Xanadu Weyr - Infirmary
The infirmary here is intended for human care. It is regularly scrubbed spotless and smells of disinfectant, redwort and other herbs that are - if sometimes strong - preferable to the scents of sickness. Cots are lined up against one wall, with a set of curtains that can be pulled to give some privacy to the occupants of the cots if they so desire. They're mostly used for examinations of patients and the treatment of mild injuries that won't require long term care; near the back are some more private areas with folding dividers.
There's a number of cabinets that stand off against another wall, instruments and medications stored against when they will be needed, and a back room holds those supplies seldom required.
A desk with chair is set just off of the doorway to the caverns, meant for the healer to sit and catch up on record keeping after a long day's work or await patients. If things get too busy, the patients can do the waiting on a set of uncomfortable chairs set nearby. The other doorway comes directly from the clearing, wide enough for a team to carry a stretcher through.
No, it's not dawn. Seriously. This game has whack time. It is, in fact, mid-morning, and Kyszarin is currently rummaging through one of the cabinets, a clipboard in one hand and a rather intense expression on his face. He pokes and prods at stacks of bandages, jars of herbs and salves, and packets of medicines, muttering under his breath as he makes a notation on his clipboard. It seems he's been relegated to doing inventory today - at least while there's no patients to be seen. Grunting, he crouches down and sets the clipboard aside to begin digging into some of the lower shelves of the cabinet.
And then there is Ila'den, carried into the infirmary with a gait that can only be described as predacious, ruined every second step by the slight give of a knee that's clearly been through too many years of abuse. He's wrapped in leathers and probably probably wouldn't be here at all except there's a bandage wrapped tight around one hand and, despite his best efforts to only ruin the light tunic beneath his jacket, he's dripping blood everywhere. Normal people would probably panic. Ila'den? He leans far too casually on the counter beside his son and tilts his head to fix that un-eyepatched eye on all the inventory he seems to be taking stock of DOWN BELOW. A normal person might call attention to their injury, but Ila'den just bleeds all over the damn place and states a casual (low pitched, raspy-growled), "Ahhh, so this is where you healer-types hide everything. And here I was, thinking all the cabinets were for hiding bodies." NOBODY THINKS YOU'RE FUNNY, ILA'DEN. It's okay, he doesn't either, he's just doing what he does best and making himself known in the worst way possible. Drip. Drip.
"What? No, of course not. They'd start to stink; that would be terribly unsanitary. We keep them in the cheese caves, near the… what do they call it? Limburger?" Kyszarin doesn't even glance up at Ila'den until he's made a thorough counting of the supplies on the second-to-bottom shelf. "Did you know that we have twenty-three sets of adult-sized diaper cloths in here? I wasn't aware that the Weyr hosted quite that many geriatric potential-patients." That's what people are to him. Potential-patients. Finally, he reaches up to place the clipboard on a shelf above his head, then pushes himself to his feet with another grunt. "Now, what finally brings you- Ah. Hmm. Da, did you know you're bleeding?" The healer doesn't panic - but his eyes do widen slightly at the edges and he reaches out for the bandaged hand. "Why, pray tell, are you bleeding?"
Low pitched laughter chases after those words, and when Kyszarin stands up, he's met with a slow, wolfish smile in answer to geriatric patients. "I suppose it's too soon to tell you that I'm one of them." At least he can laugh at himself? DOESN'T MATTER. UNIMPORTANT. Important is the attention on all of his bleeding, on the sudden focus that has Ila'den cutting his gaze down to that poorly wrapped bandage and all the blood he's getting everywhere. "Am I? I hadn't noticed," comes dry, amusement in the corners of his lips because he definitely noticed. What he doesn't do is answer why it's bleeding; instead he just turns his attention back onto Kyszarin and rasps, "Actually I was here because I was wondering if you'd spoken to your mother lately. Have you?"
Lean fingers tug at the bandage, trying to get to the wound beneath as Kyszarin grimaces. "Well, you've managed to not notice blood all over the place," he mutters, eyeing the red trail the bronzerider had left behind. Then he dismisses it for more immediate concerns - namely, keeping his father from bleeding more. "Here. Let me deal with this, and you can take a supply of diapers back home with you." Distracted, he frowns at Ila'den. "What? Mother?" Frustrated noise. "Spoken with? Not in so many words, no." His eyes slide towards the healers' desk and its piles of paperwork. "I've got a few letters around here somewhere; she's, ah… displeased with me." Seems like an understatement from his tone, not to mention the slightly-sickly grin on the journeyman's face. "Nothing new, right?"
Ila'den doesn't fight Kyzsarin, allowing the bandage to be manipulated and the pretty deep cut underneath to be inspected. It will mend, of course, given diligence and a healer's attention, but it's not not a serious wound. That's probably why Ila'den grimaces when gentle pressure comes in the form of that shifting wrap and then he's laughing again. "I'm going to hold you to it," about the diapers, he means. Which clearly means that he will, in fact, allow Kyzsarin to do whatever in the hell it is needs doing to fix his hand. As for Kyszarin's mother, well… Ila'den makes a soft noise in his throat, not particularly willing to say anything rude about the woman who birthed his son, but clearly thinking it (despite the fact that there's no real change in his posture, in his gaze). "She'll come around." A beat, and a slow roll of his shoulder upward in a dismissive gesture of his previous statement. "Or she won't. Have you been to see Risa on the sands or Leirith and Xermiltoth's clutch?"
"Don't worry, I'll make sure there's enough for you and everyone else," Kyszarin replies absently, lifting his head long enough to send a distracted smirk at his father before bending his attention once more to the cut. "Sometimes I think you like being stitched up. Here, come here…" Carefully cradling the injured hand in his own, the healer slides around and walks backwards towards the counter where the suturing supplies are kept. "She will or she won't," he echoes. "Frankly, as long as I don't cut her out and I try to make at least infrequent visits home, she'll deal. It's the same pattern as when I went to the Hall; sulks and vapors and extorting promises to visit and stand whenever Aseliath had a clutch on the Sands." He exhales. "I sound ungrateful, I know." He falls silent for a moment as he rests Ila'den's hand on a towel draped across the counter to soak up the excess blood and begins to mix up a bowl of redwort. "I saw Risa not long ago - briefly, in between bouts of business for both of us. I heard," and his voice is dry - EVERYONE heard, "that Leirith had taken to the Sands."
"I appreciate it," Ila'den answers, amusement clinging to every word even as he's lead away by his hand and (shocker of shockers) actually follows, not a single ounce of resistance to be found in a body so often unwilling to be touched. But Ila'den listens, his attention rapt on every word, the whole of his focus on Kyszarin as he speaks in a way that'd be intense if Ila'den were anybody else except for Kyn's father. After too long of a moment, he finally rasps, "You don't sound ungrateful. You sound like somebody who spent too much time trying to please somebody else and is trying to find a way out of that pressure. She loves you; the rest is up to her to figure out." To come to terms with his growth, his life, the trajectory he's chosen for himself whether she has any real input or not. As Ila'den watches that redwort being mixed, Ila'den laughs again — this time brief, hushed, lingering in the corners of his mouth long after the sound has died on his lips. "Mmm. Six eggs. Xermiltoth hasn't shut up since Leirith laid them." To be fair, Leirith hasn't shut up since Leirith laid them, but SOMEBODY thought it would be a really good idea to put TWO REALLY OBNOXIOUS DRAGONS IN CHARGE so EVERYBODY HAS TO SUFFER. "Are you planning to go back home and visit her any time soon?" His mother, he means.
Kyszarin, being Ila'den's son, doesn't particularly realize there's anything unusual about the bronzerider's behavior. He mixes up the redwort and grabs some gauze to dip in the mixture, then begins to swab at the injury to clean it and sterilize it. "Perhaps that's it. I love her, I do. I just don't love being her son sometimes." He shrugs his shoulder as he wipes free the blood and any additional mess, then picks up the other man's hand and studies it carefully, determining the best sutures to use. As he puts it back down and turns to get out a needle and gut, he grunts. "Six certainly isn't a bad clutch. Xermiltoth - that's R'hyn's dragon, yes?" He knows of the man - might even know him; who knows who he's met in the turns he's been meeting clandestinely with his paternal family. "I'll have to go by and see them sometime. Offer familial support and congratulations." The chuckle in his voice fades away. "Am I planning to go home and visit? Yes. Soon? Depends on your definition of soon. Maybe in the next turn or so, depending on whether I'm feeling bratty or not."
Ila'den growls low in his throat, teeth baring for only a moment as pain echoes through nerve-endings and he resists the urge to jerk his hand back and away from the practiced touch of his son. "Unfortunately we don't get to choose our parents," comes too guttural, a testament to the discomfort he patiently endures, "or our children." The last comes dry, a point that Ila'den doesn't elaborates on, because he's rasping out, "But yes. Xermiltoth is R'hyn's dragon," as Kyszarin takes his other hand and studies it. The bronzerider listens to Kyn's explanation and makes another soft noise in his throat, supportive in his own right without pushing Kyszarin in any direction or challenging his choice because Kyszarin's relationship with his mother is his relationship and has nothing to do with Ila'den. Hence the half shrug and the hint of laughter at the corner of his mouth again when he says, "You should see them soon. Sooner, actually, if you really want to illustrate your independence to your mother." Okay, so maybe he's just enough of a Dad to be a little biased in his son's favor without actually insulting the woman who birthed and raised him.
"I'm fine with my parents," Kyszarin replies softly as he begins to stitch up the cut with neatly placed sutures. "And most of my family. Except my mother's youngest daughter. She's a bit of a pain." His teeth flash briefly in an absent grin. "I will see them, I promise; it's been a bit busy here with inventory and patients and cleaning." He shoots a glance over Ila'den's shoulder towards the red splotches on the ground that follow the path which the bronzerider walked to get here. "But believe me, I have every intention of offering Risa - and Leirith - my congratulations." That last cryptic remark gets a brief frown and he pauses as he ties off the suture he's working on and starts on the next. "What are you on about, old man?" The affection in the young man's voice is as strong as the suspicion.
"You're pretty alright yourself, kid," comes with a hint of humor and Ila'den's usual delivery of affection: gruff, but unquestionably kind (where his kids are involved, anyway). And then he's laughing again, low, soft, husky, abbreviated when there's another low growl for continued sutures to interrupt it and a roll of his shoulders as if he might dispel pain through the movement alone. That hurts. DOESN'T MATTER, the pain is fleeting, and there's another lilt at the corner of his lips when THE UNREPENTANT LITTLE SHIT HE HELPED CREATE (accidentally, during a flight, when he had zero memory of what happened except for the next day when he realized he'd won a gold flight and spent just enough time in Kyszarin's mother's company to earn her ire) calls him OLD MAN. "You should go do it after we're done with this." A jerk of his chin indicates that he means with the suturing of his hand, but details. "And what I mean is that you should " Give him a moment, as he utilizes his good hand and the freedom it still has to dig around in a jacket pocket for a moment to produce — gasp — a white knot and place it on alongside the hand Kyszarin is working on, " give her every reason to be upset with you if you're going to be here." There's a hint of laughter in his voice. "And terrorize the big sister on your dad's side because she's a bit of pain, too." RISA. GEEZ.
Kyszarin could have used numbweed. It says something that he didn't bother. Obviously, he feels his dad is MAN enough to take a few pricks of a needle. Either that or he's secretly a sadist. Little of column A, little of column B perhaps. "You love to live dangerously, don't you?" he asks, his voice and face deadpan as he studies the white knot resting on the countertop. "She's going to have a whole litter of kittens, you realize, at the idea of me Standing for Leirith's clutch. Standing at Xanadu. Standing for a gold not her own." His sudden grin is just a bit feral as he reaches down to slide the knot over to his own side and puts the last stitch into Ila'den's hand. "Let me bandage that up, and I'll go take a look at the eggs. Might as well see what the focus of my life for the next long while is going to be." Storm-blue eyes lift to meet his father's. "I think this is the first time I've been asked. It's a nice feeling. Thanks, da."
And Ila'den? He knows. Those brows only raise with each reiteration of how upset Kyszarin's mother will be, something wolfish starting in the corners of his mouth that's just as feral as Kyszarin's until the man is laughing in a way that's at once wicked and dark. But he takes that last stitch with another baring of his teeth and then he's nodding his acquiescence. "You're welcome," comes with honest gravity, before he adds, "I would have just thrown you over my shoulder and hauled your ass there if the answer was no anyway, so it was only the illusion of a choice," to inject levity. He would not have forced Kyszarin to stand, but that's besides the point. The point is that he's saying, "I would avoid Leirith if you can. Risali too, to be honest." But he allows those bandages to be wrapped, patient until the end and rising to leave only when another heated, gold-and-diamond dazzle mind is threatening to bleed into the infirmary as a whole. "Somebody told R'hyn I'm here," comes on dry tones, a hint of laughter in the words. "Try not to do anything I wouldn't do." WHICH ISN'T A WHOLE LOT. But, "Congratulations. I'll see you in the barracks… and good luck, Kyszarin. With your mother, I mean. Survive her and I think any dragon will find you worthy." He's laughing again, but it's one clap to his son's shoulder and there he goes, running away before the Weyrleader's dragon can do the whole infirmary in.
"I'm telling her it was you!" Kyszarin's shout follows after Ila'den, before the healer goes about cleaning up after his father. Duty before… well, if not pleasure, then at least a different kind of duty - one that could become a pleasure. Or a hell of a lot of pain. Probably a little of column A, little of column B… just like Kyn.