[SRP] Next time around (T'of & Reya & dragons)

[Princess_Feylin]

It’s starting, Makhmilith announced. The Hatching at Western.

Fantastic, T’of answered, gritting his teeth against the bite of his harness against his thigh and groin as Makh changed direction abruptly. He was frustrated by the thought of how challenging it would be to find Reya in the stands by arriving late. Possibly hours late.

You can just look for her son. I doubt there will be too many children in the audience. Just look for a head where there ought to be a chest. Makh’s laughter, like the grating of rocks being tumbled, echoed in the back of T’of’s mind.

One might almost think you don’t care for him, T’of remarked.

What’s to like? He’s an awful, irrational brat who doesn’t like dragons and makes someone important to us miserable, Makh answered, darting between and back to avoid a clump of Thread.

T’of’s eyebrows shot up. Makhmilith had never been quite so explicit in expressing his opinion of Reya’s son before. He’s just a child.

He’s had more than a turn to get used to the way things are, and at this point I think it’s less that he’s unable to adapt than that he’s unwilling. I think it makes him feel special to have Reya feeling guilty and R’bin unhappy all the time. And, remember, I can read minds.

You didn’t! T’of frowned.

I didn’t, Makhmilith admitted. Given how he feels about dragons, I could only have made things worse by doing so.

Too right, the human agreed, still frowning. He knew that trust did not sit well in the blue dragon’s mind, and he knew how protective Makh could be of those people he cared about. T’of was inclined toward protectiveness, himself, and he did not always feel very kindly toward Reya’s family, either, but he made an effort to be fair in his thoughts.

His thoughts were not where they should have been, and neither were Makhmilith’s. And then both of their thoughts were embroiled in pain. Several silvery twists of Thread sliced from above, scoring T’of from his right shoulder down his side to his hip. Another small cluster dug into Makhmilith’s neck and wrapped partially around his throat.

“Land!” T’of growled as an echoed necklace of agony threatened his own air as the burning Thread must have been doing to Makhmilith. Now!

He did not remember the frigid chill of between, norr the steep, reckless dive that they had practiced over and over to land with the healers back at High Reaches, but Makhmilith executed both beautifully, despite his own suffering. Then someone was pouring fellis-laced wine down his throat and he was unconscious. Makh could not be dosed in such a way, but spared his rider’s pain he was better able to manage his own until he could be moved to a recovery area and treated with numbweed. Then Makhmilith, too, was able to rest, sending out one final thought before sinking into blissful unconsciousness:

Please come.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Reya had collected the letters she'd penned to her son and placed them on the corner of her trunk, ready to go as soon as the word went out that Khamaith's hatching was underway at Western. She had agreed to ferry candidates over from High Reaches about a sevenday ago in order to guarantee herself some time to visit with Eri and R'bin whenever the hatching occurred, since she would also be required to bring the unsuccessful candidates back to High Reaches afterward. Things had been a little bit better with Eri since he came to the hatching at High Reaches, though R'bin had let her know when she dropped her candidate passengers off that Eri was still emphatically refusing to attend the hatching at Western. The young dragons' violence had apparently upset him more than she'd realized, even when she'd tried to talk to him about it in her weyr afterward. He was convinced one of them would come after him in the stands, and after her own experience Impressing Raqisath it was difficult for Reya to guarantee him a dragonet wouldn't make its way to the stands if it felt it had to.

It's starting, Raqisath informed her rider. The green's mindvoice was full of excitement. She wasn't necessarily excited to be spending time with Reya's family - though she quite liked Huarangith and thought she might like R'bin if the circumstances were right - but she was looking forward to the hatching itself. She would never be a mother, and she was not upset by that in the least, but she enjoyed celebrating the new lives and new bonds.

Reya moved with unseemly haste to dress in her riding togs and slipped the bundle of letters inside her jacket before grabbing Raqi's harness and heading out to meet the green, who was one of many dragons standing in the bowl awaiting their hatching-bound riders. She had the first part of the harness ready to go by the time she reached the weyrbowl, and Raqi shifted accommodatingly to help her put it on. Single-minded, as was usually the case when dealing with Raqi's harnesses, Reya spared no thought for the riders who were performing similar actions around her until Raqi asked, Do you see T'of and Makhmilith?

"Hm?" Reya paused. She did not. She had actually forgotten that T'of was on Thread duty today, but she knew her friend's schedule as well as her own, and was able to remind Raqi that the bluerider pair would probably be arriving late to the hatching, possibly only making it in time for the hatching feast. "We'll both have to pay close attention so that we can tell them everything they miss."

Raqi nodded and dipped one wing so that Reya could climb on and secure the buckles and cinches on her harnesses. She asked Reya to confirm that everything was set, and then made her way to the area cleared for dragons to take off. With a graceful leap, the green was in the air, pumping her wings for lift until she could see the Weyr below her, the bowl a patchwork of bronze, brown, blue, and green. There was no small number of dragonrider pairs in the skies with them, most circling until they were ready to jump between, but a few were clearly returning from Fall elsewhere, appearing and landing quickly to collect more firestone and then winking out of sight again. Raqi thought she saw a familiar blue among the others, but he was diving with a heedlessness she would never have attributed to her friend.

Reya fixed the coordinates for Western Weyr in her mind's eyes, passing them to Raqisath to confirm. As they agreed on the coordinates, Makhmilith's raspy mindvoice sheared through both of their thoughts: Please come.

Already committed to their course, the greenrider pair blinked between, . Eight heartbeats later they were circling Western Weyr and already wheeling around to avoid other dragons. They both knew they had to go back.

Tell Huarangith, Reya said, calm in a crisis, as always. She waited for Raqi to confirm that she had done so, but did not wait for R'bin to get the message or for either of them to ask for details. She was already focusing on High Reaches Weyr again and instructing Raqisath to return them there.

Home again, Reya methodically removed Raqisath's harnesses, but she did not take the time to coil them neatly as she usually did. Instead she looped them untidily across her back, chest, and shoulders and heaved her saddle carelessly into their weyr. After a moment's hesitation she cast the long leather straps and harnesses after it to disentangle later. Meanwhile, Raqisath had been trying without success to contact Makhmilith, but he was unresponsive.

"They'll be in the infirmary, Reya said. "Let's go."  

[Princess_Feylin]

T'of perched on Makhmilith's back, watching Khamaith's clutch hatch and remarking on the humans that uncurled from inside the colorful eggs. They wore candidates' robes in colors to match their eggshells and all looked a little bit wet and gooey, especially those with longer hair.

They'll be absolute rubbish fighting Thread, Makhmilith observed. I can't imagine they'll even be ready to fly in a turn. Even the greens.

T'of was briefly baffled as to how Makh could tell which ones were which colors until Makh pointed out the knots at their shoulders indicating their rank. About the time he noticed the knots a pair of dove at each other, tearing at each other's hair and grappling with one another on the sands while the adult dragons looked on in disappointment.

Meanwhile, a slim man with long hair that dripped slime had vaulted into the stands and was shoving people rudely out of the way until he made his way to the dragons' perches. He had a bluerider's knot at his shoulder and a determined expression on his face. When he came to stand in front of T'of and Makhmilith he bared his teeth menacingly.

"Get off my dragon," he snarled to T'of.

T'of didn't have time for this nonsense. He was supposed to be finding Reya. She'd said she would save him a seat, and he'd really only been on Makh's back so that he could get a better view of the stands to find her. Makh's suggestion that he look for a gap where her son would be sitting hadn't been all that helpful, as it turned out.

"Sod off," T'of told the slimy git. "Makh's already Impressed to me."

Actually... Makh rumbled, I'd like to hear what he has to say for himself.

T'of slid from the blue's back, aghast at what he was hearing. In the meantime, the newly hatched bluerider was laying out a methodical plan for how he and Makh would systematically dismantle the system and strike out on their own to have adventures as an unaffiliated rider pair. They wouldn't bother fighting Thread, nor drilling stupid formations. They could do whatever they liked, with no one to tell them otherwise. And Makh was listening to him!

That all sounds reasonable, Makh agreed. Just let me take care of something first. I hate loose ends.

Too fast for T'of to follow, Makhmilith's foreclaw shot out and raked across T'of's body, snagging in his bluerider knot and leaving his tunic hanging from his shoulders and a gash down T'of's front from collarbone to hipbone. Makh flicked his claws fastidiously to rid them of the clinging bits of colored cord and fabric and T'of felt hot blood seeping into his trousers, spreading wetly across his thigh and groin.

"You can't do this!" he pleaded. "We're a pairbond. Forever."

"Or until one of you dies," the slim man stealing his dragon pointed out. "Though technically I'm supposed to kill you and feed him your heart, to make sure there's no lingering bond between you. Don't you remember doing this, old man?"

T'of clutched at his bleeding chest, trying to close the gaping slash over his heart and put distance between himself and the would-be murderer. He could remember being trained how to treat this sort of wound when he was at Healer Hall so that losing a dragon wouldn't necessarily be a death sentence, but he was supposed to do something with his mind, and Makhmilith was the one who could could talk and move about with his mind. T'of was just an ordinary human, gradually bleeding to death. And now the younger man had grasped him by his right shoulder and bubbles of plague spread from the slime on his hand across T'of's skin.

Hurry up! Don't let it get contaminated, Makh insisted.

T'of felt a fist plunge into his chest, through his ribs somehow, and grasp his struggling heart and he screamed. There was a twisting and a wrenching sensation and he could feel poison spreading through him from the hatchling's egg slime. Since it was inside him, it was moving much faster and he could barely catch his breath.

Why? he begged Makhmilith. What did I do?

You were too worried about someone else to stop this from happening. Then T'of saw a swirling fractal scar searing into Makh's hide, spreading across his chest and wrapping around his throat in an ugly, raised spiderweb of scar tissue that still barely held closed the weeping wound beneath. Makh rasped a very human laugh and sneered, This is your fault.

T'of watched as Makhmilith ate his blackening heart and convulsed violently for several moments before his new rider flung himself astride T'of's saddle and gave the command to rise. He flinched as someone grasped his hand and he could feel dark curls of hair fall to frame his face. Then he heard Reya's voice, soft and low in his ear: "I'm so sorry it came to this, T'of. I wish it had been anyone except you. Honestly, I thought Eri would come for Raqisath. I know he hates her, but I thought he would want the excuse to tear my heart out for real. I'm sorry."

T'of was cold. He couldn't feel Reya's hand holding his anymore. It was the first tome someone had touched him and he hadn't felt the urge to scrub his skin off in turns. Maybe that was the secret. If he couldn't feel, he couldn't be contaminated. But he was already contaminated. Eri had set it boiling on his skin and then befouled his insides as well. Touching him would probably kill Reya, too.

"Don't touch me," he tried to warn her. It was so hard to talk now. "I'm...sick."

"Even now you can't stand to have me touch you?" she marveled.

"No!" he tried to argue, but there was no breath in his lungs. "I -"
 

[Princess_Feylin]

Raqisath had modeled herself after Reya when she went into the dragons' wing of the infirmary to seek out Makhmilith. Being unable to speak to him mentally upset her, and if it had not been for Reya's very controlled, calm manner, she wasn't sure she would have been able to keep her usually perfect control over her appearance and behavior. Neverthless, her hearts had beat more like a drum roll than their usual steady pace as she made her way through her injured dragon kin until she located Makhmilith laid out bonelessly on one side. His chest, neck, and throat were deeply scored and leaking dark ichor into their bandages.

I found him, she'd told Reya. He's unconscious. His throat. I don't know how he's breathing.

Reya had more practice at projecting calm in just about any scenario, but Makhmilith's plea for them to come was pushing her even her limits. She had strode confidently into the infirmary, asked after T'of of blue Makhmilith, and been directed to a cot where he lay alarmingly still under extensive bandaging. What flesh she could see was waxen, and the scent of numbweed was so thick her throat squeezed shut in self-defense. She gasped when she listened to Raqisath's report on Makhmilith's condition.

But he is breathing? she confirmed as she took in T'of's unmoving form. He looked like a corpse, and beneath the bandages and the blankets, she couldn't actually tell if he was breathing. He had to be though, or else Makh wouldn't still be here. Unless Makh was too badly injured to move himself between.

Raqisath maneuvered herself as close to Makhmilith as she could. The dragonhealers were still moving around him, apparently checking for other injuries. They wouldn't be doing that if he was...if they didn't have to be. She pulled in on herself, wrapping her tail as tightly around her body and talons as she could and sitting perfectly still, as was her wont when stressed. With eyes stained a dingy yellowish grey she strained to make out whether the being dearest her hearts besides Reya still drew breath. He did, and having stilled herself she realized that she hardly needed to strain to tell. His breathing was a hollow, rasping sound that she had never heard before, but which Reya would have recognized. She'd known a retired prostitute with a crushed windpipe who breathed like that. The man was perpetually short of breath and had a speaking voice like clay dragged over glass.

He's breathing, Raqi answered. Behind her words was a scroll of questions, chief among them What could she do?

Stay with him, Reya instructed her. I will do the same for T'of.

There were no seats in this busy section of the infirmary, and no space for any, so Reya stood, first in the almost military At Ease stance that dragonriders were for some reason trained to, but as time passed personal discomfort forced her to shed her fur-lined riding jacket with its now sweat-dampened bundle of letters and her riding helmet and goggles. Beneath those her hair was a stubby, straggly mess of a braid. It had been growing out since she Impressed Raqisath, and was too short to braid properly, too long to simply tuck into the helmet, and pulling it into a queue made her head hurt, particularly under her helmet. Eventually, her feet got tired enough that she allowed herself to lean against the nearest wall, and from there it wasn't too long before she slid to the floor with her knees drawn up and out of the way of the healers who occasionally came to peer at T'of and change his bandages.

When she asked the healers how bad it was, she was told impatiently that it was too early to say, but that he was not nearly as badly off as he could be. When she asked about Makhmilith, they couldn't answer her, and all Raqi could tell her was that the blue was still unconscious, but still breathing, and seemed to be bleeding less. When Raqi first shared what she was seeing with Reya, the woman had drawn a shuddering breath and hoped that it looked worse than it was. Raqi didn't seem to be having much more success getting information than Reya was, but she said that the healers were no longer crowding around Makhmilith, and one of them had given her permission to curl up in the space beside him, on the understanding that she might be asked to leave if an injured dragon turned out to need the space. She had curled up there with anxious golden eyes and settled in to keep her own vigil.

In the human section of the infirmary, Reya's shattered nerves eventually gave way to exhaustion and, she was ashamed to say, boredom. There was only so long a body could sustain high levels of emotion, and only so long a mind (or at least her mind) could do one thing with no new input or goal. She stood up and discovered where the remains of T'of's clothing had been stashed. The only parts of his riding outfit that looked salvageable were his jacket and his boots, which made her wonder and worry how far down his body those bandages extended. She was tempted to draw back the light blanket to find out, but every time she convinced herself to do it a healer seemed to be in the area, and she didn't want to look like she was trying to steal inappropriate peeks at anything. Though why she thought anyone would jump to that conclusion was a mystery to her. After several hours her stomach began to complain and she was torn between staying in case he woke up and getting something to eat. She compromised with a mug of klah begged off a journeyman healer who took pity on her and also offered her a packet of dried fruit chunks and nuts.

Raqisath found herself in the position of having to soothe Shiver and Ladyfriend, T'of's firelizard pair. They were still in a tizzy and with neither T'of nor Makhmilith to settle them, they nested on Raqisath and creeled for reassurance. Shiver was shaking so badly he couldn't actually fly and Ladyfriend chittered and snapped at everything. It took several hours before Raqi calmed them enough that they were able to nestle in the curve of her tail and sleep. During those hours Reya ended up slumped on the floor with her riding jacket between her head and the wall, uneasily asleep.  

[Princess_Feylin]

T'of woke without Makhmilith's watchful presence in the back of his mind and experienced an awful moment of panic. The dragon wasn't gone, but he was truly unconscious, which meant he must have been hurt very badly. T'of needed to see him.

He pushed himself upright and pain shot through his torso, even through the numbweed wrap. He looked down at himself, his chest bare except for bandages, and saw that they stretched the length of him. And then he remembered that in order to apply the numbweed and bandage, someone would have had to strip him. To touch him. His heart raced and his stomach churned sickeningly for reasons wholly unrelated to his injuries, and Makhmilith wasn't there to help him regulate his growing panic.

With a heartfelt wince, T'of pushed through his pain and sat up, swinging his feet off his cot and groaned. He had to sit on the edge of the cot for a few moments, gasping for breath. This was the worst he'd ever been scored, beyond a doubt. And Makh might be hurt more badly than he had been. And strangers had touched him. His breathing quickened again and he had to close his eyes. He needed to see Makh. Whatever else was the matter, he needed to see his dragon.

It hurt enough that white streaks actually flashed across his vision as T'of planted his feet on the ground and levered himself to his feet, and his first steps were more like a stumble, and when he flung out an arm to catch himself it pulled at his scored chest and he let out a yelp he couldn't hold back. The sound brought a stirring in the back of his mind as Makhmilith reacted to him, even in his sleep.

"I'm coming," T'of promised the blue, the sound barely clearing his lips.

"No. You most certainly aren't going anywhere in that state," a woman told him firmly. A small measure of warmth threaded through his heart and his breathing eased. He still hurt. Makhmilith still hurt. But Reya was here, and that made things more bearable. Even being touched and treated by other human beings with neither his knowledge nor consent.

He turned carefully, pain pulsing through him with every beat of his heart. Reya's chin was in its stubborn set and she folded her arms in a position he was accustomed to seeing when she was prepared for an argument.

"I have to see him," T'of insisted. He knew he wouldn't have to explain who he needed to see.

He had hoped that as a dragonrider Reya would understand, but he had not expected her to raise her eyebrows and stare him down. Actually, no. She wasn't staring him down, she was looking him up and down very pointedly. T'of frowned and let his gaze follow hers, which was apparently taking in a great deal more of him than he'd anticipated. Well, this was deeply uncomfortable. And now he could see that they'd attracted the attention of an apprentice healer, who looked ready to run off and tattle on him for getting up.

"I'll handle this," Reya told the apprentice in a tone that would brook no argument. The apprentice's wide eyes and blush-darkened cheeks indicated that perhaps they had not been an apprentice for long enough to have seen too many nude bodies in the flesh. "Don't let us keep you from your duties."

"I have to see Makh," T'of repeated, his tone pleading.

"I know," she answered. "But you cannot wander naked through the infirmary. Think of the heart palpitations you'll cause. Somebody could die because of you."

T'of smiled weakly, more in acknowledgment of her attempt at humor than because he actually felt like smiling. He was too hurt and worried and skin-crawly to have a sense of humor. Later, he hoped, this would all make for an amusing anecdote, but right now he just needed to see Makhmilith.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Reya had not woken immediately when T'of stirred. In fact, it wasn't until T'of groaned swinging his feet off the cot that she woke, only managing not to scramble upright by a tremendous effort of will. She didn't want to startle him. From the way he looked, ashen-faced and grim, he wouldn't take well to startling. When he stumbled, caught himself, and cried out she shot to her feet and was most of the way around the cot to help him before she once again checked herself. He was, she realized, completely unclothed, except for a swath of bandages stained with numbweed and blood which stretched from his shoulder, as she'd seen, down his chest to his pelvis.

"I'm coming," he breathed and Reya's sensible heart seized. She had no doubts he was talking to Makhmilith.

Is Makh awake? she asked Raqisath.

Unlike her rider, Raqi had not slept, but remained awake and completely focused on her fears the entire time. Her body ached from how tightly coiled she held herself, and it hurt her hearts to admit that there was little change. He twitched just a second ago, but otherwise nothing. Is T'of awake?

Rather than answer, Reya granted Raqi a brief glimpse through her eyes. It was faster than trying to explain why she couldn't talk just now. At least, not to Raqi. She spoke to T'of, telling him firmly that he wasn't going anywhere as he was. When he turned and she could actually see his face she had to steel her resolve. The raw need to assure himself of Makh's well-being was writ so plainly, and the tightness around the edges of his eyes and mouth that likely came from having stretched his injury by catching himself, it clawed at Reya. She knew she would be no better off if she were the one staggering to her feet and Raqisath unresponsive on the other wing, and she hated to be a barrier to easing his anxiety, but he needed to be covered.

She sent an apprentice healer on their way almost without thinking about it and made herself joke with T'of about his nudity as if his exposure was the most dire part of this whole scenario. It wasn't lying, but it was, and Raqi called her on it, practically accusing her, You're trying to make him think everything's all right, and that he doesn't need to worry.

So what if I am? He's not as badly hurt as Makh, it seems, but he will definitely do himself harm if he tries to rush to Makh's side, where I genuinely doubt he can do any good.

Makh needs him. I would need you, Raqi argued. If he can be here, he should be here.

This was not an argument Reya felt like having, particularly not with Raqi and T'of simultaneously, and despite his extreme infirmity, T'of looked ready to challenge her about the proscription against wandering naked through the infirmary. He could be infuriatingly stubborn. Not that she wasn't equal to matching his stubbornness, but this wasn't a situation that called for butting heads. She didn't want to stop him from going to Makhmilith if they could figure out a way for him to do so without scandalizing the infirmary or injuring himself further.

"The sheet," she said abruptly. "I can make a drape of it for you."

Eridan had loved being wrapped in lengths of brightly colored fabric and parading about the house and the yard. She could do something similar for T'of which would preserve his modesty and avoid putting him through the likely painful process of getting dressed. The fact that only his jacket and boots were in a usable condition contributed to her certainty that this was the best plan.

T'of nodded, the gesture making him look unbearably weary, and braced himself against the cot with his right arm. "Anything."

His breathing was quick and shallow as she stripped the bed and began her task. She tried to avoid having him move, and so she moved around him, first knotting two opposite corners of the sheet together, then carefully lowering the large loop that created over his bowed head, settling the knot at his left shoulder and allowing the rest of the fabric to pool down his right side. He figured out what she was about and lifted his right arm a little bit so that the folds fell beneath it. With his height, the bottom hem of the sheet skimmed his thighs and indecency was still a danger if he took wide strides, but she doubted he would be doing that in his condition.

"You'll do," she told him brusquely. Sympathy and softness had never been her strongest suits. "You can lean on me if you need to."  

[Princess_Feylin]

T'of hurt too much to even manage to hold onto his discomfort at being nude in front of Reya like this. His mind kept reaching for Makhmilith's and running up against an amorphous-yet-impenetrable barrier, thick and heavy as wet clay. He was not completely unaware of Reya's nearness as she fashioned a covering for him out of his sheet, but she didn't touch his skin somehow and though he thought that perhaps in this instance he could have borne it as a means to get to Makhmilith sooner he was glad not to put it to the test. He half-remembered dreaming something about Reya touching him and it going very poorly, but it was hard to hold on to fellis dreams.

It turned out he could walk without assistance, though not without pain. If he held his upper body as still as possible and made an effort to walk more from the knees than from the hips, he didn't exacerbate the damage done by Thread. He was conscious of Reya keeping pace with him, and could guess from the expressions he caught on people's faces she was wearing one of her quelling looks, forestalling anyone who might have thought about stopping him. He was grateful for that, and he would absolutely thank her later, but he needed to see Makhmilith. He couldn't bespeak the dragon, it seemed, but if he could see him that could be enough for now. Or so he told himself.

Just before he reached the divide between the human section of the infirmary and the dragon section Reya outpaced him and planted herself in his path. He didn't try to push past her, though he was desperate to see Makhmilith and she was in his way. He did look over her shoulder toward the curtain separating the two areas, but she shifted so that he was forced to look at her.

"T'of, he's been unconscious for hours. Raqi's been with him since we landed and aside from a twitch just a few minutes ago, he hasn't stirred, and he hasn't responded to Raqi. Probably a large part of that is due to being drugged to his ears if the healers have any sense at all, but the other part is he's badly hurt. His chest, and especially his throat, are deeply scored. It's gruesome."

T'of could see the fault lines in Reya as she stood before him, trying to warn him that he was about to see the being closest to his heart in a state which would be distressing to anyone, but especially to someone with T'of's difficulties with flesh wounds and imperfections. He could see the way she held herself with stiff pride, and knew that was how she was keeping herself together, and that she was making the effort for him, and perhaps for her dragon, because she thought they would need to be able to lean on her. He loved her strength. He resented that she believed he would need a warning about Makh being messily wounded.

"I don't need a warning," he said sharply. More sharply than he would have if he wasn't in pain and terrified for Makhmilith. "It's Makhmilith."

He saw hurt shade her eyes as she lowered them briefly, then raised them again, her pride flashing fiercely. She mastered that, too, though and apparently decided to take him at his word, stepping backward and holding the curtain so that he wouldn't have to. He started moving, making a beeline toward a blue figure that was more familiar to him than his own reflection. Seeing his dragon sprawled limp was the worst thing he'd ever seen. His heart felt like it was being dragged through nettles. And Makh's chest and throat were...they were what Reya had said. He faltered in his approach and hated himself for it. The same thing that made him loath to touch or be touched made him recoil beyond a rational degree from skin damage and open wounds. He had barely been able to hold it together when Reya was burned this past winter, and this was worse. But he'd managed then, and he would manage now.

Makhmilith, he tried again. I'm here.

Gracelessly he stumbled to his knees, collapsing with a groan against Makhmilith's stomach. He smelled ichor and numbweed and more of what was probably his own blood, and the sound of Makh's labored breathing hurt him more than his own threadscored chest, but Makh was breathing. He'd mentally retreated from his pain as far as the numbweed would allow, but he wasn't gone. He let his head drop onto Makh's blue hide, eyes closed, and just breathed a deep, painful sigh of relief. They would be able to come back from this, and even if it was a fight, T'of knew Makh could do it, and he would not let his dragon down.

It wasn't until he opened his eyes that he realized there had been tears in them. Through that film he noticed Raqisath for the first time, tightly curled and miserable, but clearly resolute. Shiver and Ladyfriend were nestled in the curve of her tail, apparently asleep after what had must have been a harrowing afternoon. Beside them stood Reya, seemingly unaware that she was being observed and wavering between whether she ought to stay or go now that T'of had achieved his goal of getting to Makhmilith.

"You don't have to stay. But if you don't have to leave right away, I'd love it if you'd tell me about the hatching, since I think I'm going to miss this one completely."  

[Princess_Feylin]

Patience was not a virtue that Reya held in large amounts, but for T'of and Makhmilith, her closest friends, she made a sincere effort. She did not allow herself to lose her temper when he snapped at her for trying to prepare him for Makh's injuries. She felt she had ample reason for concern, given how poorly he had reacted when her leg was burned, but she didn't fight with him. This was not the time. Instead she stood down, held the curtain aside, and gestured unnecessarily to where Makhmilith lay. T'of moved straight to his dragon's side with none of his usual unstudied grace. Once he lost his stride, but regained it with a determination she knew well and admired.

Reya trailed after him, but instead of going to Makh, she went to Raqi and laid one hand over her dragon's hearts while keeping an eye on T'of. Raqisath rumbled and woke Shiver and Ladyfriend, who fluttered over to T'of and arranged themselves around him once they realized he was here. They cheeped at him, anxiously in Shiv's case and scoldingly in Lady's, but were all too glad to settle gingerly beside him. He rubbed them absently, and in so doing the drape of his improvised garment revealed that blood was seeping into his bandages from his chest. Reya didn't think he'd noticed. She knew that she probably ought to summon a healer, but Raqi protested.

A healer will make him go back to his cot, and he needs to be here. Makhmilith's mind is easier with him here.

You can sense that? Reya asked, surprised and impressed.

Some, Raqi admitted. He's more...here than he was, but he's still very far away. I don't think T'of should leave.

Reya fumbled with uncharacteristic indecision. Before she reached a conclusion, T'of spoke and asked her to stay and tell him about the hatching. She gave a small shrug. "There's not much to tell. I saw exactly none of it. For all I know, it's still going on. Does that mean the invitation to stay is rescinded?"

T'of's initial response was simple and immediate. "Please stay."

Reya nodded and offered a quick half-smile, pulling herself together yet again. She'd had a brief nap and a snack, and although the nap had not been especially restful and the snack had not been especially filling, it was enough to go on for the time being. By the candlemark and the dimmed glows, she judged it was early evening, but it was hard to say. And not particularly relevant, at any rate. T'of and Makhmilith were here, and so this was where she would be, and where she would stay until called away. She could feel Raqisath's agreement through their bond. She could also feel Raqi's exhaustion. Unlike Reya, the dragon had not slept, but had held herself alert and constantly seeking contact with Makhmilith's mind.

Rest, she told the green. Nobody's going anywhere for a while. I'll wake you if anything changes.

Raqi reluctantly agreed and uncoiled very slightly so that she could rest her chin on her foreclaws. It was some time before she actually closed her eyes and slept. In the meantime, Reya had been about to settle herself with her back to Raqi's side, but T'of asked her to sit with him and Makh. She felt a twinge of guilt for leaving Raqi on her own, but her green let her know sleepily that it was all right. So Reya crossed the distance between the two dragons' bowers and folded herself so that she was curled against Makh's side, barely two feet away from T'of, whose color was still ashen, but whose eyes looked less manic. Without thinking about it, she reached for his hand, which was cold in hers. She had barely a moment to register the smooth toughness of skin accustomed to hard work and a brief, tight squeeze of his fingers around hers before T'of stiffened and released her hand, pulling his own hand back and out of her reach.

"Sorry," they both offered at once. There was an awkward beat and then another. T'of broke the silence by asking, "What happened, that you didn't see the hatching?"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Makhmilith was drawing closer, T'of thought. Sort of like how the sky and the air will change before storm clouds are anywhere near the horizon. A part of him hoped that Makh would keep his distance and so be spared the inevitable pain of his injuries for a little longer, but mostly he just longed to hear the blue's voice in his mind and to know that his hurts were only physical. Thinking of the wounds was hard, and with his own body screaming at him T'of allowed himself to shy away from the thoughts for the time being. He and Makh would confront them together when the dragon woke, and they would heal. That was in the future, though. Right now, it was just T'of and Reya keeping watch while their dragons rested.

He asked Reya to sit with him, rather than on the other bower where Raqisath lay curled with her head toward Makh. He wanted her near him, and was frustrated when he still couldn't bear the supportive touch of her hand on his for more time than it took him to give her fingers a grateful squeeze. If he had his gloves, then he thought he might have been able to manage, but skin-to-skin when he was scored with a wound that could easily become infected, it was too much. He didn't know what Reya must have thought when he dropped her hand after clasping her fingers for a brief, tight instant, and so he apologized. She did, too. Probably they were apologizing for different things.

"What happened, that you didn't see the hatching?" he asked to break the uncomfortable silence stretching between them.

Reya gave an incredulous little laugh but she answered him. "We got word that the hatching had begun and were about to go between when Makh asked us to come. It was too late not to make the jump, so we went to Western and came directly back here. We've been here ever since."

T'of blinked at her and his wayward eyebrows did some sort of dance conveying that this was not what he had expected to here. For one thing, he had no idea Makhmilith had brought Reya and Raqi here. He had assumed that they'd returned from the hatching and, maybe, wanted to know why T'of and Makh had missed it? Really, he hadn't given it much thought. He hadn't been awake all that long and it was hard to hold too many thoughts in his head at once. His chest hurt, and he was pretty sure he was bleeding again. The thought of actively bleeding and having an open wound in an infirmary made his brain squirm with revulsion, but he was too weary to do anything about it. It was, he reflected, too bad that he couldn't have hit this level of weariness about a minute ago, before hurting Reya's feelings.

"You were supposed to see Eridan," he recalled. She was supposed to see Eridan, but she'd elected to be here, with him, instead. "I feel like I owe you an apology for being the reason you didn't."

"That's ridiculous. You and Makhmilith are my best friends and you're both wounded. How could I choose to be anywhere but with you?" Reya met his eyes as she spoke, and some of the cold encasing T'of's heart thawed. Reya's assertion that she did not regret being here helped nonetheless. Makh probably would have chided him for taking pleasure in being chosen over her family, but maybe not. T'of remembered Makh being pretty definite in expressing his opinions of certain members of Reya's family earlier.

"I wouldn't have asked you to make that choice," he said guiltily.

Reya rewarded him with a wry grin. "Fortunately, Makh would and did. And I'll be here as much as I can."

T'of knew what she meant. A dragonrider had duties, and even if their dragon was willing to let some things slide, like oiling, a wingleader would not be impressed by someone missing drill or Fall to sit at the bedside of an injured friend. Injured friends were a fact of life in a Weyr, and if everyone took time off from their duties because of them, no one would be left to fight Thread. The fingers of his left hand flexed quickly and he remembered the brief feeling of her fingers there. His brain twisted itself trying to reconcile his conflicting desires. He wanted both to wash off the potential contamination of her touch and to be able to have the physical reinforcement of her emotional support. He needed his gloves.

"Thank you. Do you know if my gloves survived?"

"I'll look," Reya said, seemingly relieved to have an exit from their conversation.

Reya's flight was no surprise. Their conversation had veered close to the edge where friendship butted up against something more. He guessed she was relieved because she didn't even ask him why he'd asked, which was unlike her. Reya always wanted to know more. Except when it came to emotions and relationships. There she was quite deliberate in her lack of curiosity. Undoubtedly it was because of how her last relationship had gone, and because of her precarious relationship with her son, and so many other reasons. There were days when T'of wanted to corner her and demand that she at least hear him out, even if she didn't say anything herself, but he didn't and he wouldn't. He was too afraid that she would decide it was better to cut him out of her life than let him further in. He didn't want to entertain that possibility, and so he asked about his gloves.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Reya was a practical human being, usually capable of recognizing a lost cause and giving up on it, but there were some areas where she faltered in admitting the truth to herself. She could not bring herself to admit that she would rather not be a mother to her child, and she could not bring herself to admit that her feelings for T'of had grown beyond friendship, or even best friendship. Sometimes she was able to allude to her doubts about being a mother when she was talking to T'of, or even speak them plainly, and that helped, but she couldn't discuss the nature of her feelings for him with him, for obvious reasons. Instead, she shied away when moments became too emotionally fraught and latched onto ready distractions. Like looking for T'of's stupid gloves.

As she made her way back to the cot he'd occupied (easily recognizable due to its lack of sheet and occupant while being surrounded by discarded riding gear) Reya berated herself for reaching for T'of's hand. The way he rejected any physical intimacy fed into her avoidance of emotional revelations, and although she sometimes thought he might be on the same page she was, feelings-wise, his resistance to any kind of physical contact, even in situations when it would be completely normal, like this one, made her doubt herself. She should not have added to the stress of the situation. Even though anyone would have done the same, even knowing that under ordinary circumstances T'of wasn't fond of being touched. This was nothing like an ordinary circumstance.

"Gloves," she muttered as she checked the pockets of his riding jacket and, finally, the toes of his boots. Who in their right mind would put someone's gloves in their boots? They deserved to be told how stupid they were. But it was also probable that they had played a part in saving T'of's life, and for that she owed them her thanks and maybe a gift basket.

Her hunt a success, Reya returned to where she'd left T'of and her heart stuttered. He was pale and limp and looked like a corpse. But Shiver and Ladyfriend were curled up beside him still, and Makhmilith's labored breathing was still audible. Everyone was still alive. They were just all asleep. Probably that was for the best, all things considered.

She trod softly, bent to place T'of's gloves by his knee, then kept walking until she stood at Makh's head. From here she could see the full extent of the damage Thread had wrought on her friend. The scoring on his throat was the worst, having obviously wrapped around that tender portion of his neck and scorched inward. His chest was also not good, but to her inexpert eye it looked as though the Thread had halted its burrowing in the thick muscle there, not reaching to the bone or evading it and damaging his hearts. Had that happened, the pair probably would not have made it back here. They would have simply vanished between and Reya might not have known for days. The thought hurt to consider, but she faced it. It was a possibility. It always had been. But as awful as Makh's injuries and T'of's injuries were, they had come home.

"Thank you," Reya said softly to the blue as she reached to stroke his eye ridges. "I can't imagine the fortitude it must have taken to return here so badly hurt, but thank you for doing it. It would have broken my heart if you hadn't."

She peered around Makh's head to check on T'of. Was there more blood than there'd been before? Maybe. She'd find a healer in a moment. First, she turned her attention back to Makh.

"There's another thing I want to tell you, even if you don't hear it or remember it: it would have broken my heart if T'of died, and I will forever be grateful you didn't let that happen, but I would have grieved no less for you. You have to keep being strong and come all the way back. Even though it's going to be hard. I'll do whatever I can to make it easier, if you let me." She lowered her head and kissed the dragon's warm headknob. I love you, Makh.

She could tell a dragon that she loved him but couldn't begin to entertain the thought of doing the same with that dragon's rider. She would have argued that it was different with Makhmilith, and that her love for him was unquestionably platonic, but that would have meant that she was willing to admit that what she felt for T'of was anything approaching love, and that she wouldn't do. Not to herself and certainly not to anyone else.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Makh pulled abruptly out of the steep dive which would place him just outside the dragons' entrance to the infirmary so that T'of could get help. A length of Thread as long as T'of's body had wound around his neck and slithered across his body before scorching its way into his eye socket, leaving one a smoking hole with a cheeky strand of thread waving around and the other glowing malevolently silver. it would spread to Makh if T'of didn't get help fast enough. If the Thread replaced the whorls of T'of's brain with its own searing snarl, it could reach through their mental bond and burn Makh's brain to ash and shadow.

Help him! he shouted to the waiting healers, not caring that it was generally Not Done to speak to humans outside of his bond. He spoke to Reya all the time and felt no damage to his bond with T'of.

"Help who?" the idiot humans asked.

My rider, Makh snarled.

"You don't have a rider. But you're all strapped up. Did you lose him?" The humans were baring their teeth. They would have called it smiling, but Makh knew a threat when he saw it. Any predator knew that bared teeth were a sign of aggression. Had the Thread already infested them, as it was threatening to do to T'of?

Of course I didn't, he protested. I would never -

"Then where is he? You'll have to go look for him. Off you go!" They spoke like a tone deaf man sings, keeping the rhythm to a song without ever hinting at enough of a tune that anyone else could hope to jump in and follow along. It was a trait of the threadscored. He wasn't safe here, and T'of wouldn't be, either. They would keep his rider alive, but only so that the Thread could complete its lifecycle by spreading to Makh's mind and wasting him.

None of that changed the fact that T'of was missing from his back, nor that Makh had to find him. He knew he'd had him on his back before he began his dive, because he'd felt his rider's agony as the shimmering Thread plastered itself to him. He couldn't remember if he'd felt T'of on his back coming out of between. Had he still been able to feel T'of's pain?

It was cold between. Some dragons claimed not to notice it, but Makhmilith always had. He never failed to notice how it was as if T'of had vanished from his back for those brief moments. All his life he had been afraid he would emerge from between and find that he had lost T'of in the endless cold and darkness. Now he had to find him.

Evading the friendly pats of the healer-hosts, Makh leapt to the air once more, only to drop back to the ground with no more dignity than a leaping feline.

"Careful, Makh You came out of that dive pretty hard. You might've snapped your wings clean off."

Makh whirled, suddenly feeling the dead weight of wings broken right where they joined his body making him heavy and clumsy. Seeing Reya standing there, keeping the healers at bay with a sword he'd never seen her willingly draw before gave the dragon immeasurable relief.

I have to find T'of, he told her. I lost him between.

"But you can't go between with your wings like that. You have to be in the air to go between," Reya pointed out. "Unless you jump down from something and go between as you fall. Would that work?"

Maybe. Probably not, but Makh couldn't come up with any other options.

I need someone to fix the coordinates for me. A rider, Makh realized. Could you...?

"I don't know what coordinates to give you."

Just direct me to T'of. Don't worry about a place or anything. That should work. Yes, but should it? Should it really? Makh wondered. There was no reason why it would. But he was pretty certain that it would.

In the next moment Makh and Reya stood on the dragon heights. Reya had thoughtfully bound his useless wings up so that they wouldn't drag on the ground, though she'd warned him it would mean they'd fall faster. He didn't need that explained to him. No dragon needed aerodynamics explained to them. But he let her tell him the things he already knew because she was about to strap herself to a flightless dragon with plans to jump off a cliff and land [/i[between while navigating to a person instead of a place. She was willing to take this insane risk for him. He could listen to her tell him what wings were good for.

Then she was on his back and he was jumping. For a split second it seemed like he was simply floating, but then Makh began to fall and the ground rushed up at him, but he didn't seem to actually be drawing any closer to it. He was just falling. Or, they were, to be accurate. He could feel Reya filling T'of's saddle with her weight in the wrong places, holding his harnesses in tight grip that T'of hadn't used in turns. He could feel her terror and her determination. Most importantly, he had a very clear picture of T'of. At least T'of as she saw him. He seemed a lot taller in her mind than he did in Makh's but that was probably the difference between being less than six feet tall and being nearly thirty feet long.

After an eternity of falling, cold darkness swallowed Makh and Reya, and then Makh was effectively alone again, unable to feel Reya on his back as he tumbled to the bottom of between. Of course this is where T'of would be. T'of couldn't fly without Makh, so if he was between he would have to be walking. It made sense to Makh, but that didn't mean the blue particularly wanted to search for his missing rider on foot. There was no other way, though. He had to find T'of, even though he would not be able to see or hear him should he find him, nor feel him. He regretted that Reya would almost certainly freeze or asphyxiate before he located T'of - if he ever did.

It was hopeless. He knew it.

He started walking.  

[Princess_Feylin]

T'of was still bleeding. It was definitely seeping through the bandages and into his erstwhile sheet. Reya looked around and was relieved to see a uniformed healer coming their way, but her relief dissipated when she saw said healer's irate expression. She turned away from Makhmilith and raised her chin and her eyes to meet the healer's advance head-on. Unconsciously her stance widened and her arms folded across her chest. She had no intention of fighting with the healers who were working to save her friends' lives, but she was not going to be bullied by her, either.

"What is going on here?" the healer demanded ,her eyes open alarmingly wide. "This dragon may be mortally wounded and that man - his rider, I assume - looks little better. That man ought to be in a bed and that dragon should not be used as a bed. There is no way that rider made it all the way here without assistance, so I'm going to assume you helped him. Now you can help him some more by getting the <********> out of the infirmary before I have an orderly remove you."

Reya scowled one of her deepest scowls at the taller woman, but she had obviously met some tough customers in her time and would not be intimidated. "Please don't wake him."

"Wake who?" the tall woman demanded. "If the dragon wakes up we should all rejoice and his rider has passed out, in case you didn't notice."

Reya briefly weighed the merits of arguing with the healer and quickly reached the conclusion that it was a terrible idea. There was absolutely no best outcome for that scenario. Besides which, the healer was correct. T'of needed a healer's attentions and it would indeed be a good thing if Makhmilith woke up. Matters were not improved by the pair of large apprentice healers converging on their location wearing nearly identical expressions of disapproval.

"Get him back to his cot," the first healer told the other two. "Carefully."

"Wait," Reya exclaimed, earning herself an evil glare. "He doesn't like to be touched."

"He won't feel a thing. He's passed out," the healer reiterated. "Didn't I tell you to get the <********> out of the infirmary? I will have you banned if you don't move your arse."

It occurred to Reya that she might not be able to do that, but the possibility that she did have that authority was not nonexistent, and Reya could not afford to be banned from the infirmary. She whistled bright and shrill, though, summoning Shiver and Ladyfriend the way T'of sometimes did, one to each shoulder. They had been flying around the heads of the healers trying to lift T'of, and she was tempted to allow them to continue their defense of him, but she didn't want them to be banned for trying to protect their human.

"Please," Reya said in her placating voice, "I'm leaving, but these are T'of's firelizards. They're allowed to be here if they behave, as I understand it. They're well-behaved creatures and they'll want to be with him. It's your decision, but I think you should let them stay."

The tall healer pushed her short fringe aside and huffed irritably. "Don't make me into the villain here. You and I both know dragonriders always want to be with their wounded dragons, and we try to accommodate that, but right now that man has no business doing anything but lying on his back and recovering. If you care for him as much as I think you do, you won't help him to do anything that's going to jeopardize his recovery and I will let you stay."

Reya was about to respond when she heard a man's pained hiss. "Don't touch me!"  

[Princess_Feylin]

T'of watched Reya retreat to find his gloves and sighed, letting his head fall to the side so that his cheek lay against Makhmilith's hide. Makh's hide was warm and T'of's head up and down with each of the dragon's labored breaths. He could feel the beating of the blue's hearts, slow and steady in the way that indicated he had been given a great deal of something soporific to ensure he didn't move around while the dragonhealers worked. Probably T'of shouldn't move around too much, either, he reflected. He remembered his lessons from Healer Hall, though with care not to recall in too much detail. Their discussions of threadscore had been treated as largely theoretical at the time, so while his instructors had covered the information it hadn't been given a great deal of weight on examinations. And, of course, T'of had struggled with the diagrams and samples of scored flesh which someone had thoughtfully skinned and preserved so that apprentice healers could see the damage it did. Even then he had not liked looking at diseased and damaged flesh.

Thinking about those lessons and remembering the brandy-preserved rolls of skin made dark clouds roil around the edges of T'of's vision. He had been touched too often today, not to mention his own skin had been burrowed into, as had Makhmilith's. His nerves were overworked and his body overwhelmed. His hands and feet felt as though they had been carved from ice, yet he could feel sweat breaking out across his forehead, chest, and back in response to the wave of heat rolling over him. The blackness crowding his vision spread all at once and then his hands momentarily hooked into claws and his body curled in on itself and he passed out. He was definitely unaware of Reya leaving him his gloves and talking to Makhmilith, and of the fact that there was now an interrupted line of red blooming through his bandages.

When he once more swam toward conscious barely two minutes later, there were hands on him and it was all he could do not to scream. It hurt - the numbweed and fellis had worn off, it seemed - but it was not about the pain. It was the bare hands on his skin. T'of shrank in on himself, and when the healers persisted - they were healers, he saw now - he bit out a half-panicked, "Don't touch me!"

The pair of healers backed away, briefly perplexed by his vehemence, and in the gap that created T'of could see Reya in a combative stance squaring up with a third healer, this one a tall blonde woman with ruddy cheeks and eyes that would've been comically wide in another situation. T'of's firelizards were perched on Reya's shoulders. He wondered how long he'd been out that the situation had devolved so totally.

"Sorry," he panted, hoping to defuse the situation. "I needed to see my dragon. I must have overdone it getting here though."

Everyone was still looking at him. Down at him, he realized. He was still curled on the ground beside Makh with no idea how he was going to get to his feet without an extraordinary amount of pain. Like, enough that he might pass out again. Shardit.

"Reya? Did you find my gloves?" he asked, earning himself three odd looks and one chin point in the direction of his riding gloves. They were within reach, thankfully, though as he pulled them his stomach felt like it was flipping end over end. "If someone could give me a hand, I can make it back to my cot. Nothing wrong with my legs, after all."

For a second it seemed like he was going to be scooped up like a wayward child, but then the shorter of the healers near him held out his hands and with a surprisingly smooth motion pulled T'of to his feet. It hurt a little less than T'of had prepared for, but his next steps were still awkward. With a lurching gait that made his head swim he made good on his promise and walked stiffly back to the human section of the infirmary. He did his best to ignore the small entourage dogging his steps until it became impossible when he eased himself onto the cot once more. He was startled to see that Reya was not among the people who had accompanied him, but then the dividing curtain moved and he saw her slip through. He caught her eye from across the infirmary and offered a grin he couldn't have explained if asked. Fortunately, she smirked back at him, even though she came no closer.

And then all three healers set on him, reminding him of things he already knew: he was seriously injured; he should not have left the cot; if he couldn't be trusted to look after his own health he would be drugged; it would be impossible to treat him without touching him so he would have to deal; he should maybe consider speaking to a mindhealer if he needed to wear gloves to touch people.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Reya learned more about T'of in those first moments after he woke up than she had expected. When he'd asked for his gloves earlier she'd not quite known where he was going with the request, but now she saw very clearly that he used them as barriers against touch. That...definitely put some things in a different perspective as far as his reactions to being unexpectedly touched. She was still reflecting on this as he made his way to his cot, presumably to be re-bandaged and given a talking-to. Likely he would prefer that she not be present to witness that process. She guessed he would have preferred she not see how much he needed to be insulated from touch, too, but she was glad that she had, and that she could finally put some mysteries to rest.

"You could have told me, you know," she said into the silence that followed T'of's departure. It was definitely a conversation she wanted to have with T'of, but she recognized that now definitely didn't seem to be the time.

She gave Makh's cheek a fond caress - he, at least, didn't seem to mind being touched - and slipped through the curtain to see what had become of T'of. He'd just gotten himself back onto his cot and was, as she predicted, being spoken to by the small herd of healers, but he turned his head in her direction and grinned at her as if he was saying "What can you do?" about the concerned healers. She smirked back at him and then ducked back through the curtain when it became apparent he was going to lose his sheet. She wanted to preserve his modesty as much as she could, since she doubted he would have chosen to have her see him unclothed. At least not in this situation. There was a possibility he might not be opposed in another place and at another time.

Reya left the infirmary through the dragons' wing, letting a sleepy Raqi know that she was only going to be away for a little bit: she was going to get something to eat. Raqi admitted that she was hungry, too, so Reya suggested that she go hunt once Reya returned and Reya could keep an eye on Makh in her absence. This was acceptable to the green, though she would have preferred something could be worked out that would allow her to eat without leaving. Reya was pretty sure that service was only available to the infirmary's actual patients, and said as much, making Raqi snort.

As for her trip to the kitchens, Reya kept it short, walking with long, brisk strides that made it very clear she was a busy dragonrider with places to be, an empty stomach, and no time to chat. She tucked a small and somewhat misshapen loaf of bread under one arm and a bruised pair of redfruit. Meat would have been nice, but there wasn't any readily to hand and she didn't care to take the time to seek it out. It crossed her mind that she might well be missing a hatching feast right now, and with the warmer climate at Western there probably would have been much better options than were on offer to those left behind at High Reaches. Well, she'd meant it when she told T'of she had no regrets about her choice to be here. Honestly, it didn't even feel like she'd made a choice. She needed to be with him and Makh while they recovered. It was as simple as that.

Yes, Raqisath agreed emphatically. We belong here. With them.

Reya smiled at her dragon's vehemence. But then, Raqi's feelings for Makhmilith had always been fairly transparent, even though she might think otherwise. She'd certainly grown more adept at playing it cool and standoffish, but it was really too late. Makh of a certainty knew that the green was completely smitten with him, since T'of did. It was something he and Reya had discussed a few times when their dragons were too occupied with other things to eavesdrop, and those discussions had pretty much amounted to T'of's acknowledgment that Makh was aware of Raqi's interest in him, but didn't return it. There was nothing, really, to be done about that. During those discussions Reya had always inferred that T'of might also be speaking for himself when he said there was no forcing feelings that weren't there, but now she wondered. At any rate, Reya had always been honest with Raqi about her chances with Makh, but the green's hearts had been given and that was that.

Interesting about the touching thing, Raqi observed, not caring for the direction of Reya's thoughts. Knowing one's love was hopeless was bad enough, but knowing that everyone knew was the worst. She didn't like to be reminded that her greatest secret wasn't actually a secret at all. I wonder why he didn't tell you about it.

Probably for reasons which he thinks are very good and which I will think are very stupid, Reya responded with a mental huff as she walked back into the dragons' infirmary. She didn't care to be kept in the dark "for her own good" any more than Raqi cared to have her secrets out in the light. Go get something to eat, please. I'll let you know if he so much as twitches.

The green saw herself out with a swift glance back at Makh's unconscious form. Reya waved and made sure Raqi saw her seat herself in the warm spot the green had left behind. She was right where she said she'd be, and she stayed there, watching over Makh and eating her disappointing dinner while Raqi hunted. Raqi was quick about making her kill, not bothering to be choosy about her prey, nor about eating neatly. Deep down she knew she would have plenty of time to groom herself before anyone whose opinion mattered would see her. She didn't like the thought, but it was hard to ignore, particularly since Reya was thinking it so clearly. Her muzzle was bloody when she returned to the infirmary and there was blood on her claws.

You're getting crumbs in my spot, she pointed out to Reya, who rolled her eyes and muttered, "Blame the baker. I don't know how they made a dry bread with clots that are still doughy, but they did it."

Humans eat the most disgusting things, Raqi pronounced, nudging Reya out of her spot. No change, then?

Sorry, love. Not yet. Reya wished she could say otherwise.

Raqi gave a sort of mental nod of resignation. Thank you for watching him. You'd probably better go check on T'of now.

Reya nodded and climbed creakily to her feet. This had not been a great day for her joints. Still, it got marginally better when she stepped through the curtain to the human wing of the infirmary and saw T'of across the room. Seeing him usually had that effect on her. It was a little embarrassing to be a sensible woman of her age and experience and still get happy flutters in her chest when she saw a particular person. It was ridiculous. But there it was. There he was.  

[Princess_Feylin]

T'of endured the healers' serious warnings with what he felt was admirable stoicism, but Shiver and Ladyfriend were circling overhead in a way that betrayed his irritation at being lectured and his anxiety at being stripped once again and handled while his bandages were changed. It would have been hard to say whether his rapid breathing was from physical or mental discomfort, but he hated everything about this and didn't even have Makh to hold him steady.

"You may not want to look," the tall blonde healer told him in the moment when his wound was laid bare as his old bandages were discarded.

"I was trained as a healer," he informed her with less grace than he might have. Her expression was skeptical, but she put up one hand to pause her coworkers' ministrations so that T'of could look down his torso and see what had been done. "If you've trained as a healer, you know this is going to hurt for a long time, even after the scoring heals," she reminded him. "And it's going to scar. We'll do what we can to see your mobility and strength aren't affected, but you'll have to work it a lot as you recover to keep the skin as supple as possible."

"I know," T'of said faintly, his face blanching as he surveyed the damage.

The extensive threadscore stretched from his collarbone to his hipbone, slick red, wet pink, and scorched black. Whorls and fractals branched out from the Thread's main path, curving across his chest and abdomen and curling around his ribs. His breath stuttered as his mind filled him in on how many muscle groups had probably been damaged to various extents, and what his skin would look like when he healed, whether with a shiny burn scar or raised keloid scars. Thread had contaminated him indelibly. There was a possibility he would not be able to bare his chest again, even in private, in order to avoid touching the ruined flesh with the unmarred skin that remained, such as on his arms.

The healers finished their job, reapplying numbweed and bandages, then covering him with a blanket and moving away, except for the middling-tall redhead who had yet to speak. "Consider this, mate: however bad you think it looks, you've got a girlfriend who's clearly crazy about you. She's been here practically since you came in. Slept on the floor next to your cot while her dragon kept watch on yours. Hasn't flinched from anything yet, and I bet she won't in future. Just try not to get her kicked out of the infirmary for helping you with unsanctioned field trips, yeah?"

T'of nodded a little dizzily and was left alone with his thoughts, which were mostly awful, and a mug of fellis-laced wine. He drank it all, just in case. It would be nice not to hurt so much, though belatedly he remembered that fellis might make it harder for Makh to sense his mind if the blue woke up while he was asleep. The feeling of creeping foulness from being handled so much made the idea of sleeping seem impossible. He looked around the infirmary in the hope of finding a distraction, but he only found more evidence that he was definitely going to get infected with something. There were too many sick people here.

Occasionally people would walk by: healers and their apprentices or visitors to other patients, he guessed. At least none of them were members of his wing. It seemed he and Makh had borne the brunt of Thread's damage today. That was a good thing, even though he would have thrown any member of his wing into Thread in an instant if it would have spared Makh his injuries. An ignoble thought, perhaps, but true. He had little doubt the others felt the same. At any rate, he was glad no one he knew had been brought in. But it meant that there was little to take his attention away from the revulsion crawling at the corners of his mind, pointing out all the contaminants in his vicinity.

After perhaps half an hour the curtains between wings parted and instead of a healer Reya emerged. He raised his eyebrows and one hand in greeting and was gratified when she made her way among the cots and healers until she stood at the foot of his cot holding out half a cut redfruit. He remembered the healer telling him that she'd stayed with him for what must have been hours, even sleeping on the floor. Of course she would have needed to eat. His stomach, totally uninterested in what had been done to the rest of him, grumbled inaudibly.

"You are too good for this world," he told her. "Thank you."