

Still, she got it back without any blood on, and every time she pops her head round the curtain the patient’s lap is draped with another piece of reading material — there tends to be something else frilly, too. Nick’s quick visits at the beginning or the end of the day seldom coincide with anybody else’s but she notes plenty of proof Katrya is well-attended by other friends too.

You look like you’re having a good time,” she drawls accusingly as she lets the curtain fall behind her and steps up to the foot of the bed. She’s had her run already; she’s dressed for work, in dark red flying leathers that match Edyth’s straps, with helmet and goggles and gauntlets tucked variously in her pockets or through her belt. Crisp white linen shows beneath her unbuttoned jacket and its matching red vest. “I didn’t bring you anything,” she adds straight away, to depress expectations. “Breakfast was hardly worth the chewing today.”

"Who, me?" Katrya questions innocently, batting her lashes. "Have a good time? Here?" She snorts as she rerolls the hide scroll with one hand, something she's become quite adept at in the past sevenday or so. "I wouldn't dream of it. Tomorrow, though…" she trails off suggestively as her finger taps thrice against the hide and performs some illicit shoulder wiggling. IT HURTS AND SHE DOESN'T CARE. She doesn't even seem to hear what Nick says after, go figure.

Sometimes Nick’s in and out of the Infirmary so quickly she doesn’t bother to sit down[1]; today, though, she claims a chair and parks it at a conversational angle, and herself in it. Leaning forward a little towards Katrya and resting her forearms on her thighs, she speculates: “Going to let you wipe your own arse, are they? Or have you graduated to taking a real bath? It’s getting so you could do with one of those,” she drawls, in a kindly and avuncular fashion.

Katrya's delight continues as the adoptive adultier-adult settles in, though the comment about the bath has her wrinkling her nose sulkily. "Like I haven't smelled worse." A full contingent of dragonriders stripping off their leathers after Fall is just as bad if not worse than when they drag the kettles to the courtyard and brew numbweed. "Well, I will get to take a shower tomorrow at least. After they let me out." Wiggling intensifies. One of the pillows behind her is upset by her constant motion and jumps from the bed in protest.

There’s a reason why Nick’s visits have mostly been (ahem) flying ones — it’s that petulant young chin. “Stop fucking fidgeting,” she grouses as she bends to retrieve the escapee. She stands up between the chair and the bed just long enough to shove it — with actually quite careful hands — approximately back where it came from, and then flops back into said chair with one leg stretched out and the booted foot at the end of it tucked beneath the bed.

“So that’s what’s got you in convulsions,” she adds deadpan. “I’m glad to hear it.“

Katrya blows air out her nose before sinking into the pillow victim so kindly returned to its life of indignity. A moment later she returns to brightness and sunshine as her thoughts wander dragonward. "I can't wait to be with Vino again. Theidith's good company and been so patient with him asking every question he can think about eggs after Wrayth told him off," she sighs, "but I've only seen him once. We've never been apart for this long before."

Rather than dwell on that she redirects the conversation. Perking up on the pillows, she drawls in an ornery fashion, "Say, Uncle Nick… I heard the Healers talking." The word you're looking for is 'eavesdropping', Katrya. "Seems like one of their own got kidnapped — uh, tossed unceremoniously on a brown dragon when Wrayth went up." Her eyes narrow suspiciously as she questions in a sweet voice, "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that?"

That separation between ‘rider and dragon does earn Katrya a ceasefire, and a quiet and sympathetic exhalation of, “Yeah,” which fades away beneath her own words…

But then, ah, hostilities recommence with prejudice. It’s too late to deny what’s known; all that’s left is the chance of a little judicious damage control. Nick may have taken her shades off when she stepped indoors from the Bowl, but her expression contrives nonetheless to remain a complete non-expression. Once the fog cleared she did indeed practice this story. It’s true, it’s absolutely true, it just happens to… leave out all the interesting bits[2]. “Yeah,” she repeats, nodding, “a friend of mine has a brother up at High Reaches. I offered to take her along to visit him, but she’s not too fast on her feet and I was in a hurry to get going.” She shrugs. “I always,” she adds with pointed delicacy, “take Edyth away when there’s a queen rising.”

Colour Katrya incredulous[3]. The lack of reaction doesn't do anything to help Nick's case; the sharp-eyed younger brownrider has worked out over half a Turn of acquaintance that such an absence is a truer tell than almost anything else her adopted uncle might do. "Uh huh." Another thing she's worked out is that there's no point pushing Nick when she doesn't want to talk so she pivots again. "Well, I'm glad for Vino's sake he didn't have the competition." Wink.

“Mm.” Nick shifts in her seat and unfolds her arms into a more casual posture, and rests a hand on the chair’s arm and her considering brown gaze upon Katrya’s face. “Yeah, Edyth always wants to get in the race, you know what he’s like. But I’ve always felt it’s better for the Weyr as a whole if bronzes mate with queens,” she says simply. She makes it sound conversational rather than reproving. She’s just giving her own opinions, is all. “A brown winning once in a while does no harm but if it happens consistently, during a Pass, the Weyr risks falling below repopulation levels. Bronzes sire larger clutches and more of their own kind — breeding in one Turn the fighters who may be more sorely needed than we know a couple of Turns down the line — and then there’s the chance of a gold… With thirty Turns of Threadfall still ahead Southern could do with another laying queen,” she adds, “and no brown’s going to get us one.”

She shrugs, and changes tack from the broader strategic considerations to others painfully personal. “Bronzes are better adapted to the demands, too. Winning a queen’s flight requires an incredible expenditure of stamina and strength — plenty of browns have that power in them, but they usually don’t bounce back from it and recover their fighting form as fast as your average bronze can. That’s been the case in my experience,” she concludes, “at any rate.”

She falls silent then, and just lets her recently victorious — now bedridden — junior sit with what she’s said for a while. It’s not as if they’ve never talked before about the perils of running your dragon into the ground… There’s no need to hammer home what has already arrived.

If the infirmary had a clock, the passing of the seconds would at least be accompanied by a doleful tick-tock. Instead Katrya sits in silence and her eyes slowly fall to her lap. Fingers on the scroll and toes under the blanket both squirm anxiously while she shoves down her impulse to kick Nick out for saying things she doesn't want to hear. Reason wins out.

Carefully, and still not looking up, she affirms, "You're right," PAUSE, "but it was his first flight in a while. I didn't realize he had a chance, especially with Wrayth. She's just so large and it was the first time he went after a Gold. He's never done that before. I thought there wasn't a chance he would last and I could pull him down before he wore himself — like we talked about — but then…" She sinks guiltily into her pillows. "I think I might've goaded him into it."

Nick nods. "There's always a chance," she affirms quietly. "Edyth knows he can win— somehow, he doesn't forget that," she drawls as an affectionate aside, "so I just don't let it get that far, for the reasons I’ve told you. I think almost always it's the right choice, and it's not one he can make for himself. Whatever you did this time, or didn’t do, or wish you had done, you’re going to have to do some thinking about the future. About what choice you’ll make for Vinodestroth another time… because he’s going to try again one day, that’s certain enough.”

"It'll break his heart if I don't let him at least try for Theidith's…" Uhh. "H-hand? Paw? Wing?" Katrya's nose scrunches as the metaphor falls apart in the face of draconic anatomy.

“Tail,” Nick supplies helpfully. They do often twine tails, in the aftermath. "Let him then, if you think you should,” she agrees. “But maybe don't jump back into high altitude Threadfall two days later without your usual wingman. Ask someone to substitute for you, if you have to."

"Tail," Katrya agrees with the word choice that clears her mental roadblock. "It's something to keep in mind, certainly." In her ongoing attempt to drown in fowl-feather, the weight of her previous choices sinks her even deeper into her impromptu backrest.

“Yeah. One thing about reading history books and mouldy Records, and passing the time of day with grumpy old folk like me," Nick allows, wryly and with a light sigh, "is that it gives you the opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes." Another pause. "Not much fun, is it?"

A moment after Nick's finished speaking, you can almost hear something click into place in Katrya's mind as the words distill into something that perfectly fills a gap in her knowledge. The inscription (My dearest Nick, FUCK YOU…[4]) in the history volume loaned to her nearly two sevens ago — and the disparaging mention of a junior queen caught not once but twice by the same brown, and the 'inferior' clutches thus produced in a Weyr so enamoured of the traditional hierarchy of the colours. "It was Shirakath, wasn't it?" the young rider asks.

Once again Nick’s expression is unreadable and unchanging.

But three full seconds pass before she decides, “I’d better get going, Katrya,” and stands up, unhooking as she does her shades from the small loop of hide stitched to her jacket to hold them. "Wouldn't want to be late for drills," she drawls, having recourse — as a diversion! — to the lead news item she left so cunningly buried till now, "on my first day in Ocelot."

Instead of pointing out that she can tell when Nick is trying to distract her and avoid a topic, Katrya… Well, sharddit. She's effectively distracted, exclaiming in her excitement, "Ocelot?! Welcome, wingmate!" The wind is knocked out of her wingsails as she realizes the reason: they'll be down two browns for the next few months. What should be happy news is instead met with a crestfallen, "I wish I could be there with you."

That’s the beauty of Nick’s tried and true, tailor-made distractions from emotional intimacy: you can see what’s happening, but you’re powerless to keep it from working.

“Ye-e-eah,” the elder brownrider exhales, “but that’s just how it goes sometimes. I’ll still be there when you’re up and flying with us again,” she reminds Katrya, in a voice grown gentler. And she quirks her eyebrows at her. “Till then I'll keep an eye on 'em all for you, eh?"

But she wants to be flying nooooooow, Uncle Nick. Whine, whine, whine! Katrya doesn't even have to vocalize it, her pout and the angle of her chin and her general slouchiness does it for her. Instead she responds with a lame, "Yeah, I guess so." Imagine her petulantly kicking a tiny rock with the toe of her boot for maximum effect. Then, she's struck with just a bit of good humour — as a treat — she can't resist suggesting, "Keep an eye on Bremi in particular." You know, blonde hair, green who plays ball… They're wing(wo)men for real now, after all.

That recommendation earns her a low, gravelly chuckle from the departing Nick.

“Not in the same wing,” she drawls, slipping on her smoked glass shades. “Never in the same wing.” She lifts back the curtain with one hand and tosses off a casual salute to Katrya with the other, before stepping out into the rest of her morning. She’s got Dragon StuffTM to do.


[1] Insert joke about Yoko here.
[2] Being Discreet.
[3] It makes a welcome change from sunburnt/blushing red, or the pallor of the last seven.
[4] Define Decent.

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