Difference between revisions of "Logs:Finding the Criminal!"

An alcove of the living caverns that once was just a good spot to eat a meal has been turned into a giant mess of papers, a couple of notebooks, knitting needles, fabric, extra writing utensils and a bowl of raw vegetables, in addition to a glass of ice water. Oh, and Hypatia -- she's the only one at the table, perched at the end of a chair (the other five at the table are still present and don't even have things on them) and scribbling things onto one of the /more/ blank, though not entirely so, papers. There is actually space at this table for another few people to sit and eat or talk, and she seems utterly oblivious to the fact that her mess of work might be less than welcoming. She is also rapidly whispering to herself about fevers. It may be interpreted as kind of creepy to a passerby, really.

Creepy has never deterred Iolene, but the mess? The mess looks like it might cause the dubious looking young blonde to walk away, except there she is, continuing down along with that mug of tea cradled in her hands, approaching the creepy healer of doom. "Hi. Hello. Um, hi?" is the greeting extended as Io stands just across from where Hypatia whispers to herself. "You're a healer, right?"

The whispering abruptly cuts off; Hypatia looks up, smiles a bit less creepily, and says, "Yes! I am. Hi. Did you want me to -- move some of the stuff?" It seems to be dawning on her, finally, that she has made the table less than hospitable for others. Not entirely sure how to address an exile-weyrling-goldrider, Hypatia takes the risk of completely forgoing title and continues talking as she gets papers out of the way, "And did you need something? From a healer? Or were you just asking?"

"I was-," Iolene purses her lips, indecision shifting her dark eyes back and forth as she appears to try to come to a decision that is ultimately, "Just asking. Mind if I sit?" For someone just asking, there's a spark of curiosity in the blonde's eyes as they flick from Hypatia down to the mass piles of stuff she seems to be going through. "Busy?" Small talk doesn't become Iolene, and as she sits, without invitation or taking Hypatia's offer to move stuff as one, a nervous fidget of her leg beneath the table seems to somehow tremble the table it's under.

"Not at all," is only said after Iolene has taken her seat anyway, of course, but that doesn't stop Hypatia from saying it. Yarn is tossed into a bag, and papers are neatened up into more proper piles. "I mean, I don't mind if you sit, that is -- I'm not denying I'm busy!" She doesn't seem to have the intention of continuing to work now that she's got company at her table, though. Instead, she munches on another one of her vegetables and gives the goldrider a crooked half-smile.

"Oh, you're busy?" Crestfallen hints color Iolene's intonation and those dark eyes of her shift away from Hypatia to the work in front of the healer. Then, there's a perked up, "Can I help? Is it something I can help you with? Maybe organize your papers? File them or something? Help you read through them and underline all the important bits?" That is, if she can even figure out what half the words mean, but who's counting?

Hypatia laughs, setting the bowl back down and leaning back in her chair a little. Thankfully not so far back it actually tips over backward, this time. "Are you really that bored?" she asks, eyebrow quirked in what can only be curious amusement. "I'm really surprised anyone would /volunteer/ to do that kind of stuff. Filing drives me crazy. I sure won't stop you if you want to help organize things -- right now I'm just doing math, anyway. Are you good at calculating percentages?" She may be talking to an exile, but Iolene at least deserves a chance to say no without being assumed to be rubbish at it!

"I'm good at math and organization. It's one of the few things grams could teach that stuck." Iolene's voice turns droll in recollection of her deceased grandmother. "She was, I guess you'd call her the Headwoman back home? My aunt was supposed to follow in her steps but she passed away during what you call the Comet Pass and then me, but-," But clearly, that didn't happen. "Can I ask you something?" The lanky blonde sets her mug of tea down on the chair by her, rather than the table, and begins to shuffle idly through the papers just to glance at the tops, the titles, nosily.

Most of them say 'INFLUENZA' on the top in an all-capitals hand with messy underlining, and are followed by dates and numbers. Some of them have different names, either long and fancy ones or colloquial nicknames; for the most part they end in 'a.' Hypatia certainly doesn't seem to mind Io's poking around in them -- there's either no confidential information or the apprentice just doesn't care. "That's actually amazing, then. You can absolutely help. Because I have a mountain of calculations to do -- sure," she cuts herself off, answering the question belatedly. "Anything you want."

Oh look, a random pencil is unearthed as Iolene rifles and the gold weyrling picks it up. It becomes an idle baton between her fingers as she glances further, feigning interest in what those documents say despite the fact that her brow is all knit up, puzzled. Silently, she mouths out in-floo-en-za and wrinkles her nose. "Healers read such funny documents," she remarks, flashing a quick, shy smile upward to Hyptaia. "I was wondering if you could tell me more about how- how- h- how Seani died. That you can tell, I mean. To me. Ysavaeth," it never hurts, as Io has apparently discovered along the way, to name drop your not-yet but-soon-to-be big damn dragon, "Was curious." Cause these are just the things dragons are curious about.

Hypatia's eyes widen in surprise as she takes in Iolene's question, seeming a bit startled. It's never /her/ who anyone asks, though she's always wanted it to be; that's why she often takes dictation for autopsies, despite not having the authority to actually do them. And yet, faced with the actual reality of being asked she's stuck wide-eyed staring in silence for a second instead of launching into a disturbingly excited take on bleeding to death. "Are you -- sure?" she asks, wary. "It's a bit -- well, it's grisly. Probably not to a dragon, but to you it might be. Upsetting. I'm glad to, though, if you really want to hear about it."

The pencil gets set down to the edge of a hide and a small butterfly doodle is drawn lightly. Slowly, Iolene's lashes lift so she can study Hypatia squarely. "Yes. I really do want to know. I'm tired of people keeping us. Keeping me in the dark and I'd like to know exactly what you think killed her. A knife? A fishing hook? A dragon talon? What." She's dropped the pretense of Ysavaeth at least, and presses her arms into the table to look all the more earnest. "Please?"

"You're like her family," Hypatia replies logically, nodding. "So -- of course I will, yes." She pauses, then, looking away for only a moment from Iolene's earnest gaze and down to her own hands. Thinking. Finding the right words. Collecting memories. "She died of exsanguination; bled to death. Which I think you already knew. As far as what caused it, it was definitely some sort of blade. I couldn't tell you how thick it was, or whose blade it was, and while there are some healers who might be able to tell you how tall the person was from the angle I'm not one of them -- sorry," she adds, seeming just as disappointed if not more by this fact than Iolene might be. "But my bet's on knife. In theory it could also have been a very sharp item that wasn't actually a knife, like a letter opener. The odds of that, though -- not really."

"You can-, I mean, someone can really tell how tall the person was that did it?" Iolene gapes, trying to digest this fact and the pencil she holds falls lax in between her thumb and index finger. It creates a light, but unsightly, line along one of Hypatia's hides. "How can you tell that kind of stuff? I mean, is there any way you can find out for me? I promised- I think it would help. I mean." Io's face screws up a bit and not really all that /good/ at being sneaky, the blonde lowers her voice, "I'm trying to figure out what happened and why no one seems to care about finding the criminal. Don't you find that /weird/? Even on the island, we would have justice when people did horrible things. But-, we never had anything like this." That she knows of.

"Not, like, exactly? But in relation to the c--the victim," Hypatia smoothly corrects from 'corpse' without changing her distantly thoughtful expression. It's half training and half that she rather always looks like that. "The angle of a cut can tell you a lot about it. I do actually go to autopsies but I'm more interested in pathology than being a Harper's expert witness on murders, especially considering how I've never actually seen a real murder before, and so I didn't learn that sort of thing. I don't know there are many who have, but it's possible. I could research it, though, and I /might/ have notes on things like angle and depth, which is what I would need for it. Also a bunch of people to pretend to be murderers and pretend victims around her size." Because everyone's going to want /that/ job, of course. Hypatia seems sympathetic to Iolene's further questioning, though, and her own voice drops when she finally gets there: "It is. Strange. I don't know what's going on. In the grand scheme of things I'm completely unimportant to this Weyr and so I don't think they'd notice if I pried, honestly. I don't know why a murder would just get swept under the rug, except for politics, and politics are deplorable in general."

"Maybe," Iolene's blue eyes get even bigger than normal and her teeth bite down on her lower lip in the beginnings of her own thoughtful expression: the gnaw. "Maybe you could look into it for me? I'm not really sure how people might feel if I poke around and I don't really like talking to healers." She's quick to a sheepish apology and make an excuse with with, "I'm sorry, it's nothing against you but- I don't really have good memories of the infirmary. Do you think you could possibly look into it for me? If itw as a man or a woman? Or how tall? Anything you can find out? I'd really appreciate it. /I/ think you' pretty important. I mean, you never know what could happen tomorrow, right? I was just an exile and now-..." her voice trails off, again sheepish as she flicks a glance out to the bowl.

"There's no need to apologize." Hypatia's tone becomes even softer, then, and a bit quieter as well; she's lowered her head so she's looking more through her eyelashes than between them at the goldrider. "I can understand that kind of thing. It's like my parents. They're skittish about a lot now because of a death, and there were so many of you so sick -- I wouldn't blame you for never wanting to go in there again, even though I wouldn't recommend /actually/ avoiding it forever, if you do actually need to be there." Enough tangenting; one or two deliberate, slow forced blinks and Hypatia is back to the topic at hand. "Anyway. Yes. I'll do what I can. Because you're right, it is bizarre. I don't really know how it wasn't bothering me /before/." Meaning: it is now. She smiles a little, when she adds, "And thanks. For thinking I'm important. I'll try to live up to that and get your information."

"I'm Iolene, by the way," says the blonde with a small smile, both gratitude and a friendly warmth in the expression for Hypatia. "And thank you. I'm sorry I interrupted your work with my concerns." The pencil is gripped on a little more tightly as she heaves her shoulders up and then down. "Did you still need help with those calculations?"

Hypatia is shaking her head even as Iolene is speaking -- as soon as the word 'sorry' comes out, anyway. "Don't be; it's really my job to talk to people and take care of them first, and do stupid math about public health concerns that don't actually concern anyone but me later. Especially if you're going to help with them." She is essentially grinning as Io still seems interested in helping, and nods. "Because I could, really, yeah, it'd get it done twice as fast at least with two people working on it." And, at long last, she remembers, "My name's Hypatia. Nice to meet you properly."

"Which ones should I look over?" asks Iolene, her pencil still at the ready and her gaze struggling to retain that 'excited' emotion with middling success. Numbers. Oh. So. Exciting. "I've seen you around I think. Have you lived here very long?" The mug of tea, long forgotten, is suddenly remembered and her other hand reaches for it to sip. The face she makes? Cold tea that's not meant to be iced tea is not always tasty.

Cursed numbers; Hypatia can't stand them either. "About a turn and a half," she answers, then gathers a couple of the flu sheets together and starts pointing with her pen. "These have a bunch of numbers on them which basically state how many people got sick that month, and then the weyr's approximated total population. It just needs to be converted into a populous per cent. So, hours and hours of tedious ratios. Want another one of those? I'll wait on you hand and foot for the next hour if you're helping me with the math -- you're /sure/ you don't have anything better to do?" But she's laughing.

"I really don't have anywhere else to go right now. Not anymore." Iolene takes the starting points Hypatia gives her and begins scribbling quickly. "I learned how to do all this quickly mostly so I could get it done fast and play. Grams always rapped my knuckles whenever I got anything wrong so-," So she learned how to not get things wrong. There's another smile for Hypatia. "Anyway... If you could? I'd love it if my tea became magically hot. What are all these numbers for anyway?"

At first, all Hypatia does is nod. And smile, a little, hesitantly. Before she actually answers the question, she is removing cold tea and disappearing with it. Once she has returned with a fresh tea -- magically hot, indeed, as it's the same mug -- and put it in the exact same spot it had been in before, she sits back in her seat in just about the exact same position she had been in. That's when she actually answers: "A public health study, sort of thing. Keeping track of who gets sick when and in what numbers tracks the course of the disease, and it mimics itself year after year with only slight deviations, so -- we can predict it, next time around."

Iolene can't help but laugh at that. It's a small sound that doesn't float any further than a one table radius about them, but it's genuine. "You realize," she begins, her cheek starting to dimple faintly, "I didn't understand a word you said, right? But that's ok. There's a lot of things I don't understand that people tell me all the time." An audible sigh exhales. "Sometimes, I wish I could skip the growing up part and just be grown up already. Well, I mean, old enough that people don't feel like they have to explain things to me slowly. Know everything. Know something at any rate." But enough of her emo. "So I am guessing it helps to stop as many people from getting sick next turn?"

"Well, in -- theory." Hypatia furrows her brow a little bit, obviously frustrated by the shortcomings of her method. "Because there is actually no way to adequately prevent people from getting it except to hope that they stay away from behaviors that make them more likely to get sick. Which requires compliance. Which is hard to inspire. And -- at least," she tries to save herself, starting to smile, "I didn't explain it to you slowly? I'm rubbish at making people understand things, actually. If you /want/ to I can try to explain it more slowly or in different terms? But it sounds to me like you get it, really. It's establishing patterns so we can prevent more people getting sick."

Iolene is about to protest any more healer-like edification, but then Hypatia is recanting on her offer and the goldrider flashes a weak weak weak smile. "Let's just stick with me on numbers and you doing the healering, yeah? Our strengths." And with that, the two continue to work in companionable silence, with some small talk interspersed in between until all of Hypatia's percentages are completed to Iolene's long lost Gram's satisfaction.