lionessofuldah:
thecoldfireofishgard:
thebullofishgard:
It doesn’t really even have time to react again when the one person takes out a stick of wood– something glows, and then darkness claims it. Whatever dreams it has are of flying, perhaps, of the wide open sky and an ancient knowledge it should not know. Some are darker, though, with the pall of humanity over them, cold and angry and violent, dreams of distant nobility, of a temper and thing that beasts don’t have.
He doesn’t remember them when he wakes, but when he wakes he’s clean – cleaner than he recalls ever being with his memories hazy and feral – and warm and with soft cloth covering his limbs, and so is his brother, and it’s…nice. Very confusing, but nice.
Time passes, and he – he can remember, at least, that he’s a he and not just an it, that he’s a person too somehow, even if that’s all he can really hang onto with his mind still twisting in on itself in feverish sickness and in a delirium from whatever happened to him to put him in that cave (and his time in the cave itself). He can speak, but only in the rough and rasping tongue of dragons, and only in fragments, and he still snaps at those who come close – though only the men in armor. The women who take care of him are allowed, if only because he’s got enough sense now to know he’s ill and they are fixing it, or more importantly that his brother is ill, more ill than he is, and he needs help too.
But at least he’s…recovering, albeit slowly. There may yet be hope that there’s a man in there, the man he was, somewhere beneath the bestial state he’s still clawing out of an ilm at a time.
Life is sickness and misery and he hates all of it. The desperation of starving, of having to fight to stay alive is gone, but he is ill, and knows he’s ill, and no matter what he does the people who aren’t his brother keep coming at him to poke at wounds and try to get him to drink something that tastes vile, and he’s not even allowed to bite them for it because the one time he tried he ended up falling asleep for ages and the glowing stick was waiting for him to try it again the next time.
He doesn’t like the glowing stick. He doesn’t like the strangers. And he really does not like how much he keeps coughing. He spends most of his time curled up in the nest he and his brother were given, and though he’s aware that there is… something beyond this, something before, it doesn’t seem different enough for him to spend much time wondering about it.
Today he’s curled up with his brother, as usual, or more accurately draped over top of him, making grumbly noises that have no real meaning, because he isn’t feeling well and it’s making him angry, and the world needs to know that’s the case. Every so often, a stranger - usually one of the two from before, the ones who had brought the red thing - will look in on them, and he thinks that maybe that will happen again soon, so he lies on his brother and buries his face in blond hair and grumbles his complaint again, because really. He hates this, and he hates that he’s aware enough to hate it, and he hates this shelter and this stupid nest and did he mention he hates everything, brother? Because he does.
It isn’t hard to gather up the more closed-lipped Herald-trainees to help keep watch over their new guests. Merle has taken each of their measures, and they’re each sound folk, not like to run or tell who it is that’s being looked after beyond ‘very sick patients’. Merle herself takes turns at it, especially when it’s Fleurelle looking after them. Because they seem to respond less violently to women, and Haurchefant is probably one face they don’t need to see, even in their still-somewhat-feral mindsets. She isn’t risking it.
It is more than a little strange whenever she hears Dravanian out of Grinnaux’s mouth, recognizable to her as such only because Dravanian has that odd quality of being half-heard, half-something more.
Dressed in more casual garments that day [shades of soft browns and muted greys, clothing better suited to the village she’d been born in], she moves to look in on the men, knowing Fleurelle isn’t far behind. They’re still ill, in one way or another, and it worries the both of them. Surprised, Merle is not, considering the state they’d found them in, but that doesn’t make it any less worrying. “I see you’re already awake and grumpy.”
“Oh, are they?” Fleurelle asks, passing off the bundle at her hip to the trainee left standing guard before she enters the room - their patients may be relatively peaceful any more, for the most part (though she keeps her staff at the ready when it comes time to medicate either of them), but that doesn’t mean she’s going to trust them around her son. “Good. That makes this easier.”
She smiles at Merle, then at the two patients - Grinnaux and Paulecrain don’t yet seem aware of their own names, but they are returning to themselves a little at a time, and that means a mental evaluation will be needed sooner or later. For now, though, they’re really only here to check in on them and try to help them find their way back where they can.
(And in particular, Fleurelle wants to look Paulecrain over again, because as slow as the former ward members’ recoveries have been, she wants to be certain there’s no toll on the man’s lungs beyond the flareup he’s suffering right now.)
