Temper, temper!

Breelands Weather

The early night summer air is very hot and dry around you. The night sky is cloud-filled and gloomy.

Infirmary

The Infirmary is an area of clean floorboards and white walls. Not a speck of dust or dirt can be found here. Three beds are available for patient\'s use, each one with a small trunk at its foot for the patient\'s personal items and a place where a medical chart can be hung. Between the three beds, two curtains have been hung on poles creating a sense of privacy for each invalid, yet allowing the healer\'s an easy view in. A cabinet with bottles, pouches and scrolls can be seen toward the back of the room. A small chair rests beside it. A set of wooden shelves holds a wash basin, towels and extra blankets. The single window in the infirmary looks out over the front rose garden.

Contents:

Doin

Thari

Obvious exits:

Curtain to Main Room

[Thari(#31038)]

The day has been hot and has lead to fitful sleeping for some of the wounded dwarves, but though Thari has shifted around quite a lot during the day, but she has rarely awakened.

Night is coming now. Crickets have begun to sing outside and the fiery light of sunset has turned to a more soothing grey tone. It is in this twilight moment that Thari\'s eyes open again. Her face is towards Frarin\'s cot and thus her gaze settles on him first.

[Frarin] Seeming to rest peacefully at long last, Frarin moves very little in his sleep. He lays still upon his back and his white patient\'s robe bulges all along the left side, from shoulder to hip. Indeed, his left leg lies outwith the blankets atop him, held in a sort of sling above the bed. The fingers protruding from his bandaged left arm are black and blue. But there is some improvement in the silver merchant. Sweat still gathers on his brow, but it seems a function now of the weather rather than fever.

And indeed, a quick question to one of the healers in the main room beyond the infirmary curtain might reveal that his fever has broken in the early morning hours before dawn that very day. As of yet, however, Frarin has not yet awoken from his deep slumber.

[Doin(#32187)] From the evening air, another of the dwarves enters, but luckily by the strength of his own uninjured legs. Doin passes through the various patients in their beds, staying out of the way of the occasional passing healer, and comes to the beds of his kin.

Noting that it is Thari who is awake, and Frarin yet slumbers, the Warder approaches and, as soft as his gruff voice can make, says, \"I\'d bid a good morning, though it is nearing the evening.\" A bit of a smile forces through his beard, in spite of his worry for these here.

Thari uses her right arm to shift her blankets down a bit. Her own left side is also thick with bandages, her left leg too held by a sling.

She glances down suddenly as Doin approaches. \"Is it evening?\" she asks. \"I thought it was nearly dawn. Ah, hail to ye, Dorin\'s son. It does me good to see you still alive.\"

[Frarin] Frarin draws a deep breath in his sleep and his bandaged left arm rises with his chest, but the breath is cut short with a passing grimace. His lips part to expell the breath, lightly blowing the ends of his mustache. Then, with hardly a movement to signal his awakening, his eyelids part to become slits. Gradually, they widen somewhat, then open all of the way.

The silver merchant\'s gaze is foggy to be sure, encumbered by grogginess and whatever drugs to have been administered in the past few days, but it is clear, focused. Still, he makes no movement, and only one watching him might notice the open eyes. He blinks slowly several times, staring at the ceiling.

[Doin(#32187)] \"Alive among few,\" Doin answers reluctantly. \"Though I should feel ashamed to have weathered battle with not but my share of bruises, while you all lie here, in this state.\" He gestures at the pair of them, seemingly identical in their injury. And it is with that gesture that he glances to Frarin and sees him slowly awake.

\"Another late riser,\" the Warder comments to Thari with a tip of his head towards the silver merchant.

[Thari(#31038)]

\"Bah.\" Thari\'s eyes close in what starts as a blink but lingers tiredly. They open again to rest on Doin. \"It\'s lucky for all of us that you had enough skill to make it out of there. Probably the very reason we\'re alive instead of in a cookpot.\"

At the Warder\'s last comment, Thari\'s head turns on the bed again, braid shifting on the sheets. She studies the silversmith. \"Frarin?\" Her left arm, seeming uninjured, gingerly reaches out for him but it falls weakly as soon as leaving the bed. She gives a cry of pain and tilts back her head.

[Frarin] The silver merchant\'s slow blinking continues for a short while after Doin\'s recognition of Frarin\'s wakening. The gaze remains directed at the ceiling, for though it is clear, there is confusion also. At last Frarin\'s head rolls sleepily to the side at Thari\'s utterance of his name. His eyes are unstill, darting and blinking as he looks at her, and no recognition comes yet.

Instead, he opens his mouth for a moment, looking from Thari to Doin to the other cots in the infirmary. \"Where am I?\" he near whispers, voice grating after nearly a week of non-use.

[Thari(#31038)] \"Ah!\" Thari uses her right hand to grip the sleeve of her left and pull it back up to the bed. Her head is still tilted back, neck arched, and she breathes hard while doing this.

Once settled, she spends a moment or two just trying to calm down her breathing. \"In Bree, you daft old fool, you\'re in Bree and so am I.\" Every breath is now accompanied by a quick wince.

[Doin(#32187)] \"Easy!\" Doin calls, voice a touch louder than he intended in this place. He doesn\'t, however, help the arm because he\'d just as likely hurt it more. \"At this rate, those of us who -did- make it out will have to carry you all home.\"

To Frarin, he utters, \"Healer\'s House. And lucky for it, it seems. They\'ve taken suitable care of you, for what I can tell.\" He makes a gesture of it, and glances about the room.

[Frarin] Frarin\'s muzzy gaze does not clear up right away, even with Thari\'s pained exclamation and terse reply to his question. His head rolls back to the ceiling, as if having heard only the words, not the voices to have spoken them. \"No,\" he says, voice low but growing above the whisper. \"I thought I had left the Healing House already.\" Perhaps something at the back of his mind remembers only his injuries before the battle a week ago, for he shifts suddenly as if to rise. Instantly his face goes white, not even the healer\'s drugs enough to keep at bay the pain of shifting shoulder, ribs and hip all at once.

Grunting and breathing hard all of a sudden, Frarin gasps, \"Oh...I did.\" His eyes flick to the sling in which his left leg hangs, then roll upwards. \"I did not have that before.\" The comment is almost comical except that Frarin leaves no time for the humour to sink in.

Drawing a sudden breath of realisation, he grimaces at the same time as his head rolls back to his right. This time there is recognition pushing beyond the tired gaze. \"Thari!\" he mutters hoarsely, apparently at a loss for any further words at the moment.

[Thari(#31038)]

\"We could just wait here until we\'re healed,\" Thari answers Doin in a disgruntled tone. \"We haven\'t been home for years, what\'s one more to add to it?\"

Thari stares hard at the ceiling as Frarin speaks and waits like this for a moment, lips pressed together. She finally tilts her head aside so she can look at his face, and oh, there is a silvery spark in her grey eyes! \"Why did you come?\" she demands. \"We were working to protect you and Bree and you came! What were you thinking? Wake up!\"

Another hard breath, but after a brief consideration, she glances down to Doin. \"Would you mind terribly fetching a cup of water for him?\"

[Doin(#32187)] A grunted response is Doin\'s answer to Thari, but again he vocalizes, \"Easy, Frarin!\" as the other in stricken by his pain. A shake of the head, and he steps back while Thari begins to loose on the silver merchant. And it is quite anxiously that he nods and says, \"Water, aye, I\'ll be back with it... if you spare him.\" A gruff chuckle carries back while he spins about to search for said cup of water.

[Frarin] It is relief that glazes over Frarin\'s sweating face as he utters Thari names, but the healer dwarf has clearly had more time than Frarin to form thoughts beyond relief and stew upon her anger. At her outburst, his groggy gaze clears at last with a blink that screws his eyes shut for a moment before snapping open. Wake up he does. At first his expression is one of confusion as his tired mind struggles to place what exactly she is speaking about, and he even has the sense to nod gratefully to Doin as the Warder goes to find water.

But then realisation seems to roll over Frarin. Whatever scattered memories he has, he seems at least to know what Thari is so angry about. No look of embarrassment or guilt crosses his face, however. Perhaps being yelled at so soon after such deep and fitful sleeps drives Frarin into a defensive position, his foggy thoughts yet to fully form themselves.

\"I thought you were dead!\" he says, voice still very low and cracking, but spoken with force. There is a quiet indignation in his tone. \"Do you think I would be foolish enough--\" But whatever rhetorical question he means to ask is put on hold, for the force of his speech brings a racking cough from his chest.

[Thari(#31038)]

\"Thank you,\" Thari growls to Doin, her eyes still on Frarin. Her hand starts to reach for the silversmith again when he starts to cough.

She is silent for a moment, the crickets\' song coming to the fore, and Doin\'s footsteps on the wooden floor. Her face relaxes a bit, the ire seeming to leave her-- but there is something else in her eyes to make them still rather intense. \"Don\'t be working yourself up like that, Forli\'s son. Calm down. Why would you think me dead? Didn\'t I tell you that I\'d see you again?\"

[Doin(#32187)] It takes asking a little to get his bearings toward drinkable water, but Doin eventually returns with a cup for each of them, weaving back and coming between their beds. \"One for the both\'a you,\" he announces, holding them forth, though perhaps they might need more help drinking than that. \"Drink up, master Frarin, and rid yourself of that cough.\"

[Frarin] Although his cough has dissipated to a low rumble at the back of his throat, Frarin is still unable to respond to Thari. He gratefully nods and accepts the proffered cup of water from Doin with his good right arm. Awkwardly, he raises his head a meagre inch from the pillow and brings the cup to his lips. The cool liquid spills into the brown beard, but not even a cocktail of painkillers seems able tempt the silver merchant into raising his head anymore. In any event, a sufficient amount of water reaches his mouth to clear the dry catch there.

Setting the cup precariously on the bed sheet besides him, Frarin says quietly, \"My thanks, Master Doin.\" To Thari, however, still with the same weary expression, he raises his right hand and points an accusing finger at her. \"You have no place to talk about getting worked up,\" he rebukes in a mutter, irritated. He does not answer her question though, for he continues with, \"I am awake not a full minute and you are tossing out accusations. Durin, what is the day?\"

[Thari(#31038)]

\"No place getting worked up, he says,\" Thari mutters. \"Oh, thank you, Doin.\" She, too, lifts her head only a little to drink, and so the drink spills into her gold-streaked beard. She sets the cup down with her good right hand.

\"I see him nearly dead, about die myself from the worry and fright, nurse him to health well enough to move him somewhere safe,\" Thari is giving a resentful monologue to the ceiling at this point. \"Then I go to battle the same troll and lo! There is Forli\'s son, who a week ago was half-dead!\" Her hand gestures upward.

\"Then I am lifted up on a pony and go to get him, too weak to pull him up on the pony with me, then wake to find myself here.\" There is a pause while she presses her lips shut and glares at the ceiling. \"Dressed in new clothes by the breefolk-- who knows what they\'re whispering about now-- and too hurt myself to tend after Forli\'s son. They\'re probably doing it all wrong.\"

[Doin(#32187)] A curt nod is Doin\'s reply to both of their thanks, and he backs away to find a stool or chair to sit on nearby. He lowers himself gingerly onto it, his own stiffness demonstrating his more minor rewards of battle. \"I\'ve not heard any whispers yet,\" he replies to Thari, \"though it likely wouldn\'t happen around me anyhow. That breefolk healer certainly seemed willing to the challenge, though.\"

That said, he looks about for said healer, also noting the others who have been laid here.

[Frarin] If Thari\'s resentful monologue is meant to guilt Frarin into submission, it does not succeed. Indeed, as one irritated by a rude awakening, he refuses to back down. He looks almost odd, head still laid upon the pillow, side bandaged beyond the possibility of movement, only his right hand moving. And his voice is still low and weak, but the anger there is still evident.

\"It was more than a week,\" he whispers harshly, likely working himself up to another cough. If the healers in the main room could but see their two most grievously wounded patients arguing like this. \"And I could walk and ride by the time I left Bree. Do you really think me foolish enough to ride out with a chest of barely healed ribs with the intent of doing battle?\" Again his finger is directed angrily at Thari to further his point. He almost stammers in his effort to steady his breathing while simultaneously berating the healer.

\"You said, you /said/,\" he mutters, \"that I would see you again unless the host came to Bree, in which case you would likely be dead. Well, the host came and went and no news followed, nothing to suggest that anyone I cared anything for was still alive. I did not ride out to challenge that filth, even though my heart bid me do so. I rode out to, to find what might remain.\" The tirade is quick and half whispered, forceful and angry, and by the time Frarin has finished his face is pale and beading with more sweat. His head rolls wearily back to stare at the ceiling, brows stitched together in anger and weariness, but there is also a hint of something else in his gaze. Something akin to sadness.

[Thari(#31038)]

Thari nods to Doin. \"Well, thank ye for listening. If word gets out I don\'t know that I can ever come to Bree again.\"

Thari\'s mouth works and her head turns again to the left to face her friend. Silence stretches out again as the evening darkens. Someone in the next room lights a lamp which casts long shadows into this one and a path of light through the door.

Finally, she speaks. \"I would have done the same, dear Frarin. I did not know the host had come here.\"

[Doin(#32187)] Doin listens quietly to the conversation between the two, a hand stroking absently at his beard. Almost reluctantly, he murmurs to Thari, \"Aye, it did indeed come here.\" But that is almost all that he interjects. He seems to become distracted by watching the way the new-shed light flickers off of the woodwork in the floor, and the sheen of metal from the lamp. Alas, stick something shiny in front of him and you\'d have to fight his attention back.

[Frarin] \"Aye well, they did,\" Frarin mutters in irritated retort to Thari\'s concession, nodding violently as Doin backs up his own statement. Were one of his arms not heavily bandaged or his chest broken, this might be the point at which he angrily crosses his arms over his chest. As it is, his frown only deepens and his right fist clenches at his side. He stubbornly refuses to look again at Thari.

Loathe though he might be to admit it, it is perhaps fortunate that most of Frarin\'s body is numb of pain. But even devoid of pain, he looks worse now than when he had awoken. His face is drawn and pale and haggard. And beneath the stubborn anger, there is a lingering sense of hurt that is not the product of physical pain.

[Thari(#31038)]

Thari\'s glance goes from between watching Frarin to studying the woodwork much like Doin. She sighs, and it turns into a hard cough. Her face turns red and clenches from the pain.

A sip is taken from the water, and then the healer looks at the ceiling again. \"Forgive me,\" she says, deep and low.

[Doin(#32187)] Drawn to the two once more by their seperate accounts of pain, Doin stands with a soft grunt, and excuses himself with a bare, \"I\'ll be back, you two.\" If he were to tell them he was going to send a healer their direction to check on them, they\'d probably have protested... so he simply excuses himself wordlessly and moves into the other room.

[Frarin] Frarin continues to stare at the ceiling, even as Thari offers what must be a difficult apology. His frown remains, but the brows slowly relax and the new candles flickering light through the room draw dark shadows across his face. Now, more than anything he looks tired.

Clearing his throat, Frarin\'s head rolls to face right again and he beholds Thari with the same frown as she stares up at the ceiling. Then the frown retreats and a sad smile slips in, barely visible in the dimming light. \"Don\'t,\" he says quietly, all harshness gone now from his voice. \"I...Don\'t.\" That, it seems, is all he can manage to put into words. But there is the sense in his tone that he understands Thari\'s worry and, with his own temper now abated, wants no explanation for her words.

[Thari(#31038)]

Thari inclines her head just a little at Doin\'s departure, more to be polite than anything, for up she still looks, lips pressed together. Her right hand reaches up and tugs at her beard. \"It\'s not easy,\" she says in the same low tone, voice gone raspy, \"To watch you dying and not knowing if I am able to stop it.\" She doesn\'t look at him.

[Frarin] The silver merchant keeps his head facing towards Thari, but his eyes descend in thought, almost closing altogether. Then they open slowly, as if having come close to drifting back into sleep. \"You are not alone in that sentiment,\" he murmurs, and now there is a hint of deliberate humour. Indeed, he smiles again around his weariness.

\"But you are a healer,\" Frarin continues quietly. \"And a dwarf, and a citizen of this Middle Earth. I doubt this is your first such experience, and will not be your last. If I was meant to have died, then...well, then it would have been. Do you understand? I cannot act against my nature, to refrain from entering battle for the aid of others, only to spare others the pain of my...departure.\"

[Thari(#31038)]

Thari\'s head tilts a little toward him, but it is a moment before her eyes flick to meet his. The gaze is shadowed and is just as soon moved away, to look at his hand.

\"I know,\" she says, voice tired and sad in its quiet tones. \"So many have already died as I have tended them, even just since we left Rivendell. I didn\'t want you to go with them yet. You did aright, of course.\"

[Frarin] Frarin drops his voice even more than before, eyes flicking around the infirmary to check if any Breelanders linger there. With none nearby, Frarin says, \"Thari, I have lived now one-hundred-seventy-three years, and more than half of that has been on the road. I have no spouse, no children. Where lies my duty but in the protection of others I travel with?\"

His eyelids flutter quietly down, then up again. \"But let us speak no more of it. Friends, mm? It is an ill will that bids us argue with each other when there are still foes abroad. We should rest, you and I.\"

Thari\'s eyes widen and focus suddenly on Frarin\'s face as if in surprise or something alike. After a moment of staring at him thus, she closes them again and settles her head back in the pillow. When next they are opened, it is the ceiling they again observe.

\"Rhiffarth told me that our work is done. Our foes are scattered. We are finished.\" For such joyous news, her voice is low and subdued.

[Frarin] Frarin\'s face changes at this newest piece of news from the healer. His brows rise and he moves again to stare at the ceiling, sleep temporarily put off awhile longer. \"Did he?\" says the silver merchant quietly. \"Did he indeed? That...that is good.\" Perhaps Thari\'s subdued tone stems from thoughts of the losses suffered to bring about such a fortune, but Frarin at least seems quietly content. A smile of sorts grows slowly on his face, expressed more in his eyes and cheeks than his mouth.

\"Then we have done it. Against all odds and after many months, we have accomplished what we swore to.\"

Thari\'s eyes drop tiredly closed, but still she speaks. \"I am ready to go home. Perhaps it is good that these Breefolk give no credence to what we have done, but for me, all I can think of is the sound of the forges, the glittering halls, and my father\'s face. I am glad that we are done.\"

[Frarin] \"Yes, yes we are done,\" Frarin murmurs. \"My feet will be grateful for a rest from this weary road of ours.\" And slowly he falls into silence, his eyelids drooping again as he looks towards the ceiling. His right arm comes to rest gently on his bruised but unbroken right side. Gradually, the merchant\'s breathing becomes longer and deeper, but before sleep takes him entirely, he speaks once more. The gentle candlelight still create shadows in the crevices of his face, but now he appears more at ease, less strained.

\"I am glad that you were right, my friend, and did not die.\" Then he is gone, slipping back into a sleep that is hastened by medicine and, finally, a sense of peace as well.

[Thari(#31038)]

There is silence for a while again, perhaps even after Frarin has fallen asleep. \"I am glad that you were right, too, and I saw you again,\" Thari finally says in a murmur. Her head slides to the left and she studies him in the shadows as he sleeps for a while before slumber overtakes her as well.