Difference between revisions of "Logs:A Chat with a Friend"

She sat behind the curtain in her alcove in the infirmary, looking at the stretch of drying plaster that now housed her left hand and forearm. Lycinea fidgeted. She never was any good at waiting. Oliwer had impressed upon her the importance of keeping her arm still so the cast would fit properly and they wouldn't have to do it again.

It hurt a lot less now. Now that she had a mug of something Oliwer had assured her was medicinal even though it smelled a bit like the alcohol she so abhorred. She'd drank it because she wasn't about to be in pain even one second longer than absolutely necessary.

She'd been here before, when she was eight and she'd fallen while she and Zalmai were clandestinely climbing up to the diving rock, having eluded the watchful eyes of the nannies after harper lessons were over that day. That was the nice thing about not having particular parents to answer to. The nannies always had their hands full, so slipping off a time or two... well, it was fine until you slipped and broke your arm and needed them. Zalmai had fetched them quick, but not before she'd ended up a blubbering mess.

Later, she told people a lot of different things about how she'd come by the injury. She'd tasted the nannies' soap no less than five times for those lies in the three weeks it took to heal.

This time it would be longer, Oliwer had explained. Teenagers and adults just weren't as resilient as children. Make that one more thing that sucks about growing up. She used to be able to get away with loads more things than she did now. Sure, she'd get a smack from time to time or occasionally worse if she was truly naughty, but now? Now they docked her wages, meager as they were. Maybe she should've tried harder to apprentice. If she'd apprenticed like Zalmai had, she wouldn't have been here for V'ros to shove.

She'd been going over it in her head since insisting to Oliwer that it was an accident and she was just clumsy, is all. Was she responsible? She couldn't work it out. So she did what she always did when she needed someone to talk to. She made a someone. Usually, it was a sock. Sometimes an edge of her kitchen apron, but today it was the leftover gauze on the tray Oliwer had left beside the cot in case touch ups were needed. She shoved her skirt up past her knee before wetting the gauze with her good hand, as she'd seen the healer do, and then set about forming a face with it on her knee, pinching and folding it and making it look sympathetic.

She used to blush when people saw her. Crazy Lya talking to herself again. But not now, now she didn't care. She felt like the turns in the kitchen made most of her caring about most anything just drain away from her. It was a necessary job, she sometimes told herself, but it was one that just torturously murdered the spirit. Look at Gamil who'd come here to Impress and failed. Maybe she'd ask to Stand next time. She knew the kitchen staff would laugh at her if she didn't Impress. Well, some of them. Mostly where she couldn't hear it, but many of them had tried and failed, and making fun of those who come after probably lessens their sting even however many turns later.

When the apprentice boy peeked around the alcove, she told him to scram, and he did. Most people avoided Lya if they didn't have to speak to her, or had the misfortune of coming too near and not being able to avoid the interaction entirely. She didn't mind so much. If she did, she'd've worked at being more pleasant.

No, she decided with her knee-face. She'd said things, things that might've made him mad, but V'ros had started it. It wasn't her fault for calling things like she saw them. But maybe, she admitted in confidence to the face, she should've been a little nicer. He'd lost weight. He was even scrawnier and paler than before. She'd thought weyrlings were supposed to get stronger, but he just seemed... more sickly.

She glanced at the alcove wondering how many of the weyrlings would end up here before too long. But then it didn't matter. She imagined what life must be like for weyrlings. She spent a lot of time imagining. It was Oliwer's disappointed tone that had her coming back to the here and now. He'd seen the face, the misuse of healering supplies. She mashed the face quickly and tossed it onto the tray. Maybe that kind of treatment was the reason she didn't have real ones.