Memories Fade [Open]

[Fel]

Drills had been over for the better part of a candlemark, but Yun still sat in the infirmary, staring down at her hands. She'd been here--or now--for two Turns, and some parts of her old life were starting to fade. She couldn't quite remember Kya's face; it was as though the other woman's memory was somehow blurred. A once vibrant thought to cling to was beginning to disappear.

What if she forgot her name next? Or everything else about her?

You won't forget her, Bolth said reassuringly from where he was busy eating his dinner, but Yun could feel that he was as unconvinced of that as she was.

We both know my... head doesn't work right. It's why we're here. Now. Almost a thousand Turns past where we should be. I had to learn to... do things again, after the accident. I know that. What if this is like that? Only she's not here. I can't learn what she looked like.

The blue was silent for several long moments. He had no good answers. He wanted to have them, but he couldn't remember for his rider either--and there was nobody else in this time who had ever known Kya. Their time had long, long since past.

You have the journal. You won't forget everything.

Maybe...

She looked up across the infirmary. It was still and quiet, the first Threadfall of the Turn still yet to come. But it would soon, and then things would be full and busy. Maybe that would be for the best; not that people would be hurt, but that she would have more to distract her. There wasn't enough to focus on during the winter and the earliest parts of spring when black dust still rained from the sky instead of live Thread.

You should go eat dinner.

I know. I will. Soon.

[Arcane]

Actaeon had spent most of his healing career in fishing hamlets and small mines and remote cotholds. More often than not, his master and he had been the only healers on offer, pursuing their craft in a storeroom or barn they'd turned into their makeshift infirmary. It was still strange, to be surrounded by so many healers, who spoke in his lexicon, and to find the shelves always stocked with supplies he hadn't procured himself.

But there was still work to be done and patients to be tended. While Fort Weyr had more hands to share the labor than a small cothold, it also had more hurts in need of mending. Riders and handlers lived dangerous lives.

The bluerider didn't appear injured or ill, at first glance. But she looked like she wanted something. Few people sat in an infirmary for nearly a candlemark if they didn't. And not even the most experienced of healers could discern all ailments by eye alone.

"How may I help you this evening, dragonrider?" Actaeon asked, greeting the bluerider with a polite bow. He was still newly enough arrived at Fort that they were strangers to each other, and he was nearly a decade her junior, but he wore a healer's knots and riders were more accustomed than cotholders to new healers coming to their service. They didn't generally needed to be coaxed to make use of a healer's services.

[Fel]

Yun looked up at the man's approach. A healer, apparently; well, she though have expected that given where she was. She inclined her head respectfully in his direction as he spoke.

"I apologize. I was only... thinking. I didn't mean to in... inte... get in the way of your duties. Drill ended a little while ago."

"A little". Maybe more than a little she supposed, but it didn't feel like much time had passed at all. Not with the thoughts she'd had racing through her head. !

[Arcane]

"You've been here over a candlemark, dragonrider," Actaeon informed her gently, looking her over again for any signs of concussion. Her eyes looked clear and her words weren't slurred. He couldn't see any physical injuries on her.

The infirmary was an odd choice of places to think but dragonriders were often unusual people and the weyr indulged their whims, so long as they were fit to battle against thread.

"You aren't in my way and are of course free to remain, but there are better places in the weyr to think, ones that don't smell of numbweed," Actaeon suggested, "Are you sure you're alright?"

[Fel]

"Oh. I see. I'm sorry. As I said, I was only thinking. I suppose I got ea little lost in it." Yun inclined her head again, partially stalling in order to give herself time to properly form words. "The smell doesn't really bother me. I'm in Healers Wing, it's something I'm acc... a... used to. Plus I spent a lot of time around it a long... very long time ago."

Longer ago than any living memory, and yet still so recent in her own mind. Recent and even so, like everything else it was starting to recede into the distance until it was almost more a dream than a memory. Though some of it she knew had always been more dream than reality, the parts she had only bits and pieces of after it had happened and before she'd been herself again. Or at least some new version of herself.

"And yes, I'm uninjured, I promise." That was technically different from "all right", but that technicality was enough for Yun to avoid telling an outright lie. Doing so would have been impolite, after all.

[Arcane]

"Ah," Actaeon said, looking down at the color of the rider's knots to try to memorize the color of her wing knots. A member of healer's wing. That would explain why she had retreated to the infirmary, he supposed, if this was where the wing usually worked, "My apologies. I'm newly stationed at this weyr and have yet to have the opportunity to work at length with Healer's Wing. I suppose members of your wing are here often."

Actaeon gave her a shallow bow of greeting, realizing he hadn't introduced herself, "My name is Actaeon. Fort Weyr is my second posting as a journeyman, although my master Iona and I spent a few months studying under your healers, a few turns back."

He didn't push for what the rider had been thinking about. If she wished to share, she would. The sorts of thoughts a rider grew consumed by were likely private.

[Fel]

"Oh, of course, I'm so sorry. I'm Yun, of blue Bolth." She really was out of it if she'd neglected things which were only proper and polite. To have been so rude... "I meant no insult by failing to introduce myself, I assure you."

She paused for a moment, thinking. "You were here at Fort before?" she asked, then added more quietly. "Do you... find it different, upon your return?"

[Arcane]

"No apology necessary. I was not offended," Actaeon assured the bluerider. He had spent most of my career in farming cotholds and fishing hamlets, where there were no great expectations of formality, "But please forgive me if I give any insult to you. I am not accustomed to the formalities of dragonriders."

Actaeon had spent most of his time with his fellow healers, when he and Master Iona had last been stationed here. He had been only an apprentice, deferring to his master when seeing patients.

Actaeon nodded to Yun's question, "I spent about a season here, in 2773. The place itself seems much the same as I remember, but I was not here long enough to call myself an expert on the place. Some of the healers I worked with have left the weyr or become dragonriders and there are a few new masters and senior journeymen."

[Fel]

"You've done nothing to give offense," Yun said, trying to be reassuring. All of this was easier with other riders. Except she hadn't always been a rider; had she really grown so unaccustomed to socializing with anyone else? Evidently so.

"I see though. So it hasn't really changed... too much. At least not recently." Which didn't provide her with any clarity at all. Besides, while it was true that there were others who had come from other times, including some from almost her own time, she was pretty sure they remembered how things had been and the people they'd unwittingly left behind with perfect clarity.

Only maybe remembering so clearly made it worse for them, not easier.

[Arcane]

"I don't believe so, at least not to my admittedly untrained eyes. Have you been away from Fort for some time as well?" Actaeon asked, because something about the way Yun phrased it sounded personal. How much could the weyr have changed in the turns since she had been there last?

She didn't appear especially old to his eyes and the weyr felt ancient to Actaeon, a beacon unchanging over the centuries, exactly at it had been described in the harper songs of his youth. He hadn't read of any recent renovations.

But Actaeon rarely had the chance to converse with scribes and harpers on matters of weyr architecture. He wanted to understand this place, which would be his home.

[Fel]

Yun shook her head slowly, then nodded. "Just the length of a Threadfall... and several centuries." Not even the whole Threadfall; not even half of a whole Threadfall had passed for her. And yet when she'd returned it had been to this. A time so thoroughly distant from her own.

"I'm not the only one. There were... others. Accidents who somehow... are here. Now, when we shouldn't."

[Arcane]

"You're one of the riders who got lost in time. Or however you prefer to phrase it," Actaeon realized. He had heard of people like Yun, but had never before met someone born in centuries past.

She looked much like any other woman, which was only sensible and rational. Healers' texts and lessons from ages past still spoke of the same basic human anatomy. It was ridiculous that some part of Actaeon's mind had expected them to seem...more special, in some way.

"My apologies for your loss, although I'm sure you've heard the same sentiments said better many times," Actaeon said, trying to sound less awed than he felt, because what else was there to say, to someone who had lost an entire world and everyone in it? "I have questions, of course, but I imagine you've had your fill of interrogations, if Fort's scribes and harpers are anything like the ones I've met."

Dragons could truly do the most remarkable things. Breathing fire, crossing worlds, traversing centuries. And because they were such remarkable creatures, their lives and their riders' were rarely easily one. Actaeon did not think he would ever understand them. He tried not to look awed or overly curious and wasn't sure if he succeeded.

[Fel]

"I am, though I'm afraid I'm one of the least helpful when it comes to asking questions about the past, even if you were to ask them." Yun had met that young greenrider who had wound up at Semaca and thought she was in another world entirely. She was probably a rather unreliable source of information.

"My memory isn't always... very good. The longer I've been here, the more things have started to fade. You'd be much better off asking S'nek." At least she was fairly certain that was his name. "Though it's likely he'll... attempt to..." Yun paused for a long moment, but there was simply no polite way to phrase this. "Flirt."

[Arcane]

"That must be difficult," Actaeon acknowledged, "Especially with no one else of your era to remind you of what you left behind."

"Did you struggle with your memory before you came to this time?" he asked, the healer-trained part of his mind automatically seeking to diagnose. He presumed other time travelers did not have similar difficulties, if Yun considered herself the least helpful. She didn't otherwise seem a particularly unreliable person. But there were so few time travelers, the sample size was small. Perhaps fading memory was a rare side effect of the process.

He blinked at Yun's mention of this S'nek flirting with him, completely at a loss as to how to respond. Ears turning a bit red at the tips he tried to sound blase as he said, "I've never been flirted with by a dragonrider before, of any era. I suppose I ought be...flattered."

Weyrfolk were more casual about such things than holders. Actaeon should strive to do the same, to see it as a compliment worth reading no further into.

[Fel]

"Sometimes. I didn't always, but after... I had a head injury during a Threadfall. A bad one. After that... sometimes." Yun shrugged slightly. She usually tried not to let it bother her. It had seemed so much less important than other things that had happened as a result. So what if she sometimes couldn't find words, or forgot what she was doing? Next to the emotional effects, or having to re-learn how to tie her shoes, it just hadn't been too much of a concern.

But that had been before she'd somehow vaulted forward in time.

She looked away at his sudden embarrassed reaction to her warning about S'nek. Maybe it was for the best if he thought she hadn't seen how red his ears went. "It's of little concern. I think it's just... something he does. Some riders are... like that."