Recovery

Nidus Ryslen wasn't home, really, but Ari didn't exactly have her old home to go back to.

More than her blood relations or the place she was born, Micah had been her home. Ari supposed, looking back, that she'd been in love. Fifteen was hardly an age at which she could have known what love was, but since Micah there hadn't been anything quite the same. Small comforts existed - the steam rising off a mug of tea, drifting flakes of snow, removing a bandage to reveal that a wound had finally knit closed - but nothing really made her feel like she was home.

For a long time, Ari had accepted that maybe she wasn't meant to feel at home. The world was her liminal space.

Ryslen had been kind to her. Her dearest friend had died in the care of their healers, and the drift happened shortly after, and the whisperings that there would be no Hatching. She stayed, for lack of anything better to do. The walls of the infirmary that once felt like they were crashing in around her became the only semblance of "home" she had.

Young, displaced, and nearly crippled by loss, she stayed. The healers and the Nidus administration, whether out of charity or pity, let her. She ate what was given to her, accepted the quarters she was offered, and survived. When she finally emerged from her grief-induced stasis, she shadowed the healers. Ari picked up the craft at a swift pace. Idle hands had been her crutches. The healers' craft, mending the broken (and realizing that she was one of many broken people), became her rock. She never asked for anything beyond her meals and her living quarters. Ari felt that, though she'd never be truly whole again, she had her mentors to thank for what recovery she managed.

Her experience both numbed and healed her, the way some patients had to be anesthetized before they could be mended. Losing Micah had felt like losing her heart. A piece of her would always be missing, but she functioned. Humans could live, she learned, with a single kidney or lung. The resilience of the human body made Ari realize that she could live without her heart. A shorter life, perhaps, and one she'd have to keep careful watch over, but a life nonetheless.

Death was something she encountered again and again. Patients died: some in her care, some before making it to an infirmary bed. After the first, rather than panic or hopelessness, Ari felt very little. She fell back on her studies. This one was inevitable: the injuries were too great, the prognosis grim. She felt a tug at what remained of her heart when she told the family, but also felt an odd peace. Death meant the end of pain. It was those left behind who had to carry on broken. She understood that her pain was universal. She was still broken, but never alone.

Years passed like days. Ari was a teenager when she experienced her first death (her second, if you counted Micah). By the time she was in her twenties, she'd seen hundreds of them.

The Nidus didn't die, like many worried it would. It carried on. Ari didn't remember ever giving up on her dream of being a dragonrider, but it definitely fell by the wayside. It didn't help that there were no Hatchings, and no news from outside worlds. Regardless, there was always a place for her craft, and Ari saved far more lives than were lost. While not particularly charismatic or outgoing, she maintained a gentle demeanour. Her profession softened her once-prickly exterior. It was the kindness of healers that had brought her back from the brink; the least Ari could do was pay it forward.

She didn't keep track of birthdays, but her mentors did, and suddenly she was twenty-five and the whispers at Ryslen were changing.

They're back.

The dragons are coming again.

We're connected.

The Nexus.

It's snowing.

Ari looked up suddenly, almost dropping the jar of poultice she was holding.

"What?"

Her mentor's eyes, surrounded by crow's-feet lines, were glittering. "I said it's snowing. Look!"

Ari adjusted her grip on the jar - it wasn't like her to be so careless with medicines - and turned to look out the window. "Very funny. It hasn't snowed in-"

But oh, it was true. Fat white flakes, impossibly light despite their size, drifted past the window. Ari almost dropped the jar again. She stumbled toward the window, barely managing to place the jar on a table on the way.

They say there's going to be another Flurry.

The corners of her eyes prickled with tears. Keep it together, she tried to remind herself, but couldn't hold herself back. Ari let out a breath that didn't feel like her own. It came out hot, swift, and with a sound she hardly recognized. Her world spun. She clutched the frame of the window.

Micah.

A hand on her shoulder brought her back into the room.

"You've been waiting," came the voice, gentle as the drifting snow. "I think it's time."

Ari gasped. The air that rushed into her lungs felt cold. Had she forgotten to breathe?

She looked her mentor in the eyes, and the voice that she replied with surprised her.

"I think it's time, too."