A good healer tends to others before herself, one of her instructors had told Derrica once. She'd had thin, spindly hands, and delicate features, and very specific ideas about how a healer functioned in battle. She had imagined Derrica serenely waiting, out of sight; certainly not in the middle of things, collecting scorch marks and bruises of her own.
But still, certain things stick in your mind. Derrica's thinking of her old teacher as she slides off her horse, eyes the rest of her companions. The adrenaline is fading. She's aware of the aches in her own body, the places where blood has been washed away by rainfall. Her hair has come loose from her braid, curling in the damp air. She'd imagined time to get settled, assess before deciding how to divide her attention.
Then the sky opens up. Derrica sighs.
"I thought we'd been able to outrun it," She says regretfully. "Is everyone alright to set up camp?"
The implication being: is anyone about to fall over from an injury before they start dealing with tents?
( ii. tent )
Derrica has never put up a tent, and it shows. It lists to the side, droops sadly in the middle. She regards it from a few feet away, considering the chances of it caving in on her and whoever else is unlucky enough to share with her in the night.
She'd rather sleep in the rain, but—
"Can you help me with this?" She asks, a faint grimace in her tone. "I can't get it to stand up right."
"Sure, give me a minute," Nell says, heading past Derrica to dump a rather measly armload of fuel into the growing stack beside the main fire. She brushes her hands together, and then on her pants as she returns, stopping a few feet back to survey the tent's current state.
"Alright," she says after a minute, "I think what's happened is you've got this pole--" she waves at one end, "Swapped with that one. And you need--. Actually, let's just start over. Do you mind? I think it will be easier."
"Better it come down now than in a few hours when we're all mostly settled," Derrica answers, though she's less fussed at the idea of being dripped on in the night than her tent falling on top of her. Living for years aboard a ship, she's gotten used to a certain measure of wetness permeating living spaces.
"I'll need to get all of you onto a ship next time, so you don't think I'm completely useless."
As she says this, she carefully pulls the tarp from the rickety skeleton of poles she'd managed to construct. She can see what Nell had meant now. A few look improperly placed and now she has an idea of why instead of a faint, nagging sense that she was on the wrong track but unsure of how to correct it that had been pulling at her during her earlier efforts.
Kostos isn't everyone. But his role in any given combat scenario is usually to make sure as few injuries exist to be healed afterwards as possible—which means he takes injuries as personal failures, which in turn means he notices them occurring, usually, with the same focus that makes people remember every possibly-stupid thing they've said after a conversation ends.
His instinctive response to rain is to try to hide from it by making himself smaller, like a cat, but the rain is so heavy that he gives that up after only a few seconds, broadens his shoulders again in a resigned sort of way, and looks Derrica over. Fine and unscathed aren't the same thing. His forearm is blistered from a burn, he remembers just in time to keep from scraping it over his face to get water out of his eyes, and if he remembers correctly, she used to be bloody.
"I know we will be. The barriers deflected some of the worst things they were throwing," She tells him, running one hand down her horse's neck soothingly as the beast snorts. Even just having the barriers up, and someone dedicating themselves to a specific kind of defense was a far cry from the types of ambushes Derrica had gotten used to.
Fighting with a group of mages is vastly different from fighting alongside a pack of pirates. She's still processing the experience of it as she smiles, looks quickly around at their companions.
"And no one's fallen off their horse yet. That's a good sign." Just what you want to hear the healer say. She extends a hand towards Kostos, nodding at his arm. "Can I see?"
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derrica | ota.
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"Alright," she says after a minute, "I think what's happened is you've got this pole--" she waves at one end, "Swapped with that one. And you need--. Actually, let's just start over. Do you mind? I think it will be easier."
no subject
"I'll need to get all of you onto a ship next time, so you don't think I'm completely useless."
As she says this, she carefully pulls the tarp from the rickety skeleton of poles she'd managed to construct. She can see what Nell had meant now. A few look improperly placed and now she has an idea of why instead of a faint, nagging sense that she was on the wrong track but unsure of how to correct it that had been pulling at her during her earlier efforts.
i.
Kostos isn't everyone. But his role in any given combat scenario is usually to make sure as few injuries exist to be healed afterwards as possible—which means he takes injuries as personal failures, which in turn means he notices them occurring, usually, with the same focus that makes people remember every possibly-stupid thing they've said after a conversation ends.
His instinctive response to rain is to try to hide from it by making himself smaller, like a cat, but the rain is so heavy that he gives that up after only a few seconds, broadens his shoulders again in a resigned sort of way, and looks Derrica over. Fine and unscathed aren't the same thing. His forearm is blistered from a burn, he remembers just in time to keep from scraping it over his face to get water out of his eyes, and if he remembers correctly, she used to be bloody.
So: "I think," he amends. "You would know best."
no subject
Fighting with a group of mages is vastly different from fighting alongside a pack of pirates. She's still processing the experience of it as she smiles, looks quickly around at their companions.
"And no one's fallen off their horse yet. That's a good sign." Just what you want to hear the healer say. She extends a hand towards Kostos, nodding at his arm. "Can I see?"