all_is_truth | Uhhhhhh...

"That is an unkind name," she managed at last, "but it a pleasure to meet you, Dezzi. I am Khemrys, healer and stillmistress, now doctor in this place." She would NEVER call the girl by her given name, no. Not unless circumstances were dire.

"And this is Rimia, the city calls her my secretary." She was, of course, introducing the girl to a snail that looked like pastel painting left in the rain. Said snail was bouncing and chirping cheerfully on a plant by the desk.

Edited 2015-05-01 07:34 (UTC)

"Yup, it's an awful name." she agreed, her natural cheer reasserting itself now that the danger was behind them, "Nice to meet you Khemrys and Rimia. I'm an engineering student..."

"WELCOME TO THE CITY ENGINEER JONES!"

Hopefully Khemrys wouldn't be too distressed when all sense of personal space went to hell in a handbasket when the girl tried to bolt away from the voice, tangled up in her own legs, and fell on the woman.

Well, it depended on whether one saw 'suddenly turning into an ill proportioned pard in order not to get squashed and landing on the girl's back' as 'distressed'. Worlds had different values for such things after all. With luck the sheer difference between Khemrys's shifts and her worlds version thereof may be distracting?

Rimia...tried to chirp worriedly. It took a while to learn the difference in her chirps?

Almost as quick as there were paws on the girl there was a brush of mist and Khemrys was kneeling in a pool of skirts beside the fallen girl. "I have asked the city to speak softer indoors. It is...excitable."

"I knew I smelled cat!" Dezzi said, wrenching her nose back into place with a whimper and a lot of practise. "This is really...weird. Not you. The city? Talking."

With Dezzi already setting her nose Khemrys's hand hovered in the air a moment before falling back to her side, "yes, it is disconcerting to say the least. I am told the city is a large machine, and it speaks civilly enough to me, but it is by no reason or model of morals, sane."

Granted, the level of 'insane' Khemrys experienced was a bit different than most. Dotty, distractable, exuberant, and prone to babble was more her experience. "And yes. I have two forms, though my other self is less able to aid the injured."

She grinned as she wiped blood off her face, "I'm really used to breaking and setting my nose, don't worry about it. I'm a werewolf. Totally ordinary! I can't do much in my other form either, as far as people things goes. I don't need healing, though, so, uh. Yup. That's a thing."

Khemrys eyed the girl a moment, unsure how to take that, before finally offering a tissue. "You are not of my world so that cannot mean what it would where I am from. Please explain? Because otherwise you would be the only other woman I have heard tell with two forms granted from wererider blood and...we should not exist."

"I'm not human." she said immediately, "I'm Canis Sapien rather than Homo Sapien. Everyone in my species can change forms. I don't know what wereriders are. Of course I never met a cat with two forms before, so I guess it's that? Anyway I heal really quickly which is good because I am such a klutz that if I was human I'd be dead a couple hundred times over."

She continued holding out the tissue so the girl could wipe her face, then took her time parsing all that. "Nor am I," she admitted easily, "but Wererider is not cats precisely. It is a branch of the Old Blood that has shape shifters of many kinds, but all men until I. They are fearless warriors and strong, but not without flaw. Such as the fact they do not heal as fast as it seems your own blood does."

"I heal fast even for werewolves. Grandma says it's because of how often I get hurt. I give myself a workout." it was wry, "Is my nose straight? If not could you rebreak it? It's big enough I have a problem with it." She wiped the blood off her face with the offered tissue and then stood up. "Thanks!"

"That must be quite taxing," she noted, reaching forward to snap the girls nose and pull as instructed. It was always best to get such done quickly after all.

And she was quite the interesting girl to touch. "I believe we should withdraw to the cafeteria, it is not ideal fare but it provides some measure of normality to the day."

"Food would be good." she said, the attitude of 'hungry wolf' overriding the 'cheerful girl' for a moment, "That's a thing about my kind...we eat a lot. Even more for healing, and crazy amounts for shifting forms. You probably won't ever have me as a patient 'cause werewolf wounds tend to be no big deal or fatal. I mean, if I lost a leg again I'd be pretty pissy for the day or so that it'd take to grow back...but as long as I kept eating no biggie."

"I will honestly admit that the idea of losing a limb is a terrible," Khemrys noted, leading the way to the cafeteria in a manner that in no way illustrated anything but calm acceptance. She'd touched the girl after all. "But one may hope you'd seek company if nothing else."

"Depends on how easy food is to get." she said without hesitation, "I mean if it's right there I'm not going anywhere until I'm not hungry anymore. Food is absolutely priority one."

"I see. And what should I have on hand for you in case of emergency? The city provides, yes, but specific food for dietary needs is easier for me to procure than others."

"Doctors are well aware of patient needs and allowed necessary supplies!"

"Thank you, City," Khemrys noted easily. "Regardless, I can ensure the proper diet on hand without risk of funding issues."

"Meat." she said, nodding firmly, "Cooked, raw, whatever. Pretty much anything humans can eat, but meat packs the most nutrition into the smallest package for me. Ground meat is probably the most convenient 'cause it doesn't have to be chewed much."

"And so," she allowed. "I will keep much frozen and I will be raising rabbits in a hutch on the roof, and hens if I come across such. Not enough to heal you, likely, but enough for fresh meats when you wish to share a meal."

"Oh, I can bring stuff too." Dezzi offered, "I can cook, and pretty well! It's an important life skill if you are very capable of eating twice your own body weight in a day. No werewolf wants to live on Top Ramen."

"You are welcome to share my hearth," she noted easily, a brief flexing of the air around her labeling the words as more than mere rote. Hospitality was a form and binding in her world, here? Well, here it was just meant the air skipped a second and paid attention to the welcome.

As for the rest though, "I do not know what Top Ramen is."

"That felt strange." Dezzi said, blinking at the weight in the air. "Ah, Top Ramen is a very cheap, not very nutritious food eaten mostly by college students and people without jobs. It fills the stomach, but all it's really good for is making it hurt less to starve to death. If you're a werewolf, anyway, I think humans get a little more out of it."

"Ah, like feeding watered milk to orphaned children," she noted, finding a comparison her world would know. "Filling the belly without the necessary factors of an actual meal." It was horrible that a world may have such a thing as common place!

"It is not criminal to sell such?"

"You'd think, but no. Perfectly legal. Sucks to say it, but there are enough worse things in my world that enforcing proper nutrition isn't anyone's priority. I know some people who carry it in their purses or bags so that if they get hungry where there isn't food they can tied themselves over, but I carry jerky and protein bars." Her purse contained nothing but food and her wallet, her backpack had her books.

"That is a terrible thing to have as common place," she noted softly. "Lords and the like may be cruel to their people, but feeding them must come first if they are to have a people at all." Which meant even in a poorly run area there were aids in place, often.

"We don't have lords. We're part of a representative republic, although people tend to call it a democracy. It means that people vote for people who then vote on things and it gets so big and complex that...a lot of people, mostly human, fall through the cracks. Some of us non-humans get treated as second-class citizens, but that also means that we tend to support each other. The packs, of course, are fiercely family oriented. We've learned to be less territorial so we can live in cities and the like, but mess with one of us and you've got all of the pack on your tail." she said it in easy cadences. Dezzi was a very smart young lady and she liked precision.

She was, after all, an engineer in training. Now a city engineer. Entirely mental whine? Yes.

"There're outreach programs and such, but honestly I don't know much about them. I'm not a bigot!" she hastened to say, "I'm just taking way too many classes to do volunteering right now! I'm in high school and taking some pretty heavy college classes," she held up a backpack that could easily club someone to death with all the books, papers, flash drives, and her computer, that were in it, "so right now my life is school, home, college, home, homework, spend time with dad, sleep, repeat. You can pretty much put food in any of those sections but sleep. I don't sleep-eat. I think."

"...ah," she noted, not really following MOST of that but hey, she could try? "It seems your world has a fare greater number of people than the Dales did, even before the war killed many of us."

"The abbey aided as we were able, we were a place of peace and of aid when others may be persecuted or ill, but there was no great outreach, nor was I able to stay. I was chased forth."

"I think it's in the trillions." Dezzi said, although she wasn't entirely sure. She tended to zone out a little in social studies. "There are massive amounts of people, that's for sure. More than there should be, in some ways. It's hard to keep track of."

Then she frowned, "Just because you're a cat?"

"Ah..." she could...not honestly picture that number in the least. In fact it was a number she'd never even heard before. "People must be like drops of water in your world, or grains of sand..." she could only assume as such? It was an absolutely boggling amount.

"...in part? It was...an excuse. I was not liked, in the least, by the new Abbess. Being a war orphan I would not be bringing a lady's gifts to her coffer, nor was I bound to take oaths to the Flame. My discovery was...simply convenient I believe, thinking back." Terrible, frightening, and traumatizing, but ultimately simply the excuse the Abbess needed.

"Water and sand do out number us," Dezzi said wryly, "but, yeah, we're pretty packed in there." Then she looked at Khem again and said, "That was really, really shitty of her. People shouldn't be dragged away from their home, or forced out. I'm really sorry that happened to you." she was, too.

"I would have been asked to leave even by my own elder dames in time," she admitted. "Children may be excused, but if I would not swear to cup and flame I would have had to leave." It was just the manner of leaving that was...terrible.

"Well, yeah." Dezzi said, "Moving out 'cause you grew up is normal. That's not being thrown out or chased out." she had Strong Feelings about this kind of thing. Very strong feelings.

"True," she chuckled softly. "I am...adjusting? I was afraid for a very long time but now I am here." And it was...easier? It was an insane, empty city but somehow still far less frightening?

"It's easier for people to group together when we're all in a weird situation." Dezzi said wryly, "Also, you know, pack animal." that was pointing at herself, "So we may be alone, but we're alone together and there are worse ways to be."

"Very true, less...censure and far more cooperation," she chuckled easily. "And I have....a whole hospital to learn here? It will be strange."

"Yeah, but super useful!" Dezzi said, "I mean, who knows what strange illnesses and stuff are going to show up here? If I got sick I wouldn't have any idea what to do. Except eat a lot." She really didn't get 'illness', except as an academic thing.

"Healers always are," she chuckled. "You do not grow ill in your world?"

"Nope. Silver poisoning is about the only thing that'll keep me down, but honestly if I get it here I'll probably die before you get to me." she said perfectly honestly, "It disrupts the way that my cells switch between their two states." she held up a hand to demonstrate the change between human hand and wolf's paw as it went fluidly between the two. "So if silver is introduced you get uncontrolled shifting. It's a really fast, really painful way to starve."

"Ah," she noted, watching closely. "Should you be struck by silver is it best to remove a limb or drop you into a stasis sleep?"

"I dunno what stasis sleep is, but I can regrow a limb in a couple of hours." she offered, "So just hack it off. Otherwise, um. Get as much food near me as possible with as high calories as possible and pray?"

Uhhhhhh...

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