Yesterday ... today ... tomorrow ... (Lotty

[dragon]

The stupid tome wouldn't fit in the stupid slot on the stupid shelf that was over the stupid table that was too stupid wide. Argh! Orena gave the tome one last banging stab at that hole that was just barely out of reach. Naturally, the wood-and-leather covers smacked off of the tomes that were already up there and refused to go in even a little. Giving up again, she dropped it onto the table with no never-you-mind for where it landed. The thick thing landed with a resounding bang that made the small glass items on the table jump and tinkle against each other. "SHARDS AND SHELLS!!" She kicked at the table leg, missed and knocked herself flat on her back in the process.

Laying there a moment with the wind knocked out of her, Orena gasped at the ceiling.

Huh. She hadn't known there were little crawler-looking things up there along with the spinners. Those would need removed, obviously. Probably before someone yelled at her to do just that.

It sucked, living in a cave. Not a weyr, but an actual Faranth-flaming cave. With crystals and creatures and glowworms and ... grit. Lots and lots of grit. Groaning miserably, Orena rolled to one side and sat up, rubbing the back of her head where she'd given herself a good sound knock.

She needed some wine.

[Lotty]

So it was pretty safe to say that Rae had been nothing but a giggly school girl since her date with E'rro. Really, she had been acting like she had never been on one before despite the fact that it could be argued that in her time down south she had gone on a multitude of "date-like" excursions. The only difference between those and her most recent was the fact that something... some tiny little nagging suspicion... told her that this time was different. Somehow it would work out to be less fleeting than her previous engagements... not doomed by some silent and invisible force... and it had to be more than wishful thinking. It had to be! With a heavy sigh, the Meadowlark of the Infirmary dreamily considered these romantic realms - though cleverly enough, away from the sights of her beau in case he suddenly think her too silly or ungrounded for his tastes.

It was in the midst of this starry eyed pause that she heard the sound of a thud and clatter, doubly distracting her from both her wild imaginations and the scroll sprawled out before her. The quick to follow cursing, willed the healer away from her work so that with a bit of a hurried brush through her hair, she attempted to coax a few brown wisps out around her face to hide the subtle rosy blush coloring her features. It was only a split second before she was actually getting up to investigate the source of the racket, instinctively heading toward the bookshelves that lined the walls behind her. It was as she was puttering around then, in search of broken glass and a most assured mess that she nearly stepped on Orena; her foot hovered for a moment over the woman's legs before she yanked it back apologetically.

"Oh!"

The mindhealer peeped a bit as she glanced down at the dark haired woman, one of the many she recognized as an apprentice and regular feature of the infirmary. One thing that set this one apart however is the fact that she knew the woman as being recently dragonless, and the little psychoanalyst couldn't help but want to comfort and inquire the other. In time Raelove, in time...[/color] a calm green voice reminded, as Raebeli offered a hand, "Are you ok?" Chipper as ever the woman attempted an encouraging smile despite the fact that Orena's head very obviously was throbbing, "Are you one to look out for? Should we be packing you with pillows for now on?" Small talk really... she didn't think she was in position to do much more at the moment.

[dragon]

Orena was still rubbing the back of her head morosely when a foot appeared in her field of view ... a foot about to step on her. But before she could think to do anything about it, the owner realized the error of their ways and put it back down on the floor instead. Where it belonged. Turning her gaze upward, Orena blinked up at who she found there.

Shards and shells. Orena knew who it was in that, well, she'd seen her around. But her name completely escaped her mind at the moment. A-something, she was pretty sure. A .... something. What was the something? Ably? No, that wasn't right. Whatever the case was, she was pretty! Orena offered her a small smile. "I'm alright I guess. I just ... having one of those days, if you know what I mean." She heaved a sigh and dusted some stray grit off of her legs with both hands. "One of them days where nothing goes right at all. All the small, little, piddly shit just eats at you and gnaws and makes you insane." She made small, nipping and biting motions with her hands then, as if wherries were picking something apart one tiny bit at a time.

Belatedly realizing that she was being offered a hand up, Orena reached over and accepted it, gratefully taking the assist back to her feet. Settling back on her feet, she took a moment to dust her rump off too. "Um..." she blushed slightly. "No. I'll be fine. I don't need pillows tied to my elbows and bum. Thanks, though." She offered a small smile again, before reaching out to pick up the tome again. Straightening it out, she reached up again to try one last time to get it to go where it belonged.

Wouldn't you know it went in perfectly.

Orena didn't know if she wanted to cuss again. But she swallowed the impulse and instead offered Raebeli a smile. "I'm Orena." She introduced.

[Lotty]

Hmmm well, though Raebeli definitely understood the sentiment and the expression of frustration with the little things in life, the woman wasn't sure if she would have been so fast to throw around terms like "piddly shit". Sure, she was prone to saying words as such from time to time, but the mindhealer always just looked out of place and awkward when anything less than warm and fuzzy came out of her mouth. Actually, if anything the woman sort of wished that she hadn't cultivated such a squeaky clean persona, then maybe she too could get away with dropping a foul word every once in a while without the aghast, shocked look she exclusively seemed to receive. To think, envious of the poor girl having a bad day...

"Oh you don't say? Everyone has bad days from time to time..." Rae wasn't sure when her last bad day was exactly. She only definitely remembered the earthquake and knife like sting of her cracked ribs and the throb of broken fingers. She was healed now of course, the only evidence left was the lightest of white little scars on her hands, her back. She wasn't vain enough to worry about these marks though, especially since her set backs were temporary and quick to fade, "we've just have to keep hoping that our good days always out number the bad.."

She watched then as the pretty dark haired apprentice slipped the tome easily back into it's slot on the shelf. Ah see, sometimes one just needed the time to take a moment of zen. Canting her head, the mindhealer nearly snorted replying to Orena's introduction, "Of course, you're one of the apprentices yes? I see you time to time bobbing around..." Rae hardly thought she really needed to introduce herself, not out of arrogance, but out of the simple fact that in the past nobody had been shy about pointing out the wacko shrink sent down by Fort. Now that she was a fixture, she must have begun the slow process of blending in, "I'm Raebeli..." she paused to pretend to be pondering for a moment before saying, "You have a twin don't you? I feel like there are so many of you twinsies around the weyr, isn't there another set? With the red hair?"

[dragon]

Sure, everyone has bad days from time to time ... "I seem to be having more than my fair share of them, all at once." She grumped, before heaving a sigh and attempting to possibly try to put a lighter visage on. It just ... wasn't like her to be grumpy. Mischievous, yes. Grumpy, no. But grumpy was all she felt. Grumpy and hurt. Simmering in her pain. "How do you tell if the good outnumber the bad? Do you keep a log?" Maybe a stupid question, but eh. She couldn't resist the quip.

"I ... I am an apprentice, yes. Or I was. I am not sure ... I hope they don't take that away from me too." Orena admitted. But ... bobbing? Orena couldn't but help the tiny giggle that bubbled up at the idea of bobbing around. Like a ball in the surf. Yeah, no. She wasn't bobbing anymore. Sinking was more like it. Like a ball with all the air blown out of it.

"Raebeli." Orena repeated thoughtfully. "For some reason I thought your name started with an A. I'll remember that, I hope." Orena offered her a small smile though it was only half hearted despite being earnest. It was really hard to get ... engaged fully in much of anything anymore. But she registered actual shock at being asked if she had a twin. A lot of people saw both twins, but so very few ever actually managed to identify that there were two of them, instead of just one very active girl. The joys of being identical in every aspect. "Um ... yes. Actually. I do." She admitted, before pausing and blushing madly at the mention of other twins. "Um ... yeah. That'd be ... ah ... Cr'oph and M'kai, I think you're referring to." She quite remembered when M'kai had been her teacher before the takeover. And then he'd disappeared along with her sister. Aaaand ... apparently the two had fallen in together somewhere along the way out in the jungle. Ironic as that was, since it had been Orena telling Isori that M'kai was hot ... not the other way around.

[Lotty]

"Well you could keep a journal I suppose..." Rae replied. She hadn't much thought of how to weight good and bad, the woman assumed there was an internal sort of calendar for those types of things. One would have to notice if months on end were just horrible... but then it probably wasn't very fair to get into that type of argument with someone who had just lost their dragon not too long ago. Not any dragon, clutchsister Riavorth... Ah yes, they had been weyrlings together hadn't they? Raebeli hardly could remember such things, and what with their innocent weyrlinghood being interrupted by Wasteland that whole episode of life was far to easily pushed away into the depths of her mind. Honestly of her class there was but A'eon and Ithanna that she still saw regularly, and even Syrene whose dragon won Quixoth's first flight was a rare sight to behold.

Anyway, "Take that away from you?" Sounded like a rather paranoid thought... something to grab onto the mindhealer supposed, "Why ever would you think that? Are you not doing well? You seem to be getting along just fine," they certainly hadn't taken any titles away from Serissa, so why would they do the same to someone like Orena? Strange, "Regardless I think that if something like that were to happen then I would definitely let you know," great she hoped that nobody else in the infirmary overheard that, she didn't want to be the angel of death, letting people know when they were being let go.

Shifting gears, the woman listened as her name was parroted back to her, grinning in approval before silently gesturing for the pair of them to take a seat. There was never a shortage of tables and chairs around this corner of the infirmary, and with the curl of the finger and a simple eye movement the petite little journeywoman was luring her new found friend over to a chair across from her as she quietly took her place in one all of her own, "Ah I see, twins seem so much more common here. I can't claim to have known any when I lived in Fort.... very interesting though," her head shifted again, allowing for her bangs to lightly drop to the side, "Whats it like between you and your sister? I hear lots of folklore, but I sort of want to know firsthand... I don't know of you sister working in the infirmary so obviously your lives have taken such divergent paths," and here the woman went, starting on yet another ethnography.

[dragon]

Orena snorted. "Journals get read. So just on principle I would never keep one." Yeah ... if people only knew the things she got into or thought. Faranth help her if her parents had ever found out even half what she'd been up to as a kid. Yeah ... no journals for her. "It works for some people I guess. People who don't have anything they don't mind sharing with the whole rest of the world. You know how these things tend to get leaked out and then everyone knows everything ..." Shards ... her sister would probably have been the first to find and read it. Though that really wasn't too bad for the most part. Isori had been there for most of the things she'd gotten into in life. Right up until Isori had disappeared that night of the coup. Everything had changed that night, it seemed.

"Because ... because ... " Orena heaved a sigh and rubbed her face. "Because I'm busted on the inside." She admitted. "I ... I don't want to have that break mean the difference between everything I had and nothing. I ... I already ... lost ..." she shook her head firmly trying her best to not let it drag her down into that dark depth again. Inhaling sharply, she focused on Raebeli instead. "I just don't want to lose my apprenticeship." It was the only thing she had left, really. That and the pets that had survived the quake.

Orena glanced at the table for a moment before slowly moving toward it. Some part of her had to wonder if she was going to get questioned to death now. All because she had knocked herself down cussing out a book. Ach, gotta love life. Settling into the seat, Orena looked at Raebeli again, trying to figure out why she'd thought her name had started with an A. Maybe it was the way the name sounded. Orena had to admit that she'd not been paying a whole lot of attention during her classes. She'd been too busy dreaming up things to get into and eyeballing the cute fellows... and worrying about her sister for most of it too.

"I admit I hadn't met any twins either, before I came to Selenitas. And then ... well ... they were riders already and I didn't notice right away. I actually became a weyrling before I became aware of them." she admitted. "I wasn't exactly looking either. I am just used to twins being a rather unusual thing ... " She paused as the topic of her sister came up. Heaving a sigh she leaned forward and kneaded her forehead. "My sister ... we ... used to be inseparable. Before wasteland. She even stood in on a few weyrling lessons for me. No one knew. Most of the time we didn't have to say much to know what the other was thinking. But then wasteland came and everything changed. My sister ... she disappeared that night." Straightening again she leaned her elbows on the table. "I found her again at the gather, I was happy to know she was alive. But she couldn't come home with me. I made sure she had some decent things to wear when she had to leave again. But ... I hadn't seen her at all until we moved here. To ... this place. I found her again, but ... things have changed. Too much, sometimes I think. We ... had a fight. She's mad at me ... I admit I was a bit rash with her. But I was ... and am ... not exactly emotionally stable yet. She said some things that pissed me off more than it should have. I said things back deliberately trying to wound her. It worked ... I am ... sorry for it." Orena shrugged slightly. "But once the wherry's out of the bag, you can't exactly catch it again. But no ... she doesn't work in the infirmary. She's a weyrling, actually. So you could say that yeah ... things have gone completely opposite of the way they used to be."

[Lotty]

"We aren't going to take your apprenticeship away..." Raebeli assued the young woman once more. If anything it would be very counter productive to do that to the woman... she needed something to focus on after all, and definitely something for her self-identity. Reaching over to pat Orena on the hand, the mindhealer continued on, "And I hardly think that you are all broken... just a little bruised and it will all be fixed up. It will just take some time," in honesty it would be a long, long time, but why overwhelm someone who is already clearly drowning in her own frustrations? Rae at least wasn't going to be the person to do that, and with this mission in mind, she found it so much more important to simply listen to what Orena had to say.

Sliding forward to set her elbows on the table and her head into the cradle made by her hands, she made it painfully obvious how hard she was paying attention. She looked as enraptured by Orena's tale as a child hearing some long yarn spun by a traveling harper. It took a moment then after Orena finished for Rae to sew together all the pieces, and finally after sitting up and tapping her chin asked, "Why do you think you said those things... to hurt your sister? I mean, you don't seem as unstable as you could be... I think there is a very logical reason you would retaliate against her the way you did. Are you feeling jealous because she is a weyrling now?"

She smiled to show that this was not in the least indictment of her character, "It's perfectly ok to be jealous of someone Orena. It happens to the best of us..." including herself, which ignited the thought, "You wanna hear a secret? There were times that I get awfully jealous of some of the girls in the infirmary... with their boyfriends and their babies..." Ok so Rae was generalizing horribly. The only true jealousy that she had was of Erilena, and it was less of the baby part and more the fact that she felt once again she lost a friend in Dmitri. It was silly, and it was irrational... and she knew this, but nonetheless the feelings cropped up. Her only way of fighting the sensation was to instead befriend the other woman. It worked mostly, not to mention the fact that she had this new thing with E'rro to keep her very easily distracted.

"Any way, just because you can't catch the wherry doesn't mean you can't apologize anyway. Have you tried that?"

[dragon]

Orena had no idea if Raebeli really had the authority to say whether or not her apprenticeship was in danger or not. But having it said in such a confident manner that it would not be taken from her had her melting with relief. "Thank you. Thank you so much. I like it here ... it gives me ... something to do I guess. I realize this sounds sick, but seeing other people hurt takes my mind off of my own hurt ... maybe pretending that if I can fix their hurt, somehow mine can be fixed. Even if mine is not so simple as a busted leg. I ...sometimes wish I had busted every bone I owned, rather than lost Ria. I miss her a lot. Every moment. It's like there is this big hollow place where she used to be. And because she's not there I fall into that chasm of emptiness that she used to keep me out of." Orena paused, realizing that she had tears rolling down her face again only when one dripped off and splatted on her arm. "I'm sorry." She hurriedly dried her face with her sleeves, trying desperately to stop the waterworks.

To be seen in such straights, to be caught crying her eyes out over an insubstantial internal hurt ... it was embarrassing. She had nothing to show for it, no reason to be seen to be in such misery. And Raebeli was paying so much attention too ... there was no way she could miss it. No way to hide it and hope it went unnoticed like most of her stray tears that crept out unbidden. Orena sniffed. "I'm sorry. I'm ... silly. I know."

Orena started to answer her question, but then snorted instead. "I'm not jealous of my sister's dragon. That runt could never be Ria. I .... she's my sister. I love her still. I am happy she has Impressed. Happy for her. But no ... I am not jealous of her dragon. I ... said things ... because she said things. She probably didn't realize it at the time but what she said, landing on my raw edges really bit. That ... on top of other things. I wasn't exactly emotionally stable. And I reacted badly. She ... she told me that I should have been there with Ria at the time of the quake. Not off somewhere else. I don't think that she realized that had I been, I would be dead too. Not that I don't sometimes wish that. It would be easier, you know. But ... I survived. Gerroff bites me when I contemplate any other way to proceed." She scrubbed at her face a moment more before inhaling. "I ... said what I said because she had hurt me, I wanted to hurt her back." She admitted. "I ... might be slightly jealous of her. But not for her dragon." And all other reasons paled under the massive weight that was the lack of Riavorth. So no ... jealousy wasn't it. It was pure instinctive reaction ... lash out at that which was poking your wounds, hopefully make it stop.

To hear that Raebeli was not only jealous ... but what of ... it distracted Orena a moment. She tilted her head to one side as she considered the other Healer. "You're wanting a family of your own then?" She asked. It was understandable and not at all silly in Orena's mind. It was the aspiration of most young women that were wired correctly. It was only natural.

But ... apologize? "No, I haven't. It wouldn't go well. I am still too unstable. She doesn't understand. Talking to her again would only cause more of the same. I just ... need to figure this out myself. I need to ... to not be so easily knocked off my precarious perch." Orena explained. "Until then, it is best that I avoid her. I don't want to make it worse."

[Lotty]

Seeing someone cry automatically made Raebeli want to reach over the table and warmly snuggle the other girl, but the pure logistics of such a maneuver just made it a little bit impossible. Her her part, the best she could do was reach into the pocket of her cardigan and offer a handkerchief to Orena - it was a delicate thing with blue borders on all sides, but frankly Rae could care less if someone were to slobber and tear onto it. Better that it happen to a piece of cloth than someone's clothes yes, "Here Orena. It's ok, now.. don't ruin your pretty shirt, we don't want any kohl to run off onto it right?" She didn't know if the apprentice took to wearing makeup, but if she did the mindhealer knew first hand how tricky it could be to get the pigments out of your garments.

"No it's not silly at all, you have every right to feel the way you do. What is silly is thinking that someone can tell you how to feel about something," the petite woman was offering what help that she could. Of course, Quixoth was so very positive that she too had invaluable pieces of advice to offer, but Rae was too busy muting the green voice. It was a bad idea she assumed, to allow the dragon to talk to someone who had lost their own.

"You know maybe you were right in saying something back to your sister, but you know what my master told me a long time ago at the hall before I came here? Things other people say can't make your feel bad, ultimately you are in charge of your own emotions and you let people offend or hurt you. There is nothing intrinsic to words.. there is no magic about them... Now I can't say for sure how true that is... but when people say things to me, I think about that and ask myself why I feel so hurt," the problem of course was that Orena had already felt hurt. Past tense... now she had to help her find a way to fix it, "I still think apologizing would be a good idea. You can stay away, but it will all catch up with you eventually."

As for the subject of a family of her own... well that was just so far away still, "Maybe someday. Not right now of course.... its a little complex," Raebeli couldn't help but laugh out loud. Oh my, how crazy she would seem if every man she got close to was suddenly subject to a barrage of requests including settling down and baby making... before even getting to truly know them. No, Raebeli went to very great lengths to not appear so needy and clingy... they were rather unattractive traits weren't they?

[dragon]

Orena accepted the kerchief with some measure of embarrassment. It was only a testament to how busted she was on the inside, the tears that rolled over her cheeks. To how much she hurt, and how far she had to go before she could even speak without going all bubbly and incoherent. She just wasn't used to this. But in using the cloth, it also became apparent that Orena wasn't wearing any kohl, or anything else for that matter. Most of the time, unless she was going all-out in dressing up super-fancy, she didn't use makeup. Mostly because she didn't need it. She already had a good complexion and big dark lashes to frame her eyes all quite naturally. It was part of how she got into some of the trouble she got into from time to time.

To be told that she wasn't being silly ... the notion that someone actually understood ... that was what surprised her. So much so that she fell silent and just watched Raebeli. It was clear that Raebeli either did understand, or was doing a very good job in pretending to understand. That or she was doing a good job at saying the right things to try and make Orena feel less cruddy about feeling bad. It didn't stop her from feeling bad, though. Orena wished Raebeli had magic words for that ... anything to take the pain away. To make that glaring hole a little less deep. But ... it seemed she wasn't that lucky. So she uttered a shaky sigh as she seemed to melt into herself, her whole posture drooping. Wadding the kerchief up, she gestured incoherently at nothing in particular with it. "I just ... don't know what to do with myself. About it. Anything. Except sit and suffer."

Orena listened to what Raebeli said about words, and heaved another sigh before sniffing. "I suppose it's true. But aren't we conditioned for those words to mean things to us?" she asked. "Catching up to me eventually doesn't bother me ... maybe when eventually rolls around I'll be better situated to handle it. I only know that I can't handle it right now."

"I'll say." Orena agreed with a tiny half-hearted laugh in agreement to Raebeli's assessment of family. As simple as nature made it out to be, it was one of the most horribly complex things she'd ever run across. Given that she grew up in her own family, it had been one of the first things she'd run across in life. Obviously. But, as the saying went ... you could choose your friends, but not your family. There was no getting mad and splitting ways ... especially not with kids involved. Everyone pretty much had to get along or else. And that was the simple part of it.

[Lotty]

"Well, you can't let yourself suffer Orena, its not fair to you or anyone around you," what seemed like personal problems always had a way of screwing things up for everyone else around. Not that the girl really needed to be hearing any of that right now, she doubted it would be all that helpful to know, "listen, it's good to cry your eyes out when you need to. It really really is.... very cathartic and all that..." Raebeli knew immediately she needed to somehow switch subjects though. Soon enough she feared she would start repeating herself having forgotten what it was that moments ago she just said, "but that doesn't mean you need to wallow. Instead of feeling desperate, you just need to channel all that energy into something else. I know you have your work here, but you can't always be in the infirmary," that after all was just as unhealthy, "So what else do you like to do? Hobbies?"

Raebeli, not wanting to get into any debates about denotative meanings versus connotative meanings, just shrugged and replied, "Maybe we are conditioned, but just because we are so doesn't mean we should be, yes? Jumping to those bad conclusions isn't a very good habit to be in, and its hard to reverse it. If it wasn't then I wouldn't have much of a job would I?" They could make a little rodent run around in a maze before spontaneously changing that, and a canine drool at a bell before weaning it too from that behavior... but humans were just mixed, messed up, bags of chance sometimes. All in all, in spite of Rae's knowledge, it was rather hard to do little psychological experiments in the world of Pern.

"Anyway, if you think you need time before facing your sister, then I suppose you'd probably know better than me. She is your sister after all," the mindhealer gave into Orena on this one. It would probably be good to give the former greenrider some sense that she was in control of something in her life. It was the little things after all that were turning out to be important. She noted the little laugh that Orena gave her. This was good, even though it was at the expense of her own impossibly complicated life. Rae just continued to tease, joking, "I can say however, that twins don't run in my family, so at very least I would never have to worry about having a pair born to be perfect partners in crime," not that the woman would especially mind.

[dragon]

Orena nodded numbly, basically just agreeing with Raebeli so the lectures wouldn't come around. It was an evasionary tactic she had learned way back as a little girl when enduring her parents' ideas of what should be and what shouldn't be. But one thing Raebeli said did give her pause and she refocused on the Healer's face. "What is cah ... whatever you said. What does that mean?" She asked, a bit flummoxed at having encountered a word she didn't know. She immediately leapt to the conclusion that it must be an advanced specialized Healer terminology word. Because she'd certainly never run across it before in idle conversation in the Hold or the Weyr.

Orena balked a moment again. Why couldn't she spend all her time in the infirmary? "Hobbies? Um. No, not really. I uh ..." Causing mischief was a hobby that had sort of fallen by the wayside when she'd lost her partner in crime. "Not unless you consider random sex a hobby." Orena offered rather boldly. Because, no, she wasn't embarrassed about it. Because ... well ... fooling around with people was a hobby. It was fun, wasn't it?

"It is hard to ignore life long conditioning set in place from childhood." Orena agreed. She couldn't even begin to think of all the ways people were conditioned. Some people wouldn't even eat fish if the thing still had its head on ... but others didn't even blink twice at it because it was 'normal'. How bizarre was the human mind.

Orena did consider the twins comment for a moment. Trying to decide what that was meant as. It sounded as if Raebeli was trying to be funny, but she failed entirely to see the actual humor behind the words. Oh well ... maybe that was another layer of conditioning from their different backgrounds. "Twins don't tend to run in families." Orena pointed out. "They're too rare for them to do so." But ... she did have to admit that at one time, she and her sister had been partners in crime. Maybe that was the part that was supposed to be funny? She didn't know, but she did crack a small smile for the effort. It was nice.

[Lotty]

Raebeli cocked her head much in the same manner a puppy would, as she watched the girl struggle with a word. The mindhealer found herself vaguely embarrassed with herself, having known better than to just start running her mouth off throwing around words that belong only in medical tomes... or in the case of this word, in harper's handbook on poetics, "Cathartic?" She questioned a bit tentatively before moving on to explain, "Ah well, it is a very very old word... to have a cathartic experience or catharsis, at its very simplest means to purge or purify yourself," she paused then wondering if she should go any deeper, and deciding it wouldn't hurt she continued. After all, Orena might find it useful, "I was told that long, long, ago when we didn't even speak Pernese, they used it to talk about the feeling you get at the end of great stage tragedies.... in mindhealery type stuff we just use it to talk about when you let out all of the deep emotions you keep inside..."

You wouldn't know that what Raebeli was talking about was even a touch depressing considering the constant brightness to her tone or to way she bobbed her head from side to side. Talking about things... anything... just sort of brought the girl up, as strange as that might seem, "It's a pretty fun word if I can say so myself. Tends to roll off the tongue just right, and now you can turn around and use it on someone else..."

Of course her bubbling might have dimmed a little bit when Orena mentioned that random sex was a hobby of hers. The random part truth be told bothered her much more than the sex part, though the two of them going hand in hand was not very good. If Rae could be commended on one thing though, she didn't miss a single beat. What? The woman had heard a fair share of odd and downright deviant things in her time, starting even back in her apprenticeship, "Oh do please tell me that was a joke..." she wasn't chastising really, her words came out as whimsical as before, "...or at least tell me the random part of the 'random sex' is location and not partners... it really isn't good for you." Especially in the state she was in. The dragonless girl didn't need someone taking advantage of her emotionally by way of sex.

"I'm not going to tell you how to have fun, but really do be careful with that... take your rides between and all of that or you'll be bursting at the seems with babies..." Raebeli shrugged and left it there, in part because who in a weyr could really lecture another on random sex? Especially, when they all eventually got caught in some whether it be from dragons, mandyrs, or whers.

[dragon]

"Oh." Was all the answer Orena offered for a moment as she filed that away for later reference. She was not opposed to learning, or even admitting when she didn't know something. How else did a body learn, after all? "Cathartic." She said again, as if tasting the word as it crossed her tongue. "Thank you. I will remember that." She said finally, realizing that she'd been a tad rude about that, if completely by accident. In getting distracted by the new word, she had also completely lost the context of the word ... but she wasn't going to admit that just yet. Even if she didn't remember the sentence in which Raebeli had used it, she understood that the mindhealer thought that Orena ought to spill her guts about her stress.

That sounded all well and good of course, and probably made proper sense. But at that particular moment in time, Orena was not at all prepared or ready to do such a thing. Her thoughts were her own, and truthfully she really did think that even those who might have been close to her at one time would hate her now if they even got an inkling toward some of the dark things that crossed her mind of late. They were deep, dark thoughts that should never see the light of thought, much less be given the honor of being spoken to anyone else, set loose to wreak havoc upon the minds behind the ears that heard it.

In some cases, ignorance really was bliss.

"Um, actually no. I meant it just the way it sounded." Orena clarified. "Random sex. It's not new, either ... I've had it a long time. It's just a lot of fun to mess with people, and sometimes the messing gets to be mutual. For a few hours anyway. Starts with messing with their heads ... and I do mean the top one ... and then, well, it snowballs from there." She shrugged. "Trying out different people gets different reactions, you see. And that's always fun. But yes, an old standby hobby is, well ... an old stand by. Helps take my mind off my current state of affairs." Orena admitted freely. "Random can be construed in any way you care to take it. Interesting places, interesting people, interesting times ... you, uh ..." Orena hesitated a moment, as if realizing that not everyone was as open to regailing with such tales as her twin had been once upon a time. "... er ... probably don't want to know what all I got into. It's not lady like."

And Raebeli smacked of a lass that wanted to be lady like, at least most of the time. So happy and bubbly and making everything better. So nice and clean. Not at all like the used to be happy and bubbly getting into all sorts of messes type of gal that Orena had been and in some cases still could be. Orena delighted in seeing just how far awry she could prompt something to go.

"Rides between?" Orena asked. "And where, pray tell, do you think I'm going to get such a thing as that? My ride between didn't even get the dignity of a last trip to between. I certainly can't get there myself." Even though she was aware that the statement hadn't been meant that way, the whole thing still felt like a slap across the face to her. Be sure to go between, she said. Like how was she supposed to do that, when her dragon was dead ... which also happened to be the whole reason why Raebeli was talking to her in the first place? Even knowing better, Orena couldn't help but sulk a bit.