Welcome to Gaia! ::

The smell was everywhere. It was in her hair, stuck in her nose and infused into her clothes. But after the first few minutes of stirring the evil smelling brew Roana managed to control her gag reflex to focus on the job at hand. It was easier than thinking to hard. Thanks to some sort of sickness within High reaches weyr other wings in other weyr's had been scrambled to fill the gaps in their fighting formations. However thanks to the patch work nature of the new partnerships and lack of cohesive training plus the exhaustion of dragon and riders already fighting and flying their normal rounds thread score injuries were becoming an epidemic.

Thus Ro felt she had been doing nothing but stirring numb weed solidly for the last seven days. The candidates were paired off over individual patches which then had to be carted out into the weyr bowl once a healer had given their approval the mix was ready. But it was safe to say Roana's mind was not on the work. Nyeh sat on her shoulder, the small gold unbothered by the numbweed fumes as she stretched out her delicate wings. But the gold only ever spent any length of time with the red head when her favorite napping spots of Diesteths head and back were unavailable to her. Which meant the pair were out on the morning's thread hunt.

At first the revelation had caused some minor anxiety for the pirate candidate but each time she carted out a batch of numbweed there seemed to be another thread scored rider pair being tended to by the over worked healers. Ro's worry intensified with each viewing till it was bordering on fear. After the loathsome numbeweed task was finished the candidates were set at the disposal of the healers as runners. Fetching other medical supplies and sending messages. Getting a chance to get even closer to the injured riders did not help the situation. Ro's stomach lurched at the thought of seeing Diesteth with his wing tattered and torn like the poor green. Or Nicara with her clothes burned away and a thread score down her back like forking lighting.

At last with a chaos of bulging dragons the sky split with the rest of the back up wing returning from between. Since all the injured had been sent on only a few minor wounded separated from the main pack to join the healers group. Few enough that the healers could deal with them without the candidates help. When the young healer that Ro was working with motioned her back without instruction the redhead decided to take that as dismissal. She slowly backed away into the entrance of the weyr's main building structure, then she turned and started to run. With a disgruntled squeak at the change of pace Nyeh launched herself from Ro's shoulder and vannished between, going ahead of Ro to her detestation of the Blue riders residence. Racing her way past lower cavern workers and riders alike till she reached Nicara's privet weyr. Not bothering to knock she pushed the door in and barreled inside. Her heart was hammering in her chest and her breath was ragged from the combination of the run and mounting fear as all the injured dragons marched through her head baring scarred and mutilated riders.

The first thing Ro saw was blood, a smear of hand print in dirty crimson. That alone was enough to make her insides convulse like she had just swallowed ice water too fast. She was hurt? Why hadn't she seen her at the healers? Where was Diesteth? Usually she could hear the great blue shuffling around on his ledge or the soft timber of his head dragon breaths, but neither were present.

Her breath seemed trapped in her chest, refusing to come out or move past her lips at all, so when she saw Nicara sprawled out on the bed all she was able to manage was a high pitched squeaked exclamation of her name. All she saw was the blue rider lying still, sprawled unnaturally on her front and of course, more blood. She rushed over to the women waving away Nyeh from her position on the small women's back. The gold chittered again and flew up to land in Ro's mass of hair which she used as a nest quite often.

Meanwhile Ro called out to her friend again. "Nicara?" he called worry lacing her tone as she carefully gripped Nicara's shoulders and rolled her onto her front. She even made sure to roll her in the direction of her un-bloodied arm so that the injury would not be crushed in the move. She looked down at her , taking a breath to see she was at least conscious. "Nicara, what the hell are you doing here? You're hurt, you should be down with the healers! And wheres Diesteth?" she demanded glancing more to the empty ledge that the dragon usually occupied. "Did you put this numb weed on yourself? It's terrible, its not even cleaned or bandaged properly." Ro was no healer but she had been watching the healers work all morning so she had picked up the basics of treating thread score. She also had basic first aid skills from life. Out in the open ocean a healer was not usually to hand.

Ros face was wrinkled and creased with her concern it had also drained of almost all its colour, her workers clothes stank and were smeared with grime. Her hair had been a mess before but now with a firelizard nesting there it was even worse. Combined it made the poor girl look ten turns older than her tender 19 summers.