Xanadu Weyr - Infirmary
The infirmary here is intended for human care. It is spotless and smells of disinfectant, cots are lined up against one wall, a curtain can be pulled to give some privacy to the occupants of the cots if they so desire. A cabinet stands off against another wall, instruments and medications stored against when they will be needed. A couple of curtained off beds are used for examinations of patients and the treatment of minor injuries which won't require long term care. A desk with chair is just off of the doorway for the healer to sit and catch up on record keeping after a long days work.
Since reaching the infirmary, Marel has spent most of the night asleep, initially unable to stay awake and then, as midnight approached, dosed into a heavier sleep to give her body some time to heal and keep her active mind from preventing true, healing sleep. She may have kept up with changing her own bandages since the incident, but what she's done a good job of is trying to bandage the whole wound away out of sight so that she can ignore it, leaving the healers with quite the mess to re-stitch, cleanse and cover back up again. As well as something to make her sleep, she's also been given a concoction to try and keep her temperature down, and though she's still pale when she finally stirs early morning of the day after she was brought in, she's not flushed or restless with signs of fever.
Mur'dah has stayed the entire night by his twin's bedside. Not interfering with anything the Healers needed to do, he still watched, asked quiet questions, and even helped when they needed assistance. But he did not leave. Come morning he's sitting in the same stiff chair he sat in last night, his riding jacket and outer leather pants draped over the back of it. Linen tunic and loose pants beneath are giving off a faint scent of man-who-has-not-bathed, though for Marel's sake he's kept his boots on. Dozing but trying to stay awake, his chin keeps dropping to his chest despite his best efforts.
Lying on her side, her weight resting on her uninjured leg, Marel starts to roll over, not quite aware of just where she is yet. That course of action is discovered to be inadvisable and painful only moments after her sleep and pain-fogged mind decides upon it, for the sheets of this bed restrict far more than her own do and currently any pressure on that injured leg hurts. She gives an inarticulate cry of protest and confusion, trying to piece together events that are still muddled and fuzzy in her mind, and what would have had her facing away from Mur'dah instead keeps her right where she is, her hair a riot of dark waves against the pillow, and her twin right in her line of sight.
Mur'dah jerks awake with a yank, as if his puppet strings have all been pulled at once. "Shhh," is his first sound to his twin, twisting in his seat and reaching for her hand, her arm, her shoulder. "Stay still. Your leg…." Then his brain catches up with his mouth and he stops, just staring at her, his eyes wide and showing many mixed emotions. Primary, though, is concern, and despite the growing up he's done, in this sleepy, half awake, scared moment, he looks a lot like the younger version of himself.
"…Muir," Marel murmurs, glancing down towards her offending leg - thankfully covered by the sheets and blankets of her bed - at his prompting. She doesn't do more than stare at it, no hands lifting to pull the sheets back and look, and as she struggles to recall all of the events from the previous evening, her brow begins to furrow. "Hurts," she says softly, the word slipping free before her usual filter can step in and prevent her making a complaint. "I don't understand." She's not clear about what she doesn't understand; it could be anything from why she's in the infirmary and not at home to why her leg hurts more than it should.
Mur'dah scoots his chair closer, seeking to hold her somehow, even if it's just her hand pressed between both of his. "You're in the infirmary. Mom and I brought you here last night," he explains, voice soft and even. "You were in a bad way. Your leg…it needed attention."
Marel must manage to put enough of those events in order now to realise how bad things must be if she's in the infirmary now, her fingers of the hand her brother holds curling more strongly around his. "…It wasn't so bad when it happened," she tries to promise, though it might have been and the brownrider's insistence that all was fine doesn't permit her to remember it being so. "Did… Did she tell you what happened?" It sounds like she really doesn't want the answer to that, her voice low and almost not there at all.
Mur'dah shakes his head. "No, she didn't." And he squirms, barely able to contain the emotions that churn within him as he clutches his sister's hand tighter. "But the Healers said it'd been that way for a little while…" Which begs the other question that he's aching to ask - to demand - but doesn't.
Marel directs her gaze down towards her sheets, unwilling or unable to look at Mur'dah in that moment. "…I did it," she confesses, staring down at the little hill that her feet make towards the bottom of the bed. "…Isyriath went after Seryth and wouldn't stop or listen me. I had to stop him, so I found my belt knife and…" The rest is obvious, surely. "I did get it looked at. I didn't want this and I didn't want people knowing and I don't want to be a burden."
Mur'dah blinks a few times and then he exhales heavily, like all the air is leaving his body. "Shards, Marel," he whispers, squeezing her hand. "You're never a burden," he adds a moment later, voice low. Fierce. Almost angry. "/Never/."
"I am," Marel insists, shaking her head. "There are people in my wing doing the things I should be doing; I've had to put the manager in charge of things I should be doing for the shop… and I've worried you and Mama and M'kal and Ka'el, but I didn't know what to do!" Closing her eyes, she attempts to hide her face in against her pillow, but it's a poor effort. "…And now everyone's going to know that I was stupid enough to let my brown chase my mother's gold. We're all going to be humiliated."
Mur'dah leans forward, shifting one hand away from hers to brush hair off of her face. "Mare," he whispers softly, gently, "it was the first time. If Kalsuoth and I hadn't been at Cold Stone, he would have been chasing too. That was luck. You're not going to be humiliated…"
"…People will think all sorts of things that aren't true," Marel murmurs in protest, unable to conceal her misery, hampered both by fellis and pain, and by the reality of a situation that she's no longer able to ignore. "M'kal's supposed to be moving in with me and it'll look like he's moving in to look after me because I'm an idiot." An idiot who can't even walk at the moment. She glances back towards her feet again, if only to watch them twitch. "…Is it bad?" Her leg. "I can feel both my feet."
Mur'dah sighs. "People will think whatever they want to think, and we can't do anything to stop that. Don't worry about /them/." He brushes hair away from her face again before resting his hand once more over hers. "Or he's moving in to be with you because he loves you and wants to care for you," he says gently. "Or you're moving in together because you're mates and you want to. Who cares what the rest of the weyr thinks, Mare?" He glances at her leg. "It was," he says quietly, honestly. "It needed lots of attention but it'll be okay…"
"Even when they start talking about you, when Kalsuoth didn't chase, and Mama too, when she has no control over who chases Seryth?" Marel sounds more pained by that thought that what anyone might say about her. That same logic doesn't seem to apply to her brown and their behaviour. She inches closer to the edge of the bed, curling her good leg to help her, whilst her injured one remains straight and supported by the other. "…I'm sorry, Muir," she says softly; regretfully. "I didn't mean for this to happen. Any of it."
Mur'dah shifts to slip an arm around her shoulders, giving her a gentle hug. "I don't care what they say about me," he whispers softly, kissing his twin's hair. "All I care about is that you are okay. You're my /twin/, Marel. And I'll tell anyone that it was pure luck that we weren't there. I didn't know Seryth was going to rise…" He gives her another squeeze. "I know," he says, a faint smile on his lips. "Next time let's do something different though, okay?"
"I care," is Marel's last, quiet little argument, awkwardly looping an arm around Mur'dah's shoulders in turn, unable to make it seem any kind of elegant with how she has to reach up without sitting up. "I don't want there to be a next time," she confesses in a whisper, unable to keep from sounding the faintest bit sorry for herself. "…But we can do something different. I don't want to be anywhere near here. I can't do that again. …I think Mama said something about Jethaniel and making an electric lock," if she's remembering that correctly, "but I don't know it'd be enough."
Mur'dah nods his head slightly, holding her gently in his arms, just like he did last night when he carried her here. "We should just leave when the other golds leave. And they can /make/ our dragons go, if they don't want to. The queens can make them, even if we can't…we just go when they do. That was my plan…" He just got lucky. Very lucky.
"…I'd rather suffer the indignity of being ordered than… any of that again," Marel agrees, nodding her head against her twin's shoulder. "We can do that. If…" If her leg doesn't get worse; if she's in a position to go anywhere by that distant point in the future. She can't quite face those 'what-ifs' yet, and so turns away from them, blinking a little blearily around the infirmary. Pain forces her to swallow her pride, her concentration already beginning to wander as she becomes more and more alert and aware of the burning sensation down her injured leg. "I think… I need some numbweed." Or dosing. Or something. "Could you find me a healer?" At least she doesn't try to find one herself.
Mur'dah gives her another gentle squeeze and softly kisses her forehead. "I'll go get one," he promises. "And maybe take a bath now that you're doing okay. But I'll be back, alright?" he asks, slowly letting her go and getting to his feet, gathering up his stiff leathers. "I love you, Mare."
"Thank you," Marel murmurs, sinking back down to lie with those restrictive sheets pulled as high as she can possibly make them. It looks like she might be climbing the walls - in a manner of speaking - by the time that healer arrives, a tension in her frame that wasn't there before, yet she appears to determined to not make a fuss, trusting her twin to do as he's promised. "I love you too," she echoes quietly, one hand reaching to catch at his again before she goes back to hiding beneath those sheets until that healer arrives and either gives her more fellis or attends to the bandaging of her bad leg.