Office Hours [Midnight]

[Lotty]

Wavy dark hair was pulled back into a bouncy, curly, messy pom pom of a pony tail with short cropped bangs and a few renegade tendrils falling out around her face. Even then, a quill had somehow managed to find itself tucked into her hair, and ink had dried onto her coif and she still seemed in be a perpetual state of perfect zen about it all. Actually, the only hint that the mindhealer could in anything but peace is the bobbing of her clogged foot, but that was more excitement than anything resembling agitation.

Rae was ecstatic. Concerned and pensive in preparation for her appointment, but above all else she was excited because this was work! These were the kinds of things she was supposed to do, and though she did wish that nobody ever needed to see her, she couldn't help but look forward to fixing the mental maladies that did present itself.

It was quite unfortunate what her new patient had been through - she had been briefed shortly on some vague details - but she was afraid that such tragedies could very well be a more common thing, especially as the northern wars dragged on and started to reel the south in with it. Actually, Raebeli believed that all the candidates should have been sent through a basic mental evaluation, even if it was of the most basic degrees just to screen for exactly these kinds of situations. A distressed mind, regardless of the trauma that created it, was certainly detrimental to candidacy, and if only that poor girl had been caught sooner then maybe she wouldn't have been left standing time and time again.

Any minute now. The mindhealer stayed seated waiting for Meagen...the door was even left ajar as a clear welcome. Rae would be devastated to find out that anyone was afraid to approach her and went to great lengths to be as comforting as possible. She looked over at her oversized darter who was perching quite contently on his stand. Cap'n made good conversation when in a crunch, "I do hope she comes don't you?" The creature cocked his head; he only cared if this guest brought along a snack with her.

[midnight]

Meagen had been removed from candidacy. She had been told she needed help, and maybe she did. But honestly, it was her choice not to trust males. Or even females sometimes. She sighed faintly as her head tilted down, tapping her foot idly as she wondered exactly how to approach this situation. Appointment time was rolling around and the female was rather nervous. Not of the MindHealer, not at all, actually of never being allowed to stand again. Of being told her mind would never repair, and she would never get a dragon.

Her dream crushed and destroyed, that's what her nightmares had been for the last week. She had set up the appointment as soon as she was told to. Had been told the date, and time. Now it was time to meet the music of what she had to face, herself.

Stepping into the room, the female stared ahead, golden brown eyes slightly apprehensive of the situation to come. She had continue with her new ritual, of taming her hair. She had braided it for today though, and tied the braid up with a loop of string. To keep it out of her way. She was dressed casually, and in a rather relaxed manner, soemthing not uncommon for the girl now. She took a few steps in and then finished the process till she was seated.

"Good Day to you, MindHealer Raebeli." She said in a respectful tone, handing over the letter of which she was required to. "I am told to see you."

[Lotty]

Raebeli had risen from her seat the moment she saw the girl round the corner. Meagan's arrival had been tipped off by the stirring of the eaglesque darter; quite the effective guard bird. She took the letter carefully, cutting open the seal with her nail before she could even return to her spot. She wasn't exactly sure why she was perusing the contents, she already learned what she needed to know, but she supposed sifting through the words for little details and specifics were important. One thing she did learn from the memo was that this poor girl's candidacy - to a degree - was held in her hands. She had to sign off on it all...Rae was apparently the keymaster.

"Ah you are told to see me? Am I to suppose you don't want to see me?" she asked, the twinkle in her eye giving away her words as something joking and light-hearted. It was after all the same exact thing she asked that Ari girl when she had been sent to her door. That girl was just shy though...and there was never a second visit. This would be completely different. As much as Meagan might want to rush through the system - and who would blame her, getting back to the hatching sands would be a reason to rush - it would never work this way. Treating trauma was always so slow and arduous.

Now where to begin? That normally was the hardest part. She supposed maybe the question should be thrown back at the girl and since there was no time to waste, the mindhealer didn't mess with the small talk ad got right down to business, "Now maybe we should start by talking about why you are here..." even though Raebeli already knew. That was beyond the point of the whole exercise, "And don't be afraid to be particularly blunt with me...I can stomach anything," and a girl trained in Fort's healer hall normally could. It wasn't uncommon to hear the most gruesome of stories and see the most disgusting war wounds.

[midnight]

Meagen stared at the other female as she kept her seat. She was trying to think of exactly what to say. Her eyes closed as she sighed softly. She might as well go through the story, slowly and as much as she could remember. "I grew up in Benden. My parents had time for me occasionally, but Mik and Cry were my best friends. They and Dia were my older siblings. They watched out for me, and we watched out for each other." She said lightly as she tapped her fingers on her knees. Be blunt, don't let any of it hide.

"I spent most of my time pretending to be sick with one various thing or another, to avoid riders beds. It started around thirteen or fourteen? I don't know. At Seventeen the unthinkable happened..." She said as her hands clenched in her pants. "There was a BronzeRider his name was D'mian. He made it a habit to watch me. First it was watching, then it got to be more. He started following me. I had Mik and Cry train me in hand to hand a little. Just in case. But it didn't matter." She said softly as she released a long breath.

"He cornered me one day, D'mian. He said it was what I had wanted, and I was going to get it finally. That he knew I had saved myself for him. Despite my screams, he didn't care... It hurt so much. I can't remember everything about it, but I remember Mik picking me up... cursing.. Cry was so mad. I was in the hospital wing for a bit, and then they started training me again. I learned to fight, and the fighting helped my anger. I imagined... everytime I fought... that... I was attacking him."

[Lotty]

"I see..." a common mindhealer response, so common that it could be mistaken for a dismissal, words for the sake of saying words, and in this case, it sort of was as the woman reached over to grab a ream of paper and began jotting down facts. If Meagan thought this would end with her she was sadly mistaken. Case studies! The girl was to become a case study and that meant an intensive long investigation of a person's life. At least as much as was reasonable considering the limited resources of Pern. These people: Mik, Cry, and Dia....they all needed to be questioned too, as she wrote more and more down she asked a few questions, "These friends, Mik, Cry, and Dia...are all of them still at Benden?" She was about to ask how she got from Benden to Selenitas, but that was bound to spiral into a completely different set of questions.

What she found most interesting was not the actual incident with bronzerider D'mian. Yes, that was a topic to tackle, but these things...traumas like this so rarely happened in a vacuum. What if the real trauma was Benden Weyr and the rape was just the straw that broke the camel's back? That seemed very likely, but then again it was too early to jump to any conclusions since each person was so individual and unique...despite how feel good and wishy washy it sounded it was true.

"You said that you pretended to be sick to avoid sleeping with the riders," which in some cases could be a mental illness all of its own, but Meagan was admitting to her act, she was at least self aware, "maybe you could explain to me the anxieties and fears you had even before your encounter with D'mian..." Just for clarification. Of course a fourteen turn old would be be frightened of a sexual encounter, but as a woman of the weyr she should have been accustomed to the idea by the time she had reached seventeen.

So much to unpack. So much to get to. The missing memory, the fighting and the anger. As life altering as a single blow was, it was the recurring stressors that caused the most psychological damage - and this was what had the mindhealer so concerned. Regardless, Raebeli was convinced that it could be dealt with, there could be resolution, she just wasn't going to tell Meagan that right away.

[midnight]

Meagen waited patiently as the Mindhealer seemed to be thinking and writing. Then she began to write something down. "Mik... is the rider of Blue Futh, M'kai... and Cry is one of our newest bronzeriders." It shouldn't be hard for the woman to know what she meant. "Dia, is at Blossom Hold, she's now a dolphineer." She said as she tilted her head down, her lips quirking up at the corners.

"We escaped Benden, we escaped..." She whispered as her hands rested in her lap, she looked up at the woman and cocked her head to the side. "Yes, I pretended. I didn't want to sleep with men, I felt no real interest in it. So I pretended to be sick to avoid it. I didn't want to be turned into one of the... sexual slaves." She said in a clear voice her eyes staring ahead of her.

"The fears and anxities..." She murmured as her eyes closed. "Honestly... no other males interested me... I liked Mik and Cry so much. They were the only guys I felt I could trust." She stated as she hummed beneath her breath, her shoulders sagging a little. "Benden was a horrible place, plain and simple."

[Lotty]

They were all here. That was excellent on more than one level. There were others to verify her story and fill in blanks, and on top of that the girl had a support group. That was already one thing going for her. Had to do something about these vague answers. She couldn't do vague! She had a free pass today, but next time around Meagan might be in store for a barrage of "why" every other sentence. Raebeli moistened her finger with a subtle lick and flicked away her first sheet of paper to start another one.

"So, you were afraid of being abused by the riders...was it just the riders or all men? Would you say that all men you meet are inherently bad?" She posed a couple of questions but had about fifty more to go and didn't want to dump all of them on her at once. Really she probably was delving a little too deep for now, she hadn't even touched on the surface ailments; the symptoms that were plaguing her everyday life. She made herself a promise to drop the psychoanalysis for a while and maybe cultivate some trust instead. After all she needed the girl to keep coming back in order to get better.

"When you do encounter a man how to you react? What are your emotions? And is it the same here at Selenitas as it is in Benden?" When she spoke she tended to wave her hand around with her words and today was no exception. It must have been a throwback to her harper parents, such an expressive group of people those harpers were. However the harper hall had its own dangers too. It might not have been Benden, but Raebeli could relate in a way to the girl. Rae was lucky that she was scooted off to the healer hall before she could be picked out by a particularly lecherous master, or maybe even Camlin.

[midnight]

Meagen released a long sigh, something about this felt very beneficial. A small smile quirked her lips as she looked down at her lap. A long breath leaving her as she tried to figure out what to do next. Raebeli supplied her with that answer as she started asking questions. Meagen got a contemplative look, as she tried to figure out exactly how to explain the way her mind worked. Sometimes she felt that she thought differently.

"It's like this... I was afraid of being abused by the males around me. I saw it happening constantly, and told myself it wouldn't happen to me." She said as she folded her hands in her laps. "Females didn't really show an interest in me, or I in them." She stated lightly as she nibbled her lip, trying to think further into how to answer the questions.

"I would not say that all men are inherently bad. It's the situations they are placed in and their moralities that make them bad. A lot of the Riders at Benden were morally demented. They followed a leader that lead his men into places they shouldn't have gone. I have no problem with most men, it's just how they act towards me that marks them as good or bad in my book. Mik and Cry, are some of the only males that I will trust my secrets too. Not because I'm love them, but because they have earned it."

"How do I react? Usually how I'd react with other people. I'm not completely distrustful of anyone, except for Benden BronzeRiders... They seemed to be a morally compromised lot sometimes. " She murmured as she wiggled a little in her seat. "My emotions? I"m always nervous around men, but that's just my reaction to them. And things are MUCH different here. Here I don't constantly have to be worried that he will find a way to get me again. Here, that is not acceptable." She murmured as she looked up at the woman.

Her eyes focused on Raebeli, then she shook her head. "I've had a few turns of therapy with Dia, and Mik and Cry have been teaching me how to channel my anger. I'm mostly over what happened, I'm not exactly a victim anymore. I'm just generally afraid of sex with guys... with the... " She stopped, her cheeks turning a faint pink. Her little situation with Mik was another thing that was mentally compromising her.

[Lotty]

Very well then. After jotting note a few more notes here, there, and everywhere, Rae was ready to begin the process of actually analyzing what it was that she had even written down. That was all meant for later though. No, right now she still had a very hurt little girl in front of her - although she said she was just afraid of sex with guys, it was not any good for a girl who wanted to be a dragonrider - and the mindhealer was determined to fix it in the way that the masters of her field knew how: confronting the past and coming to terms with it...learning from it. Easier said than done however.

Rae solemnly set her pad of paper aside. Everything from her demeanor could read poorly. She looked as if she was about to deliver poor Meagan the death sentence, and having a big carnivorous avian in the background staring one down didn't help a whole lot either. The thing was that this was the mindhealer's attempt at being formal and serious; it was such a contrast from her usual happy go lucky self that one could mistake what was to come for bad news. But it wasn't. There was still light at the end of the tunnel so to speak, "Meagan, I just want you to know...."

She cocked her head in a pseudo-motherly fashion, "That you aren't hopeless. We're going to fix you up I promise. Hopefully in time for the next hatching too. I hear Hepaticath is to rise soon, and by the time that is to happen we should be well on our way with dealing with this all. Just don't try and rush it. One day at a time...baby steps," ah the infamous "Baby Steps" handed down from one mindhealer to the next over the millennia, "One last thing for now...you have to do something for me now..."