[PRP] Numbweed can't numb the heart. (Ro + Nicara)

[Sinders Path]

The smell was everywhere. It was in her hair, stuck in her nose and infused into her clothes. But after the first few minutes of stirring the evil smelling brew Roana managed to control her gag reflex to focus on the job at hand. It was easier than thinking to hard. Thanks to some sort of sickness within High reaches weyr other wings in other weyr's had been scrambled to fill the gaps in their fighting formations. However thanks to the patch work nature of the new partnerships and lack of cohesive training plus the exhaustion of dragon and riders already fighting and flying their normal rounds thread score injuries were becoming an epidemic.

Thus Ro felt she had been doing nothing but stirring numb weed solidly for the last seven days. The candidates were paired off over individual patches which then had to be carted out into the weyr bowl once a healer had given their approval the mix was ready. But it was safe to say Roana's mind was not on the work. Nyeh sat on her shoulder, the small gold unbothered by the numbweed fumes as she stretched out her delicate wings. But the gold only ever spent any length of time with the red head when her favorite napping spots of Diesteths head and back were unavailable to her. Which meant the pair were out on the morning's thread hunt.

At first the revelation had caused some minor anxiety for the pirate candidate but each time she carted out a batch of numbweed there seemed to be another thread scored rider pair being tended to by the over worked healers. Ro's worry intensified with each viewing till it was bordering on fear. After the loathsome numbeweed task was finished the candidates were set at the disposal of the healers as runners. Fetching other medical supplies and sending messages. Getting a chance to get even closer to the injured riders did not help the situation. Ro's stomach lurched at the thought of seeing Diesteth with his wing tattered and torn like the poor green. Or Nicara with her clothes burned away and a thread score down her back like forking lighting.

At last with a chaos of bulging dragons the sky split with the rest of the back up wing returning from between. Since all the injured had been sent on only a few minor wounded separated from the main pack to join the healers group. Few enough that the healers could deal with them without the candidates help. When the young healer that Ro was working with motioned her back without instruction the redhead decided to take that as dismissal. She slowly backed away into the entrance of the weyr's main building structure, then she turned and started to run. With a disgruntled squeak at the change of pace Nyeh launched herself from Ro's shoulder and vannished between, going ahead of Ro to her detestation of the Blue riders residence. Racing her way past lower cavern workers and riders alike till she reached Nicara's privet weyr. Not bothering to knock she pushed the door in and barreled inside. Her heart was hammering in her chest and her breath was ragged from the combination of the run and mounting fear as all the injured dragons marched through her head baring scarred and mutilated riders.  

[Hattaki]

Blood stained the wall just outside the weyr, slowly drying on the stone in the pattern of a sliding handprint, having clearly been caused by a hand reaching for balance. It was not the first evidence in the scrambling Weyr of the pressure that was being placed upon dragons and their riders to respond to the lack of support from High Reaches. It had started with longer shifts and stretched wings, now it seemed as though they were fighting with fewer and fewer wings as Threadfall continued it's constant onslaught against Pern and all the people that lived there. Dragon riders and the giant dragons they rode were beginning to show the wear and tear of their jobs as High Reaches lost more riders to a sickness that had all but shut the ancient Weyr down. Western was struggling to cover the loss with their own support, trying to protect the people they flew Thread for.

It was a losing battle.

Stretched across her bed with streams of blood and numbweed slathered down the length of her left arm, Nicara kept her eyes shut tightly against the memories of the High Altitude Wing and the losses they'd suffered. Her large blue dragon was hunkered down with the Healers having the Threadscore on his left shoulder looked at. She simply hadn't been fast enough when she'd raised her own arm to block it, hadn't managed to popl Between fast enough to crack it off the pair of them before it burrowed into both of their skin. Screams echoed in her ears despite the silence, some of them her own, some of them the shrieks of pain and death that had swallowed that entire flight.

If she had been strong enough play her violin she might have taken it down to the dragonhealers and played it for Diesteth and the others that had been wounded but survived. They all deserved it. Her body wouldn't move though and it wasn't just the hammering pain of Threadscore on her arm that kept her from it as it was the muscles in her back and legs. It was fortunate that she rode such a large blue dragon, she was able to stay in the air longer than others and help her wingmates. Nicara didn't know that any of them were helping though, what good were they against the constant onslaught of Thread? In the end there was no way to win, even those back in the Ninth Pass had believed that they'd won, that they'd driven the Red Star from the skies above Pern forever and they had failed. Riders that Harpers like herself still played and sang about had failed in the long run. It filled her with despair like nothing she'd ever felt to know that those who rode with her might one day meet their end in the air beside her.

Body tensing a bit when a small pop preceded a weight that dropped square onto the worst soreness that existed in her back, Nicara managed to open one blue eye and tilt her head back to see Nyeh, somewhat distraught and chattering. "No amount of numbweed can help the weight of a whole gold fire lizard on your back, can it Nyeh?" her voice was frayed from screaming and it graveled out past her vocal cords in a discordant growl despite the levity she'd attempted.

Nicara's head fell back to the bed once more as a wave of pain passed over her, numbweed not quite enough to ease the pain the pressure was creating. In doing so she missed Roana pushing through the door, but somewhere despite all the pain she'd have been absolutely mortified to have the girl find her in such a splayed out state of exhaustion and torn body. Nyeh kept her pinned though, unwittingly.

Sinders Path

 

[Sinders Path]

Hattaki

]

The first thing Ro saw was blood, a smear of hand print in dirty crimson. That alone was enough to make her insides convulse like she had just swallowed ice water too fast. She was hurt? Why hadn't she seen her at the healers? Where was Diesteth? Usually she could hear the great blue shuffling around on his ledge or the soft timber of his head dragon breaths, but neither were present.

Her breath seemed trapped in her chest, refusing to come out or move past her lips at all, so when she saw Nicara sprawled out on the bed all she was able to manage was a high pitched squeaked exclamation of her name. All she saw was the blue rider lying still, sprawled unnaturally on her front and of course, more blood. She rushed over to the women waving away Nyeh from her position on the small women's back. The gold chittered again and flew up to land in Ro's mass of hair which she used as a nest quite often.

Meanwhile Ro called out to her friend again. "Nicara?" he called worry lacing her tone as she carefully gripped Nicara's shoulders and rolled her onto her front. She even made sure to roll her in the direction of her un-bloodied arm so that the injury would not be crushed in the move. She looked down at her , taking a breath to see she was at least conscious. "Nicara, what the hell are you doing here? You're hurt, you should be down with the healers! And wheres Diesteth?" she demanded glancing more to the empty ledge that the dragon usually occupied. "Did you put this numb weed on yourself? It's terrible, its not even cleaned or bandaged properly." Ro was no healer but she had been watching the healers work all morning so she had picked up the basics of treating thread score. She also had basic first aid skills from life. Out in the open ocean a healer was not usually to hand.

Ros face was wrinkled and creased with her concern it had also drained of almost all its colour, her workers clothes stank and were smeared with grime. Her hair had been a mess before but now with a firelizard nesting there it was even worse. Combined it made the poor girl look ten turns older than her tender 19 summers.  

[Hattaki]

She would have to have been deaf not to hear the way Roana called her name in a noise that could only come from someone that was utterly terrified, despite that it was not at all easy to respond to that sort of panic without moving and even the thought of moving made her muscles ache in a way. It was rather nice to have Nyeh off the worst pain in her back but being rolled over immediately afterwards had Nicara squeezing her eyes together tightly, pain washing over her and the haphazardly slathered wound began to bleed a bit more just from moving. Name called over and over, words, questions asked of her that she wasn't certain her voice would hold up to responding to despite the worry and concern that presented themselves, the blue rider hadn't even opened her eyes since Roana had come in.

Mostly from fear that the younger woman would see the tears that threatened to begin leaking from them.

Images had begun to flood through her mind from the moment she'd heard that familiar voice, the horrible things she saw behind her closed eyes always involving blood and death that sat on her tensed rib-cage as if the foot of a great gold had been placed there. Of all the ways that she wanted to respond to Roana, of all the things she wanted to say, Nicara was afraid that she would simply begin to apologize and try to convince her to leave, something that had her heart hammering hard for some reason. It was her fault though, if Ro Impressed and then something like this day happened... the face of the lost green rider swam to the forefront of her mind as they were sucked Between and never returned, the pain and shock. They had known in that moment what leaping Between was going to do to both themselves and their dragon, but there was nothing that could be done in reaction to the clump of Thread that had caught them.

Swallowing her pain and fear, Nicara opened her eyes and felt her heart sink when she saw the pale features looking down at her with such concern and worry. How could she simply say nothing in response to those questions that were asked? How could she convince her that she was going to be okay and that all wounds healed when the ones etched in her heart by fire and Thread had yet to do so? Opening her mouth to give her some kind of peace a voice spoke firmly in her mind that stopped her before she even got the first vowel articulated.

If you lie to her I'll come up there and make you wish you hadn't.

Diesteth did not threaten, he often promised even if in that exact moment she could tell that he didn't want to follow through on it. Realization that he'd spoken the words to both of them rather than just herself made her close her mouth and throw her good arm over her face with a rough noise of torment that boiled up from somewhere deep in her soul. It was all she could manage to keep tears from sliding down her cheeks, but she had some shred of dignity left in her person even if she felt safe enough around the former pirate to allow them if she wanted. A howling noise banged around in her mind, the inner pride she always swallowed that screamed at the top of it's lungs that she was a dragon rider of Pern and she was not yet beaten. Luckily it all stayed internalized, because dragon rider or not she was definitely beaten in this moment.

All that mattered was that Roana deserved an answer, deserved to know the truth just as her dragon had pointed out, even if it was rough for her to think about. In this moment she didn't have to tell her all of it, not right now when all she had asked was why she was here and not being fixed up. So not a lie to make her feel better, not that she'd ever fully intended to lie to her so much as pretend to be less affected by everything than she truly was. To see anyone die, dragon, human or both was hard, to watch others be wounded and know that all the pair could do was continue to fight as hard as they could while death threatened them from all sides, it was sobering. Much as she didn't want it to be true, danger and death walked beside every dragon rider at every moment of every day, so it wasn't a matter of if it would come for them so much as when it would. To hide the brutal truth of a rider's mind from someone would be like they were lying about how life itself worked on Pern since Thread had returned.

Certainly Roana meant more to her than that, than hiding things. Diesteth was right in that way, but she didn't have to pour her heart out right away when tears threatened to betray her as weak.

Pushing her raw and roughened voice out past vocal cords that had been over exerted, Nicara managed, "It was a candidate when we first landed. Too many wounded, too much Thread." Swallowing down a knot of pain that flashed through her throat the blue rider realized that maybe over exertion was an understatement. It sounded as if she were gargling rocks as she spoke, "I couldn't catch all the Thread before it hit Diesteth, he's getting patched up by the dragonhealers now."

Sinders Path