Injury Counseling from the Experienced

Writers: Avery, Miriah
Date Posted: 4th February 2019

Characters: Talwynn, Ninaine
Description: Talwynn counsels Ninaine about dealing with injuries.
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 2, day 7 of Turn 9

Ninaine

Talwynn was in an odd in-between state with her life right now. She'd
spent three whole Turns solidly in the category of retired rider. Now
she'd been taken back into a flying wing for drills, but she hadn't
yet fought Thread herself. So she wasn't quite retired and not quite
active.

Her experience with being retired was what mattered right now. One of
the Healers had reached out to her, asking her to speak with Ninaine.
She had been scarred by her brush with Thread, and learned to work her
way back up to physical health and watched Riveth do the same. It was
experiences she could relate to viscerally, in a different way than a
Healer who just treated patients but had never felt it themselves.

She wasn't sure if she could really help Ninaine. Maybe the other
greenrider wouldn't think that she understood the pain she was facing.
Maybe all she'd see was that Talwynn was working back to being an
active rider, and she wouldn't realize how long it had taken or how
bad the scoring had been. Maybe Ninaine would say that she couldn't
understand and would turn her away.

But Talwynn knew that others had helped her through that first awful
Turn, and how it had mattered. So if the Healers thought she could
help Ninaine, she felt obligated to drop in and try. She'd just be
passing a favor forward.

She tapped on the curtain of the alcove where Luneth and Ninaine were,
and waited.

"Come in." The tired voice was quiet, almost to the point of being
inaudible. Ninaine looked up from beside her dragon, looking
exhausted, with shadows under her eyes as she carefully rubbed oil
into Luneth's hide. She stopped when she realized it wasn't another
Healer and her brow furrowed as she vaguely recognized Talwynn. She'd
met the woman as a Candidate, and had even helped oil her green, but
hadn't spoken to her much since then. "Can I help you?"

Talwynn walked in and kept her face neutral as she looked at Ninaine
and her lifemate. Ninaine looked horrible, but that was to be expected
- she'd been hurt and her lifemate was badly off, of course she wasn't
sleeping and was wrung out.

"I know it's probably completely unexpected that I stopped by. I came
to see how the pair of you are doing," she said. Fumbling in her belt
pouch, she extracted the wrapped dessert she'd hidden there. "Oh, and
I brought a treat, if you want one."

Ninaine blinked slowly, then put down her oil paddle to take the
wrapped treat. Politeness made her respond with a "Thank you," but she
didn't unwrap it. Picking up the paddle again, she carefully rubbed
oil into the hide before Luneth voiced a complaint. "We're doing the
best we can, I suppose."

"Are they controlling her pain okay?"

"As best they can. They can't get rid of all of it, so she aches often
and has problems keeping still. She doesn't really understand why her
wings have to be wrapped." Ninaine wiped at her face, but if it wasn't
obvious if it was because of sweat or tears. "She keeps trying to tear
them off, so I have to be here all the time."

Talwynn winced. "I think it's worse when they're hurt than when we
are. We can understand why we're immobilized. Were you badly wounded
at all?"

Shaking her head, Ninaine spread more oil on Luneth. "No. Just a bump
on the head, really. But she wants to fly and she can't. And it...I
think she's depressed."

"She might be. With a dragon's memory, it's not going to sink in for
her for awhile what she can and can't do. A lot of the retired riders
have experience with grappling with their dragon's feelings about not
being able to do things, and it's really tough to manage."

"At least their dragons can still do things like transport and stuff."
Ninaine murmured, more that a little bitterly. "She might not even
rise again."

"They don't know if she'll even fly short distances within the Weyr?"

"They don't know. Maybe. She has a chance of doing that, but they're
not certain yet. They have to see how she heals." She rubbed in the
oil. "And now we're useless."

Another sharp pang of emotional sympathy ran through Talwynn. She knew
how self-loathing she had felt when she had believed that. "No
dragonrider is useless. We can all contribute something," she said
gently. "You could sit watch duties. If she can leap off the ground
and gain a bit of height, you can /between/ to a Hold or Hall to do
it."

Ninaine snorted softly. "If. It's not what we're supposed to be
doing." It was ironic that she used to be so afraid of Threadfall and
doing her duties, now she couldn't do them and it was heartbreaking.

"It might take time for her to get there, but there are good
dragonhealers here and they'll help her through as much rehab as she
needs."

Sometimes healing could take Turns and Turns, and what seemed
impossible at one point turned out to be solveable later. She herself
was proof of that - they'd said she'd lose the use of her arm, but she
hadn't. It had taken physical therapy that had been grueling, and
there'd been days she'd wanted to lie down and cry and rage at the
world as she thought it would never get better.

But it had gotten better for her, and she'd been the one with the
worse of the injuries. For Ninaine's case, she'd have to grapple with
Luneth's injuries and controlling the green's instincts, and time
would tell if the green could be retrained. Talwynn wasn't a
dragonhealer and she couldn't answer that. All she could do was try
her best to be encouraging.

Ninaine's shoulders were slumped. "You know...I didn't want to ever
fly thread when I Impressed. It scared me. Now, it feels like we just
let people down again. And I want to be up there helping. And I can't."

Talwynn's voice was surprisingly soft given her brusque reputation.

"Yeah. You wonder what the point of you still being on Pern is, if
you're not doing the thing dragonriders are born to do. The
mindhealers talked to me a lot about 'finding my purpose' and
reminding me that I didn't lose Riveth. It could have been so much
worse. But it's one thing to hear them say it when what the shards
have they lost, and another to just...feel it, in your heart."

She sighed, and went on.

"Maybe you can't help up there, but there's a lot of essential duties
around the Weyr you can do. Working with Candidates, weyrlings.
Firestone. Watch duties. You didn't Craft, right?"

"Why would they want me working with weyrlings except as a model of
what not to do?" She gave a soft snort, acknowledging her own failings
in that regard. "No, I didn't Craft. I wasn't allowed to. All I was
taught was how to be a wife."

"Any of those skills transferable to a Craft, or is there one you'd
want?" she asked. "A wife is supposed to contribute skills to her
husband and the hold, right? Obviously you don't have to decide now,
but there's options for activities around the Weyr that still do
something."

Ninaine held up a hand, ticking off fingers. "Have babies. Do your
duty to your husband, clean your home. Keep your husband happy. Keep a
straight posture. Cook." Her nose wrinkled. She hated cooking. Her
brow furrowed; once she thought those duties were going to be the
whole of her existence. Now none of them held appeal. She looked at
Talwynn. "What did you do?"

"I'm weyrbred, so I've been a Starsmith since I was old enough. I did
a lot of weather reports and double-checking the Threadfall charts so
that active riders didn't have to spend their time on it. Plus a lot
of night watch duty at the heights. I actually like it," she said.

Talwynn tried to process Ninaine's duties list into weyr-related
tasks. "Cooking...could become a Baker, make meatrolls for dragons,"
she joked. "If you can sew or work with fabric, maybe a tailor or a
weaver. How do you like making riding straps or repairing your gear,
maybe tanner?"

"Uhm, I really don't know. I can sew, but I didn't like or hate it."
Her brow furrowed. "I guess I'm just going to have to find my place
and figure out what I like."

Talwynn nodded. "Any time you want to come talk to me about it, you
can," she said. "There's kind of a community of us here who are
retired, and we all get it in different ways, try to keep an eye out
for each other."

"I will. Thank you." She would probably need to. But right now, she
had to focus on Luneth getting healed. Decisions about what she could
do would have to come later.

Last updated on the February 28th 2019

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Injury Counseling from the Experienced