Teachable Moments [Chek]

"And you are Lokien," the trader responded with a low voice colored by summoned warmth. His ear had caught the strain of the other Candidate's pronouncement and it of course required, well, healing. "Journeyman Healer," he continued, flushing respect in along with friendliness, and offering an acknowledging tip of his head toward the other's arm. His own shoulder was absent any signs of rank. Qosis did dress as if harper-bred though, that unmarked shoulder wrapped beneath a deep green jacket sleeve, and a few rings hanging on the longer fingers of his right hand. They were gold, at least on the outer layers. For all his congeniality, Qosis did not apologize for what may or may not have occurred prior to his reluctant teacher's arrival.

He had no trouble making a smooth rise to his feet, a snap of silver marking his belt buckle even without the acute light of the larger infirmary. He balanced his fingertips upon the tabletop a moment, raising his head to its expected overage beyond the other man's. Still, Lokien resembled a spindly, reddish shadow of himself, and Qosis appreciated the familiar face. His callused, ringed hand reached across the table, offering the usual test of a greeting. Some traders took great airs about the gesture; Qosis was not one of them.

He ruminated on the question a moment; Lokien appeared very much a busy adult, disrespecting his Candidate-related duties with as much fervor as Qosis himself might. How to turn that around into something productive? He grinned. "As you may have noticed there is Fall soon. As Weyrlings they expect us to have some grasp of dragon and human aid." The trader offered no second guesses on their prospects at the next Hatching. "Knowing how to follow instructions is of course the most critical in that skillset...but perhaps learning minor assists in the treatment of Threadscore would be a reasonable foundation. What would you have a non-healer do to assist you?" For all his wisdom, Lokien had seen no more Thread than Qosis.

[ OOC: It's no trouble at all! I enjoy seeing the first steps. ]

Qosis wanted to think it had been a long time since anyone had taught him anything worthwhile, but everything he knew about Weyrs had come from lessons over the past months. So he owed the Candidatemasters that much accord. None of his fellow Candidates stood out in his mind as particularly wise, but Lokien's brisk manner spoke to his confidence in the subject matter. Well, he had the rank to prove it all, did he not? Smirking at the meeting's potential, the trader did as asked, and returned to the table before his sour-tongued educator.

"Yeah," he grunted at the question, tempering both his formality and friendliness. Lokien need not take on an impression of him that was too giddy, or boyish in spite of age. Qosis opened the blue jar without asking, or being asked, and took one of the needles from the kit with similar disregard for any potential order to the lesson. His eyes grazed the spot on Lokien's arm that would have been covered by the bloody cuff, then withdrew to glance down at his own jacket sleeve. "I'm decent."

At first, Qosis' manner of grasping the needle did not seem to agree with his self-assessment. His forefinger was gnarled dramatically against his thumb as he held the eye. Problem was, the tip of his forefinger that he should have been bracing the eye against was missing, and he had remained right-handed even after that particular accident. So he adapted, balancing the needle against the next joint down. He reached over to claim a thread spindle and nocked it to the needle, then lifted his eyes to Lokien's expectantly.

The student squinted at the bent needle as it quivered on landing and then fell still. He picked it back up. The drab brown-green in his eyes sparkled with an anticipatory gleam as he looked back to his teacher. Qosis had not known these lessons came with rewards beyond wisdom. Wisdom and...connection with persons who appeared to be more than screaming teenagers. He was finding it hard to figure Lokien's age, but was happy to assume it par with his own.

"If you need assistance in such negotiations, that is an area in which I have more reason," he mused with lightly bridled enthusiasm. "In my own interest, and yours, I would accompany you at that time." They both knew the quality of said unsavory chores. That did not bode well for the cause of transfer, if Lokien could not even wring himself out of the work at every occasion, but Qosis decided that in this particular company he would play the optimist. That required believing in his own capacity for follow-up too, but Qosis had that covered before he even entered the infirmary.

The only stumbling block was the warning. Not the requirements of him, but the designated punishment. The trader mouthed his thought: little sister? He considered Lokien's features, and tried to link them to another face, naturally paging through his memory of Candidates first. If the healer was quick-eyed enough, he would see the little dawn of realization race through the muscle in Qosis' left cheek, the trader's head pulling back. Redheads, both of them. The sister was one of those lanky girls that the dragonriding profession hopelessly attracted in droves. Damali had an abbreviated finger, just like Qosis, only not the same finger, and not even on the same hand. More tragically, she was known for certain disgusting habits. Taking his vibrant and expensive clothing to be laundered would never have the same casual ease it once did.

He took new measure of Lokien. He could see the healer now as a logical reaction to Damali, from his demeanor to more subtle ironies like his craft of choice. Or craft of conscription, Qosis imagined with a pulse of sympathy. He caught the hides sent to him out of the air, sizing up the rents in them before taking on a big gash on the left side. Starting on his block-stitch, he proved slow, but thorough. Qosis imagined speed was of greater importance when one was patching skin instead of-- well, skin of something alive rather than something that would become part of a clothing ensemble.

And sewing in the latter instance did not require devoting his attention anywhere else. "Ah--" he started on the subject of numbweed, only to instantly stab his own finger with the needle. He grit his teeth, wiped the first spot of blood off on the other hide, and continued. He raised his face pointedly toward Lokien's as he kept working, though as a result he went even slower, fingertips occasionally brushing over past work to check its quality. "It's a southern-y import, as most of the good medical weeds are. When something hurts, you slap it down, it stops hurting." He did not dignify his ignorance with an innocent shrug. "The cost is incurred mostly due to the processing rather than the availability of raw material. I--ow--do not know what the economic climate of the North--ow--ern Continent is anymore, but I could give you the--ow--price by the liter from a Turn ago..."

He dared look down at his stitching, and as would not be recommended with a living patient gave the hide a tug at either side, moving on to another tear when his knots did not pull apart. This time he practiced the zig-zag, and his work went much faster. The plague of "ow" in his speech was greatly reduced. "Though most of the holds that require it only barter, so it's not straight marks. You try not to put it on any part that's real important to you unless you mean it." He lifted his eyebrows at Lokien, testing any receptivity to humor. "I heard that eating it isn't too good for your health either."

The trader took a sharp breath at the command, but stilled his hands and did not say anything at the manual rearrangement. His eyes flicked to Lokien's, then back down to the hide just enough to find where he had left off. Then he continued with his gaze pointedly up at the other Candidate rather than at his work. If he was to do all of this blindfolded, then it was best to practice early and often. His lips creased at the notion of numbweed being applied inside the body. Apparently none of the healers that had occasionally ridden with the caravan were forthcoming enough on that note; he had certainly tapped them to the best of his abilities, enough to make their added baggage worth it. Or maybe they had just all been dimglows, and this Lokien was their superior even within the rank. His uncertain creasing developed into a frown: he was trying not to think charitably of the healer too automatically, but he could not help but feel impressed. This stitching and paste wisdom was by far the better talent to hold in a Weyr.

"I did not know that," he said, voice soft with appreciation. "About the bleeding." He did not think his fellow Candidate cared about his ignorance-- it was being resolved! --but perhaps he could understand gratitude. There was no sign Qosis had noticed the threat of an insult. He smiled. "I would not waste your time and then dare to take away only the 'technique' of numbweed application." And so the trader took a moment to consider the next question under the guise of switching to a new rent in the hide. He began the third stitch type: the individual knot-loops.

Apparently he had not been bleeding out enough people on the caravan, to have missed that property of numbweed. He was just thinking of how his fingertips might prove bloodied enough to serve as an example when he realized he had not stuck himself with the needle lately. Not since Lokien shifted his grip. Qosis redoubled his concentration, determined now to prove his usefulness. He needed to repay even that which was given freely. "Well, the redwort clears the numbweed off as readily as it does anything else," he said, sniffing as if he already had the astringent stink in his nose. Redwort might have been in one of those pots he tipped open earlier, but the clouds from that mishap smelled as if they had dissipated by now. "Alternating between them worked before.."

That admission came as more of a mumble, but such shamefulness was not in Qosis' nature. He rectified by pausing in his sewing to peel back his sleeve. His arm had been encroached by so many old, discolored scars it was hard to tell if any of the original skin was left. Many were ironically the sort left by improper stitching. As he let his sleeve back down, he realized the weed had probably helped with the bleeding then-- he just hadn't realized it. And Lokien had probably just noticed the same incongruency. Qosis shook his head, gesturing to his other arm, and his legs. "Lots of experience, not much observation I guess," he grumbled before returning to the topic proper. "I don't think I've seen a pair of gloves fine enough to be useful to a healer. Not if you have to do this--" He raised his needle. "--in addition to the weed. Maybe the fingerless sort, but then you can't disinfect as easily...no, I would stick with just the redwort to counteract the numbweed. I can't think of anything else."

Qosis was a sedate enough subject for observation, even if he had not really meant his little show-and-tell to become a show-and-touch. Long ago he had learned not to flinch when the area was under ministration, and these days his hide ran too rough for much sensation to get through. The trader smiled at the immediate, correct diagnosis of the scars.

"Sometimes there was a proper healer around," he replied with a shrug. "The rest...my mother. Sometimes my sister. They already took care of all the clothing in the family." He lofted the needle again, but only to drive it back into the completion of the final stitch. "They did use redwort at least," he chuckled. Such an antagonized look on the healer's face! Was it sympathy? As he listened to Lokien, and monitored his expression, Qosis decided not. Rather, he thought Lokien might have been upset that sometime, somewhere, someone had gotten a stitch wrong. Offense in the name of his craft, rather than on behalf of its receivers. Qosis grinned as Lokien turned away from him , and he laid down the finished hide on the table. Finished by his standards anyway. Lokien had said nothing of it, which he took to mean it was acceptable.

How the healer had anticipated the drudge's arrival Qosis would never know. He certainly had not heard a knock. Stowing his amusement behind a veneer of studious commitment, he contented himself with turning over the oiled rag Lokien had given him rather than immediately reaching for the...what to call it? A giblet? Qosis snorted at himself, then shook his head so that Lokien would not take the noise as a response to his wisdom. "Then the oil is first," he contributed quickly. "Or preferably, before the 'patient' arrives." Qosis paused as another thought made its sluggish ascent. "Though redwort is before that, if supplies allow." He noticed anew the blue jar Lokien had made him bring to the table at the start of the lesson. He had not smelled astringent when he had examined it before-- probably numbweed instead.

Confident redwort would play no immediate role in the care of the meat lump, he removed his jacket and pulled back the sleeves of his tunic. This time it was not for display, though both his arms were equally ugly, differing only in the pattern of the healing failures. Qosis used the gifted rag to run the oil over his fingertips. It did not take much oil to create a coating over his entire hand, though he did have to repeat the cycle twice to achieve the consistency Lokien had recommended. Two times, and he had an extra skin that did not slip on the needle. He grabbed the edge of the platter and pulled it closer.

A coppery stink ran straight up his nose and announced itself.

Qosis twisted his head away, uselessly, and could not refrain from one short cough that rang out of his lungs a second later. When he turned his face back toward the glob of skin and flesh, his eyes retained traces of moisture at the corners. He glanced at Lokien, but anything else he had to say was drowned in his current nausea. Luckily the feeling was short-lived. He reached into the blue jar and thought to treat the fetched substance-- he hoped it was numbweed as he had thought --like he had the oil, sparing one small dab and then spreading that around the skin. He could not figure how to coat the wounds without jabbing his fingers into them, though, and eventually resorted to larger helpings of the paste.

Most of the "patient's" injuries did not look like knife wounds to him. He liked to imagine a cook rending her day's frustrations into the flesh once she attained just cause for doing so. "Which stitch for which wound..." he muttered, framing one sizable puncture between his hands, then turning the patient to get a better look at a large, ragged gash on the right flank. It seemed simpler to deal with than the almost circular puncture. Readying his slightly-used needle, Qosis returned his focus to Lokien.

Qosis was far too busy poking at the meat's wounds to realize he was being recruited. He looked up at the clink of the Journeyman's fingertip on the numbweed jar. The word triage saw Qosis' features beginning to draw together in confusion, but Lokien readily clarified and the trader relaxed. The meat was not part of anything's head. Qosis surmised it could be a much-abused flank steak. In any case, there was no danger of pierced internal organs because there were none. Without blood at work in the dead flesh, it was hard to tell where the veins might lie. He decided to address the puncture first, and then the remaining marks by depth and any discernible vascularity once he was done with that.

Lokien had not provided any answer as to which stitch was most appropriate. Qosis glanced to the hides he had finished and laid out. The healer might have said to return in mere days with the necessary mastery of each healing weave, but it seemed to Qosis he would have to gain most of his expertise here and now. He thought about stalling under the premise of re-oiling his hands already, so he could look over his stitches a few seconds more. But he suspected Lokien would not be fooled. Hesitation costs lives. Right. A rather self-absorbed worker, he only noticed his teacher's adoption of a gargoyle-esque observational posture at the last second.

His eyes flicked resolutely down from the image. He had no time to make opinions about it. But he soon regretted his choice of the puncture first. The question of which stitch seemed immaterial: there was something additional that needed to be covered when dealing with a wound of this shape, he was sure. And his needle continued to hover above an arbitrary starting point. Hesitation. Sucking back a question, Qosis abandoned the trickier wound and sought out the deepest of the gashes. A light press near one such rent sent a few oozing streams of blood out, and as surprised as Qosis was it did help indicate where the cutaneous veins were. Now if only he could pinpoint them by eye instead of at the cost of his patient's reserves. His needle leapt into the wound immediately this time, its first course the interlocking series he had been shown.

He performed similar treatment on two more of the gashes, then switched over to the individual loop style for the rest. He really would have preferred to make the neater loop-stitches for all the ordinary wounds. When he had performed them on the hide, the individual knots had closed each tear more accurately. But his earlier uncertainty over the puncture had cost him time. Lokien gave no scale of time, or how long it would take for this sorry blob to bleed out. Qosis might have been worrying unnecessarily. He certainly waited a long time between oilings, to the point where he stabbed one of his fingers and did not notice till he saw the new blood flow, as the fingertip had gone almost completely numb.

When he came back to the puncture, he started stitching right away, running his thread continuously in and out of the edges. He thought he could see a bigger concept by now: the stitch style was less important, but the shape of the overall line he made through the flesh had to be able to invert the circular edge. When his needle came around to the start of the stitch again, he pulled it out to tighten the string and close the wound. Then he locked the excess back into the first stitch and knotted it. Reaching over to the sewing kit, he pulled out a pair of scissors and used it to clip the tails off each stitch.

Then he laid down his tools to indicate completion, and swallowed the grunt of distaste at his own work. Practice would improve it, as would the imminent tide of corrections, but he was not about to put in that he had outright murdered the steak if Lokien was not going to supply the same conclusion. He did not know enough to doubt himself, he thought with some amusement.

He went to wipe at a line of perspiration that had accumulated at his brow, only to recognize the handful of oil, blood and numbweed coming at his eye and drop his fingers quickly. Qosis did not even trust the cleanliness of his forearm, so he let the sweat be. He was happy to meet Lokien's eye for the entire critique. His only concern was that the healer might take such offense that Damali would be set on him sooner rather than later.

The trader absorbed the critique. He was comfortably detached from pride at this point, and did not worry so much about defending his as he did about getting his form right. When Lokien passed the patient back, he reached greedily for the bloody body of knowledge before taking a moment to consider his hands and the new supplies bequeathed to him. He dried the first round off his fingers and sipped from the skin. Twitching the towel on its side, he located an unspoiled patch and used it to dab his forehead.

Then he dutifully re-oiled his hands and set them to pulling stitches, erasing the brief illusion of cleanliness they had enjoyed. He thumbed at the delicate knots tying each stitch. The sewing kit provided a slim pair of scissors for the knots, but Qosis dismantled the less fussy ones with the edge of his fingernail. As with the needle, he had to maneuver his maimed hand a bit to fit with the scissors, but he certainly had enough of a digit left to meet the metal loop.

"So Journeyman," he started at last, voice low as it emerged from a newly built grin. "Can you only make your sister behave as part of a threat? What is wrong with her?" Oh, he had heard the rumors, but he would not air them out when a legitimate source sat only a steak's throw away. "She's for the whers, isn't she?" Lokien said he could ask questions!

With old needle and new thread he readied himself, pausing briefly to give notice of the fresh attempt. His grin loosened into a lazy smile of challenge.

Then he started in, lacking the anxious speed of his first try. He addressed the puncture first, and with confidence of the purse string stitch he wrote into it. His gaze tracked up to the healer's face, stealing a sample of the reaction before making a loyal return to his work. His hands never slowed for it, and he matched the type of stitch to the wound as instructed, saving the ragged gashes for last. The new thread was black, the finished stitches patterned over the bloody flesh like lines from an oven grill.

[ OOC: Of course! But you already knew that. xD ]

Qosis' self-satisfied smirk at his finished product started to dwindle when he realized Lokien was not even paying attention to it. His head turned to follow the Journeyman's gaze, only to jerk back as Damali's face invaded his vision. His broad shoulders tightened under the light press of the girl's body, and his eyes darted back to Lokien. Threatening to summon Damali was one thing, but getting her here without a word to anyone? Miraculous.

He looked between the siblings with growing suspicion till he noticed Damali's damaged left pinky. Solidarity came in strange flavors today. Qosis wiped his hands clean with another patch of the towel's unblemished real estate, then lifted his right hand with its one shortened finger to wag dismissal of her encouragement. Not that he would fail to take her words under advisement, but blunt pride was an enemy in these circumstances---

"Shards girl, what happened to you?!" the trader squawked, apparently the only person in the room who was upset or surprised by the wound Damali presented. Lokien had his professionalism to account for, but why was Damali not a screaming mess? When she answered, mostly to her brother, Qosis shut his hanging jaw and grabbed the water skin. He drank from it as if it were a far stronger fluid. He might have risen and run for additional assistance if not for Lokien's smile.

First of all: Lokien was smiling. Second: it was a smile with certain baggage in it, and Qosis almost thought it was a response to his own insulting line of inquiry. He bit back his first thought of this is your sister. Lokien thought he was adequate for the job, and Qosis had to check that opinion against his own, and he was not inclined to modesty. He dismissed his own doubts, and with considerably more difficulty ignored the way both redheads treated this as a painless everyday mishap.

Qosis dragged the redwort bottle over to his other supplies. He popped it open and dealt with his hands first, then glanced over the wound again before reaching for the sewing kit and snatching a couple balls of cotton. By dabbing each one in the redwort and then applying it gently to the cut, he could spare the small reserves of the extract. As he oiled his hands and began stroking in the numbweed, he blinked up at Damali's face with a still uncertain lift of his brows. After considering the needle he had used on the flank meat for a moment, he selected a new needle from the kit and bent it. It was still doused in redwort, but he felt better with the new tool anyway.

The trader said nothing to the request, but muttered under his breath as he went over the thread spools available. He chose a blue thread. It happened to match Damali's eyes, and Qosis donned a rare scowl of shame as he looped the leading end into his needle. After the first few sluggishly delivered knot stitches, with no tensing of the arm at all, Qosis began moving into the quicker, accomplished movements he had managed over hide and meat. "No more cave climbing," he grumbled. "You'll die," he added for emphasis, but if dying was painless did one ever need to fear it? It was the process, not the outcome, that left many men ill at ease.

Before he finished he checked the wound from the top for signs of shallow stitching, then laced up the final inch and tied it off. "Show it to him." Qosis nodded toward Lokien, anxious against mentioning either his Journeyman status or his sibling attachment to the patient. He claimed the redwort pot again and washed his hands with a sniff at the astringent odor.

"If you confined your risk-taking to wearing scandalous dresses at Gather, this would not happen," Qosis answered, still unaware of his ineffectiveness as an adviser to the Girl That Felt No Pain. Or aware, but determined to air his opinions anyway. Why had he not thought of trading the blue thread for a promise of non-injury? Probably because Lokien had been waiting, and that the idea was so absurd in the first place...

He had not even been aware of Damali's immediate agitation of the stitched arm till Lokien called out to the girl. Qosis' eyes were examining Damali's untroubled expression with far more interest than the wound, but as directed he gathered some cotton and began cleaning out his work. "If she can't feel pain, why does she hate this part?" he asked the healer, as if Damali was not in the room. He did not doubt the assessment of the girl's touched condition, but presumably the application of bandages was the easiest portion of treatment.

After cleaning, the trader found himself oiling his hands for the umpteenth time, working slowly around the globs of numbweed to see how little he could spread on Damali and still get an even coat. "I assume it's easier than stitching," he replied to the inquiry. As he collected the bandages and set to improvising a wrapping, Qosis never thought to ask why Damali could not feel pain. Even the Journeyman might not know the answer, and why was the most bothersome and pointless category of questions anyway.