At 21:41 28/02/97 -0500, Jacqueline \"Morgan\" Routier wrote:

Arri sat beside the tiny girl's bed. She supposed she may have been a little
hard on Lakoda. How could she possibly have expected the girl to understand
that this time it was personal?

While ..Yasmine?... was unconscious, Arri had made an effort to get a comb
through the luscious honey-and-silk hair. Then had come an excursion for
nightclothes... a little guesswork had turned up a set of periwinkle silk
pyjamas. With her luck, the girl hated blue, she mused as she waited for her
to wake up, but returning her some modicum of decency would go a long way.

>Several hours later Yasmine awoke screaming and thrashing about, "No! Go
>Away! Stop! Hurt!" The poor girl was totally panicked, fighting off an
>enemy she alone could see.

The healer leaned gently on the young girl's shoulders, pinning her down so
she couldn't do any more damage to her already battered limbs. Yasmine
kicked the sheets off and fought her with as much strength as she had.

>She felt two hands on her, holding her down. "Shhh... Calm down... he's not
>here, he's gone now," a female voice reassured her, "You need to lie still
>so you don't hurt yourself."

The little body slowed, then stilled. It seemed she was getting through.
Arri couldn't repress a wry smile. Apparently she did still have some skills
beyond those she had grown infamous for, she thought as she continued
speaking in the same quiet soothing tones she had used on Wraithburned
dragons when she had been the girl's age.

>Yasmine looked through eyes that were mere slits and recognized the person
>holding her as being a woman. She searched through her foggy memory,
>"Marrid? Lakoda?"

Well, at least she knew where she was. There was a microscopig stab of
jealously at the fact that the first name out of her mouth wa Lakoda's, but
reason replied that the first name she heard would have been the younger
healer's when she got here.

>"Yes, dear, you are at Marrid now. He's not here, you don't have to be
>afraid. My name is A'rillia. Lakoda was here earlier."

"You're safe now. It's okay. Nobody will ever hurt you like that again if I
can help it. It will be all right. Lakoda will be back to look at you
later," Arri continued soothingly.

>"Eggs," Yasmine murmered, the details coming back to her.
>
>A'rillia looked at the young girl in confusion. "What about eggs?" she asked.

Oh boy. Delusions. Arri started running through the various sorts of
concussions in her mind and shook her head. Someone would pay.

>"He took me... a cave... there were dragon eggs there... Dragon riders...
>bad ones... They argued, about me and the eggs." Yasmine babbled in a
>panic, still feeling the effects of the drug she was given earlier to help
>her sleep. Yasmine flinched in pain and clutched her abdomen. "Hurts," she
>told A'rillia.

>"Shhhhh..." A'rillia calmed her, "You need to settle down. This isn't good
>for you."

Arri pinned the girl more firmly to the bed, as gently as she could. "We can
talk about the eggs later, okay Yasmine? For now you need to rest. Your body
has been hurt in a lot of ways and your mind needs to rest, okay?"

She gently tugged the pyjamas onto the girl's unresisting body and stroked
her hair gently. "There, that probably feels better. You have nothing to
hide, but I always found good pj's made me feel at home."

Yasmine smiled weakly.

"Now then, little goldenrod, you are going to go back to sleep," she said
gently, still caressing the mass of hair on the pillow, "And then when you
wake up I want to feed you, and then we'll talk about your dragons and eggs.
You need some real sleep, not the kind because of drugs or delirium."

Arri pulled one glove off and, softly as possible, passed it over the girl's
abdomen, struggling not to flinch at the pain as she took as much as she
could handle. The girl would heal... but would her mind heal later?

Finally the girl closed her eyes and drifted away. Arri put her glove back
on and sat up. Dragons, eggs and bad riders? But they said she'd been turned
up in the middle of nowhere, pretty much. 

<Is there a Warren I don't know about, preciosa?>

<:I don't think so A'Rillia, but I'll ask. You should probably go get
something to eat... she'll be asleep for an hour or two anyhow.:>

<Yes mom. See if you can find out anything from the other dragons, and I'll
see if I can dig anything up from the dining hall or the folks in it. You
realize,> she added cynically, wincing and looking down at her own abdomen,
<That the last thing I want to do right now is eat...>

She kissed the tiny sleeping girl's forehead tenderly and, pulling the
covers up over her, walked out after asking one of Sina's new trainees to
mind the door for twenty minutes while she left for dinner. "If you hear her
wake up, just go in and talk quietly with her. She's pretty battered,
emotionally and physically," she told the girl as she walked off in search
of dinner.

>**********
>NRPG: Tag Bets!

NRPG: Okay... anyone? <smile> When are we going to see the results of
Carie's flight? I'm thinking we may have to skip some of her healing for
that, but since she's waiting on a dragonet... <shrug> Anyone care to
enlighten Arri about the Nomadlands over dinner? (Us sheltered country gals
wouldn't know about such things, I would think...) Anyone wanna join Arri
for dinner?

-Bets-
=====================================================================
"This is who I am, what I do and what I say: If you like it let it be
      ...and if you don't please do the same"  -- Ani Di Franco
     <<=======================================================>>
             Slainte'   --- | ---   tlw663@freenet.mb.ca
          *** The Heart And Soul of A'Rillia and Daetyn ***
                http://www.indy.net/~echo/dlands.html
=====================================================================