Th'bek noticed he'd started fading after afternoon stamina drills were scheduled for noon heat. Tavuqth took after a green only to spin his lust for mating into lust for fighting. The brown's injuries were superficial but ate time away from the sweeps they had to really cover in a hurry without sacrificing vigilence. A caravan stalled for a wounded man merited a visit and apportionment of what basic medical supplies the brownrider carried. Then it was off to see Tavuqth and firelizards fed before checking in on J'dal and blue Sokelth, wingmates decimated by Thread but expected to recover. Whether they would 'live' was up to no healer to predict. J'dal is sleeping so Rev haunts the doorway while Tavuqth confers with Sokelth.

However crystalline the star-studded vista of open desert skyline outside, the night brings no reprieve from the heat with it. Zeyta continues along with her industry as if daylight still shone outside, with so few other natural conditions changing. Her constant activity and the slight, frenetic air about her hurried, thundering step (less clean than her calmer soldier's march) and dark drag of bruised purple beneath her eyes signal she's approaching the end of her latest spell of insomnia. Riding sleeplessness until the end, her late round in the inner caverns brings her to the ground weyrs to check on the medical records for those members of Arroyo stranded here with threadscore — like J'dal and Sokelth, for instance, bringing the grim specter of a woman inward, intense gaze appraising.

Th'bek needn't tap into the conversation of his dragon to know the brown and blue are building war stories: razing faults, lauding what went right, using dramatic adjectives to capture how they remembered they felt. It's a portion of familiarity that makes the rider smile just for his own sole benefit. J'dal's children have decked his cot in ribbons and even installed a favorite toy to guard a portable side table. The thirst he had before is gone now, but the effects of being static are advancing the brownrider's own fatigue. He folds his arms differently, notes a fresh cut on his hand he hadn't noticed before now, and filters through the day's events so that he might know its origins. His own Wingleader saves him from such tedium. Th'bek sharpens his stance, cleans the lounge from his lines and salutes. "Sokelth's loss of ichor stopped yesterday and by the sounds he may outpace J'dal healing. And C'dorn's pulling out of his deep sleep," providing an update to the other nearest brownrider's coma break. "You alright, Wingleader?" Sleep malaise is a mistress of every rider, but still begs asking about.

Withdrawn to the northern bowl where he prowls, solitary instead of beleaguering his bonded or those subordinate to him with his clinical presence, Kczyslawborth abandons Zeyta to perform duty alone, sparing both the web of tales woven. Cutting a path straight to the healer's alcove, the short woman inches forward on tiptoes to help herself to the missives stacked on the shelf, clutching them tight to her chest when she spins around. Exhaustion suppressed, tight-lipped expression leaking out irritability in counter exchange, a cursory glance sleeps over the bedridden to settle at last on the hale and hearty. "Th'bek. Thank you for your, mm, summary." Already she employs a scrap of hide and stick of worn charcoal to scribble his verbal report in her hasty script. "Of course. I'm, mm, always fine." Almost always, now the rare exception as she squints, blinking to regain focus.

Th'bek senses Tavuqth's heated conversation with Sokelth ended when the blue deigned to return to sleep. Tavuqth returns fully to his life-mate's head, filling the cavity up and more if Rev didn't reserve some space for himself. This mental check and balance is second nature but still needs to be done carefully and regularly. Like watchdogs against wolves or sand bags against flood waters, least he risk being overrun. He scratches at his chest when it calls for it, keeping the woman more or less centered in his sights. "You seem," eerily nice? "distracted." He knows of his leader's insomnia, many do, but very little about its true side effects on her. "But then I suppose you really suffer for rest with the 'ncreath a repon'hibility," yawn alert, "sorry, increase of responsibility." He doesn't have the will to cover it but does turn his head slightly to avoid showing Zeyta Lion Face. "Does it say the status on Bumpy, I mean S'tor?" No one's been aloud to see the Whirlwind bronzerider and it's getting too tiresome to sort rumor from fact. Even if it is sensitive information he's trying to extract from a superior.

Being overrun; a curious concept for a pair interlocked in a perpetual state of quid pro quo, always ceding and claiming mental territory from one another. On nights such as this, they stalemate, Zeyta and Kczyslawborth, each to their own until refreshed for one another. Tucking the charcoal away, the wingleader takes her smudged, blackened fingertips to rifle through a page or two, browsing, collecting intel. "There are not enough candle marks in the day." Or night; sleep sacrificed, nigh impossible as the clip of her booted heels track her progress closer to the weary Th'bek. "Oh. You mean K'vvan, yes. Well. I can do the work of many men while awaiting his return." As to his question, her lack of social grace emerges, frostbite stinging with, "I stopped caring about Whirlwind when N'cal handed me my wingleader knot."

Th'bek starts a circular course that soon breaks its bonds and has the young rider paralleling the wall. Can't sleep if you're moving. A healer steals into their pocket of space on typically quiet feet; she carries a doseage of liquid in a glass. Armed for a mercy arrand? That image makes Th'bek open his eyes alright. "Wait! What is that?" He's practically situated to intercept the woman with the pageboy haircut though she assures him it's fresh tea and resumes her progress. Rev's heart still raps his ribs, not sure if she lies or if he really is turning little into much. "Isn't, there must something they can brew to help you. Or," he chances it because he can't help let (un)sleeping Zeytas lie. "Is it your preference to sleep little, Wingleader?"

Ri'enn whips her head up, attention taken from the page subject to her study in an instant, anger flashing in her eyes. Censure rising in a gust of arctic air, she breathes her sharp reprimand, "Th'bek. If you impede the healers I shall order your removal." To the healer, she issues no apology, raptor intensity dropped on her next, watching her every move as she administers to her patient, hides forgotten with so many bodies milling about, contrary to expectation. Coming up beneath him, she settles into a sturdy pillar of tired severity. "I've work to do before retiring. Fret not — worry about yourself." A barked order with several implications.

Zeyta whips her head up, attention taken from the page subject to her study in an instant, anger flashing in her eyes. Censure rising in a gust of arctic air, she breathes her sharp reprimand, "Th'bek. If you impede the healers I shall order your removal." To the healer, she issues no apology, raptor intensity dropped on her next, watching her every move as she administers to her patient, hides forgotten with so many bodies milling about, contrary to expectation. Coming up beneath him, she settles into a sturdy pillar of tired severity. "I've work to do before retiring. Fret not — worry about yourself." A barked order with several implications.

Th'bek strokes the skin above an eyebrow, repeatedly painting the same place over and over. He's thinking about something or trying not to think it, either or. After Zeyta's outburst his skin burns but the whites of his eyes are the only things showing red. "Indeed. Then I'll leave you to it, Wingleader." There comes a time-honored salute before he's on the heels of the healer, catching up to her shadow and keeping it under his boots. He's not impeding a thing just watching extremely critically, hands bunched behind his back.

Zeyta installs herself against the wall, ceasing all that incessant fidgeting commotion, back shoved up against the rock, a knee arched to prop her foot against it too. The hides always the hides; like a bookworm she sticks her nose back between a folio she extracts from midway between the pile in her arms. "Should you not be sleeping? What good is visiting with the unconscious. They'll never know you weren't here beside them." So lacking in sentiment, the cynical ice queen with her protruding lower lip, a frown of general dissatisfaction overcome her. "Th'bek." Another chastisement rattled off, buying enough time for the healer to sprint around the corner in final retreat.

"You get more work done burning the torch on both ends." Opined with a fleecy voice considering their sensitive location. But then he's not a fanatic of neither sleeping in nor channeling a night owl. Th'bek installs himself in a stool beside J'dal's cot, deliberate looking at Zeyta with his hands raised to showcase his innocence. "Healers told me they can sometimes recognize voices. So," looking down at the cloth folded on the bluerider's head, "let it be a friendly one." Seizing the inside of his cheek with the sharpest of his teeth, Rev staves off fatigue a bit longer. "Sokelth will be in the sky before you if you don't hurry up. They'll stick some other rider on him and muck the straps all up," Sokelth lost a chunk of flesh three Turns ago, its crater changing the normal fit of riding tethers just on one side of him.

*deliberately

"'Til the flame eats its way to your hand. Always leave yourself a way out." Zeyta pounces upon a metaphor, sinks her teeth into it and drags it for every bit of meaning. The dullness of her voice mutes the full impact of her words, deadened tone not carrying far — not that she observes the space with any particular reverence either. Pursuing Th'bek to J'dal's bedside, she'll look over the bluerider to conduct her own assessment of his status, heedless of the readings on the charts. "Huh." Chuffed under her breath, for the moment, she'll not interrupt.

Th'bek doesn't have to force any positive reaction to Zeyta's evolved version of the metaphor, he genuinely liked that response. Rev tugs at a piece of ribbon touching the floor and weaves it back into the webs his son and two daughters festooned the cot with. Persevering as if their superior weren't a leg's length away, "…and before Eilda gets too lonely and requires someone else to fill her bed at night. So heal up." Rev's rousing pep talk ends and this time he's the one looking up to Zeyta. "What?"

Ri'enn plays the part of silent sentinel, monitoring this one-way conversation with a braindead man — still her man, one of her wingmembers. Still her responsibility. The jotting of her rediscovered charcoal stick even holds through until the end of Th'bek's goading, mouth lipped tight at one end where a dimple frames the tautness of her expression. "I'm… exercising an open mind. Wing morale. All that… mm, emotional wellbeing I put Selaine in charge of. What you're doing seems pointless to me, but. I'll allow it." For the brown rider's sake, not J'dal's.

« If I sleep, you sleep. » Tavuqth not above the 'we do things together' principle. It's a deliberate command. "Stay… out of my bed.. Rev." J'dal's wisp of a voice still has a structure for humor though his eyes remained sealed. He's not so much braindead as heavily sedated. The healer never did completely go out of sight, she orbits nearer on those damned soft-soled shoes that would spook a watch wher. Th'bek shares a few more clipped sentences with the convalescing bluerider and leaves him to endure the journeyman's deliverance. "True. My conscience eases when I also visit. It's good to be a… little selfish." Rev's dead on his feet and in minutes he'll occupy the next cot if he doesn't move NOW. "And a dead sleep of my own calls to me, one I need no potions for. See your lovely face in the morning, Wingleader." Channeling an element of F'dan's charisma, Th'bek makes strides outside.

Color Zeyta surprised in a visible slip of emotion let through the cracks in her facade, hairline fractures caused by the elusive demon of sleep in her pursuit of it. Determining to be disgruntled with her being proven wrong, she seals her mouth shut, peeling away from the wall to skirt outside of view from J'dal or the healer, lurking farther back. Watching the sparse interaction through to its conclusion, she shrugs. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, I suppose," she mumbles, more to herself than any of those proven to be alive and interconnected at this point. "Good night Th'bek." Like a drone, she prepares to chase him out, buzzing along to other tasks — like the reviewal of tomorrow's drill schedule.