Hydaelyn Role-Players

The clinic was a small and quaint place located in the Lower Docks of Limsa Lominsa with wooden floorboards and drab stone walls like most of the other buildings, but a few plants were sitting in the window and a colorful little banner hung from the outside to make it look better. Inside, there were four snow white cots lined up at different parts of the main room with a brick stove in the center where she usually prepared her meals while a few cabinets lined the connection of the wall to the ceiling to the left and right of the entrance. There was a large rug spread out across the middle of the room that likely would have been vibrantly colored if it age would have spared it, but now the dyes were vanishing from the tightly woven cotton threads and they had become only a dusty variation of sky blue, sun-bleached yellow, and a pastel pinkish color. A bookshelf in the back right corner was lined end to end with various books of random varieties and stood next to an open doorway protected only by strings of beads hanging down from its top. A long unopened door was to the left as well as a small staircase that lead to a place the outside suggested was an attic.

Catharine had lived here since she was just five winters past, and it for the most part stayed just as it had looked a very long time ago. Some things had been repurposed such as the glassware ware cabinet which had basically turned into her medicine cabinet; the lines of bandages and salves lined the little shelves visible through the little porthole window made this apparent. Her aunt had taken some of the stuff when she left, but she had not carried away too much and what was gone had been useless to Catharine anyhow. Other things, like the books on the shelves for example, were left alone or kept the same way. In fact, she had actually read most of them but she made sure to put them back in the exact same and incongruous manner her aunt had placed them there.

Today was not a day different than any other, and the singular nurse of the clinic did not appear any differently than she usually did. Her long, silvered hair was left trailing down to her shoulder-blades and was only kept out of her green-flecked cerulean eyes by a modest, petite headdress that complimented the faded blue longcoat she was currently wearing. Underneath she wore a black, sleeveless tunic hanging down to her middle thigh where she was wearing simple, drab, and equally loose cotton trousers that made it only about to her middle-shin. She was wearing a simple pair of sandals upon her feet that added to her modesty and her overall carefree appearance.

As result of her lax dressing manner, a hand made of ash wood could be seen hanging from her left sleeve in a loose and open position. Each section of the finely shaped wooden fingers were separated, held in place by what rarely ocurring glints of light would give off as metal. A closer inspection showed all the various scratches and burns that it had taken from time to time in its extended use as a replacement for a limb. She would have bothered to try and hide it, but she was currently in the company of someone who knew it was there and had seen it in full.

He was a hairy, slow Sea Wolf Roegadyn named Dyrsteyn, a fitting name since he spent most of his time posted around the Drowning Wench and had a real penchant for alcohol and a difficulty and getting drunk. She had already finished bandaging his wounds, and he was lying on one of cots now with both of his hands cushioning his head and displacing windswept hair. It had only been two knife cuts, neither really deep or close to any vital area, so he had really just come in to stop bleeding all over his outfit. She was lucky that all of her cots were made to take heavy loads for he would have easily snapped one made of weaker lumber.

“I’m sure glad yer still around, Missy. Hel- er, I sometimes don’t know what me and the guys’d do without ya fixin’ up the cuts ‘n bruises the other medics don’t bother with,” Dyrsteyn said, looking straight at the roof from his relaxed position.

“Honey, you just about broke my poor little heart not coming back to visit me and now you up and walk in more cut up than a bunch of leather strips. It’s been what, more than a year now?” Catharine replied with her mannerisms, as she sat on her stool nearby stitching the two cuts in the Roegadyn’s bright jacket with thread of the same color supplied by the Maelstrom.

“Ah think ye’ve done lost your sense of time- it ain’t been but a month or two since I las’ came in here. I ain’t gonna argue about me battle wounds, though!” This statement set the deep voice and the bright voice laughing simultaneously, causing a partway harmony in their joyous laughter.

“Oh hush, you. It felt like a year to me in this little clinic of mine. You ain’t swearing like you used to, are you?”

“Naw, Missy, ah used to soun’ like a real scurvy dog, but I’ve cleaned up now. Ah give ye m’ word!”

These exaggerations had become common between her and most patients, forming out of her fussy, motherly attitude, and the laughter it caused was some of the best medicine. She knew Dyrsteyn was telling a bald-faced lie given that she had overheard him not a week ago blathering a stream of profanity just “like a real scurvy dog”. She disapproved of it heavily, but she had been spying on him so she was just about as guilty as he was right now.

“Good, I know I didn’t teach you to be a fibber and an uncouth man like some of these kids running around the streets now.”

“…D’ ya think I can get me one of yer delicious dinners to take with me like las’ time?”
“Now, hun, you’re like my child, but last time, you came in here with a bullet in your chest and another in your shoulder; this was nothing but two scratches. Don’t they feed you up there at that bar?” she asked with a smile as she finished the stitching on the jacket. Reaching up into the sleeve, she pulled the lever on her arm and unclamped it from the fabric.

“Sure, but I hafta pay fer that and it ain’t nearly as good as yers!” replied the hulking man as he sat up with an indignant expression on his bearded face.

“…Aw fine, I know they don’t give enough food up there for a growing man like you. Here, let me get a fire started so I can cook some fish up. Put your shirt back on or else I won’t give you any,” she said, as she lightly tossed the finished yellow-jacket back to Dyrsteyn. He caught it and began to put it back on without protest, being content with the fact he was getting some of her delicious cooking. As soon as it was on, he went back to resting in the cot at staring at the roof.

Catharine pushed herself off the stool with her one real hand and went over to the two fish she had wrapped in cloth on the stove. She had cleaned them earlier, so she simply put both of them on spits and went to start up a light cooking fire. She had planned on making them into jerky, but that could easily wait until tomorrow.

It was a nice day and she was sure tomorrow would be as well. For now, the pleasant smell of the wood smoke was beginning to enter the room at miniscule levels and soon the aroma of the savory fish would be filling the room.

On this same day, a tall, black-horned Au Ra gentleman came limping to the doorstep of the Lominsan nurse. He wore a long, sleek robe of blue and red, with the odd tribal marking decorating the body of it. His hat, though extremely damaged, was made of a similar material to his robe, and was dyed to match its color. It was the standard sort of hat one would expect of a mage, wide-brimmed as well as long and pointed. The Au Ra stood, panting, at the door for what felt like eternity before giving it a weak knock.

"H... Hello? Miss Catharine? A-Are you there?" he inquired through the door, catching his breath after each question. He waited patiently propped against the doorframe until his help arrived.

Catharine had just set the spits over the fire and a pan under them to catch any savory juices that might drip from them when she heard the weak knock on the door. The breathlessness of the voice alarmed her as usually nobody came to her in a rush unless somebody had been hurt or their general health was severely damaged. The low knock was either out of polite respect or was merely because they could not manage to knock harder.

“I’m coming, dear!” she called out, trotting across the room at a brisk pace. As she opened the door, she put her left arm into a large pocket on the side of the coat out of habit. She looked up to the tall Au Ra man and gave him a warm smile in spite of her growing concern. Being in the business for so long never diminished how much you could get worried over others, she swore it may have made her even more fretful over time.

“What do you need, hon?” she asked the robed man in her sunny voice, looking somewhere at his face.

He was only just able to hold himself up on the door, his right hand clasped to his left hip in hopes of easing the pain. 

"I-I seem to have made a mess of myself, ma'am, and am--" the Xaela let forth a rough cough in the middle of his sentence before continuing. "-- i-in serious need of your care. I have heard... many good things about your c-clinic so I... made my way here..." 

His words became more labored with every breath, and it seemed he was on the very verge of collapsing. He winced in pain once more before finally succumbing to it, falling with a bizarre slowness to one knee, his hat falling off onto the floor along with him. 

"I am... N-Naranbaatar Arulaq... A th-thaumaturge... Hailing from the city of G-Gridania" He continued as he struggled back to his feet. "I was... training on the outskirts of the city when-- Ack!!-- one of my... own spells rebounded and I... was c-caught in the blast..."

At seeing the Xaela’s progressively declining condition and loss of ability to stand, Catharine immediately jumped to action.

“Shh, no need to explain to me right now, sugar. Here, can you walk?” she said as she tried to brace him with her right arm despite her severe lack of lifting ability. She mostly just had to get him out of the doorway, but she called to the Roegadyn for some assistance in moving Arulaq.

“Dyrstie, sweetie, can you help me a little here?” By the time she had finished, he had already made it to the Xaela’s side and had an arm under his right shoulder and began to help him to a cot. Catharine, knowing the burly Yellowjacket could handle it, calmly went towards the repurposed glassware cabinet and pulled out some anesthetic salve and a longer roll of hempen bandaging. Magic wounds were always odd to deal with and she presumed it to be at the hip, so she stuffed a clean needle and a small length of thread into her right pocket.

“Don’t put the child down too hard, sweetheart!” she called out across the room calmly.

She would get his hat in a minute; with how battered it looked, it probably could stand to lie on the ground for a little while.

"My thanks, doctor..." he said as he was helped to his feet and to the bed. The man, waving the Roe's hand away politely, climbed slowly onto the cot with a groan. It was an agonizingly slow process, and though he was grateful for the assistance, he felt that he needed to try to help himself to receive help. That was how it was, and always had been for him. 
As Naranbaatar heard Catharine voice her concerns over Dyrsteyn's handling of him, he could hardly help but to laugh, albeit with a pained cough midway through. 

"Doctor, you needn't worry too much about such things. If I can survive a blast of my own magic, I daresay I shall be all right if I am dropped onto such a soft cot."

“I just cleaned that one yesterday, so I’d hope it would be soft, hon. Dyrstie, sweetie, can you keep watch on the fish for me?” Catharine replied as she shooed the Roegadyn away.

Embarrassment and indignation showed on his face at being treated like a child in the presence of someone else, but his hunger overrode any feelings to protest her management. He sat down at the stove and watched the fish hungrily as Catharine calmly trotted over to her patient. She stood over Arulaq’s face and smiled warmly at him before getting started. Without any warning, she immediately lifted up his robe up past his hips so she could get at the wound.

“Oh, don’t worry, sweetheart. This is hardly a scratch; I’ll get it fixed up real quick-like.”

Dyrsteyn had bled a lot more than she would have wanted and it had left her pair of cotton gloves still soaking in a basin with a sanitizing herbal solution. She had a habit of washing her hands very well and she worked better bare handed, so she figured the Xaela would be fine enough.

Arulaq winced a bit at his robe being pulled so suddenly, his blood having dried substantially to the fabric during his walk to the clinic. 

"Rrrgh... Aye, ma'am, though 'tis much more painful than it appears..."

“Ah! I’m sorry about that, honey; I figured it would be less dried than that.” Catharine stepped back for a moment to pick up a wet rag with her right hand from the same basin the gloves were in and gently began to clean the blood out from around the large gash. It would have been likely running her cot red if it not for the quick rate it had dried.

She had been using her right arm for everything so far, but as she was soon finished gently cleaning out the area around the injury she had to begin using her prosthetic left forearm more. Laying her cleaning implement in the partially limp wooden hand, she took her real one and went up her sleeve to pull the lever to close it, making only a light click as it locked in at full tension around the cloth. Pulling out the greyish salve in her right pocket, she managed to uncap it using her thumb and emptied out a little of the contents onto the rag.

She began to hum a joyful and simple tune as she swapped which hands she had the rag in and continued to clean the edges around the gash in his hip. The salve worked simply by initially calming the reacting nerves and overriding them with a cool feeling and then progressing to lightly numb the whole area. She always appreciated the effects of jessamine and clary sage; it was relatively inexpensive and usually worked very well if not perfect. Sometimes it did not work, but it was generally safe to mix with other medicines anyways.

“There you go, sweetie. Does your ouchie hurt less now?”

It was not even aimed at the Yellowjacket and even he could not resist being embarrassed by that.

"Worry not, Doctor. I can bear the pain. I've been in far worse spots, after all." In saying this, he was only slightly exaggerating. Any worse injuries he'd sustained had all been quickly sealed by a healer's magicks. 

"As for the pain... It has subsided immensely. My thanks yet again..." He winced only slightly as he attempted to move to sit up. Once up, he gave a gentle smile of his own, if a bit awkward in execution. "I must say, your hands work near as fantastic as my sister's spells, and almost as fast, too. Pray, what is the cost of this visit?" He asked, reaching for his pouch.

At seeing the man start sitting up, Catharine jumped to try and stop him by catching his shoulders and gently pushing him back down onto the cot.

“Oh, no no no, hon! Lie back down for Missy, alright? Just because it feels like magic doesn't mean it works like it. I still need to wrap it up,” she tried to explain, smiling at him warmly.

She pulled out the bandages from her right pocket and clamped her prosthetic to it with another locking noise, still trying to hide it under the wide sleeves of her coat.

“Now, honey, can you bend your knee for me? I need to get this bandage in the right spot.”

Naranbaatar looked at her bewildered for a tick. 

"Missy....?" he whispered under his breath. He pondered on this disconnect between the nameplate outside her door and what she said, ultimately disregarding it as a nickname she'd given herself. He obeyed her order and lay back upon the cot, lifting his knee high so as to give his caretaker the proper access. He was not wholly unfamiliar with traditional medicine, but was yet unacustomed to it, much to his delight. It was not an overlong process, but he felt the urge to return to his previous task, and wished to see it to completion as soon as he was able. In his slight inpatience, he began tapping his finger on his chest as he looked up to the ceiling, not even fully knowing of his own action.

With the bustling life of Limsa Lominsa at it's height, the sound of voices echoing out around, it was around in the lower docks that something had happened. A tall Roegadyn male, with black skin and eyes of a deep, deep shade of green. He was carrying a bundle over his shoulder. The bundle looked to be a person. It was hard to tell what race, due to the heavy cloak around them, but with the slight groans heard it was clear that the person was still alive. Abit not able to move on their own, since the Roe male had to carry them, but alive never the less. The large male would shift his way in front of the clinic in question he came through. The place where he has gone a few times before, Talaic would knock heavily upon the wooden door before pushing it open to enter. "YO! Cat! Ya 'ere or out, lass?!"

His accented voice called out, trying to get at the owner's attention or at least see if Catharine was in or not. If not, then he would have to drop the person he found at the basic clinic the Malestrom company ran too. Shifting the bundle on his shoulder, he looked back when another groan came. The male was dressed in what appeared to be a fisher's gear, having just got done with today's quota when he found said person laid out flat on the streets. It was a damn miracle to the Twelve that they hadn't even been robbed in that state.

Never the less, he had been surprise to find it was a Hyur female. And one dressed strangely under the cloak she wore. In fact, she looked to have come somewhere up north, around where Ishgard was at, if he had to guess from past stories he heard. But he wasn't one to really throw out there with speculations, that usually was one way to get something bad to happen.

Sighing a tad, he looked back towards the doorway leading to the beds within the clinic, calling out once more with a hand at his hip. "Cat, I got ye a client or such 'ere!"

Catharine immediately went to calmly circling the bandage around the wound, making sure it was snug and covered all the area it needed to while humming a soothing tune. It only wrapped around a total of six times, being one of her shorter bandages, but a wound in the hip was less likely to rupture when compared with a cut in some major muscle area. She had just begun to tie the ends into a bowknot fashion when she heard the commotion from outside because of Talaic.

“I’m here, come on in, dear!” she called out behind her as she finished the knot with surprising speed in spite of the prosthetic. Reaching up into her sleeve to unlock it, she smiled warmly at Arulaq.

“Feel free to stay a while, sweetheart, I’ll hopefully be cooking a nice dinner after this next patient and you can have as much as you want. Just don’t be scampering around all over the place on that, give it some time to heal correctly first,” she said in her gentle, motherly fashion.

As she turned around and started calmly trotting to the door to meet the next arrival, she lightly called out to Dyrsteyn as well. “Dyrstie. child, can you turn those spits real quick? The cooking and flavoring has to be evened out or else it won’t turn out as good as normal.”

Despite his name roughly translating to "Thirsty One", the Roegadyn cared as equally as much for food as he did for drink; he didn’t have to be told twice.

Talaic would turn his attention to the sound of Catharine's voice, when she called out. Grunting a bit, the male would pause while standing there. Not moving as he waited for the female in question to head her way to the male Roe. After hearing the female in question speak to another first, his green gaze soon caught sight of the woman. "Aye, 'dere ya ar'." That's when he would shift the cloaked bundle on his shoulder, a groan escaping the Hyur female that was on it. It was a while though, before taking both hands, as he took hold of the body before holding the female out like she was nothing but a ragdoll. Her head angled downward and forward, hiding her face and body mostly. But her outfit could be seen through the open cloak. That red and white robes that marked her a magic user, including there was metal gold pieces in certain parts of the skirting of it. Her feet just rocked back and forth, while she was held in the air like that.

"I found dis 'ne down by the docks. Passed ou' 'n stuff. Thought to bring 'er bum here fer yer ca're."

The large male waited for Catharine's okay in bringing the female to the back. To drop her off onto one of the beds. Talaic didn't really say much after that. His job was pretty much done anyway. He did a good deed, that much was clear, and had no reason to stay and see what happened.

Turning about, the Roe male raised a black large hand, and lumbered his way back to the entrance to leave. "I 'eve 'er in yer ca're, lass."

And that was all that was said. As it was, if the female was to push the hood back, she would find a very surprising sight. While most would have this hair coloring, on such a pale looking female, it was a striking appearance. The female had a overly soft face, cheeks round and puffy enough that honestly, she probably be mistaken for a Miqo'te female than a Hyur that she clearly was. But her hair. It was such a deep, and vibrant shade of red. Almost like one's life blood, it was silky and smooth. Shining just like a ruby or garnet would. Another soft groan came, when her shaggy short hair shifted to show a spec resting across the right side of her eye. As if showing she was a scholar type.

With her outfit, and that, it was clear this female was either a magic user or someone that played a part within it.

For the longest time, laying there, that's when finally the most shocking thing happened.

A low, loud growl would be heard coming from the red headed female's stomach. And coming from her lips that were sounding parched and weak. "..........f-f-fooood....."

Whelp. It was clear what caused her to pass out on the street now.