Memories of Ichor [FirebrandPhlox]

[Ignys]

The recent camping disaster was the talk of the weyr. It would be; after all, being stalked by a hoard of whers, subsequently attacked, among other things, was a (hopefully) once in a lifetime event. Her experience had been tame compared to some of her fellow candidates, but something about the trip had cemented itself in her mind. Images of blood and ichor, small snippets of dragons and whers mauling one another, and the details of things she didn't see, all troubling her.

She wasn't terribly social, even on a good day, but it was later, and she was too ill at ease to sit in her weyr, and her roommate was nowhere in sight. The other candidate who was was Costanza; a man she found unremarkable, maybe even a little boring. But, for once, she wanted to talk, and he was the only one she had unless she went looking for someone she was more familiar with.

"Do you still think about it?" She asked, no 'hello' or lead into the conversation. "The camping trip, I mean. It all went to shards." She hoped, prayed she was coming off as aloof, hoped she was burying the unease she felt remembering everything, imagining what she didn't see.

[FirebrandPhlox]

Costanza jumped a little at the sudden conversation, startling Babu who had been dozing on his shoulder. He had been perfectly content minding his own business and enjoying a little bit of quiet after all of the chaos that had been plaguing the weyr recently. He blinked a few times, processing the words that had been said to him, as well as who was speaking. He wasn't sure he had ever exchanged more than a basic greeting with Neidellah, so why she was coming to him of all people to discuss trauma was beyond him.

"How could I not?" He said with a scoff. "I got lucky and made it out unscathed, but I still saw and heard plenty to keep me up at night." He could still perfectly envision the white that had torn into Aydholin, the white that could've easily shredded his shoulder instead had he been a bit slower. Every day he was thankful that it hadn't been him who ended up with the better part of his upper body wrapped in bandages.

"Where were you when it happened? Was anyone in your group seriously hurt?" Not all of the candidates had fully debriefed with each other, or talked much about what happened. Maybe talking about it would help the nightly visions subside.

[Ignys]

Ah. Hm. Maybe she shouldn't have said anything at all. Or maybe she was misinterprating the way Costanza started his reply. She'd roll with it, either way. And if she was told in nicer terms to forsk off later, then she could accept that. Where had she been...

"Likewise. Not a scratch on me, but coming back to camp to see... that..." It was enough to give anyone something to think about at night. The carnage she witnessed probably came after the initial incident. At least, she assumed that the dragons who had come to help had been the ones to scare the wild whers off. "Scrapes and bruises mostly. Nothing you wouldn't see on a normal day back at Fort. We weren't far off, but I think we escaped the notice of the whers. Or maybe they were more concerned with other groups."

She sighed a bit, leaning back against the wall. She'd been through worse, personally. Something like this shouldn't be affecting her as much as it was, when nothing had actually happened to her, and she hadn't seen most of the action.

"But the campsite looked wrecked. You can tell the difference between human and dragon blood, but it's impossible to tell if it was all wher blood or if they put up a good fight. I mean we won, obviously. But it must have been brutal to see. I only caught the tail end of what was going on."

[FirebrandPhlox]

"I dunno, did we win? One of our classmates died, and a lot of the riders and dragons got pretty hurt from what I heard. We still don't know what's going on with that wild wher pack either. They attacked us for no reason, and I heard that plenty of them escaped into the woods." He shuddered at the thought of all those whers, organized and lurking in the forest still. And some of the other candidates kept insisting they should go back out there! Not him. He would stay safely at Fort, where the walls of the Weyr could protect him.

"I mean, what if they try something else? They saw what our riders did. Hurt a bunch of them too. I'm worried the whers used that as a chance to learn about us and our fighting capabilities. I know I'm not leaving the weyr until the higher ups figure our how to deal with them and keep us safe." As if it wasn't bad enough that he had to fret over whether he was going to age out of candidacy, now he was worrying over wild whers that should only be a problem for those living outside of a weyr.