Office Meeting (Tag Kali/Req

[dragon]

Dorava received a note from a staffmember just as soon as she arrived on duty in the infirmary. Normally, this was fairly normal activity. After all ... records and charts and things changed hands regularly as the shifts changed out. But something about the staff's face clued Dorava in that this wasn't the usual note.

So once she had set her bag down and was thus unencumbered, She unfolded the note and read it.

Wonderful.

Kalierre wanted to see her in her office.

What in the world could this be about? She hadn't but just arrived, today! Surely Kali didn't already have a new peeve against her. Dropping the strap to her bag down on top of it, Dorava fished in her pocket for her pet.

Val protested this activity, and bit her thumb ... just hard enough to be felt, but not to break skin. "Ow! Shards, Val! Cut it out!" She grabbed his tail, and dragged his wiggling, squirming behind out of her pocket. Opening the bag, she stuffed him into it.

Val poked his head back out, but being shy as he was, refused to come any further lest his behind show to the world again. "Stay." She told him. She didn't need him making matters worse, should things go down stressfully in the office. Val peeped sadly, but stayed, watching as Dorava headed off toward Kalierre's office, Mandyr on her shoulder.

Mandyr was sleeping, still, though. The little round green flit had made an art out of staying on top while sleeping, rather than just simply rolling off as her shape would have suggested. Tail wrapped firmly around Dorava's neck, she wasn't going anywhere at all.

Dorava hesitated outside the door, and then rapped her knuckles on the frame to announce herself, rather than just going in. She really really wasn't looking forward to this.

[Requiem]

Now, the dragonhealer might have simply waited to catch Dorava as she came in, but, frankly, Kalierre didn't exactly have a lot of time to spend frivolously. It was far more productive for her to be logging all the charts and verifying inconsistencies in the poisonings than to be waiting for the other greenrider to show up. E'rro was a tremendous help in this, but, in the end, she was the one who had to get everything in order and make the records easily accessible to the other healers.

Lust, however, wasn't very happy with the arrangement at all. Said arrangement, of course, being that the door was very much closed at present. He hated not being able to go exactly where he wanted to. L'rineeater! he called to His in a pseudo-pleasant sing-song, dangling from the windowsill with his frill displayed in what he clearly hoped was a very persuasive manner. L'rineeater open door...Lust want out...open door like good L'rineeater... He swung forward and scurried along the sill, using his tail and hinds to prop him partially upright, frill going to full mast.

Good little L'rineeater open door? Be goooood? Kalierre cast him an amused glance. "Lust isn't very good when I let him out on his own. He bites people. I don't know..." Lust no bite. L'rineeater open door, Lust make nice, the bronze promised earnestly. Kalierre snorted, not fooled. "When I leave, you can." He hissed in frustration and turned his back on her, arranging himself in a sulky coil at the edge of the windowsill.

Looking up at the rap on her door, the dragonhealer made the last few notes on this chart and set her quill aside. "Come in. Watch the door, though; Lust's intent on escape." Indeed, the little mandyr's head was poking up past the rise of his hips, still and waiting with eyes narrowed. Kalierre fixed him with a hard look. "Don't you think it. Crawlies only go to Lust when he's good."

[dragon]

Dorava opened the door, just wide enough to slip in past it and shut it again quickly, eyeing the bronze mandyr. Well ... he wasn't going to get out past her. But she looked at him only for a moment, before resting her gaze patiently on Kalierre instead. "I left Val outside." She mentioned.

"You called for me?" She asked, placidly. She wasn't going to start anything ... she knew better. She had no idea why Kalierre wanted to see her. But she wasn't going to provoke the dragonhealer in the least little way if she could help it. Things were starting off cool, she hoped to keep them that way.

[Requiem]

Kalierre nodded to a seat as Dorava entered, her expression mild. She couldn't say she liked the greenrider much, but that really shouldn't have anything to do with how she treated the other woman in the infirmary. Very little Ka'rys had said held much weight with her. (He was astonishingly good at misinterpreting everything she said, and she wasn't much better with him.) But he was right about one thing; this grudge - and it was a grudge - that she had against Dorava was anything but productive. This needed to be taken out of an emotional realm.

Lust had spilled from the windowsill, despite Kalierre's warning, though he didn't even make it halfway across the room before the door closed again. Hissing, he spun in a circle and flared his frill again, stopping to snap in the direction of Dorava. Kill idiot, L'rineeater? Make stupid blue scream? he questioned sadistically, edging closer to Dorava and being sure that she could hear him too. It would be no fun if she couldn't. No fun at all.

"What did I say about crawlies? Get over here." Lust wasn't very happy about his fun being spoiled, but he came just the same, quite deliberately knocking over her inkwell as he grumbled, Mean L'rineeater no fun. Kalierre caught the jar before more than a few drops of ink could spill. She finally looked up at Dorava, a half-apologetic smile on her face. "He's a nuisance. Sorry." Casting one more glance at him to make sure that Lust was actually going to behave, she leaned forward in her chair and let her hands fold before her, elbows propped on the desk.

"Yes, I did. I know I haven't been entirely fair with you. My feelings about how you arrived here and some of the things that have happened afterward haven't changed...but my feelings shouldn't be allowed to matter as much as they have been." Trust Kalierre to get straight to the point. "I was a first response dragonhealer, you understand. It's especially...upsetting...for me to see those sorts of injuries aggravated to that extent. So I felt I needed to apologize...and to make you an offer."

[dragon]

Dorava crossed the room, and settled into the chair that Kalierre indicated, folding her hands on her lap. She shot a look at Lust for a moment, before looking at Kalierre again. "Who is this L'rineeater he keeps referring to?" She asked, out of curiosity. The crazy pest was obviously trying to bait her into something, and she wasn't going to play that game. Especially not with something as potently emotionally unbalanced as a mandyr.

As Kalierre launched straight into the pertinent topic, Dorava merely nodded slightly, glad to be hitting the meat of the meeting already. She really didn't want to be here. But the topic both surprised her and yet didn't at the same time. "I understand that the situation when I arrived was vexing and stressfull, ma'am. It was, likewise, to me also. It was the whole reason why I came here." She tried to explain, yet again. She, too, had been rather stressed at the state of her own dragon.

But then she got on to the point of the conversation. "Apology accepted. Please accept my own, in turn. What offer?" She asked, quite to the point. In the meantime, however, Mandyr woke up from her nap and stared down past Dorava's shoulder at Lust. She peeped a tiny peep, and then shifted her stance slightly to be able to lean farther out and see better, tail tightening around her pet's neck. Dorava reached up to tug on it, to loosen the grasp again. "It's just a mandyr." She told her flitter. Who naturally got that statement confused as a reference to her own self. Her being Mandyr, after all.

[Requiem]

Kalierre would have answered Dorava's question, but she hardly had time, so set it aside for a later time. Instead, she found her eyebrow rising to her hairline. Just one. The dragonhealer, unfortunately, was a Benden dragonhealer, originally. Or, specifically, she was Benden trained in the field of dragonhealing, particularly in the realm of piecing dragons back together again so they could fight another day. Kalierre had good instincts and reacted on them with confidence, meaning she'd been a strong member in the first response unit. This caused her to believe she understood what it was like, which was perhaps wrong, given she hadn't been a dragonrider at Benden. Still, she couldn't see what was so pressing that Aonith couldn't be allowed to heal before they fled. Not fully heal, of course; she'd be right back in the fighting wings. But certainly better healed than she had been to fly across the ocean.

The cause for the lifted brow? Kalierre would have thought Dorava surely understood, by now, what had set the dragonhealer off so...colorfully. She'd thought she'd been abundantly clear on that point.

The woman decided not to point out that Dorava hadn't specified what she was apologizing for, and merely nodded. If she allowed herself to quibble they'd end up right back where they started. And, truly, Kalierre hadn't exactly expected this to be a comfortable meeting, and thus far her expectations were being met. "I'd like - " Like wasn't precisely true, but Kalierre was trying to be polite...only that wasn't what halted her words. Lust was glaring at Dorava again. No just mandyr. Idiot stupid. Stupid idiot. Lust best! Lust king 'firmary! Say. Say! Idiot say now: Lust king 'firmary. He hissed menacingly at her, fully ignoring the insignificant firelizard.

Kalierre caught him before he could do anything physical, which just resulted in the salamandyr latching onto the meat of her hand between her thumb and forefinger, chewing vigorously. L'rineeater make idiot 'derstan. Make idiot say! No stop Lust. Baaaad. Gritting her teeth, she flicked a glance at Dorava. "He calls me that when he's upset with me...never explain what a latrine is to a 'mandyr." That seemed, at present, the safest subject to be on. Catching him by the jaw, she carefully pried him loose of her hand and brought him up to eye level. "Be. Good. Or I will find very nasty, frustrating things to do to you. Like throw you in a drawer and leave you there all day." Going limp, he glared daggers at His.

Kalierre knew better than to release him too soon, instead turning her attention back to the subject at hand. "As I was saying, you're basically performing the duties of an infirmary drudge right now. Yes, you're being taught a little and allowed to study, but that's never going to get you any sort of position here. So. If you want to ever end up in the ranks of apprentices, I am willing to work with you on a trial basis. No strings attached. All past forgotten. Of course, I can't guarantee I'll decide to teach you and take you on as an apprentice here. That depends on you. But at least it's something, if you want it."

[dragon]

Dorava eyed the mandyr again, but didn't reply to his demands, refusing to be baited. Mandyr, on the other hand, was quite curious about the puny little bronzish thing. She watched as Kalierre snatched him up, and then huffed in disinterest. Tucking her head back into her own flank, the young green went back to sleep.

She merely nodded at Kalierre's explanation of what in the world it was the mandyr thought he was saying. Some creatures were just so strange. And mandyrs seemed to be the worst of the lot when it came to being strange. She was infinitely glad that her own mandyr was not like most, being rather quiet, still, and in general polite. Even if it came with an oversized dosage of shy.

Dorava's own brows rose upwards, quite high, at Kalierre's offer. That was a most unexpected thing to get offered indeed. But, there were many things to ponder. Would all things past actually be past? Or was this a temporary truce until the dragonhealer lost her temper again? And then on top of that, she was currently training to be a healer. Not a dragonhealer. Was there a difference? She was pretty sure there was a difference. What exactly it was, she wasn't sure. But all things considered, dragonhealing had been what interested her in the infirmary to start with. After all ... taking care of Aonith was first and foremost in her mind. She aimed to never let anything like that happen to her dragon again.

But was it worth it? To weather everything Kali sent at her? But Kalierre did have a point. Despite her dilligent studies, and hard work, she was going nowhere fast when it came to the infirmary. Dorava just looked at Kalierre in silence for a long moment, mind awhirl as she examined all the angles of this new facet of reality. Was it worth the risk? Aonith's well being under any circumstances was worth a lot to her. But there was also the chance of getting knifed by Kalierre. And that wasn't good for either of them.

So ... now what?

Dorava took a deep breath. Kalierre was the best healer around. Thus the rumor held, anyway. When it came to healing? Dorava was inclined to agree. She did fix Aonith right as rain. But as a person? Kalierre was far from the best person around. But then, no one was perfect, were they? Finally, she let out the breath, and then nodded. "I'd love to learn anything anyone will teach me." She admitted. She'd see how far this went. See how well it worked.

It was worth a shot.

"What do you want me to do?" Dorava asked. Though she was wondering what had driven Kalierre to even offer this oportunity to her. She was pretty sure there were gobs of other people Kalierre would rather have around, rather have to train.

[Requiem]

Lust's gaze was set unwaveringly on Dorava, eyes faintly red as he glared at her. L'rineeater wasn't letting him get at the idiot, but he didn't blame her; all that pesty humanpet softness. Idiots should be killed dead, they should. If His didn't have the gumption for it, the king of the infirmary would simply have to do what must be done for her. Of course, he'd have to do it quietly, or she'd grab him again. Humanpets could be such a pain.

Night dark, Lust come, the bronze told her with something like grim delight. Lust come night dark, make SnotterAshface no see. Claw quick. Claw hard. SnotterAshface no see ever, ever. Fear dark, SnotterAshface? Dark scary? Dark ever ever. SnotterAshface scared ever ever. No see color. No see dragonpet. No se- Kalierre flicked him lightly in the leg, halting his long list of threats. He hissed sibilantly, but his gaze never left Dorava. Lust make no see ever ever, he added as one final quiet rebellion.

Kalierre growled at the 'mandyr directly, waiting to make sure he'd subsided. No, definitely not releasing him until Dorava left. Lust was a malicious little beast when his will was thwarted on the best of days. She'd never known him to be quite this vicious - or colorful - about his threats, though. And Lust tended to make good on those threats eventually. She thrust that thought aside. Dorava would be fine. The salamandyr was too territorial to go off in search of her and leave his 'kingdom' unsupervised. Hopefully. Although she had to admit she was worried for him, more. Salamandyrs weren't exactly difficult to smush.

Dorava clearly found her offer surprising. Kalierre herself found that mildly amusing, and didn't bother to hide it. The amusement turned slightly darker at the greenrider's words. It will be a miracle if you can learn much of anything. No, the dragonhealer still didn't have much confidence in Dorava. The greenrider, from what Kalierre had seen, was abyssmally slow in the head. There were situations where that was something that could be overcome; healing generally wasn't one of them.

"You're on shift with me first thing in the morning. I'm asking you to join me on any rounds I make...lend a helping hand if I need it. You'll probably see a fair amount of trauma-related repairs on humans and a range of things for dragons...though E'rro will probably handle all but the more severe cases with the dragons. I'll load you up with information and test you while we're together...and if you show promise, I'll let you take the helm with some minor cases and maybe eventually send you to deal with the smaller issues on your own. If it gets to that point you'll earn apprentice knots. Deal?"

[dragon]

Dorava heard Lust, alright. But she chose to ignore his insults and threats. She wasn't afraid of a salamandyr. Not in the least. Usually, it was the retaliation of the mandyr's owner that stopped her from squishing annoyances that liked to chew on her leg. It was a shame that they were so well and thoroughly bonded to thier humans. The population could definitely use some culling. Lust would be one of the first to go, in her estimation. It was twerps like him that made her so glad that Val was an atypical mandyr. Shy as he was, at least he wasn't destructive, or insulting, or threatening.

The string of threats upset Mandyr, however, and the green flitter wiggled on her perch, eyeing the bronze mandyr in Kali's grip warily. She hissed, before licking her jaws quickly in worry. Even though she was a young flitter, not yet fully grown, she made it clear that if that pest made any kind of move on her pet while she was around, she would bite his frill off. And stuff it down his skinny little throat. Dorava, for her part, reached up to soothe Mandyr, not wanting her to do anything rash.

The last thing Dorava needed was another feuding war in the infirmary. It had been way too much work to get this far, already.

"Deal." She said, promptly, to Kalierre's offer. She only hoped she could tolerate being around the other greenrider for that kind of span of time. Hopefully, she would actually be allowed to learn something, other than how many ways Kali could think of to insult her. "Today?" She asked.

[Requiem]

Kalierre had the distinct impression that Dorava had absolutely no idea how much it took to simply offer her this much of an olive branch. Well, good. Better that she didn't know. If Kalierre had the luxury of being choosy, Dorava would already have been out on her ear, technically R'wign's charge or not. Yes, R'wign was currently acting as Weyrhealer, but that was only because Kalierre was Weyrdragonhealer. The outburst from earlier was regrettable and shouldn't have happened. It was the main reason she was being this...agreeable...now. But the sentiments were hardly dead and buried. No, if she'd had any large range to choose from, Dorava would be unwelcome in her infirmary unless the woman was in need of medical attention.

Kalierre was an inherently practical sort of woman, after all.

Lust let loose with a loud, hissing growl at the stupid winged one, by this point entirely put out by the whole thing. Kalierre was beginning to have difficulties separating herself from the overwhelming flood of salamandyr emotion. Truly, she thought that if she'd still had her - ability - from before the massacre, the dragonhealer would have been snarling herself. Thank Faranth for small miracles. SnotterAshFace Snot challenge Lust, he told his pet emphatically, as if she should know that this was unacceptable and there was only one response to it. Kalierre shook her head, releasing him. The bronze dropped to the desk and immediately made his way up her shirt, dropping sulkily between her breasts, though he couldn't resist broadcasting one last wave of murderous intent to Dorava and the stupid.

At the other greenrider's question, Kalierre merely shook her head. "No. Not today. You'll work with R'wign again today. I've set aside the morning for getting these records all in order." Nor was she about to allow Dorava to touch any of it. That was just asking for trouble. Nevertheless, the dragonhealer managed a tight smile. "You won't learn much rifling through a bunch of parchment. Oh, and make sure the door's closed on your way out," she added dismissively. Yes, it was to make it clear that she no longer required the woman's presence, but she also wanted to be certain that Lust wouldn't be taking out his frustration on the apprentices.

A sulky Lust was the worst kind of Lust.

[dragon]

Dorava tried really hard to not say anything back to that insulting little scrap of hide that called itself a king. It was a rather obnoxious and unfriendly sort ... she couldn't help but wonder if that was Kali rubbing off on him, or the other way around. In any event, she estimated that the scrap just wasn't worth her attention, much less her wrath. So she continued to ingore his insults and emoing.

"Yes, ma'am." Dorava replied, promptly, with a very minimal nod. She rose from her seat, and moved to the door. She looked at where Lust was hiding for a moment, but only to make sure he was not in position to shoot out the door when she opened it. And then she slipped through and securely shut it behind her again, moving back into the freer air of the rest of the infirmary.

She pulled a slow breath of releif. That had gone a lot better than expected, but she still felt rather frowned upon and hated around that greenrider. What her problem was, Dorava couldn't fathom. She could understand being upset at the severity of a dragon's wounds. But where was the logic in calling a vendetta on it? It wasn't like she'd deliberately wounded her dragon! And yes, flying on it was a bad idea, in principal, but if she hadn't, she wouldn't have a dragon left to fly, by this point. Surely the dragonhealer understood the desperation behind the actions??

Apparently not. Picking up a stack of soiled toweling, Dorava carried them off to the laundry bins and then set to cleaning up some other things that needed tending to. She'd do makework like that until she ran across R'wign somewhere along the way. Seeing Dorava go past, Val dived out of the pack and scampered across the floor toward her, to scramble up her leg and dive into her pocket again.

"Oh, hello, Val." Dorava said, absently, patting her squirming pocket for a moment, as she contemplated the things that Kalierre had said. Apparently, Kali hadn't spent a whole lot of time reading truly informative skins, if she thought that one couldn't learn very much from reading. Dorava had learned great amounts of things through reading. It was all in what was on the skins of mention, whether or not one would learn much.

Granted, the skins on Kali's desk probably wouldn't tell Dorava much that she needed to know, but that was beside the point.