Still Alive (after bonding)

[Kat]

If Ri’ley noticed Amira’s gaze on him, he did not acknowledge that he did, as he never looked up or even paused from his task. Much more likely, the man was completely oblivious to her, focusing instead on the parts of her body that needed to be cleaned and bandaged. Especially now that he was so bone-achingly tired, Ri’ley needed to focus on the tasks he preformed so that he did them correctly. He would not stand for fixing any problems unless he was sure he was fixing them as correctly as possible. When dealing with human bodies, human lives there was no margin of error. When Amira spoke, however, his attention briefly shifted to look at her face, her eyes, a long enough glance to make out her words, before he went back smearing salve across her body.
”You would be surprised at how much you did do. Sometimes, just being there is enough to prevent catastrophe.”
Ri’ley coolly, his voice showing the attention and focus he gave his tasks. He was beginning to lose any sense of ease; every action and every communication required strain, energy, focus, and he could not hide the amount of work he had to use to do anything. Fatigue was an unfortunate cycle; the more tired a person was, the more that person had to focus on every little task, which only caused exponentially greater fatigue. Blood clotting worked like that; platelets signaled other platelets, which in turn signal more platelets, so the accumulation of platelets triggers more to come. Thinking of fatigue in that manner required too much thought, and even Ri’ley’s thoughts were beginning to become inarticulate. He went back to focusing at the task at hand.

Leannan turned her back to him stubbornly. Ri’ley spotted her positon out of the corner of his large, brown eyes, as he turned to retrieve some more gauze from a pile on the bench on which he and Amira perched. The woman was being as difficult as possible; she was trying as hard as she could to guilt him into submission, to prove to him that he was wrong. He knew he did not have the best bedside manner, but no matter what Leannan tried to inculcate into Ri’ley, he knew that saving lives, preventing damaging injury, was far more important than communicating pleasantry. Later, when everyone was safe, he might try to prove to her that he could be positively cordial, pleasant, and kind, even if he had to work at presenting those attributes while tending to a patient, but now, he needed to focus on helping the injured. Now he had to work, and he was too tired to dawdle or chat. Ri’ley instead, turned back to Amira, who mentioned that she had a brother his age.
”Is he your only sibling?”
Why Ri’ley wanted to ask could not be explained. He felt immeasurably sorry for the girl, and the feeling extended beyond the realm of simple pity. He felt for her, and even though he barely knew her, Amira’s emptiness made Ri’ley sad. No one deserved to lack the bond he shared with Dionyph. The bond was already so strong, so wonderful, so miraculous. He wished he could share it with Amira, to complete her in the way he had been completed, but that was, of course, impossible, and in many ways, it would be cruel. She did not need to know, more than she already assumed, the potency of the bond she missed. She did not need to know the feeling which rushed through Ri’ley every time Dionyoh crossed his mind, of completion and of perfection, because if she did, she would not be able to live without it. Ri’ley was sure, even though he had only known the hatchling for a few hours, that he could not live without Dionyph. Without the simourv’s conscious and subconscious, emotions and thoughts, linked intimately to his own, Ri’ley would waste away until he died. So, because he more that just pitied the girl, Ri’ley felt the need to engage her in conversation, as if he distracted her from her pain. Usually stern Ri’ley, felt that with Amira, he had to be more human, if only because she deserved respect and empathy for her unfortunate condition. The fact that the girl, even so destroyed, was extremely pleasant and kind made the impulse to engage her that much stronger. The gap between Amaryllis and Ri’ley was unusually large, so the man did wonder if Amira had other siblings, or if her brother was closer to her in age than Ri’ley was to his seven-years-younger sister. He smiled briefly, but he returned to bandaging, as he waited for a response to his explanation about her shirt. He needed to know before he could continue.

Ri’ley’s back was turned to the other girls as he tended Amira, mostly so that he did not have to even glance at Leannan’s obstinate, unfairly bitter, and almost cruel position, with her back to him, so he did not see S’reni fall to the ground. He heard the commotion, then, before he saw it, hearing a small thud, and then a buzz as the medics rushed to the fallen girl. When Ri’ley did pivot around, rushing at an alarming rate, his eyes surveyed the situation, and immediately became worried. He had not expected S’reni to collapse. She was definitely injured, but she had seemed quite stable when he had left her. Why was she out of bed? How did she get out of bed? She must have gotten up for something, but what could be so urgent that she felt the need to level? Suddenly, Ri’ley’s level of stress increased, so that he felt clammy, and his heart began to race, tumbling in his chest almost uncomfortably. His face felt hot, as it flushed with the blood which now pounded through his veins. He knew that he would have turned a light pink color, or at least that his face, ears, and chest would be coated with a pinkish blush. His pale skin always turned a bright shade when he flushed, whether the blush come from humiliation, passion, anger, or stress. Even though the other medics were already there, Ri’ley leapt to S’reni’s side. He was not used to working with so many other doctors, as, for the most part, he worked alone with Master Donovan.
”She’s breathing.”
Ri’ley hissed as he moved his face close to S’reni’s chest, a fact confirmed by one of the medics, who nodded in agreement. A went cloth was thrust into Ri’ley’s hand, he did not know the source, and he began to pat the fallen girl’s face with it. One of the medics produced a vial of a substance which singed the insides of Ri’ley’s sinuses and nostrils. The vial was waved around S’reni’s face. Another medic had begun to lift the girl, a task which Ri’ley moved to help with, so that he ended up supporting half of S’reni’s body, and nearly almost all of her dead weight, with a willowy female medic. Gently, working with the woman who helped him, or rather, whom Ri’ley helped, Ri’ley dumped S’reni onto her bed.
”She must have lost more blood than we realized.”
Someone announced; the voice sounded like Ri’ley’s own voice. Had he spoken? There was not much else they could do until S’reni was revived, but they could hope, pray that the girl would be okay, would survive. The knocking on the door, which then occurred, was completely lost to the man, and to most of the people around him, as everyone buzzed over S’reni, worried and anxious. Dionyph, feeling his bonded’s agitation, stirred, a fuzzy, questioning concept bubbling at Ri’ley’s conscious. The hatchling was, of course, rather confused by Ri’ley’s new stress, which started abruptly and powerfully. White eyes peeled open and scanned the area, before, the hatchling turned on his side in his nest of blankets, shelling his back to the chaos of the infirmary, much in the way Leannan had done earlier, before Dionyph closed his eyes again. He wanted to go back to sleep.

Completely obvious to his hatchling’s brief period of wakefulness, Ri’ley heard L’nan’s gasp, and he wheeled around, so that he looked towards her. Frantic, his eyes scanned her body for any sign of greater damage.
”Are you alright?”
He squeaked, and he sounded, underneath the tense, out-of-control tones of panic, very concerned. He had no time, no energy, for anger and resentment. Not at this point in time. He had to stay in the moment, and he needed to ensure that Serenity would survive her collapse.

[Cy]

[/b] She argued quietly, turning her eyes up to him, pleading and unsure. He was exhausted, that was easy to see in the stare of his gaze and the slowness of his movements. It would have been kind to him for her to simply bite her tongue and agree regardless of her disbelief otherwise. But she didn’t want him to think of her as anything superb or helpful, her self-pity in that moment just wouldn’t allow it. It was pathetic, but she couldn’t help herself. ”She’d bonded, so I left her. I wanted to find someone who could take her off the sands, but…” she trailed off, shaking her head. There’d been no one there. Spectators had continued to act as audience, absent riders had been busy dealing with the new winglets, and the Phoenix had more important matters to deal with. She’d not even been able to get any help. The others had bonded quickly after her departure, so it clearly would have been smarter for her to just stick around until they had, but she wasn’t very much of a smart girl.

Thinking back to Kios, her thoughts felt warm and she missed him, though they’d honestly never been close at all. He was a resentful and cold young boy, nothing at all like the doctor that treated her now, but the pain of recent rejection allowed her to overlook that. In all actuality, he was closer to her age than to Ri’ley’s, but memory was often distorted. He’d always carried himself as a man so much older than his eighteen years. He’d be turning nineteen soon though. ”Yes, he’s my only sibling. Though I’d imagine he’d prefer he were an only child,” her slight chuckle was out of place in the chaos of the infirmary, but it was fond all the same, amused when she really had nothing to be amused about at all.

Grim reality settled on them once more as one of the patients fell to the ground, snapping them out of whatever kind camaraderie they’d fallen into. She dismissed Ri’ley, encouraged him to help those who needed it more than she did, and she meant it though she felt a small sting at how quickly he’d left her behind to go tend to the fallen girl. She watched him retreat, but shook her head and looked away, dismissing the feeling as mere emotional sensitivity in the aftermath of cruel things. She chewed at her lip as she finished pinning the bandage he’d been working on, looking over both of her injured arms, now white with the itchy gauze that tightly embraced them. Then she looked to the salve that had been left behind, peeking up to glance around the infirmary. Everyone was so busy, harried and distracted. She didn’t want to have to pick out a female from among them, just so she could take off her shirt and have them tend to her chest in the same way Ri’ley had tended to her arms. She’d watched him work, she knew how to do it.

After assuring herself that there were more bandages and salve stocked in the infirmary, she moved from her seat and plucked up the items that had been left behind. Screwing the cap back on to the jar of ointment, she clutched it and the gauze to herself as she turned and hurriedly moved to leave. The action was sneaky and impulsive, but she saw little harm in it. She’d take only what she needed and return what was left to the infirmary at a later point. However, she was brought up short as she exited the room and nearly collided with a boy standing just outside. Her eyes widened on him as she fumbled to keep her things in her arms, holding them close to herself and wincing at the protest of her scratches. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were there.” She offered apologetically, gaze sweeping over him for a moment before focusing on his face, confused when she noticed no visible injuries upon his person, not like the mauled girls she’d just left behind.[/ul][/size]

[cyrus]

A tinge of light red touches the young man's almost sickly-pale cheeks, and he tries to bow at the same moment as he tries to get out of the newcomer's way, to not a terribly large amount of success. He smiles awkwardly, the expression hardly at home on his moderately large mouth,making it look crooked and exposing his less than attractive sharpish teeth. He coughs, and holds what he is bringing behind his back. "...I..hello. I wanted to bring something for the injured. I tried to help at the hatching, but I was something of a hindrance." He says softly, his greyish eyes shifting downwards as he speaks, his short hair falling into his face with the sudden tilt of his head. The toes of his boots come closer together as he does so, and he looks genuinely embarrassed.

"I.." He looks at Ri'ley with wider eyes, as if the man terrifies him a little bit, and he lowers his already somewhat soft voice to avoid agitating him any further. He had been hoping that the man was already done with all of his treatments and had left, but he was not nearly so lucky. "I came to check on everyone. I...I was worried." He peeks around behind her to see if he can find any familiar faces, and his white face becomes a little taunt with worry as he closes his mouth, and his hand absently fumbles around his belt where his sword would usually be, but it is, of course, absent.

His slim shoulders slide up towards his head, as if he could disappear into himself, and though that is impossible, he could doubtlessly disappear into Ril'ey's silhouette, and he draws in his lips nervously, his fingers twitching down his belt in a smooth rolling motion like the legs of an insect. His toes curl within his boots as he waits for something to happen, staring at the girl all the while.

[sakurayasha]

(yeah, I know this is late and everyone's better by now, but...)

S'reni coughed and sputtered, eyes fluttered and then opened, looking up into Ri’ley’s worried face, his weary, flushed, terrified face. S'reni's heart beat a little faster, she didn't know what was going on, but her body remembered what it wanted "Pri-" she started weakly, then coughed and glanced away in embarrassment. Why were there so many people, all looking at her? "Privy, I need, a woman, take me please?"

A female medic pushed forward to grab her, lifting her up and carrying her bodily to the nearest privy. S'reni was embarrassed but grateful, the medic even supported her as she relieved herself, then cleaned her up and carried her back to bed. S'reni felt foolish and impotent, that she couldn't do any of these things for herself, she made silent promises to get something nice for the medic, and the new pants for Ri’ley, and nobody would ever thing she was an ungrateful wretch for needing them so badly right now, just as soon as she was well, she would pay them all back the kindness they had shown, and she would pay back the phoenix too, for all the pain she had caused, standing there watching. She would make new plans so that the next time a grays hatching took place... the next time...

And she fell asleep.