"Seeking Out the Healer" Log Date: 10/6/00 Log Cast: Tanith, Trina, Faanshi Log Intro: Disaster has shattered Faanshi's entire fragile world: Lyre Talespinner is dead. Or so the young seeress Delilah, recently adopted into Clan Messala, has told the shudra healer. Griefstricken, bereft, the halfbreed maiden has struggled in the days since to try to hold herself together. She has not slept save in broken snatches interlaced with nightmare after nightmare of how her beloved bard must have died. She has told no one of what news has been brought to her, neither the Queen she serves nor her teacher FallingStar, nor the Sylvans out in the more hidden parts of Haven who have striven to take her under their wing. She has told none of those in Bordertown who once knew Lyre, none of those she must still somehow try to help even when she has been stricken again by the news of death... who still come to her, all unknowing, in need of her magic.... *===========================< In Character Time >===========================* Time of day: Evening Date on Aether: Thursday, March 13, 3907. Year on Earth: 1507 A.D. Phase of the Moon: Waning Crescent Season: Early Spring Weather: Breeze Temperature: Cool *==========================================================================* You pass between the massive pillars flanking the entrance to Atesh-Gah and return to the street. Palisade and North - Haven Some have likened the Varati home to a geode--rough and plain on the outside, while opulence and splendor lie within. Certainly the first part of that analogy is true. The only hint that these buildings house the more prominent members of Varati society are their size. Massive structures loom on either side of the street, crafted from brick, marble, granite, and even metal. And here, also, is the grand embassy of the Varati. Only shaping magic could have created such a structure, for it gives the impression of having grown out of the earth itself. Like the others, its decoration is minimal, yet flowing curves and the use of obsidian and marble make such ornamentation unnecessary. Flanked by stone pillars, the entranceway is constantly guarded by sentinels who may as well be stone themselves, so humorless are they. Only guests of the kingdom and ambassadors from other realms may pass within. A gate leads out of the city to a road that eventually winds into the distant, northern mountains, though few ever dare venture that far. Contents: Trina Tanith Obvious exits: Atesh-Gah Streets Gate Please see +lhelp for information on local news. Tanith has her arm linked with Trina's. She looks at the shudra and smiles warmly. "Chookma, little-dove, we have need of you.' The young graisha woman clings to Tanith's arm, her fingers clawed into a tight, nervous fist. Her head is bowed, and her round yellowish eyes glance up in tiny quick darting looks, as if she were afraid to let her gaze rest in any one place for too long. Pale and tense, she hovers next to the older Sylvan, offering only a faint, "Good day," along with her tentative glance up at the newcomer before she bends her head again, lines of pain an ddiscomfort stretching across her round face." It doesn't take very long -- at least, not by Varati standards. The stern-faced guards at the gates of Atesh-Gah do not appear very thrilled to be relaying a message in for the halfbreed healer, but then, they rarely appear very thrilled about anything, particularly if it involves Sylvans showing up rag-tag on what ought to be so far as they are concerned Varati ground. But sent in a message for Faanshi they have, and several minutes later, the maiden herself appears. Sans her loyal hound for once, and exhausted about her eyes as she peeks up over her veil... and straightens up in a bit of alarm at the sight of the old seeress and the one she has brought with her. "Namaste'," she breathes, and bobs her head in acknowledgement of the Sylvan greeting as she sketches a quick little bow. Something else in Tanith's words catches her for a moment, making her start badly... but for the most part Trina has immediately grabbed her attention, as a Sylvan she is not sure she recognizes. Brought here by Grandmother Tanith... and obviously in pain. If there is anything that can make Faanshi overcome her own shyness, it is obvious need. And thus the shudra steps anxiously forward, adding, "How may I give aid...?" Tanith looks at Faanshi and is suddenly drawn into a minor vision, one that immediately causes her some concern. She is about to say something, but up comes a young sylvan boy, rattier than most, seeking out the Elder. "Gaze-Goes-Dark," He rattles off, tugging at the arm. "Th', er, sommin' needs ya." Torn between the two, Tanith decides to hand over Trina to Faanshi's capable hands. "I am sorry, but I am needed," by the tribe, "and so I must go. But Faanshi, please, Trina is troubled. Help her as you can." The boy's tugging is insistant, but one last message. "Come to me soon. We will speak of your heart." Tanith travels south toward the intersection of Fairway and North. Tanith has left. The shudra maiden cannot help but blink at this -- and she has time to only bob her head in demure respect to the elder before her young escort anxiously leads her away. There is a fraction of an instant where something like alarm blossoms in her leaf-green eyes at the strangely, acutely aware parting words Tanith gives her... but as she turns back to Trina, Faanshi does her best to quell her own reactions. Now is not the time for them. As gently and earnestly as she can manage, she steps closer and murmurs, "How can I aid you...?" Trina Not a tall woman, but not a short one; not a fat woman, but not a slim one. Trina, glimpsed quickly in a crowd, might be such an ordinary sight that the eye would slip right past her...if, that is, the eye were not very attentive. Her build might be commonplace, but her coloring and features are not. First of all, she is so pale as to have an almost ghostly appearance. Ripples of wheat-colored hair fall on either side of a white, round, moon-face, parted at the sides by the high points of Sylvan ears, and dipping down over Trina's forehead in a sharply-defined widow's peak. Round green eyes, tinged faintly with yellow, blink out at the world, appearing oddly lashless below the transparent paleness of fringe. Her nose is not quite aquiline - it is neither that long nor that aristocratic - but still hooked, bending emphatically down towards her mouth. Her lips follow the same angle, the upper one extending in a slight point over the lower, pointing the way down to her rounded chin. The softness of her features gives her face an even more youthful air than it already might have had, and she cannot be much past her late teens as it is. Her clothes, at first glance, seem to be nothing out of the ordinary for a city-dweller. A sensible blouse, interwoven in shades of pastel blue and beige light enough not to overpower the delicate coloring of her skin, rises up in a modest jewel-neck around her throat and falls in loose draping sleeves to her elbows. Her skirt was once a deeper shade of beige, but has faded in spots almost to white, and a few frayed threads hang from the edge of its lace-scalloped hem. The unusual part, however, comes when Trina turns her back. What is in front a modestly-cut collar dips halfway down her spine - and above the gap, rising from her milk-pale shoulders, just below the angle where her neck meets her torso, is a pair of tiny wings. Hardly more than six inches long, covered with soft ivory feathers, they flutter nervously about, mirroring her every movement as if they had a life of their own. Trina stumbles towards the halfbreed girl, her mouth opening to protest as surprise overcomes her inhibitions for a moment. But Tanith is gone before she can recover herself enough to get any words out, and she reaches up to draw her cloak gingerly about her, a wince of pain tightening her face with the small motion. "Greetings - I - my name is Trina," she falters. "I'm - Tanith said that you were a healer..." There are few things about which Faanshi is brave, and very few things indeed about which she is brave when within the sight and hearing of the Lions of Fire who vigilantly keep watch over the gates of Atesh-Gah. But attending to the needs of someone in obvious pain is one of those things, and there's vivid concern now in Faanshi's eyes as she lifts a sungolden hand to Trina, more than enough concern to offset the shadow that had haunted them a moment ago -- at least for the time being. "Yes," she affirms. "Do you need me to heal you, Imphada...? Here, somewhere else...?" That Trina is Sylvan is apparently irrelevant. That Trina is also obviously graisha is also apparently irrelevant. All that matters now is that the woman is in pain, and Faanshi doesn't bother to point this out. It is obvious even to her eyes and never mind her magic. "Yes! Please!" The words are out of her mouth before Trina can call them back, their volume muted by the tiny gasp of pain that accompanies them. "And - somewhere else?" The vehemence drops out of her voice more and more with every word, until she is almost pleading. A pale, faded hand lifts to clutch at the tanned one. "Please? Not here..." The differences seem to have been washed away in Trina's eyes as well - all she sees is someone who can help her. It is a good thing she's said her evening prayers; she has nothing that really demands her attention within Atesh-Gah, at this hour. Unless one counts Kosha -- and Faanshi is a trifle nervous about venturing out into the city in the dark without her big dog at her side. But there is need here, and she cannot deny the pleading in the graisha woman's eyes and in the grip of her hand. At the contact of skin to skin the halfbreed maiden's power roils in reaction, causing Faanshi to have to draw in her breath -- but she also seizes enough of it to send forth into the other female, offering strength. "Take me where you are best comfortable, Imphada," she requests, as firmly as her soft quiet voice can sound. Wordlessly, Trina nods, her hand clutching more tightly at the healer's as she begins to lead Faanshi through the twisting streets and alleys. She knows the city well - or at least, knows the shortcuts to one particular street, small and modest and well-scrubbed, as if the people who lived on it didnt' have much money to devote to keeping it up, but _did_ have a good deal of energy, and gave all they had. Up the steps of one of the small houses the graisha girl steers the healer, and pushes the front door open with one hand, wincing again as she twists her body around to complete the motion. The first-floor apartment is their destination, a sparsely-furnished room, with more bolts of cloth scattered around the floor than carpets or furniture. Trina closes the door behind her with a deep, heavy sigh of relief, and almost immediately, some of the tension begins to seep out of her frantically tight grasp. But not all - the lines of pain remain in her face, and there is still something basically on-edge about her as she releases the healer's hand. "This is...my house," she offers. "Please - sit wherever you can." A nervous little laugh punctuates the sentence. Without protest, Faanshi has followed the graisha where Trina has led -- and where one might expect a woman of the Varati to express shock or at least shy dismay at being led to a... less opulet portion of the city, Faanshi seems as at ease if not more so than she was before the gates of the place where she lives. Here and now, though, once she has been brought into Trina's modest little flat, the halfbreed girl does not actually bother to try to sit. Her attention is still riveted upon the woman, her pain overriding such concerns as a place to sit down. With liquid eyes she gazes over the top of her veil, saying anxiously, "I think, Imphada... it is more important that I heal you first, if you will permit me...?" "Of course." More of Trina's nervousness rushes out of her with her sighed words, and the polite, edgy little smile creeps slightly more towards sincerity. She reaches gingerly up and pushes the cloak off of her shoulders, letting out another sigh as the pressure is relieved and the heavy cloth falls to the ground. As the cloak slips away, the source of the young graisha's pain becomes evident - the two tiny wings that sprout between her shoulderblades lie crumpled and limp, huddled in an uneven mass against her back. Faint pink spots of color appear on her cheeks as she turns away from the healer, presenting her back and wings with the quiet explanation, "I fell." Faanshi might be far more comfortable with graisha than many of the pure-blooded Varati people, but she is not immune to surprise. And this is the first graisha she's seen with wings like this, arguably the tiniest wings she's ever seen on a person. Half her startled little gasp is for that -- but the rest of it is for the pitiful condition of the mangled pinions. Without hesitation she rests her palms near the bases of them while she murmurs in sheepish tones, "Imphada, I have never healed wings before... but I will try." Aether flows then as she reaches into herself, calling up her magic and reaching out through her fingers with it to try to sense for herself what feels 'wrong' with those poor crumpled miniature wings, and what she can do to fix them. Trina swallows hard, the tension returning as Faanshi's fingers begin their delicate examination. The tension is not from pain, though - rather, from the absence of pain that comes with the healer's touch, and the sensation of the touch itself, as the graisha girl's mouth sets into a tight little V. It separates itself only enough to say a faint "Thank you..." before Trina falls silent again. The wings give a feeble little flop as Faanshi's finger move in, and then they too are still. It could not have been easy for them to move at all, in their condition - while neither is injured beyond repair, both have taken quite a beating. The right one seems to have borne the worst of it: its thin hollow bones are broken cleanly through. The left one is only sprained, but it too is in too serious condition to be much good at moving...or flying, if it were big enough to do that. Once again Faanshi draws in her breath, but now it is for the feel those tiny broken bones make upon her consciousness. So small are they that at least for a heartbeat or two she almost cannot distinguish the individual bones from one another, but rather, senses it all as a single tangled mass of damage. _Ushas,_ she prays unthinkingly, and then manages to find a modicum of strength. Deepen your concentration, shudra. You can do this. You have healed tiny children whose fingers have been broken, haven't you? Little wrists, little ankles of Mongrel beggar children in the streets of Bordertown. This is no different. Only smaller. And thus she does not have the attention to spare to answer the graisha girl, as she squeezes her eyes closed and strengthens the link to her inner core of power and the mangled wings upon Trina's back. That power roils... but here, as she allows herself to do nowhere else, Faanshi calls up enough will to parcel out only sprinkles of her magic at a time. This is not an exercise in strength. It is an exercise in delicacy, in painstaking unraveling of the damaged bones beneath those small feathers, and Faanshi's face crinkles up behind her veil as she applies herself to it. Frozen in her tension and uncertainty, Trina stands with her back to the healer, her hands twined tightly together in front of her. She does her best to suppress the shudder that runs through her at the odd sensation of her bones painlessly resetting themselves into their proper position, but can't quite keep it from jarring the tiny wings. "Sorry," she whispers, as her tension renews itself. She does not even dare to turn her head to direct teh word towards Faanshi, but speaks it into the emptiness of the room in front of her. On the outer edge of her awareness Faanshi hears the apology, but for the time being the shudra maiden does not acknowledge it. She can hardly be described as stubborn, this dainty, timid creature who serves the Children of Fire... but nevertheless she doesn't falter in the controlled flow of power with which she bathes Trina's wings. Bone by bone, feather by feather, they reconstruct themselves beneath her sungolden touch. It is not swift, and it drains Faanshi's strength as much as if she'd tried to inundate the damage with all of her magic at once. The halfbreed maiden diverts only enough mental attention to thank the Holy Mother of Khalid Atar that she had not been called upon to do this three weeks ago; in her inner heart, Faanshi has to admit that she isn't at all sure she could have done this when she herself was sick and ailing. But she has regained some measure of her strength since then, and thus she ignores the draw upon her energy. Like Trina's race, like the signs of animal about her person, it is irrelevant. So are the tiny involuntary movements of the wings as she bids them to mend themselves. Ever so slowly, Trina lifts her wings, spreading the tiny feathers out on the crest of a breath that catches in her throat. And then her shoulders droop as the breath rushes out of her in a sigh, and she lets her eyes slip gratefully closed. "Thank you..." she whispers. "Oh, thank you." Only then does she step forward, drawing her wings fully out of the healer's grasp, letting them extend to the widest point of their miniature span before folding them carefully back in their proper place. She turns to face Faanshi now, unable to keep the smile from pulling up at the corners of her angled mouth. "It's perfect. I never expected them to work this well after so short a time...but oh, are you all right?" Awareness of her rescuer's condition sinks in slowly, but when it reaches the graisha girl's mind, it floods forth to push away all other thoughts. "It didn't hurt _you_ to do it, did it?" The subtle breaking of contact between Faanshi's fingers and Trina's back was certainly a signal that the healer girl has completed her task, not to mention the sense of 'rightness' and health and strength returning to feather and miniscule bone. But as the graisha turns round to the shudra, Faanshi can be seen to have a sheen of sweat across what little is visible of her face; she's lowered her hands down to her sides and stands there quietly, not having once bothered to sit down. Her breathing is cautious, deep and careful, as though she has just run a great distance and is striving to regain the air in her lungs. But at the aghast query, she murmurs stoically, "I am... I will be fine, Imphada." And she draws up her hands again, this time to clasp them palm to palm at her breast and bow slightly over them. "You honor me by asking." "You should at least rest...or sit down...or...do you want anything to eat?" Awkward offers follow each other in quick succession, accompanied by an uncertain little smile. "And - oh, what do I owe you?" The little wings flutter high and proud at Trina's back as she bends over one of the piles of cloth, lifting the edge of a bright bolt towards the healer. "I do not heal for compensation, Imphada," Faanshi softly replies. And as there are very few things in the world about which she can be brave, so also are there very few things she can say with confidence and peace. But this is one of them. She even lifts up her gaze as she says it. That shadow is still lurking within her liquid regard, and there are hollows at the corners of those leaf-green eyes of hers, but for at least this moment she seems almost assured. A slow blink interrupts the impassive round yellowness of Trina's eyes as she stares at Faanshi. "You don't?" It's clearly difficult for the thought to make its way through her mind, but eventually she says, "Oh. I see. Well...thank you?" The words are uncertain, as if not sure of their own adequacy. Apparently, though, the thanks is enough for the shudra girl. Faanshi again does that small formal bow, saying gravely, "It is my duty and honor to heal, Imphada... more so, for one who is a friend to Grandmother Tanith. Blessings upon you, and be well. Call upon me again if you have need... I must return to Atesh-Gah, for now, though. I am expected. Namaste'... and chookma." She turns away then... and even though she does not really flee, still, there is a fleeting hint of that same shadow across her gaze that had been there when Tanith had addressed her. Something troubles this girl. But whatever it is, she gives no voice to it as she takes it with her back out into the night.... [End log.]