Logs:Cruelty
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| RL Date: 15 July, 2011 |
| Who: Celadion, Madilla |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Celadion has been starving himself. Madilla to the rescue! |
| Where: Infirmary, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 20, Month 3, Turn 26 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Devaki/Mentions, K'del/Mentions |
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| Infirmary, High Reaches Weyr Two sets of double doors, one from the the inner caverns and a recently built set from the dragon infirmary, lead into the unnaturally hushed human infirmary. Despite fastidious cleaning, the scent of redwort and numbweed has long since soaked into every smooth-carved surface, along with other, subtler medicinal smells. Pristinely made cots are lined up against the walls; most of them are left open to view, but some in the back are surrounded by curtains for delicate procedures or critical patients. About halfway between the two entrances is the counter for the healers on duty; it guards the entrance to the storage rooms just beyond, their shelves and cabinets lined with meticulously labeled bottles, boxes, jars, and even vats of supplies. The Weyrhealer's office is also here, along with another side room for mixing up medicines and the like. It's a typical morning around the weyr. around Day 15, maybe 20? Around the time that morning workers are released for their meals, Celadion has found this time to come into the infirmary and settle on the ground against one of the walls with his knees drawn up to his chest. There is a sunken look to him, even with his dark skin, his color seems off, almost greyish. He lays his head against the boney knees, eyes squeezed closed but it's not a posture most people would drift off to sleep in. There are always staff on duty in the infirmary, but mornings can be busy times: feeding the patients, doing the morning rounds, substituting one set of staff for another. Between all of that, it takes a few minutes before someone actually notices Celadion-- though once someone has, the alarm is raised, and within moments, there's a healer on her way over, moving to crouch beside the islander and say; "Hello? Are you all right? Can you hear me?" Madilla is in her early-twenties, a plump figure with curly hair and a soft expression, though right now she looks genuinely concerned. Untidy curls fall over one knee and the side of his face. Though he does not move or make an effort to open his eyes, he whispers, "I have come here to the place where people die. I think I'm ready." His words are strong but there's a pause between each of them, just enough to show the effort it takes to make them audible. when Madilla comes in closer to Celadion, and there's the faint smell of 'exile' about him, like those islanders smelled when they arrived, unclean. "No," corrects Madilla, taking only a moment or two to assess the situation. "You've come to the place where people /live/. I'm not going to let you die. Can you stand?" She presses the back of her hand to his forehead, checking - presumably - for a temperature, as her gaze flicks about him, presumably attempting to determine what is /really/ the matter. "What's wrong?" "No no. I don't want to." Celadion says, the tone trying to convince her as his head comes up with an effort. A whole world of silent pleas in his watery eyes as he looks at her. "Don't. Want. To." He does feel warm but not feverish. As for him standing, his head swings from side to side, sad that she's not hearing him, his plots to just sit there and be done with it. "The others--they died here. Just do not let them take me to the cold place between worlds. I do not want my body left there. I want to be back with the sea. Please." It might not make much sense, seeing how winded he is by the end of the request. Frowning, Madilla draws back her hand, dropping into a seated position next to the islander since it increasingly seems like he won't be going anywhere just yet. "I won't let them drop you Between," she says, carefully, tilting her head to the side so that she can consider Celadion from another angle, as though that will explain everything. "But I don't intend for you to die, either. The illness is over: no one's sick anymore. No one's going to die. Why don't you want me to help you? Would you like some water? Some tea, perhaps?" The exile watches Madilla warily, or is that wearily? His eyelids do seem pretty heavy, "Thank you." The weight of his fear slowly ebbing from him so his shoulders slump down from the tight stance they had crept upward into. "I can't live this way. I don't want this. Why will you have me here...suffering?" When she offers drinks he shakes his head, squeezing his eyes closed, "I won't take any of your precious weyr-supplies." Although weak, there's still fire smoldering in his belly. Madilla's eyes narrow, as though she's suddenly gained some amount of comprehension. "I am not going to let you die," she tells him, frankly. "Even if it means we have to force-feed you. That's stupid. You can't just throw your life away like that because you don't want to be here. If you do that, you'll never get home." Her gaze lifts from him, flicking through the infirmary as though she's looking for someone. Perhaps she is: something unspoken passes between her and one of the taller, bigger male healers; he approaches. "Don't you want to make your case and go home?" In his state, he's not noticing Madilla calling in for someone to make short work of drawing out his wreched life. "I don't want to be a slave to your masters. I -won't- do it." And he understads now, painfully, that partaking of anything from the weyr, slips on the shackles and noose that he'll never shake off. "They....You. Mainlanders. Have no intention of setting us free. Unless we die. Then you can't have our strong backs." Such an awful trap he's in, looking like a wildthing caught by the throat and caged. When it finally dawns on him that other healers are coming in, he turns to Madilla, begging softly, "Please. Don't do this to me." "Don't be an idiot," snaps Madilla, she who never loses her cool, but is angry, now. She draws away from him, standing up again so that she can put her hands on her hips and stare down at him. "You're so /blind/. If you want to go home so much, why aren't you trying to convince the weyr - logically, reasonably - that it's a good idea? Instead of starving yourself until you die, getting more and more bitter about /nothing/. We aren't /using/ you, for Faranth's sake. We're trying to /help/." And so too are the other healers who come up alongside her, reaching down to grab Celadion by the arms, presumably intending on carrying him bodily wherever Madilla directs them. There's no strength in him to get his anger up, just that smoldering heat in him. He shakes his head, slowly, reaching out to steady himself against the wall as he tilts. "Tried it....they say it's gone. The island is gone." Or everything on it? "You will never let us go. We can't even leave the weyr. You take our children from us." His eyes actually tear up at this, looking at Madilla, "How can you take away our children and their traditions and their families?" Even if it's cousins or what-not. How is he to feel friendly towards this? He does his best to shake off the hands that 'help' him up, digging heels into the floor until he's pulled forward and afer the healer, bowing his tearful face so they can't mock him about that as well as his foolish pride. Madilla stands back as the healers grab for Celadion, but now that she's spoken, her expression is a mask of misery. "I want no part of children being taken; I think that's cruel and wrong, and I don't believe anything like that is sanctioned by most people around here," she murmurs. "Of course you need to keep your traditions. Your families. Of /course/ you do. I don't want them taken away. But doing this to yourself? That's not helping anything. You need to be patient." She doesn't wait for an answer, though she'll hear anything else: she's leading the way across the infirmary towards one of the more secluded cots, where she draws back the blankets to allow her fellow healers to set Celadion onto the sheet. Weak as it is, Celadion says, "Ask," He pants quietly, "Devaki. He's our healer. He knows. I'm not making this up." THere's not much strength in him to fight the whole way to the cot, feeling less than fantastic thanks to the lack of water more than the refusal, or denial of food. He sits mutely in the end, on that cot, putting his head in his hands. "What else /should/ I do? Ask your leaders what our futures will be? Workers for your stoves and kitchens, or cleaners of your work-beasts." "I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm saying that I think it's wrong, and more to the point, I know for a fact that our Weyrleader does, too." Madilla's firm, and sends away the other two healers with a bob of her head and a wave of her hand. There's water on the table beside the bed: she pours some into a cup and attempts to push it into Celadion's hands, even if it means dislodging his head to do so. "Make a case to them. Prove to them that it's a reasonable request, that it can happen easily. Now drink this before I force it down your throat, because I am /not/ having you die on me for something this stupid." Forced Cela is. Though it doesn't take much for his fragile looking fingers to wrap around the glass, "Your Weyrleader will be upset that you are wasting your precious weyr-goods on me." The islanders promisses emotionlessly. He looks at the glass, his doom, and sighs. "I don't know how to speak to your people. I am not a learned person or an elder. I am not a leader. What is reasonable in this unreasonable place? Who will hear -me-? I know your leaders think we are no one, even our leaders, why would they care about -me-?" Not looking at the healer, he stalls a few more long minutes before finally taking a drink of the water. Madilla seems satisfied only when Celadion has actually taken a drink, though her expression remains unhappily drawn. "That's-- you're wrong. You all matter. Everyone matters. Have you ever even talked to one of our Leaders? Or have you just decided that this is how things are, and you're going to be awful and miserable because of it?" It's unusual for the healer, not that Celadion would know it: she feels pretty strongly about this. "Have you done anything but hate this place since you got here? Have you even /tried/?" There's a flush of sickness after the drink is taken, so luckily, Celadion didn't gulp down too much in that first drink. He's silent for a long time than it took him to have the sip. Finally he says, "It was the -Weyrleader- that forced this on me. Work, or perish. I never, ever asked for this. For any of what you call 'kindness'. If you'd all just let us go, we could look after ourselves. But you don't. No one will." He shrugs up his shoulders, "What else should I think but that you need more workers?" As for having tried? He shrugs, "Others have tried. Others who have more authority than I do. Our Harper gets nowhere, nor our Healer. Nor our elders. How do you imagine a small, ignorant fish like me is going to get anywhere? I know. I know...." He bows his head forward, knowing what he has to do, "I have to dress in your clothes, and say your words and sing your songs and look like one of you. You know, we will never be one of you and our traditions will be stripped away." "Everyone works," says Madilla, quietly, wrapping her arms around her waist as she watches Celadion with a wary watchfulness, concern written deep into the lines on her face. "The same must have been true back on your island." She seems to decide something, because her shoulders straighten and tense, her whole stance changing. "I don't know what the Weyrleaders are thinking. I don't know what their plans are. But I /do/ know that killing yourself like this isn't going to change anything - not for the children you say have been stolen, and not for the rest of your people. If you want your people to remember their traditions, you need to be around to remind them - and to teach them." His head stays bowed but he does take another drink, see. "This isn't my home though and it's not our island. Back home I worked for friends, and family, for the good of us. Here I work for ... what? Obviously my sweat aids this place? A place with leaders who take our children away from friends who love them? Children who have lost parents, -my- friends." Celadion's words, fixed on the ground are tight, "There is no point in it Healer. The children are gone, mixing with your weyr children." He sounds broken about that, his voice catching in his throat, "Do you know...how hard it is? To see the children of your dear friends who will never know their father or mother? Never know how they suffered to have them on those cold island shores?" The reason for his bashing desperately against the glass ceiling coming to light. "Our /leaders/ have never taken your children away," snaps Madilla, sharp - sharper than perhaps she ever intended. "How can I make you understand that? If it has happened, then it has not been under /their/ orders." She has to pause and take a deep breath, to calm herself down before she can say, "We work for each other, here. We may not be as small and close as your island was, but we all work to help each other. Everyone contributes something, and everyone gets something in return. If you want those children back," though she sounds uncertain about whether such a thing as happened at all, "Then stand up for them. Get your council to request their return. Teach them yourselves. What's stopping you?" Celadion doesn't believe Madilla, not all the sharpness in her voice sways him, "They make the choices, don't they? Or, do you suggest that someone else has made this choice to send the children to weyr-nannies?" He doesn't understand weyr-life or why children shouldn't be with extended family and cared for within that circle. His nose crinkles with frustration and anger. Her suggestion to get them back is met with a sort of pre-failure in his expression. "And when I am told 'no', again? We can only be told 'no' so many times. Don't you....understand?" He watches her, "you don't believe me. Would you ask? Ask for yourself and see?" "To the--" Madilla begins, frowning; she blinks several times. "To the nannies? But... all children go to the nannies, almost. Mine does. And then she comes back to me, and we spend time together when I'm not working. Didn't something like that happen to your children back on the island? You can't just have them running around in the kitchen, or..." She shakes her head, slowly at first, and then more hurriedly. "Don't you want the children to be allowed to play with other children? Do you want to keep them locked up with only their kind? That's cruel." "But they don't come back at night." Celadion says quietly, worriedly. "Yes, our children were cared for by Aunties and our Harper." He admits this with some uncertainess. "But in the evenings, after work, they would come back to the family, to sleep withh their parents. Do you....your daughter, does she stay with others each night?" There's a frown about this lifestyle, another thing to adjust to. But then she speaks of her child coming back home, he nods, sighs. Frowning, Madilla says, "Some of them stay with the others at night, that's true. Sometimes Lily does, if I have to work overnight. Why don't you ask if you can spend some time with them, in the evenings? Time to be part of their people, their culture." She looks hopeful, as though this might be a way to make things work. "I don't think anyone truly wants to steal your children. Perhaps they simply haven't realised-- you should talk to the Headwoman. This would be under her domain. But not now: right now, you need to lay yourself down and rest, while I get you some broth to eat. Slowly. Because you can't help those children if you don't eat." Celadion uses the back of his hand to wipe at his eyes. Deep shame showing for crying before the healer, even as her words of assurance seem to give him a tiny bit of hope. "Headwoman. Right." He gives a small nod and has another sip of the water. At least having something to look forward to is a little better, even if the road ahead for getting to that point is very uncertain. But Madilla makes no mention of the tears, and only smiles at Celadion, reaching out to put one hand onto his shoulder to squeeze, as long as he doesn't pull away. "It's going to be fine," she promises, firmly. "We'll work things out. Once you're better, we'll make sure those children can keep their ways, I promise. Now - lay back, and pull the blanket up. I'll be back shortly with some of that broth." |
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