Logs:Passing
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| RL Date: 8 June, 2011 |
| Who: Devaki |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: The first few days at High Reaches Weyr doesn't end well for this family. |
| Where: High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 25, Month 12, Turn 25 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Evali/Mentions |
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| There was no denying it. Kiami wasn't okay. His youngest sister hadn't taken the trip between well, and things had progressed downhill from there. For the last two days, their grandfather, Viremi, had held her hand for the first half of the day, Devaki the second, and she curled up with Evali at night. Their little family -- what was left of it. But Kiami was not well, and it was getting worse. She lay there, pale and covered in a sheen of sweat, an occasional cough wracking her painfully thin frame. /They/ had insisted on taking her to the infirmary, and Devaki had, likewise, insisted on going with her. Evali had stayed with Viremi. The smell in the infirmary made his nose twitch. They called it redwort. The healers did things to Kiami, and Devaki felt like he should protest every poke and prod, every concoction they made her choke down, but he couldn't. The words wouldn't come. So he sat at Kiami's side, head bowed, holding her hand while he listened to her wheezing breath, willing it to continue. His clothes felt uncomfortable. He wasn't used to wearing a shirt, and he shifted around as he tried to get past the odd sensation of the material. The pants seemed to fit well, but he was unconvinced by shoes. When they'd crossed the bowl floor his feet had begun to hurt from the cold of the layer of snow, though he'd refused to let them fuss over him. He felt his chin drop to his chest, and hastily straightened his position. He was exhausted, he knew, but every time he fell asleep he would wake in a panic, desperately listening for the rattling sound of his sister taking another breath. Then he would feel guilty for having fallen asleep, panicked by a certainty that she would only make it through the night if he stayed awake. He touched a hand to his side. They'd given him a beltpouch, to put his things in, but the reality was he only had one thing of importance. The cloth wrapped bundle lay in there, the carefully wrapped hides nestled within. He felt keenly aware of it, like he expected one of the guards that watched him to leap over and wrestle it out of his possession at any moment. He managed to stay awake, in the end. His superstition proved false, though it did allow him to watch Kiami take her last, rattling breath, one of the first deaths of the exiles. The first of many. He was escorted back to the barracks, then. This time he didn't feel the chill of the snow under his feet. He didn't feel much of anything. |
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