Surrounded by the detritus of an obviously chaotic scene, the Weyrharper is the picture of weary serenity. In her arms is cradled a linen-wrapped bundle. Nearby, Aria is flopped across the bed as though /she/ had been the one doing the work. Jori, a journeyman Healer, is standing just outside the curtained area, peeking at the new pair between the curtains and keeping watch.
C'daer is in a rare state of dishevelment, his white shirt crumpled and stained, half tucked-in - his vest missing entirely - as he charges into the infirmary with his hair sticking up all over. Spotting Jori, he rushes up towards the curtains and asks, tensely, "And?"
Ilesyn has kept half an eye on through the process - it's notable that she's left her desk only briefly throughout the entire childbirth; some say that the Mindhealer never sleeps, and they might well be close to the truth, after this performance. She shuffles her hides together, stretching out stiff shoulders with a rolling motion. C'daer's entrance draws her glance, and a roll of the eyes, "The doting father," she drawls, lazily. "What a happy couple."
"Shh," Jori admonishes "Sanriel is very tired. Are you a friend?" Hearing the commotion outside the curtains, Sanriel whisper-calls "Who is it, Jori?" And the Healer turns to C'daer with eyebrows raised questioningly.
Daer glares at Jori, glares at Ilesyn, and tries to push past the former towards the curtains. "By Faranth! I came as soon as I could, Sanri," he calls after hearing her voice, "and, so, well? Boy or girl?"
Ilesyn likes pushing. Mental, physical, any combination of the above, and the commotion, such as it is, draws enough attention that she pulls herself out of her seat, stepping rather closer, eyes alight with interest. "I'm not surprised that the father didn't even want to show up for his child's birth," she says, still drawling.
Irritated but not involved enough to risk injury, Jori steps out of the way, glaring after C'daer. Within, Sanriel looks up with a tired smile. "C'daer. Nice of you to come. I'd like to introduce you to a relative of yours." She draws the soft linen away from the baby's face.
"Shut up," C'daer snaps at Ilesyn over his shoulder as he gains the entrance, sinking to his knees by Sanriel. After a quick glance at her, he fixates on the child with wide eyes, biting his lip. "And is it a she or a he? Did you decide on a name?"
"Ooh, we're in a good mood today, aren't we?" coos Ilesyn, who is obviously not in much of one herself, attempting to manoeuvre herself into a better position for hearing conversation between the happy(?) parents. It's difficult - she's certainly not in with Jori, since she's not really in with any of the Weyr healers.
"I was wrong all along," Sanriel admits unrepentantly, studiously ignoring the mindhealer's maneuvering and acid remarks. "it's a boy. I'd like to name him Cedriel. What do you think?"
C'daer coos, rather more sincerely than Ilesyn, "Hello there - hi - er, Cedriel? That's fine," he tells Sanriel in his for-adults voice, sounding rather distracted. "You are so adorable, look at your little tiny nose. Sanri, can I hold him?" Daer looks from son to Sanriel, but at he sees Ilesyn from the corner of his eye, asks her, "Aren't you a -Mindhealer-, not a body Healer?" Politely, but with distinct overtones of shouldn't-you-go-away-now.
"I think new parents need Mindhealing even more than anyone else," retorts Ilesyn, quite blandly, holding her ground - and her physical position, which is towards one side of the curtained area, so that she can't see in, but can certainly hear everything.
Sanriel glances at the mindhealer's silhouette on the curtain before looking back to C'daer with an absolutely /thrilled/ smile. "Of course you can!" Gently, gingerly, still unaccustomed to such a fragile burden, Sanriel offers the baby to his father. Eyes are closed in the baby's red, wrinkled face, and thin whorls of dark hair crown his head. "Would you like to come see?" She calls softly to Ilesyn, willing to offer a truce in the aftermath of such an experience.
C'daer goes all boggle-eyed and awed as he carefully tucks Cedriel into his arm. "Aw Sanri. He's.." Daer's big finger tests the softness of the baby's hair, tentatively, as the new father's lost for words.
Ilesyn's face registers absolute surprise, her eyes narrowing slightly, as if she's not quite sure whether to trust Sanriel or not. After a pause, she pushes her way through the curtain, defiantly lifting her nose as she passes Jori, although she stands rather as far from the baby as she possibly can. "Red, and puffy, and--" she concludes, for C'daer, although something ensures that she doesn't quite say the last word. Ugly, perhaps?
"Beautiful." Sanriel finishes Ilesyn's statement decisively, reaching out to rearrange the cloth over the baby's chest. Moving her hand a bit higher, she strokes a finger lightly down C'daer's cheek. "Like his father."
Looking up at Sanriel with startlement at the caress, C'daer nonetheless nods, "He is, he is. But uh - isn't Cedriel a bit distinctive?" He cradles the child carefully close, and narrows his eyes at Ilesyn, "Speaking of which, how'd -you- know?"
Ilesyn, with the usual roll of the eyes that marks one less enamoured by children, and more wary, comments, "He could be C'drin's child, with that name. I'm sure you want your baby to grow up with his name linked to /him/, the old bastard." Sweetly, she points out, "I pick things up, in my line of work. It's not exactly been /impossible/ to tell."
Belatedly, regretting her decision to inclde the caustic mindhealer in the moment, Sanriel says. "Or Cedaern. And C'drin isn't /that/ bad. Not really." To C'daer, she says in a completely different tone. "Are you ashamed to call him your own, then?" Her position has completely reversed in the hours since she went in to labor, apparently.
With another glare at Ilesyn, Daer mutters, "Oh," and then blinks, bemusedly, at Sanriel. "I, uh? No? But my mother - uh -" He breaks off, looking down lovingly at that wrinkly red baby-face, and says quickly, "Cedriel is -fine-. C'driel," he tries, thoughtfully.
"No, C'drin isn't that bad. He's worse." The Mindhealer crosses her arms in front of her, returning C'daer's glare with an absolutely saccharin smile that sits pristinely upon her lips, giving her an almost Madonna-esque expression. "Thinking of Impression already. Setting the poor child up for failure, it seems to me."
Sanriel hovers one hand over the baby protectively. "No-o," she protests, shifting uncomfortably. Ready to snatch the baby from his father's arms, it seems. Forcibly resisting the urge to argue (she's surrounded by the two people who encourage it the most, after all...), she satisfies herself with "He'll be whatever he wants to be."
"As long as -you- don't get to him, he'll be fine," father snaps at Ilesyn, then cooing hurriedly at Cedriel as that wakes him up, "Eays baby, easy - say, blue eyes? Right, Sanri. Just testing the name," he says, hopefully and with a sweet smile up at her. "It has to be possible, that's all."
Ilesyn's smile remains placidly angelic. "My goodness, you /are/ feeling snappy this afternoon," she comments blithely, dropping her hands towards her sides, letting them seek her pockets, her fingers looping through the belt-loops about her breeches, her shirt scrunched up at the waist. "I wonder how long /that/ philosophy will last, Harper dear."
"Ten seconds," San retorts caustically. "Are you beginning your ministrations already? Can't you just come see, Ilesyn, and appreciate how beautiful life is? Just once? You can go back to being yourself after. Just come see!" Apparently San is desperate to share her joy. Why else the invitation?
C'daer, while Sanriel is busy, carefully unwraps the blanket from around Cedriel to inspect him. Ten fingers, ten toes, the necessary boy equipment: Daer beams. "He's beautiful, Sanriel," he repeats, and draws the fabric back up.
"No thank you. I don't like children." Ilesyn's fingers are twisting about her belt-loops, drawing together into fists as if she's resisting a shudder with all of her ability. "Beautiful? He's-- /red/."
"So are you," Sanriel points out, turning back to father and child. "Ilesyn's jealous," she confides, then adds in typical baby-apreciation voice "Isn't she, little darling? She can't see that you are the sweetest, handsomest little man to cross her doorstep! Yes, you are!"
Daer looks up to Sanriel with a smile, his expression still awed, and offers the baby bundle back to her. "Has he eaten yet? Or.. well, I don't know how babies work," he says, and contents himself with only a mild glare in Ilesyn's direction, adding firmly, "He's -beautiful-."
Ilesyn's eyebrows lift. "Red?" she wonders, head shaking. "/Jealous/? Hardly. I've rid myself of plenty of those 'little darlings' before now. If I wanted one, I'd have one." Her expression turns positively nauseous at Sanriel's baby-talk. Her shoulders are shrugged, "Beautiful, ugly, whatever."
Cedriel chooses the moment he leaves his father's arms to announce his presence to the world with a gasp and a hearty cry. Quickly cuddling the infant close, Sanriel shushes him with soft words. "He's a Harper - the lungs he's got on him!" She tells C'daer triumphantly before turning her attention back to her son.
"You.." C'daer stares at Ilesyn in disturbed shock until his son starts to wail; that distracts him from whatever he might have asked or said, and he winces and nods to Sanriel. "Sure. Hope he gets his voice from -you-."
Ilesyn positively winces as Cedriel begins to cry, fingers untangling from her belt-loops to be drawn, along with her hands, towards her ears. "Shards!" she complains, wrinkling her nose. C'daer's disturbed shock draws no real response from the Mindhealer; she stands there without comment, clamping her hands tighter.
Sanriel is perversely tempted to let the baby cry, more to irritate Ilesyn than anything else. Her instincts win over, however, and she pulls a towel over her shoulder, covering the baby's head and offering a nipple with a moment's awkwardness as she tries to figure out how to do it.
C'daer watches, amused at Sanriel's unsure movements. "Just wait until he gets teeth," he says brightly; his expression fades away to a glower as he recalls Ilesyn to his attention. "Don't you have anything else to do?"
Ilesyn's hands drop, lazily, as the baby's mouth is put to busy use elsewhere, which she watches with as much attention as she can spare, perhaps perversely. "Me? No. Nothing."
Sanriel is silent, concentrating fully in the babe in arms - or seeming to. Her eyes flick to Ilesyn occasionally, to C'daer more frequently.
He mumbles something, then shrugs at the Healer and turns back to Sanriel, squaring his shoulders and resolutely ignoring Ilesyn. "So, uh, did it take long? I mean, you look fine and everything." Full of tact, he is.
Ilesyn seems to realise that she's being ignored, and thus stands with an absolutely delighted expression. "Oh, /fine/," she drawls. "she looks perfectly fine. Tired, exhausted, but sure - /fine/." Whatever that's supposed to mean.
Sanriel repeats the word of the moment. "Fine." She opens her mouth to say more, but can't seem to find words for the experience. "Umm, Jori said it was about four hours. Which is really short. But it felt like /forever/. He's early. It's why he's so small." She adds almost apologetically.
"He'll grow," C'daer says with blissful confidence. "Was your father tall? And with those eyes, he'll be a lady-killer," and the rider admires Sanriel's matching eyes for a moment. As he shifts from his kneel, he winces and rubs at his right calf. "Ilesyn, is there anything that stops legs from falling asleep?"
Ilesyn, with a straight face, responds, "Invigorating message." As to the baby-talk, she actually stays silent; evidently, it disgusts her to the point of there being no words.
Watching Cedriel to the exclusion of all else, Sanriel observes him fall deply asleep again, and admonishes both. "If you're going to argue, go somewhere else." No matter that they're not actually arguing at the moment.
C'daer shrugs in response to Ilesyn and continues to rub at his leg. "Say, Sanriel? I was wondering, maybe you'd want to be an example for the Candidates. Actions and consequences, that sort of thing."
"Oh, you'd know if we were arguing," avers Ilesyn, sweetly, taking a step back, which ensures that she starts to get tangled in the curtain surrounding the little area. "An /example/. Oh yes - let's parade Sanriel's 'misdeeds' to everyone."
Sanriel can't help but draw the same conclusion as Ilesyn, and glares at C'daer. "You yourself aren't a good enough example?"
Querying, "Huh?" up towards the Healer, Der then directs a betrayed look at Sanriel. "I mean, it was one night, and this is what happened. It's a pretty good incentive, you have to admit, since they can't Stand if they get pregnant."
Ilesyn rolls her eyes, commenting, "I would think that pointing out a candidate who could not stand, because of being pregnant, would be a far better idea. Most of them seem to be horrified at the mere suggestion, though, in my experience."
Deeply offended, Sanriel just stares at C'daer, her eyes speaking volumes.
"We don't always -have- someone who could stand except they're pregnant," Daer protests to Ilesyn. "You can't just pull them out of nowhere." He starts to look guilty as he continues to feel the full impact of Sanriel's stare. "Hey, it's me too," he complains, "they can't stand if they -get- someone pregnant either."
"Then don't use an example, at all," Ilesyn notes, providing a solution. "I think /you/ need your head examined, if you think it's a good idea to point Sanriel out as someone who made a mistake, but lived up to the consequences." She snorts, loudly, her head shaking.
For once, Sanriel and Ilesyn agree perfectly. "In fact, it's incredibly pretentious." Sanriel adds, picking up as though Ilesyn were still talking "Especially for someone who can't stand up to his own /mother/, much less the consequences of his actions." All right, perhaps a bit vindictive at the end, but San is still feeling the sting ofthe suggestion.
C'daer stares from Ilesyn to Sanriel, bewildered by the force of disapproval from them both. "But that isn't what I meant," he protests to the first. "I meant, we only, er, once, and she got pregnant. And teenagers, you know how they are, they think just once won't hurt and they won't get caught. And leave my mother out of this."
A sharp nod punctuates Ilesyn's agreement - may the world end - to Sanriel's words. "What's more," she continues smoothly, "Teenagers don't even take notice of examples; they're sure that even that which they see will never happen to them - but that is /not/ the point. Your presumption degrades Sanriel, and yourself, and I think you fear your mother too much. Do you want to talk about it?"
Sanriel nods counterpoint, giving the two crafters a frighteningly similar mien. "I'm surprised you'd even mention it, C'daer. Really. Why don't you use Miake as an example? Or Dorin, or... Anyone else, basically."
"Because," Daer says, as if trying to explain something to a child, "Miake and I didn't just do it -once- before she got pregnant. Oh, never mind. I suppose it won't kill the Weyr if all the candidates get each other pregnant and none of them can stand."
Ilesyn points out, quite reasonably for once, "It's never been a problem any other time, has it?"
"Well," huffs Sanriel, turning her attention back to Cedriel. This is /not/ turning out the way she'd hope. But then... What ever has?
Derailed, Daer admits grumpily to Ilesyn, "I guess not." His feathers all ruffled, he turns to Sanriel and asks stiffly, "Will you be staying here for a bit, or going back to your own rooms? I can come and visit whenever, right?"
Ilesyn gives a rather self-satisfied nod, smirk setting itself onto her face, somewhat triumphant. "Good," she agrees, taking another step back, nearly tripping over the curtain.
"As long as I'm not busy," Sanriel grumps. "I'm going back to my rooms as soon as Jori allows. And back home as soon as Cedriel is safe to fly with."
C'daer's mouth opens and closes several times before, carefully, he asks, "Back home?"
Ilesyn nods again, even more firmly - united as a front with Sanriel, for once, although she spares Cedriel a somewhat hesitant, eyebrow raised glance. Shudder.
"Oh, not /permanently/," Sanriel says airily, as though she just realized how that could be interpreted. "But I'd like to introduce my son to my 'family'." And even more belated - with just a tinge of remonstrance as though she shouldn't even have to say it. "The Hall, you know."
C'daer lets out his breath and says, carefully, "I thought you meant giving up your posting." Thoughtfully, as he turns to Ilesyn, "Say, would you like to have some sessions with my mother? Some adjusting might really help."
"I think /you/ might be better off as the one having the sessions," remarks Ilesyn in response, smoothly, "but if she's willing, I might be able to fit her in."
"Oh, no," Sanriel puts in quickly "I'd /never/ do that. I /need/ it for my Mastership!" And then, to Ilesyn "You haven't met her yet, have you? She's Leyrith and Avila with a little bit of spite and /alot/ of rock-salt mixed in."
Carefully reaching to touch Cedriel's head again, Daer nods with relief at Sanriel and then says bitterly, "Ma refuses to understand that I can't handfast Miake because I'm a dragonrider, for one thing."
Ilesyn's eyebrows lift, a twist of amusement falling into place about the generous width of her lips. "I think she and I will work well together, then," remarks the healer, "Although I can see that your plight is a little on the difficult side, C'daer. Perhaps have a ceremony of sorts - a weyrmating ceremony, to appease her?"
Sanriel chuckles, amused by the similar conclusion. "Or perhaps he should just tell her the complete truth, and the fact that he weyrmated anyone at /all/ will seem much more acceptable in her eyes..."
C'daer says with honest amazement towards Ilesyn, "How did you know we're going to do that? And Sanriel, I -told- her I weyrmated Miake, you know that - ah shards. I'm late." He unfolds himself to stand, reluctantly, hand lingering on Cedriel's tiny shoulder.
Ilesyn smiles again, allowing it to spread more evenly about her lips, as she dips her head towards C'daer, "I guess I'm just perceptive - or perhaps," a pause, "Great minds think alike." Again, she nods her head, "Off you go, deserting your son, already."
Ilesyn's lips do twitch, however, at Sanriel's comment. "Indeed."
"Thanks for coming," Sanriel overlaps Ilesyn's statement with her own, then eyes the Healer. She has merit, occasionally. "Duty calls, of course."
C'daer rolls his eyes, but attempts a friendly clout at Ilesyn's shoulder on his way out. "I'll tell her you want to talk with her, I appreciate it, Ilesyn! And of course, Sanriel. I'll be back as soon as I can."
Ilesyn doesn't duck - no doubt, she doesn't even see it coming, regarding C'daer's retreating back with something resembling consideration. Hm. "You're, ah, welcome, I think," she agrees, drawing her hands deeper into her pockets, shoulders hunching.
Sanriel turns immediately to Ilesyn. "We think frighteningly alike, at times." She announces without preamble.
C'daer walks off northwestwards to the center bowl.
Ilesyn's bushy eyebrows lift equally immediately, somewhat in surprise. "We are?" She pauses, her head tilting to the side as she considers this, fingers closing about each other. "I suppose we are," she agrees. "Opinionated, stubborn, but with some of the same ideas, on occasion."
Sanriel smiles, considering that admission to be a truce. Or as much of a truce as anyone could elicit from Ilesyn. "Will you come see the baby now?" She offers one last time.
Ilesyn hesitates visibly, hovering over her edge of the curtained area, still mostly tangled in the curtain, since she's made no efforts to get out. "I, er--" finally, she nods. "As long as it doesn't smell, or scream, or pee near me," she notes, taking a hesitant step forward.
"He's sleeping," Sanriel says gently. "He won't do anything until he wakes up, and if we're not loud, he won't wake up for another hour or two." Moving slowly, nonthreatening gestures as though she were working with a skittish runner, she turns the child towards Ilesyn.
Ilesyn takes another step forward, and then a third, until she's standing beside the bed, peering down towards Cedriel. "He's still red, and funny looking," she notes, in a voice that is /slightly/ quieter than her usual one.
Sanriel conquers her motherly indignation enough to chuckle a bit and admit "He /is/, isn't he? But he'll outgrow it." Stroking a hand over his wispy hair, she prompts. "Feel his skin - he's so soft!"
"And then he'll get teeth to bite people with," notes Ilesyn, full of cheerful promise for the future. "That's what my nephews and nieces got." She does, however, after another long pause, bring one hand down to touch the baby's skin - thankfully, she's not vindictive, and doesn't go for the hand-over-mouth technique.
Sanriel raises an eyebrow but deigns not to comment on that, instead focusing on the fact that Ilesyn has, ever so slightly, opened up to her. "He's something else, all right." She agrees blandly.
Ilesyn turns her head, watching Sanriel, rather than Cedriel. "You really love him, don't you," she comments, without letting it become a question.
Sanriel nods. "I do. I didn't think I would, but I do." And then, tacked on for Ilesyn's benefit "Probably a result of labor. Bringing him into the world, and all that."
"The pain," surmises Ilesyn, no doubt wrongly, her nose wrinkling spectacularly. "After all that, you have to convince yourself that it was worth it."
"Of course," Sanriel echoes, echoing the gesture, though more in rejection of Ilesyn's diagnosis than anything else. She opens her mouth to say more, but can't think of anything. A conflict in interests - to defend the young, or to defeat the enemy.
Ilesyn's not, however, easily fooled. "You don't agree with me," she notes, owlishly. "What would you say?"
"I would say..." She searches for the right words "That it is a feeling beyond explanation. Women have suffered more and loved less. This," gesturing to the babe "is a masterpiece of the body, nearly a year in the works."
Ilesyn's expression turns distant, as she, too, searches for the right way to respond to that, shifting her position so that she leans up against the wall beside the bed, her knees bent. "Yet another thing that I cannot understand, without having gone through it. Without," she adds, quickly, "/wanting/ to go through it. Would you do it again?"
Sanriel takes a moment to honestly consider. "No," she decides finally. "I would do it right next time. With someone who loves me." She gestures towards the opening in the curtains, indicating the long-departed bronzerider. "Not a /bronzerider/." As though bronzeriders are incapable of love.
"Does this mean," Ilesyn wonders, following up the answer with another rapid question, "that you will avoid sexual relations until you find love? I have to agree with your sentiments on bronzeriders, of course; they are just as bad as brownriders, in my opinion."
"Worse," Sanriel corrects, "And when do you think I'll have /time/ for such things, with two children and a carreer to nurture?" She demands in response.
"Worse, then," agrees Ilesyn, with a shrug of her shoulders. "Two children? Oh-- wait. I remember." Her smile is quietly pressed into service again, "I thought you were going to foster."
"I am. But my son won't be old enou... 'My son'" She pauses to taste the words, having never said them before. "My son... That's amazing, do you know? My masterpiece, the culmination of my ambition, my Mastership. My son." A potentially frightening connection - for Cedric's future, at least.
Ilesyn's expression is maintained without insight into Sanriel's actions; it approaches being downright perplexed, brows furrowing together like twin stormclouds as she attempts to wrap her mind around the momentous nature of this, for Sanriel. "I suppose it must be," she agrees, at long last.
Sanriel is entwined deep within her own imagination, puzzling out the complexities of her revelation. After a long moment, she shakes out of her reverie, trying to remember what Ilesyn said, forming a reply. "Oh, it is."
Ilesyn draws herself up from the wall, quickly, somewhat nervously. "I should leave you two. To, uh, get to know each other, or something." She's turned distinctly uncomfortable again, all of a sudden.
"I am a little tired," San admits in an in incredible feat of understatement. "Come back and talk to me again, Ilesyn. It's nice to be peaceful wth you." It's so rare.
"You look like death warmed over," notes Ilesyn, frankly. "I'll-- see. If I, uh, can spare the time." She manages to bow her head, as if to agree with Sanriel's statements, ducking out as best she can without tangling herself in the curtainry - somehing she fails at, although at least she doesn't bring it down with her.
Sanriel sighs, to tired to laugh. Cedriel is laid in the cradle set at her bedside for that purpose, and she falls very nearly immediately to sleep.
Posted by Louise at January 29, 2003 11:19 AM