Logs:Signs and Symptoms
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| RL Date: 13 November, 2015 |
| Who: Dahlia, Taeliyth |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: Dahlia is working herself to exhaustion. As it turns out, she's also exhausted because she has the plague. |
| Where: Nursery, Hot Springs, Infirmary, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 8, Month 4, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Erinta/Mentions, Jiana/Mentions, K'del/Mentions, Ka'ge/Mentions, R'oan/Mentions |
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| She'd always known that big knots signaled importance, but what she hadn't realized before having one of her own was that it was more than something impressive to be worn on the shoulder. Each braid, intricate and carefully placed, was a symbol of something complex: duties interwove and created the framework by which others lead their lives. A fraying strand could threaten so much more than just that single day's work because of how many others depended on you. Dee knew she was fraying, but she was trying, trying to patch the spots that frayed, managing (only just) to keep any from snapping as she lived in a haze of records, meetings, and managing punctuated by drill to keep flight skills sharp. She'd been told time and again to take time for herself, and she did, only she suspected that some people wouldn't think taking her lunch once a seven in the nursery counted as time to herself. Others would've laughed, she knew, if she'd told them that playing with the children she'd come to know as a candidate (and those she'd met since), telling them stories about her days (a challenging task to make them both interesting, realistic and age appropriate) and hearing about theirs gave her a new perspective, a better one. Children didn't look at a weyrwoman with doubt and thinly veiled judgment. Children trusted, even if she had to hear more times than she liked that Jiana's father said Dee was much too young and featherbrained. Jiana's father was nearly at the top of Dee's list of which bronzeriders should not end up her weyrleader. K'del had said she needed someone who could fake confidence until he made it; she supposed that went for her too. In those days after her visit at High Reaches, she resolved to show more confidence, more initiative, to fake it, until-- It made her happier, strangely. It took more energy, true, but she was convincing enough that she almost started believing herself. Some nights, she would even tell Taeliyth, It's going to be alright, and mean it. « Of course it is, » Taeliyth would tell her, even if Dee could feel reservations deep, deep in the knots and gnarls of the dragon's Wood. As the news of illness and deaths in Boll worsened, Dee worried, Taeliyth worried, they worried together. Dee threw herself into her work (more; she always did, but more). It was enough to make Erinta tease her. It was enough that she was too exhausted to invite partners by for a purely physical release; she even stopped inviting Ka'ge, with whom it was never purely so. He came the once, without invitation, and that ended bizarrely. She didn't invite him back after. Only R'oan she couldn't stand to turn away, no matter how tired she was. Those stolen moments were little buoys of bliss that, if kept wholly separate from the outside world, gave her only joy and were worth every moment of sleep she sacrificed to have them. The exhaustion would catch up with her, she knew, but maybe she could do this for long enough that she'd get fewer looks she didn't like, maybe for long enough to give the Weyr confidence in her before Taeliyth flew. She could hope for that much. Her hope didn't last, though. She felt tired. The new life that the practice of K'del's advice had helped breathe into her felt like it was slipping through her fingers. Did people really do this? How did they manage? She felt wrung out. As Dahlia stripped down in the hot springs, sweating from a heat that seemed much too intense, she was only vaguely aware of her dragon's horror. « Catch her! » wasn't to her, but directly from Taeliyth to someone else. Dee might've thought that strange if her world weren't going black.
She could feel Taeliyth's contained panic, the tension that wound through every muscle and every facet of her mind. What's wrong? « You're sick. » I am? Come to think of it, Dee did feel lightheaded. « You fell. You fainted. » Oh. Then, Did you get your bath? « Bath?! » was exasperated. « You're worried about my bath at a-- Dee, you need to get well. » Am I sick? She could feel the surge of upset, could feel that Taeliyth was speaking with others-- dragons, this time. Not people. Who did you talk to? Before. Her thoughts floated hazily and she felt hot. Too hot. « R'oan. » You talked to R'oan? She might have been shocked, but now she could only muster bemusement. I bet he hated that. « He caught you. That's what matters. Brought you here when you wouldn't wake. » Taeliyth doesn't comment on what a sight that must have been, but Dee feels amused by what she can glean from the gold's thoughts. « Dee, listen, » is serious, concerned. « You have to get well, do you hear me? I need you to get well. I won't live without you and we must live. You need to live for me. We need to live for Fort. » Am I sick? Taeliyth managed, just barely, not to despair. « Dee, it's going to be alright. » Of course it will, love. Then the world went black. |
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