multiversallogs | [open] Whatever is prepared for never occurs.

"Is there a... priest here?" Amberdrake asks, trying not to get his damned stupid hopes up, "A buddhist high priest, Genjo Sanzo?"

By the gods, he hasn't said that name out loud in years. And it's against the grain, as a kestra'chern, to ask about him now... he hadn't even asked after Silver Veil upon arriving in the Haighlei lands, after all.

But the smoke, it makes the need to know quite unbearable.

“I'm sorry,” she says, “I don't know of him, but it is a very large city.” Their shared cohort is just one small, uppity part of it; in a place the size of twenty-first century London, it's easy for even people who share that cohort to go unnoticed by some if they prefer it. “But if he's a member of our cohort, then he will have access to the message that you recorded earlier.”

"You work in medicine," Amberdrake laughs lightly, as though his heart didn't just curl up on itself quite painfully in his chest, "you'd probably know him, if only by how prone he is to getting his ribs broken."

Not necessarily, of course. But it's better to dash his hopes now, Drake figures, than to let them continue to fester.

"I should definitely try to keep myself busy, then. You are familiar with Empathy?" he steers back to the other topic, "It's a common enough Gift on my world, and the combination of Healing and Empathy is common as well. Having both be so strong is less common, and has its drawbacks." To say the least.

“One of the first things I did when I arrived was begin to educate myself,” she says, with an efficient glance around to settle on a booth before she signals the barman to order drinks and see if the menu is available. It is, and she opts for a glass of red wine and a sandwich for herself; she'll pick up the tab for whatever Drake wants, given his recent arrival and that she knows full well how much money new arrivals do and do not have.

Once they're sorted and she's setting her tote down beside her in the booth, she goes on, “I like to know what my colleagues are capable of - so that we can best work together. And understanding the needs of my patients is obviously essential. I have friends at the university who don't mind lending me texts to work on in my own time, but, as you might guess, these things- they are not common to my own home.”

She adapts very well, which is both nature and learned, honed skill.

“So it is an educated guess that I make, to why you might struggle in a hospital situation. I have found that people speak more readily of their gifts than, for instance, their illnesses.” In other words, she thinks the conversation that they'd had would've been different if it sprung from, say, work-related PTSD.

"It's a good guess," Drake sounds approving of this, "I have been taken from my world once before, and the people who were on the other world... I don't believe I ever met more than one who had heard of Empathy before, let alone could guess what its presence in a Healer might mean."

He orders the same sandwich, figuring she would know better than he would what's any good here. And tea. Not so much as a wine drinker, this one.

"Haven also had a terrible lack of medical skill among its 'Chosen'," Amberdrake adds thoughtfully, "There was one doctor, and then there was myself. A few others came and went, but I believe we were the only long-term medics. A very different criteria in who they took, I suppose."

“There are a few of us in the cohort,” thoughtfully, adjusting her bracelet on her wrist. “Myself, Dr Xavier, Dr Banner. My former colleague, Dr Wander. Njoki Rainmaker, as well, although she works specifically with the dead. Cruorvores, revenants; they have their need of healing, and she is our on-call expert.”

There's no shortage of demand for such skills and support in Baedal - though the city has infrastructure, much of it is understaffed, underfunded or simply corrupt. There's a reason why Benevenuta devotes so much of her professional life to two separate nonprofits, in addition to an under the table private practise, and it's not just that she'd probably get bored if she stopped courting disaster. (They all know what they're risking, working at Thames.)

“Myself, I am a little bit of everything necessary. Surgeon, general practitioner - which includes psychiatric evaluation and support, from time to time. Contraception help; I am a qualified abortionist. And, of course,” with a dry smile over the rim of her glass, “administrator.”

"I have Healed vampires before," Amberdrake nods, "in Haven. It worked well enough, since my abilities are not in any way holy." Not to say he wouldn't much rather leave it to the experts, but, he knows from experience that it was always good to have others who could at least help. "Should there ever be an emergency where this Njoki Rainmaker needed an assistant Healer, I would be willing."

And since it seems to be time to list what he's capable of, Drake adds, "I am a kestra'chern, which is... a therapist, I suppose. My skills in massage are from my kestra'chern training, as clients are often far more likely to talk through their troubles while not having to look one in the eye, and while having something done to them that feels nice. I also use it as physical therapy, of course, sometimes with a touch of the Healing Gift on things that massage alone cannot remedy."

Said kestra'chern folds his hands on the table, considering for a moment how to best explain, "I did this as my main occupation through-out a decade of all-out war between Adepts, as part of Urtho's army. I was Chief Kestra'chern of his forces, and managed the others of my profession. I also served as a backup Healer in emergencies, of which there were unfortunately many. My medical experience is thus mostly dealing with injuries, although the Gift allows me to drive out illness and burn away infection as well -- also things that we saw too much of during the war."

And now, the Gift itself;

"I can manipulate bone, tissue, fluid, and energy with the Gift," Amberdrake goes on to explain, "and increase natural healing a thousand fold. It drains myself and the patient, of course, though my reserves became quite extensive over the course of the war. And healing bone too quickly can make it brittle, but I can form a sort of energy splint inside the body to at least hold the pieces in place."

Edited 2012-09-24 00:58 (UTC)

“A form of biokinesis,” Benevenuta says, nodding her understanding, giving some thought to its implications. (She doesn't dwell too long on what an empathic ability suggests in relation, but she grasps it more readily than might be assumed, given what her benevolently distant manner suggests about her emotional availability.) “Would you say that your therapeutic practise is more of a counselling or diagnostic role?”

She can draw her own conclusions from what he's already said, admittedly, but she'd like to hear his opinion - an elaboration of his thoughts on the subject, to better understand what he's offering and thus what she might be able to offer professionally in return. Madrasati would be a good fit either way, she thinks; being able to forward appropriate cases to him from Thames would be useful as well, but the commitment and risk involved in being openly associated with that organization is something that someone should have more than a few hours in the city to be fully cognizant of.

"I've never heard of biokinesis," Drake admits easily, but with a spark of intense curiosity. He's going to be looking into that term, for sure. "Ah... counselling. Although with some overlap, of course. Intense psychological damage, such as to the point of total non-responsiveness, is in the purview of the Mind-Healer Gift, which I do not have. If I was a patient's best shot due to a lack of Mind-Healers, as was the case a time or two in Haven, I could make an attempt via my Empathy."

Which carries heavy risk, mostly to himself and his own sense of self. A strong Empathic Gift carries far more risks than rewards, but he's danced that line a time or two before in the name of necessity.

“Qualified therapists are something we have great demand for, I am sure you cannot be surprised- at Madrasati, particularly, you would be working exclusively with the xenian community, sometimes for those who are ill, and sometimes for those who do not need illness to struggle with the situation this city creates for them. I'm available to deal with initial assessments and ongoing medication if that is the option pursued, but to have more counsellors on staff would be a boon to us, absolutely.”

Presumably most job interviews actually take place at the school itself and not in a bar, over wine and tea, but Benevenuta is more than willing to be flexible when it's in the best interests of both her work and the people she works with. And even if all that comes of this is a light meal and an interesting conversation- that isn't time wasted, in her opinion.

“Dr Xavier, who is our head, has a specialty in genetic therapy- he works intensively with powered children, for instance, to give them guidance and understanding as they master themselves. Madrasati itself offers varied support to our xenian community- we are a non-profit school and social service, offering education, healthcare, referrals to other support options, even housing. Baedal is a city with prejudices, many of which are institutional; our mission is a safe space to offer care and support in the most holistic way.”

"I was kestra'chern to as many gryphons as humans," Amberdrake is admittedly a little surprised at how many times he's seen it emphasized, already, that the city needs those who can and will help non-humans. "And Healer to all."

No, surprised isn't the right word. He's dealt with plenty of prejudice and stupidity in his life for looking different than the bulk of humans on his world, and he's seen it applied to non-humans before as well. But it instills a little disquiet in him that these people are in such straits.

"I am quite comfortable with non-humans, and aware of how those who are different are sometimes treated. Ma'ar built his army by capitalizing on old prejudices and riling up his people over them. The way my kind were perceived -- that is, the Kaled'a'in," he helpfully gestures at himself, with his deep amber skin and midnight black hair and blue, blue eyes, "was less than friendly. Ma'ar turned it into a genocidal march as a stepping stone to becoming an Emperor. There was also some racial disquiet between our six races within Urtho's army... a decade of war brings a lot of tension with it."

“The war, at least, I can imagine.” The war she can do more than just imagine- but that history belongs to different lives led, and isn't anything she allows to show past her always mild exterior. Either way, wealth and her blue-eyed paleness have given her a privileged position from which to navigate both her own world and this one, and her experiences and sorrows are a different animal. “You should know that in this city, gifts such as yours do fall often under the 'xenian' heading.”

Presumably she doesn't need to point out that Baedal is no better than most places about racial discrimination, either; if it weren't, that might merit a specific mention, but Benevenuta has never known anywhere not that way.

"Having them isn't considered all that different on my world, either," Amberdrake notes, "mind-magic and mage-craft are very common." It was as common among those with different skin-tones, and those with feathers and fur instead of skin, or scales. "About the only strange thing in my case is having these particular two at such strengths. Normally if one has both of these Gifts, one of them is very, very weak."

It worked so much better that way. But Drake's Gifts had developed into stupidly strong things, and they clashed even more often than they harmonized.

“Precisely how much people in Baedal object to abilities beyond the norm in apparent humans varies,” she observes, taking a sip of wine. “Certainly things are easier for those whose power doesn't visibly manifest.” Xenian politics are a complicated beast; magic is more tolerated than species variations, those who can pass for human might rarely or even never be directly bothered...but the atmosphere lingers, all the same, more closely than those without these things can understand.

The hypocrisy involved in Benevenuta's lies never occurs to her. She's too used to thinking of herself as something apart, considers herself neither mortal nor xenian, and rarely contemplates how these things apply to her, four hundred and fifty one years old.

"I recall that my Empathy made many people nervous at first, on Haven," Drake says thoughtfully, "they always seemed to think it meant I can read minds, which I cannot. Their moods poking at my shields are only as telling as context makes it, just as with body language and facial expression and vocal tone."

For example, because Benevenuta's lies are so second-nature after so long, and not something she dwells on, Amberdrake has no idea. And even if she was being nefarious and crafty and dodgy, he would have no clue what it applied to.

"I don't intend to hide it, it seems dishonest to potential patients and clients," he muses aloud, "but I don't know that I will tell people as quickly as I did back then. The Healing Gift, of course, I have already announced and will continue to announce -- any with issue to it will have less issue the day I use my power to piece some fragile part of them back together again."

Benevenuta smiles, slightly and a little sadly, and sips her wine instead of saying that she hopes he's right but lives her life accounting for the likelihood that he may be wrong. The cognitive dissonance involved in condemning him while taking advantage of what he can do is not beyond a lot of people, and then there are those who would never feel comfortable letting him try to aid them in the first place, who would never be grateful afterwards.

Her private medical stock includes potions that could simplify a healing process exponentially- but uses them rarely, because even beyond her own need to understand what she uses on a patient, there are those who will not accept aid that comes in the wrong form, that frightens them or is abhorrent to them. It is what it is.

She says, “I am too much accustomed now to being in the company of telepaths to be concerned much by finding myself in the presence of an empath.”

"I have only been on this world for an hour and... what, a half?" Amberdrake quirks an eyebrow, "If I am being optimistic, you may feel free to say so. Trust me, it won't be half as scathing as my assistant gets when I'm being too trusting or too hopeful." In other words, he's unlikely to take offense. And she seems unlikely to huck anything at his head while telling him, at least just yet.

"Telepaths? You have the Mind-Speech Gift here as well?" Well, that's interesting, "I should not be surprised, I suppose, since you have a word for my Healing Gift I have never even heard before."

Her smile turns faintly wry, and she says- “I'm no professor to give lectures, and I am certainly no one to critique idealism.” Because she is, at the heart of her, an absolute idealist. The fact she's also aggressively pragmatic and excessively competent has made her very irritating to people who are more comfortable with the kind of idealism more easily dismissed as naivete; it's hard to accuse her of that willful ignorance.

But that aside-

“Baedal, you will find, is infinitely varied. Perhaps a third of our population is xenian, and we are pulled from many, many worlds - these things,” telepathy, empathy, “are, I think, among the most straightforward.” Certainly among the most commonly known, the most familiar. “Even among specific xenian communities, there exists astonishing variety- we discussed vampires, very briefly? 'Cruorvore' is the catch-all term, for those who subsist on blood or gore, but these words cover many different experiences and sub-species. Some unholy- others purely biological in origin.”

But to Drake's reasoning, the ones who really can't abide by the Healing Gift are unlikely to seek him out. And if he encounters someone who is injured and doesn't want his help, he'll just call an ambulance. Surely they have those here, as they did in Haven.

"I'll need to read up on these things, of course," Amberdrake nods, toying with his tea between his hands on the table. "The two vampires I've met were from the same world as one another, having Healed them only tells me that my Gift works on undead flesh in general. Those two had their own natural healing that was actually detrimental in how quickly it worked-- I had to re-break Kain's spine to put it back as it was supposed to be. And Raziel's wings, when the crushed bones knit far too fast without proper alignment."

And oh boy hadn't that been fun, alone in a cave with a starving Nosgothian vampire who was secretly terrified of having his wings mangled... and they had been, and Drake had had to mangle them more in order to fix them. Thank the gods for being able to induce paralysis in an emergency!

Desperation creates all sorts of situations, Benevenuta has found - and this is a city with a great deal of desperation. But he's been here less than hours, and has time ahead of him to learn the needs of this city for himself; from their conversation so far, she's confident that he will, and usefully. It's good, she thinks, to know already that he takes care with himself as well; somewhere like this, it's so easy to burn out.

“At Madrasati we keep records of our patients' particular needs, to best learn what it is we need to know. I do a lot of private research in my spare time- it helps.” Just being qualified isn't enough; there are too many variables in play not to be constantly improving, learning, adapting. It's one of the most appealing parts of staying in this profession while she's here, which she'll admit she initially hewed to because of the high demand for qualified surgeons and the kind of pay involved in that work.

At the time, it was the most practical choice to make in order to quickly and efficiently get her feet under her. Now, it's- less practical, but she knows what she's doing. She can make it work.

"Medical records are useful even on a world where you already know the six sentient races literally inside and out," Amberdrake smiles faintly at that, "I can imagine their use only goes up exponentially in a place like this."

He never writes down the things he knows as a kestra'chern, of course, but those are different needs, and the main need of most clients is being able to trust their kestra'chern with their secrets and their privacy. But as a Healer? Oh yes. Records are glorious. And on a world like this, he imagines they're mandatory.

They hadn't had time for records during the war, but at least they'd known that treating a gryphon with these herbs and with that Gift was going to be effective, and not detrimental.

"I also know a bit of herbalism, though I imagine the plants here are... different." More for him to read up on, but he's nothing if not a thorough researcher. No one had taught him hertasi bone structure, after all.

Edited 2012-09-25 07:13 (UTC)

Some of Benevenuta's patients prefer that she not keep records, but those also tend to be the ones who pay her in diamond necklaces and discretion, and that's a very different conversation.

“Likely,” she acknowledges. “But if you know what you need it to do, then it is not so much difficult to find suitable alternatives- I have done a lot of work, for example, in sourcing and trialling alternate medications for patients who rely on something they no longer have ready access to. It is a little bit trial and error, here and there- but medical science can be an inexact process to begin with, no? So it goes.”

"Nothing major," Amberdrake chuckles, "but as one example, there are teas that help with Gift over-extension that I prefer to have on hand, for obvious reasons. Especially without my assistant around to pour it down my throat if I end up face-down in the dirt. I also tend to make my own massage oils, so that I know everything that goes into them."

And teas that were natural painkillers, muscle relaxants, and so on and so forth. He was normally well-stocked, and had been even during the war when there hadn't been as much chance to restock. "I arrived with a cache of herbs from my world, so I have time enough to find alternatives before they run out."

“I can recommend an alchemist,” she says, thoughtful; it's funny how many things in Baedal are familiar to Benevenuta that shouldn't be familiar to Vanessza. Coming and going in horse-drawn cabs, relying on a herbalist...

It's an interesting place to be.

“I work with potions, occasionally, but I like to fully understand them before I use them with a patient. It's a great deal of extra study.”

"Naturally," Drake chuckles at that, "otherwise you may poison them and make things ten times more complicated. And speaking to an alchemist would undoubtedly be helpful," he adds, "we don't have much of the craft on my world, mostly just basic herbalism. But I've encountered the term elsewhere, before."

At least he's skipping the whole 'I'm on another WORLD?! That's un-possible!' stage of these things, with his previous experience in being yanked out of his universe and into another. The ring on his finger is solid proof, whenever he wonders if he dreamed Haven and its occupants up.

It isn't from his world. No one decorates anything with lotuses on Velgarth. He's not even sure they have lotuses.

They all come with directions, naturally, but she's a physician - she's supposed to understand what she's doing, she's supposed to be able to adapt if the treatment needs to be adjusted somehow. The first alchemist she dealt with, the wizard, she suspects he was a little surprised by the level of research she expected to do on what she was purchasing, and he didn't even know just how much she actually did.

(Dying repeatedly for science is not actually her idea of a good time, but it gives her a good baseline for dosages and learning the signs of complications ahead of time. It isn't as if poisoning will permanently damage her, after all.)

“It's interesting, those of us who are familiar with similar phenomena to this city. What it suggests.” 'Us', yes, although Xanadu never held her prisoner. Or at least not very long at a stretch, and certainly not without compensation in the form of experiences.

"This isn't your first time being hauled onto another world, either?" Amberdrake quirks an eyebrow, but he's privately a little relieved. If he's not the only repeat traveler, maybe he didn't muck things up entirely on his own with his moment of weakness and despair on this tenth anniversary.

He's had to learn, over his time as a ruler, to not blame himself completely for everything. But it's still a lesson he's teaching himself, and the timing had been... unfortunate in that regard.

“No, indeed. Xanadu is different- not a trap city, more of sort of...city intersection.” Where people come and go; like Baedal, she doubts that anyone who did live there was from there originally, but for the most part, they could come and go more or less at will. She'd been trapped there a couple of times, but never for even a full day - she visited because she was curious, mostly.

After that first time, with the robot war, well. Anyone would be curious.

(To be fair, 'anyone' might not have gone back to see what happens next.)

“I know it only a little, but I've heard on the network of other places, too.”

"I am... relieved to not be the only one who has experienced it," Amberdrake admits, "I suppose one would consider Haven a 'trap city', especially early on in its history, although we were eventually able to travel to ours and other worlds to visit. It was a strange place, and I admit I grew fond of it despite all its considerable dangers."

It was no more alien than what the mage-storms were doing to his world, after all. And once he'd assured himself that no one was suffering for his absence, Haven hadn't been so bad.

"It was nowhere near this large, however," he gestures a little at their surroundings, meaning the whole city. Drake knew that just because he'd been to other worlds before didn't mean he didn't have a hell of an adjustment to deal with. But the Chief of Clan k'Leshya and the leader of White Gryphon -- effectively a Haighlei King in his own right -- wasn't going to start off by freaking out.

If he wasn't the sort to keep his cool, White Gryphon would be at war with the Haighlei right now, not recognized as an esteemed neighbor.

“What I have heard, I think there is perhaps no 'norm' where these experiences are concerned.” It's a big multiverse, and there are times that even Benevenuta finds a moment in which she can feel very, very small.

(Not often, though. As mild-mannered as she tends to come across, if arrogance equated with height, she'd be the fifty foot woman.)

“So perhaps Baedal will always be an unusual one. But not, in all forms, objectionable.” She's aware not everyone is so sanguine as she is about the place, and she's equally aware that that's a little odd of her- but a little healthy optimism can't hurt to offer.

"When everything is strange," Drake notes, "strange becomes normal."

There's not much he feels comfortable about saying when it comes to finding a place objectionable or not. If his fate is to be separated from everyone he has ever cared about on a personal level (or more importantly, cared about him on a personal level -- as that is far more rare for a kestra'chern), he will probably never find this place less than objectionable.

But he hasn't been here long enough to know what the nature of his fate will be, and he knows that. So he's doing his best to keep his cool even underneath the kestra'chern mask of calm and serenity, because there's literally no use in melting down just yet.

Although the cigarette smoke isn't helping.

[open] Whatever is prepared for never occurs.

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Giant wall of text, brace for impact! >.>

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