Phantom Limb [CATH]

[Reky]

Darkness had come before Inrahim woke. The sun set earlier and rose later now as autumn slowly crept into winter - a curse for the dayfolk, but for the wherhandlers, it was welcome. Breakfast no longer happened in the long shafts of sunset light. It was solidly in the black of night.

When the man finally stirred, breathing deeply and soundly, he stretched out his arms and investigated the empty sheets beside him, where Isk should have been. He sat up and looked through the dark of his room and, exasperated, found no trace of the wherlet's gleaming eyes. This was not a rare event. More than once since bonding, the black had slipped away to watch the sleeping minds of fellow wherlings, or worse yet, the full-fledged wherhandlers. Inrahim ran a hand through his black hair. Now came the task of finding him.

He was not worried, though. He felt reassured, as if Isk had left him a note when he left - an imprint of comfort on his mind, as if to say, 'you know I have not left you.' Isk knew that Inrahim was calmer when he did that. The man pulled on his clothes, and headed out into the cool evening air.

Isk had travelled further that night. Inrahim didn't find him in the wherlings' barracks, or the wherhandlers' tunnels at all. Orange and red leaves skittered across the Bowl; dead grass bent underfoot. He followed the feeling of Isk's mind, but Isk was engrossed in whatever he was doing and wouldn't reply in words. The man had a bit of a bad feeling as he trudged towards the candidate barracks, and his lips pressed into a thin line.

With the setting of the sun, Isk had raised his little head and wiggled out of Inrahim's room. The Weyr had wound down; only a few stragglers still sought out now-cold supper, and most were asleep with the drowsiness that autumn brought. The black proved far more worldly than most whers his age should have been. He had no qualms about leaving Inrahim behind. He had never had, and would never develop, an infantile need to be always physically present. He had Bonded to a grown man, already full of life's highs and lows and scars, and so he knew more of the flaws of humans than his siblings and their youthful handlers might have. He knew about death. He knew about passion, disappointment, love. For his own means, he knew that Inrahim would be fine if he were to leave for a while.

As intimate as he was with Inrahim, though, Isk always craved the experiences of others. He was fascinated by their motives; the events that made them who they were; the raw reality of being a sentient, faulty creature. This night, he was particularly adventurous. Revisiting an old subject - one he had not seen since the day of his Hatching, but one he had been intrigued by. The boy who did shouldn't have been there in the first place - the one still to broken to let another into his mind. Even Isk's gentle probing had rattled him.

Quietly, like a ghost, Isk pushed his pointed nose against the door of Newtollen and Letorin's room, just enough to let his small body through. His eyes gleamed pale in the darkness and he perched himself on the trunk at the foot of Newt's bed and watched from there. Slowly, his first eyelid slid over his eyes, and then the other. He sent out his mind into the sleeping head of the still-candidate. Isk felt Newsk. He felt the euphoria of recieved new scar after scar. The rush of asking questions. L'xon's love. Animal instinct, animal heat. All of it was observed closely, but none of it affected Isk on any level other than clinical interest. He was empathetic, but not sympathetic. However, he liked the different twang of loss that Newtollen shouldered. He liked the different ways he dealt with it. He liked the contrasts and similarities between Newt and Inrahim.

For a while, he was able to probe as he pleased. Inrahim had not yet come to get him, though Isk knew that he was on his way. That was fine. He rummage through Newt's head with no respect at all, and no truly careful footing. He did not care if the boy woke up.

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[Cathaline]

Letorin was, presumably, not yet home from a long day of being a dragon candidate. Tonight Newt was shouldering the responsibilities of a wher candidate, and thus was asleep; he'd be waking soon for a planned patrol-shadowing, which he always enjoyed. There was always the slight chance of running into some wild whers, and since his movements were restricted - especially after Newsk and especially since what Jafask had done to him - this was his only opportunity to observe them. That was the one bad thing about being a candidate. You had to follow all these rules.

And Newt followed them...most of them. He followed them because he wanted to be here, because he wanted a wher, and because he respected the people who laid down the law. He followed them because despite the rock star persona he cultivated, he was a scientist at heart. The world operated according to certain rules, after all, like the clockwork fall of Thread, so why shouldn't people? He broke them because he was egotistical, arrogant, and figured he could get away with it indefinitely as long as he was careful.

But there was no being careful when you were asleep. Defenses lowered and paper-thin, nothing to shield him from dreams or nightmares. Nothing to protect him from his own mind, much less anybody else's.

His schedule had been a little shaky, so he woke slowly tonight instead of all at once, his mind booting up like a computer instead of flipping on like a lightswitch. Memory returned, he subconsciously checked that all of his limbs were in place and nothing was unexpectedly hurting - leg asleep, foot extremely asleep, he flexed his toes against the stiff staticky feeling, wincing and waiting for it to fade.

There was something inside his head.

Several months ago Newt wouldn't have noticed. Most of the whers he dealt with had no interest in sharing his mind, even briefly. But now he was traumatically sensitive to even the lightest brush. Still bleary enough to think it was a fading dream, he bit his lip and reached over to tip the glowbasket open, just a little. Light would help chase away the shadows -

A ghost was watching him.

Newt screamed, probably more than loud enough to wake any poor wher candidate who might still be asleep, not to mention alert any Candidatemasters currently in residence. He flailed away from the apparition; still tangled in his blankets and without full use of his sleeping foot, his attempt to smoothly slide out of bed and go for a weapon failed abjectly, as he hit the floor hard enough to bruise. His fingers managed to catch neither his knife, which would make him feel safer, or his glasses, which would make him feel lots safer, but only the glowbasket. And not even, he was alarmed to notice, in a way that would make them spill all over the floor. All he managed to do was slap it shut again in passing.

So now it was dark and he was on the floor, fighting to free himself from his bedfurs. His heart hammered in his chest; he could feel it battering against his ribcage and hear it pulsing in his ears, and he dragged in a shuddering breath and managed not to start screaming again. Do not scream. You already screamed. You can totally justify screaming one time. Anybody would! If you have a screaming fit right now they will not let you stand. Deep breaths. Not that deep. Breathing turned into coughing, and Newt frantically touched his eye, his nose, as if expecting to find blood dripping from at least one orifice. Fortunately the shock had not been so great as all that, but his mind was still reaching directly into that empty space, expecting to find Newsk there.

But he wasn't there. Newt was cold inside and out. He wasn't there, he was...out here, maybe.

Besides, if you keep screaming they will reasonably think you are insane. And you aren't. This happens to people all the time, I'm sure. Who can I ask if this happens all the time?

[Reky]

Newt could have very well asked Isk, who was very much used to observing various levels of fright upon being discovered. His eyes followed Newt from the bed to the floor, but by now, he had extricated his mind from the candidate's. When finally Newt's breathing grew a little quieter, the black blinked slowly, his first eyelid making a distinct shllllk on its slow way across. He sniffed, his nostrils flaring, and opened his jaw and closed it idly. He made no move to get down from the trunk; there was no point.

Inrahim had just gotten through the doors to the barracks when Newt screamed. He immediately flushed red in embarrassment and hurried up, trying to find the balance between walking quickly and not making too much noise with his boots. He spotted the ajar door down the boys' hallway and opened it. The tall man looked ragged, panicked, and doleful all at once, his scarred face knitted into a worried frown; his hair loose and out of place. Isk turned his little black head to look at his handler, and Inrahim looked from him to the candidate.

"Shards," he muttered. "Sorry, Newt. He likes to wander..." He made a stern mental motion to Isk's mind, but the reprimand went seemingly unnoticed. Isk blinked and turned his gaze back to Newtollen.

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[Cathaline]

The vision or hallucination or whatever it was was not going away. Newt could hear it. Eyelids, breathing, snuffling. It didn't seem to be moving or getting closer, but then, it didn't have to in order to properly freak him out.

Once upon a time nothing would have delighted Newt more than to find an unknown wher in his bedroom. In fact, it would have made his whole night, and probably his whole week. In fact he still would've enjoyed it if the intruder had been anything but a black, and a black who touched his mind, at that. Though he knew it was nonsense, pure superstition, he could not shake the awful sensation that Newsk had returned to watch over him. Except Newt didn't want that. He did, but he didn't, because he knew it was impossible and if he was ever going to heal he needed a clean break, not constant reminders and a bonafide haunting -

"Please," he whimpered, and then the door opened, spilling in glowlight from the hall. He didn't recognise the silhouette for an instant, and then pegged the man. Inrahim. And that meant this was not Newsk's ghost, but...

"Isk," Newt exclaimed, and then tried to pretend this was an outcry of scolding and not just-now recognition. He scrambled to his feet, or tried to, hopping on the leg that was all pins and needles. He popped the glowbasket open again, bathing the room in the cool glow, and settled on the edge of his bed, and tried to school his features into something resembling sanity. "Right, that's okay. I like getting visits from whers. Looooove it. Favourite thing in the whole world. He just startled me, that's all. No big! Sorry I haven't come to visit you since you Impressed. I've been dealing with some things."

[Reky]

Inrahim's face relaxed into a kind, relieved smile. He could see that Newt was rather frantic about it all, but he was trying to play it off as being cool and Inrahim was just glad that Isk - at least now that he had been revealed as Isk - had not caused any terrible damage. He was always appreciative of Newt's enthusiasm for whers. He remembered being similarly excited himself, when he was younger at Benden, but never quite so energetic. He revered them more than anything, he thought.

"Oh, no, don't worry about it," Inrahim said. "I meant to come visit you but I've been dealing with this thing." A wry smile; he carefully stepped into the room and stood near the trunk Isk was on, draping a hand over the black's body. Isk didn't lean into the affection, but he stood still for it. Inrahim liked the feel of Isk's hide, but Isk always seemed indifferent about the feel of Inrahim's hands.

"How have you been? Have you been alright? Even I had trouble with the hatching." And I've had a lot longer to sort things out, he thought dourly, but he offered a hesitant smile to smooth the edges. He flexed his left arm that had been resting on Isk, looking down at it. It had only just healed and it was strange to have it out of the splint and sling. "You look well enough, tough."

Isk, blinking past Inrahim's hand to Newt, could have easily answered all of Inrahim's questions. He offered the information plainly, raising it up to Inrahim's mind, but the man rejected it. He always did. Keep it to yourself, he told Isk, I don't need to know everything you do.

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