[LOG] - Ulyana: Minds
Title: Minds
Summary: Ulyana and the other weyrlings talk. Minds are discussed.
Characters: Euphemia, Katriona, Qhyluth, Ulyana, Yueth, Zezkaith
Location: Weyrling Barracks, Fort Weyr
Time: Day 28, month 2, turn 36 of Interval 10
RL Date: 11/02/2014
With her sickness coming from her dragon's state, a night's sleep has not truly helped Katriona. She still looks pale and drained as she sits on the edge of her cot and urges her sickly green lifemate to eat. Hope perches on a nearby shelf, staring down intently at the sickly green only slightly bigger than the firelizard herself, as if wondering why she's been displaced.
Qhyluth lurks on his couch, coiled and still, while Ulyana moves listlessly through the motions of getting oil and towels and a paddle together. The blue might be tracking her movements through their admittedly difficult bond, but his eyes are fixed on his sickly sister. Aching sympathy bubbles up in a thick sound that reverberates through him - and if he's a bit ashen at the edges at her state, consider it a display of his deep empathy.
Whatever went on in the night, whether Euphemia can still tell the difference between night and day right, the cot and wallow claimed by the blonde and her green have remained mostly empty, rumpled blankets and a few scrappy, abandoned possessions the only signs that they were ever there at all. Now, Ephie carries a sleeping Zezkaith through the barracks, her steps steady and eyes glazed over, every effort made not to jostle the sleeping creature. Once they reach 'home', it's a matter of easing the green into her wallow and leaping hands away, to see if she... Nope, still asleep.
Yueth makes a soft crooning noise towards her blue brother in answer, stretching her wings once before subsiding back into the blankets beside her lifemate. But it's this noise, this motion, that finally drags Kat out of her own thoughts enough to regard the other Candidates -- no, weyrlings -- in the room. "Ephie. Yana." The girl's greeting lacks her customary energy and spark, and she sits uncharacteristically still and unmoving; whatever normally spurs her into constant motion, fidgeting and pacing and gesturing, it seems to have been drained away. Still, the smile she offers the other two is nonetheless still Kat, beneath it all.
No words are offered, though Qhyluth does extend a deep well of empathy - if suspiciously salt-scented - toward Yueth. The flow is a wordless reassurance, a shapeless promise; a thing left vague, but still left. Ulyana returns to where the blue resides and, just as wordlessly, sets about the task of applying oil to alien hide. Her hands still shake and she's gone just as pale as Kat, but her mouth is set in a stubborn line. "Yes. I am aware," is flatly intoned for the blue's sake. Her gaze cuts askance to Katriona and the green and lingers there, only to move to Euphemia and hers, as well. A shallow, up-down-center nod of acknowledgment is given to each. There are no words she can offer, nor is her smile the sort to be pleasant - so it will not be shared; Qhyluth will have to speak, in his strange way, on her behalf.
Ephie watches closely as Zezkaith uncurls little by little, waiting for signs of her waking, but all the young green does is sprawl in the indentation, rather than stay curled up and as she was placed, a quiet sigh escaping her. She's on auto pilot as she swings around, using a displaced centre of gravity to create momentum, to face the rest of those cots rather than the wallow in which her lifemate sleeps. "Does anyone want anything while...?" Offered rather robotically, it's no less genuine, and when a girl from another few cots away opens her mouth, Euphemia /stares/ at her, making it plain enough that she's /not/ talking to her, but only to Kat and Ulyana. "You know. The caverns. Stuff there." Eloquent, she is not.
"I'm not really hungry, but I should probably get something to eat," Katriona answers almost reluctantly, even as she feeds another little gobbet of meat slowly to Yueth. The little green, however, seems more interested in the barracks around them; she keeps ignoring the food, in favor of staring first up at Hope, then over at each of the new weyrlings and their lifemates in turn. There must have been a silent question of some form, for Kat shakes her head towards the little green. "No, I don't know why. I'm sorry, I don't have all the answers."
The blue is remarkably still throughout Ulyana's ministrations, even if those ministrations are less loving and more an obligation that must be fulfilled. Qhyluth, fortunately, doesn't seem to be affected by the queer distance of the diminutive girl. She pauses after a moment, only to look at Euphemia with bleary eyes. Her throat works, her lips part, and she ultimately croaks out a flat, "Ginger crisps - and tea. If it is not an inconvenience. Thank you." There's a flicked look to Kat, to the awake green, to the sleeping green, and then she shuts her eyes to just stand there for a moment. Her voice is thin and strained and keenly directed to the blue in a hissed, "No. Stop. Stop now." And Qhyluth? He just issues another thick sound, something between a rumble and a gurgle.
Step by careful step, Euphemia dares putting distance between herself and cot and green, determined not to look back and yet longing (or dreading) to, her head tilted at an angle that is not /quite/ a glance behind her. "Tea, crisps," she echoes, trying to commit Ulyana's request to memory. More steps; more seconds pass. Still nothing from Zezkaith. As she passes Katriona and Yueth, she gives the little, sickly green a shuttered, judgemental kind of look that only softens when she glances back at Kat, but then she's back to focusing on her own footsteps. Almost along the line. She spins again once she's at the exit. "Tea, crisps. Ginger." Again. A blink at Ulyana, then Kat. "I'll get it." Maybe the something to eat /and/ the tea and ginger crisps? Who knows? Minutes will pass, then she'll return.
Yueth's attention is coaxed back to the meat, and another piece fed to her. It's almost mechanical at this point; a reflexive effort to turn the dragon's attention back to food, to force her to eat. Kat silently repeats this process two or three times during Euphemia's absence, before the girl's return finally tears her attention back away from the sickly little green again. "She's so /big/," she informs the others, somewhat nonsensically; after all, Yueth is arguably the third-smallest dragon in the room, with only the two miniscule twin greens smaller. Then, as if the other newly-Impressed might somehow mystically have the answers, she adds, "Is it always like that?"
The oiling ends almost as quickly as it's begun; such is the benefit of the size of young dragons. Ulyana goes through the motions again, this time to put everything away and clean herself up. Her jaw is tight, words clamped down, and a baleful look is ultimately shot to Qhyluth when she returns. The blue remains unmoving, his posture held as if he were a statute. To Katriona, Ulyana intones, "They will get bigger. There is no getting around it." And if she's a bit dismayed, well. That's to be expected. "I suspect it is always like that." But it's all speculation.
As Ephie nears the entryway that leads from the other chambers that make up the weyrling complex, there's movement in the wallow that Zezkaith was so recently placed in, then a shrill, whistling sort of cry as that tangle of limbs launches herself out of it and into the aisle between rows of cots, to go barrelling towards her weyrling as fast as she can possibly manage. A small mercy for Euphemia is that she's not carrying anything which can directly spill, a large flask tucked under one arm, while the other supports cloth-wrapped parcels, but small mercies are nothing when it doesn't look like Zezkaith is going to /stop/, either until she reaches her rider or... the exit?
"Not, not /her/ outside, not her size, but... her inside. Her mind? It's... big. Hollow. She wants to fill it." Kat exhales once and makes a sort of frustrated half-gesture to punctuate it, a pale echo of her usual self. why are words hard? "She's all questions. She doesn't have a lot of words yet, but she's /talking/ a lot, and most of the things she says are 'Why?' Why is Hope small? Why is that one..." A brief glance towards the hapless half-formed bronze. "...the way he is. Why does she feel the way she does? I feel like I'm going to fall in and be lost. Why why why..." She trails off, and adds one more 'why' as she sort of tries to force herself up off the cot: "Why is Ephie's dragon running away?"
"She should speak with Qhyluth," and the name falls from Ulyana's tongue like a dreadful weight. It hangs there, pendulous, until she shakes her head. "He is-" but whatever she was going to say is cast off when Zezkaith cries out and starts to run. Qhyluth uncoils from his resting place, limbs moving with ponderous sluggishness at first. His attention finally moves from Yueth to the fleeing one and he extends his thoughts - slow and deep and cool - toward her, not unlike a tentative, testing tentacle. For her part, Ulyana motions at Kat, "Stay. Sit. You need rest as much as she does." As does she, really, but she's already up and able to move. "Perhaps she is afraid of Euphemia being gone." Speculation again. Troubling.
The brush of meadow grasses breezes across that touch from Qhyluth, yet there's something far heavier and more oppressive from Zezkaith just on the horizon; a humid, dark sense of pressure that wants casting off. A quiet yelp from just beyond the barracks chamber is followed by a metallic clatter, yet no more that shrill noise follows. Nor do Zezkaith or Euphemia reappear. Perhaps a minute passes, then one of the other weyrlings appears and wanders his way down the line of cots, to hold out the dented flask and small parcel towards Ulyana, with another couple of parcels offered to Katriona. "She said they were yours," he states around a huge yawn. The tea and the ginger crisps, as promised, then sandwiches and more of those same crisps for Kat, but no Euphemia or Zezkaith. Not for another few hours.
Kat stares at the sandwich, perhaps confused by the food for a long moment. Oh, yes. She's supposed to eat this, isn't she. She glances at her hand, still slimy with the meat she was feeding to her sickly green, and then puts the sandwich aside on the side-table for the moment, turning her attention back to Ulyana. "Why should she speak to... Qhyluth?" She stumbles over the name for a moment, trying to figure out how to pronounce it.
The crisps, the flask, both of these things are taken - but Ulyana doesn't do anything immediately with them. There's a slight tilt of her head, a flattening of her mouth, and an eventual glance to Katriona once she returns to the moment. "It is Qhyluth," is her mild, not-quite-correction. A guttural name, akin to KY-looth, but there's something else there, something that even she finds difficult to pronounce. "And he-" She grimaces and, ultimately goes to the side table with Kat's sandwich and puts the flask and parcel of crisps on it. "These are for you." It's easier, see, but then the blue's -there- in his way, luminous eyes fixed in their direction. Of the looming beast, she practically whispers, "There is an ocean in him - and it is vast. There is no emptiness, just... depth." To fill the void, see, but she can't even piece those thoughts together.
"I don't know if even an ocean could fill her," Kat answers, her tone one that falls somewhere between awe and despair as she regards her little sickly grey-green lifemate. Then she turns back to Ulyana, and adds, "I think all of Pern might be too small. And I don't know what to do." Whether over the already-constant /need/ to understand things, or the fact that little Yueth is clearly not in good health. Or maybe both. Then she casts her gaze back at Qhyluth for a moment, trying not to let the blue's frightening appearance unsettle her. "What... what is an ocean like, in your mind?"
"I do not think his ocean ends," is Ulyana's counterpoint, which eerily echoes Kat's own conflicted tone. She swallows hard and looks askance at the blue beast in question, but he's settled into a frozen state, seemingly asleep in his wallow. Seemingly. Her gaze drifts to Yueth, but there is no judgment, no horror, no fear. Sympathy, perhaps; maybe even a flicker of empathy. And then it's gone. "They will grow," she decides. "And then that will shrink. It must." Because the alternative is unthinkable. Her jaw twitches and she looks away entirely. "Terrifying and hideously huge. Cold, loud, and full of- full of -things-." Her jaw works a little. "It is dark and still right now. He is sleeping, so the pressure- the voices-" She trails, only to pick up a moment later with a dull, "I would rather the void. The emptiness. Filling it seems easier than draining leagues of water."
"Loud?" Kat asks curiously, then looks back to Yueth. "Hers doesn't end either. It's... heavy, somehow, even though it's empty. Huge. It's... like the entire night sky. Everything, everywhere, just going on always and forever, never ending." She scrubs a hand across her face, heedless of the muck left behind from the attempted feeding. Yueth, meanwhile, lifts her head to regard Ulyana curiously, making an odd little mewling noise in greeting and stretching her near-transparent wings experimentally; she seems far too small to hold that sort of void, somehow.
The muck-smearing seems to be the catalyst. Ulyana moves away to get a clean cloth and a dry towel, both of which are presented to Kat. Her response is, simply, "It is not unlike the sound of your heartbeat in your ears, right when panic sets in." She'll leave it at that, with a glance angled toward the mewling, wing-spreading green. If there is a quest for answers, there are none to be found in her. Nearby, the blue shifts his weight a little, wings twitching as genuine slumber briefly claims him. Ulyana considers for a long moment, only to murmur, "Maybe it just feels that way now. Perhaps it will become more bearable after you have had something to eat and some rest - and when she is recovered." There is subtle emphasis on the 'when', with a thick noise sounding from a slumbering Qhyluth seemingly in confirmation. There is a pause, then a low: "Did she dream? Did you?" This is important.
Yueth puts one claw onto Kat's lap, trying to pull herself over to her lifemate. Perhaps to get a better view of Ulyana, and then of her slumbering blue brother nearby. She pushes herself upright, staring up at Ulyana given the other girl's closeness. "I don't... know," Katriona admits, distracted by the green. "I don't remember much. Fleeting impressions, but I'm not sure if they were her or me or the fever." She reaches out to take the cloth, staring at it for a moment as if she can't entirely recall what it's for. Yueth, too, turns her attention to it with curiosity, until Kat begins to wipe her face clean once more.
"I see," says she, and then Ulyana lapses into silence for a short time. Blame it on the curious distraction that the ashen green presents. She freezes, gray eyes locked onto the green's own - or as much as she can manage - while the nearby Qhyluth sinks deeper into slumber. The occasional twitch of limb or flop of tail is to be expected; something must be bubbling along in the depths of his unfathomable psyche. Ulyana, meanwhile, remains still - and ready to take the cloths when Kat finishes with them. "Is the fever going away? I requested the tea and crisps for you. They may help."
"I don't think they will," Kat admits sadly, looking down at her little ashen lifemate, as she finishes wiping her face -- and hands -- clean. She hands them back to Ulyana with a grateful nod, then lets her hand fall to the blankets beside her once again. It twitches once among the folds of fabric, as if Kat were almost about to fidget or gesture in her usual manner but discovered that she still lacks the energy. "The fever isn't /mine/, so I don't know that anything will help. Not until she's better. But I'll try the crisps and tea anyway." This last is said with a grateful nod to Ulyana.
"Perhaps," Ulyana offers, "she might feel relief when you do. It is supposed to go both ways, is it not? It may not fix her, but it may help her." The cloths are dealt with and, when she returns, it's with another couple of blankets. One, oddly, is dropped on Qhyluth; the other two are presented to Kat - whether or not she wants or needs them, they're there. The strangeling girl sits on her cot a moment later, hands folded in her lap. "I am sure all will be well soon. The dragonhealers here are good, or so I understand."
"I hope so," Kat says, finally, as she watches her partner make an impromptu nest, those diamond-dusted wings outstretched for a moment as Yueth seeks a comfortable spot. With a sad edge to her tone, the weyrling adds, "I don't feel right. I don't feel like /me/. Though I guess I'm not, anymore." She takes the tea and crisps from her side-table, eying the sandwich thoughtfully but deciding, perhaps, that she's not quite up for that yet.
"Elise told me," but the memory is a bit deep and it takes her a moment to pull the bits out, "that we have to accept the change. We have to change if we Impress - and we did that." Even if the idea makes her sickly and pale again, so be it. "She will recover. You will be you again - just with her." One shoulder rises and falls in a lopsided shrug. "I felt the same when I was sick as a child. I was not me. And then I recovered." And nevermind that her hands knot themselves up into a tangle of white knuckles.
Two crisps and about half of the tea are consumed, before Kat evidently loses interest in food and places it back onto the table beside her cot. Certainly a change from the way the young girl usually will happily eat her way through the Nighthearth. It's then that she breaks her silence again. "I've was sick for a long time," she says finally, though it seems almost more to herself. "And I made it through. And I got better. This will be no different." She settles into the cot, curled up around the little nest that Yueth has made in the new blankets, and turns her gaze towards Ulyana's cot nearby. "You'll be fine, too, Yana. I know it. And now you know where /home/ is, right?"
Everything is left where it is, right down to Ulyana with her hands in her lap and the equally unmoving blue under his blanket. The girl issues a shallow, up-down-center nod, and intones, "Yes. You will do more than live." Which means something, if only to her. Even while Kat seems to be settling in for slumber - or at least rest - she remains as she is, strange and tight and restless despite the stillness. In the end, she is forced to agree, if only with the words, "He chose." And it was so.
With a nod in answer to Ulyana, Kat closes her eyes, settling into a fitful sleep beside her sickly lifemate. After a moment, Hope ventures from her spot on the shelf and claims a place on the cot as well, on the opposite side of Kat from Yueth. This is /her/ person, and she isn't surrendering her entirely to the interloper.
Summary: Ulyana and the other weyrlings talk. Minds are discussed.
Characters: Euphemia, Katriona, Qhyluth, Ulyana, Yueth, Zezkaith
Location: Weyrling Barracks, Fort Weyr
Time: Day 28, month 2, turn 36 of Interval 10
RL Date: 11/02/2014
With her sickness coming from her dragon's state, a night's sleep has not truly helped Katriona. She still looks pale and drained as she sits on the edge of her cot and urges her sickly green lifemate to eat. Hope perches on a nearby shelf, staring down intently at the sickly green only slightly bigger than the firelizard herself, as if wondering why she's been displaced.
Qhyluth lurks on his couch, coiled and still, while Ulyana moves listlessly through the motions of getting oil and towels and a paddle together. The blue might be tracking her movements through their admittedly difficult bond, but his eyes are fixed on his sickly sister. Aching sympathy bubbles up in a thick sound that reverberates through him - and if he's a bit ashen at the edges at her state, consider it a display of his deep empathy.
Whatever went on in the night, whether Euphemia can still tell the difference between night and day right, the cot and wallow claimed by the blonde and her green have remained mostly empty, rumpled blankets and a few scrappy, abandoned possessions the only signs that they were ever there at all. Now, Ephie carries a sleeping Zezkaith through the barracks, her steps steady and eyes glazed over, every effort made not to jostle the sleeping creature. Once they reach 'home', it's a matter of easing the green into her wallow and leaping hands away, to see if she... Nope, still asleep.
Yueth makes a soft crooning noise towards her blue brother in answer, stretching her wings once before subsiding back into the blankets beside her lifemate. But it's this noise, this motion, that finally drags Kat out of her own thoughts enough to regard the other Candidates -- no, weyrlings -- in the room. "Ephie. Yana." The girl's greeting lacks her customary energy and spark, and she sits uncharacteristically still and unmoving; whatever normally spurs her into constant motion, fidgeting and pacing and gesturing, it seems to have been drained away. Still, the smile she offers the other two is nonetheless still Kat, beneath it all.
No words are offered, though Qhyluth does extend a deep well of empathy - if suspiciously salt-scented - toward Yueth. The flow is a wordless reassurance, a shapeless promise; a thing left vague, but still left. Ulyana returns to where the blue resides and, just as wordlessly, sets about the task of applying oil to alien hide. Her hands still shake and she's gone just as pale as Kat, but her mouth is set in a stubborn line. "Yes. I am aware," is flatly intoned for the blue's sake. Her gaze cuts askance to Katriona and the green and lingers there, only to move to Euphemia and hers, as well. A shallow, up-down-center nod of acknowledgment is given to each. There are no words she can offer, nor is her smile the sort to be pleasant - so it will not be shared; Qhyluth will have to speak, in his strange way, on her behalf.
Ephie watches closely as Zezkaith uncurls little by little, waiting for signs of her waking, but all the young green does is sprawl in the indentation, rather than stay curled up and as she was placed, a quiet sigh escaping her. She's on auto pilot as she swings around, using a displaced centre of gravity to create momentum, to face the rest of those cots rather than the wallow in which her lifemate sleeps. "Does anyone want anything while...?" Offered rather robotically, it's no less genuine, and when a girl from another few cots away opens her mouth, Euphemia /stares/ at her, making it plain enough that she's /not/ talking to her, but only to Kat and Ulyana. "You know. The caverns. Stuff there." Eloquent, she is not.
"I'm not really hungry, but I should probably get something to eat," Katriona answers almost reluctantly, even as she feeds another little gobbet of meat slowly to Yueth. The little green, however, seems more interested in the barracks around them; she keeps ignoring the food, in favor of staring first up at Hope, then over at each of the new weyrlings and their lifemates in turn. There must have been a silent question of some form, for Kat shakes her head towards the little green. "No, I don't know why. I'm sorry, I don't have all the answers."
The blue is remarkably still throughout Ulyana's ministrations, even if those ministrations are less loving and more an obligation that must be fulfilled. Qhyluth, fortunately, doesn't seem to be affected by the queer distance of the diminutive girl. She pauses after a moment, only to look at Euphemia with bleary eyes. Her throat works, her lips part, and she ultimately croaks out a flat, "Ginger crisps - and tea. If it is not an inconvenience. Thank you." There's a flicked look to Kat, to the awake green, to the sleeping green, and then she shuts her eyes to just stand there for a moment. Her voice is thin and strained and keenly directed to the blue in a hissed, "No. Stop. Stop now." And Qhyluth? He just issues another thick sound, something between a rumble and a gurgle.
Step by careful step, Euphemia dares putting distance between herself and cot and green, determined not to look back and yet longing (or dreading) to, her head tilted at an angle that is not /quite/ a glance behind her. "Tea, crisps," she echoes, trying to commit Ulyana's request to memory. More steps; more seconds pass. Still nothing from Zezkaith. As she passes Katriona and Yueth, she gives the little, sickly green a shuttered, judgemental kind of look that only softens when she glances back at Kat, but then she's back to focusing on her own footsteps. Almost along the line. She spins again once she's at the exit. "Tea, crisps. Ginger." Again. A blink at Ulyana, then Kat. "I'll get it." Maybe the something to eat /and/ the tea and ginger crisps? Who knows? Minutes will pass, then she'll return.
Yueth's attention is coaxed back to the meat, and another piece fed to her. It's almost mechanical at this point; a reflexive effort to turn the dragon's attention back to food, to force her to eat. Kat silently repeats this process two or three times during Euphemia's absence, before the girl's return finally tears her attention back away from the sickly little green again. "She's so /big/," she informs the others, somewhat nonsensically; after all, Yueth is arguably the third-smallest dragon in the room, with only the two miniscule twin greens smaller. Then, as if the other newly-Impressed might somehow mystically have the answers, she adds, "Is it always like that?"
The oiling ends almost as quickly as it's begun; such is the benefit of the size of young dragons. Ulyana goes through the motions again, this time to put everything away and clean herself up. Her jaw is tight, words clamped down, and a baleful look is ultimately shot to Qhyluth when she returns. The blue remains unmoving, his posture held as if he were a statute. To Katriona, Ulyana intones, "They will get bigger. There is no getting around it." And if she's a bit dismayed, well. That's to be expected. "I suspect it is always like that." But it's all speculation.
As Ephie nears the entryway that leads from the other chambers that make up the weyrling complex, there's movement in the wallow that Zezkaith was so recently placed in, then a shrill, whistling sort of cry as that tangle of limbs launches herself out of it and into the aisle between rows of cots, to go barrelling towards her weyrling as fast as she can possibly manage. A small mercy for Euphemia is that she's not carrying anything which can directly spill, a large flask tucked under one arm, while the other supports cloth-wrapped parcels, but small mercies are nothing when it doesn't look like Zezkaith is going to /stop/, either until she reaches her rider or... the exit?
"Not, not /her/ outside, not her size, but... her inside. Her mind? It's... big. Hollow. She wants to fill it." Kat exhales once and makes a sort of frustrated half-gesture to punctuate it, a pale echo of her usual self. why are words hard? "She's all questions. She doesn't have a lot of words yet, but she's /talking/ a lot, and most of the things she says are 'Why?' Why is Hope small? Why is that one..." A brief glance towards the hapless half-formed bronze. "...the way he is. Why does she feel the way she does? I feel like I'm going to fall in and be lost. Why why why..." She trails off, and adds one more 'why' as she sort of tries to force herself up off the cot: "Why is Ephie's dragon running away?"
"She should speak with Qhyluth," and the name falls from Ulyana's tongue like a dreadful weight. It hangs there, pendulous, until she shakes her head. "He is-" but whatever she was going to say is cast off when Zezkaith cries out and starts to run. Qhyluth uncoils from his resting place, limbs moving with ponderous sluggishness at first. His attention finally moves from Yueth to the fleeing one and he extends his thoughts - slow and deep and cool - toward her, not unlike a tentative, testing tentacle. For her part, Ulyana motions at Kat, "Stay. Sit. You need rest as much as she does." As does she, really, but she's already up and able to move. "Perhaps she is afraid of Euphemia being gone." Speculation again. Troubling.
The brush of meadow grasses breezes across that touch from Qhyluth, yet there's something far heavier and more oppressive from Zezkaith just on the horizon; a humid, dark sense of pressure that wants casting off. A quiet yelp from just beyond the barracks chamber is followed by a metallic clatter, yet no more that shrill noise follows. Nor do Zezkaith or Euphemia reappear. Perhaps a minute passes, then one of the other weyrlings appears and wanders his way down the line of cots, to hold out the dented flask and small parcel towards Ulyana, with another couple of parcels offered to Katriona. "She said they were yours," he states around a huge yawn. The tea and the ginger crisps, as promised, then sandwiches and more of those same crisps for Kat, but no Euphemia or Zezkaith. Not for another few hours.
Kat stares at the sandwich, perhaps confused by the food for a long moment. Oh, yes. She's supposed to eat this, isn't she. She glances at her hand, still slimy with the meat she was feeding to her sickly green, and then puts the sandwich aside on the side-table for the moment, turning her attention back to Ulyana. "Why should she speak to... Qhyluth?" She stumbles over the name for a moment, trying to figure out how to pronounce it.
The crisps, the flask, both of these things are taken - but Ulyana doesn't do anything immediately with them. There's a slight tilt of her head, a flattening of her mouth, and an eventual glance to Katriona once she returns to the moment. "It is Qhyluth," is her mild, not-quite-correction. A guttural name, akin to KY-looth, but there's something else there, something that even she finds difficult to pronounce. "And he-" She grimaces and, ultimately goes to the side table with Kat's sandwich and puts the flask and parcel of crisps on it. "These are for you." It's easier, see, but then the blue's -there- in his way, luminous eyes fixed in their direction. Of the looming beast, she practically whispers, "There is an ocean in him - and it is vast. There is no emptiness, just... depth." To fill the void, see, but she can't even piece those thoughts together.
"I don't know if even an ocean could fill her," Kat answers, her tone one that falls somewhere between awe and despair as she regards her little sickly grey-green lifemate. Then she turns back to Ulyana, and adds, "I think all of Pern might be too small. And I don't know what to do." Whether over the already-constant /need/ to understand things, or the fact that little Yueth is clearly not in good health. Or maybe both. Then she casts her gaze back at Qhyluth for a moment, trying not to let the blue's frightening appearance unsettle her. "What... what is an ocean like, in your mind?"
"I do not think his ocean ends," is Ulyana's counterpoint, which eerily echoes Kat's own conflicted tone. She swallows hard and looks askance at the blue beast in question, but he's settled into a frozen state, seemingly asleep in his wallow. Seemingly. Her gaze drifts to Yueth, but there is no judgment, no horror, no fear. Sympathy, perhaps; maybe even a flicker of empathy. And then it's gone. "They will grow," she decides. "And then that will shrink. It must." Because the alternative is unthinkable. Her jaw twitches and she looks away entirely. "Terrifying and hideously huge. Cold, loud, and full of- full of -things-." Her jaw works a little. "It is dark and still right now. He is sleeping, so the pressure- the voices-" She trails, only to pick up a moment later with a dull, "I would rather the void. The emptiness. Filling it seems easier than draining leagues of water."
"Loud?" Kat asks curiously, then looks back to Yueth. "Hers doesn't end either. It's... heavy, somehow, even though it's empty. Huge. It's... like the entire night sky. Everything, everywhere, just going on always and forever, never ending." She scrubs a hand across her face, heedless of the muck left behind from the attempted feeding. Yueth, meanwhile, lifts her head to regard Ulyana curiously, making an odd little mewling noise in greeting and stretching her near-transparent wings experimentally; she seems far too small to hold that sort of void, somehow.
The muck-smearing seems to be the catalyst. Ulyana moves away to get a clean cloth and a dry towel, both of which are presented to Kat. Her response is, simply, "It is not unlike the sound of your heartbeat in your ears, right when panic sets in." She'll leave it at that, with a glance angled toward the mewling, wing-spreading green. If there is a quest for answers, there are none to be found in her. Nearby, the blue shifts his weight a little, wings twitching as genuine slumber briefly claims him. Ulyana considers for a long moment, only to murmur, "Maybe it just feels that way now. Perhaps it will become more bearable after you have had something to eat and some rest - and when she is recovered." There is subtle emphasis on the 'when', with a thick noise sounding from a slumbering Qhyluth seemingly in confirmation. There is a pause, then a low: "Did she dream? Did you?" This is important.
Yueth puts one claw onto Kat's lap, trying to pull herself over to her lifemate. Perhaps to get a better view of Ulyana, and then of her slumbering blue brother nearby. She pushes herself upright, staring up at Ulyana given the other girl's closeness. "I don't... know," Katriona admits, distracted by the green. "I don't remember much. Fleeting impressions, but I'm not sure if they were her or me or the fever." She reaches out to take the cloth, staring at it for a moment as if she can't entirely recall what it's for. Yueth, too, turns her attention to it with curiosity, until Kat begins to wipe her face clean once more.
"I see," says she, and then Ulyana lapses into silence for a short time. Blame it on the curious distraction that the ashen green presents. She freezes, gray eyes locked onto the green's own - or as much as she can manage - while the nearby Qhyluth sinks deeper into slumber. The occasional twitch of limb or flop of tail is to be expected; something must be bubbling along in the depths of his unfathomable psyche. Ulyana, meanwhile, remains still - and ready to take the cloths when Kat finishes with them. "Is the fever going away? I requested the tea and crisps for you. They may help."
"I don't think they will," Kat admits sadly, looking down at her little ashen lifemate, as she finishes wiping her face -- and hands -- clean. She hands them back to Ulyana with a grateful nod, then lets her hand fall to the blankets beside her once again. It twitches once among the folds of fabric, as if Kat were almost about to fidget or gesture in her usual manner but discovered that she still lacks the energy. "The fever isn't /mine/, so I don't know that anything will help. Not until she's better. But I'll try the crisps and tea anyway." This last is said with a grateful nod to Ulyana.
"Perhaps," Ulyana offers, "she might feel relief when you do. It is supposed to go both ways, is it not? It may not fix her, but it may help her." The cloths are dealt with and, when she returns, it's with another couple of blankets. One, oddly, is dropped on Qhyluth; the other two are presented to Kat - whether or not she wants or needs them, they're there. The strangeling girl sits on her cot a moment later, hands folded in her lap. "I am sure all will be well soon. The dragonhealers here are good, or so I understand."
"I hope so," Kat says, finally, as she watches her partner make an impromptu nest, those diamond-dusted wings outstretched for a moment as Yueth seeks a comfortable spot. With a sad edge to her tone, the weyrling adds, "I don't feel right. I don't feel like /me/. Though I guess I'm not, anymore." She takes the tea and crisps from her side-table, eying the sandwich thoughtfully but deciding, perhaps, that she's not quite up for that yet.
"Elise told me," but the memory is a bit deep and it takes her a moment to pull the bits out, "that we have to accept the change. We have to change if we Impress - and we did that." Even if the idea makes her sickly and pale again, so be it. "She will recover. You will be you again - just with her." One shoulder rises and falls in a lopsided shrug. "I felt the same when I was sick as a child. I was not me. And then I recovered." And nevermind that her hands knot themselves up into a tangle of white knuckles.
Two crisps and about half of the tea are consumed, before Kat evidently loses interest in food and places it back onto the table beside her cot. Certainly a change from the way the young girl usually will happily eat her way through the Nighthearth. It's then that she breaks her silence again. "I've was sick for a long time," she says finally, though it seems almost more to herself. "And I made it through. And I got better. This will be no different." She settles into the cot, curled up around the little nest that Yueth has made in the new blankets, and turns her gaze towards Ulyana's cot nearby. "You'll be fine, too, Yana. I know it. And now you know where /home/ is, right?"
Everything is left where it is, right down to Ulyana with her hands in her lap and the equally unmoving blue under his blanket. The girl issues a shallow, up-down-center nod, and intones, "Yes. You will do more than live." Which means something, if only to her. Even while Kat seems to be settling in for slumber - or at least rest - she remains as she is, strange and tight and restless despite the stillness. In the end, she is forced to agree, if only with the words, "He chose." And it was so.
With a nod in answer to Ulyana, Kat closes her eyes, settling into a fitful sleep beside her sickly lifemate. After a moment, Hope ventures from her spot on the shelf and claims a place on the cot as well, on the opposite side of Kat from Yueth. This is /her/ person, and she isn't surrendering her entirely to the interloper.