(no subject)

[wolflord_andain]

Waking is more of a difficult prospect than it ought to be, the fact of which Galadan refuses to become resigned.

Though today is a fine day, it seems, to begin consuming food that is slightly more civilized than raw venison (if not quite so civilized as anything deep-fried).

Thus the arrival of a guest finds Galadan cleaning up after the end of his afternoon meal.

Comments

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

The knocking on the door is sharp, measured, and somehow conveys an air of stiffness.

. . . and quite probably this already gives Galadan a good idea of who is standing outside.

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan sets his cup down upon his recently-used plate, then makes his way toward the door.

He's moving a bit slower than was previously his wont, but his eyes are clear.

"Mary Lennox," he says, opening the door and stepping aside to give her room to enter.

"Today finds you well, I hope?"

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Much better than I have been," Mary answers, truthfully.

She steps inside and then stands there, unsure of where else to go, folding her hands into her skirt.

"And you?" Her mouth forms the word ought, and then she bites down on it before the rest of the sentence can emerge: ought you to be standing up?

[wolflord_andain]

"Wearier than I prefer to be, certainly, but compared to the initial moments of our return, it hardly signifies."

During this speech he closes the door, then turns to regard Mary.

"Do you care to sit?"

The room has a chair, which he is not using at the present time.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

If she takes a seat, he is likely to as well, she decides, and moves towards the chair.


"I have never seen you so tired," she says, once she's sitting down and facing him once again.

[wolflord_andain]

"There is very little I will not do for a worthy cause."

This is more true than Mary can guess. Perhaps.

He'll wait until she is seated before moving to sit on the surface that remains to him. Which is to say, the bed.

"But such exhaustion is a very rare event. This occurrence will make it thrice in two thousand years."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary flushes, her hands tightening together.

"You should not have had to. I wish -"

She breaks off, and then says, abruptly, "I meant to say thank you. It is what I came to say. Thank you -- I am glad you did come. It was very awful. But I also wish you had not. I had forgotten how much I hate it -- for people to be ill or hurt and to have it be my fault."

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan's smile is a bare twist of one corner of his mouth, and he quickly smooths his face back into its usual sardonic expression.

To do otherwise would be unfair and, perhaps, cruel.

"I find it equally distasteful, I am sure, to see those I call friend harmed. Particularly when I may have some hand in preventing it, or ameliorating it after the fact."

He does not bother with a shrug, or with denying her own claim to responsibility. It would serve little purpose, anyway. He does not much think she would believe him.

"Though I much prefer prevention."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Prevention," Mary says, very serious and back very straight, "is my job. You ought to have taught me well enough for that."

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan inclines his head.

"That is its own matter of prevention, is it not? But you are right, our lessons certainly ought to have prepared you well enough for situations such as this most recent one. Among others."

And now he does smile, if only faintly.

"The evidence suggests that, while certain points may need a bit of polishing, you are capable of keeping your head in trying circumstances. This is the bedrock upon which you'll build all the rest of your strategies."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"My other studies should have taught me to keep my head, at least. But I had been neglecting your kind of strategy, I think. I suppose," she adds, ruefully, "there is nothing for teaching one to do better than making an awful mistake -- but it does not make the mistake any more pleasant for all that."

From now on, Mary vows not to forget her general scheming and suspicion training in among everything else!

[wolflord_andain]

"No," Galadan says quietly. "No, indeed, it does not."

He sheds that quietness a moment later, as if it had never been.

"May I take it that you will look to certain types of lessons as less of an intellectual exercise and more of a training ground, of sorts, in future?"

It would make a great deal of his work a very great deal easier.

Well, at least in part.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"I had never thought of them as intellectual exercises!" Mary protests.

"I do know -- it is not that I do not know why you teach them to me! It is only that I have been out of the habit of thinking that way when I have --"

She's trying to make an explanation, worried that it will sound like an excuse.

"One cannot turn medicine into chess. Or if there is a way, I do not know it. It is not a game one can win."

[wolflord_andain]

"On the grand scale, no. On an individual scale -- perhaps. Though I should imagine you would not particularly wish to regard it so."

He has known Mary long enough to feel fairly sure of that.

"But the rest of the world does not partition itself nearly half so well."

Which means he would prefer Mary to learn to think like that around her medical responsibilities, at the very least.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"No," Mary says, very definitely. "I would not."

She makes a face. "You do not mean the world; you mean people. Flowers do not work that way any more than viruses do. But one cannot deal with viruses, it seems, without dealing with people as well - and even if you do not wish to deal with them, it seems what I ought to remember is that they may try to deal with you."

Much as Mary might prefer they didn't.

[wolflord_andain]

Again Galadan stifles the briefest flicker of a smile.

"That is, indeed, one of the things you ought to remember, Mary, and not only in the context of strangers. Though they, of course, can often be the most troublesome."

And the least. It's all a question of context.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Well, I don't mind with some people," Mary admits.

"It is strangers I mind most. They are the unknown quantities."

Even people she knows and dislikes can at least be accounted for, to a certain extent.

[wolflord_andain]

"That is why caution is frequently important."

He pauses, mouth curving in a smile that is partway between wry and sardonic.

"As is the skill of quickly gaining the measure of a man, woman, or child, while also realizing that such quick impressions are only an approximation."

Motivations, you see, may also be key.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"You know very well," Mary says, "that that is the lesson I have always been the worst at."

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan merely raises one eyebrow.

"Shall you not let that function as a goad to drive you toward improvement?"

He would, Mary.

And has.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary looks down almost sulkily at this. She knows it ought to only make her more determined, and ordinarily it would -- but the language that people use without words, their expressions and countenance and tones, is more difficult by far than Spanish or Chinese.

"I can read their symptoms," she mutters. "There is a lexicon for that. But it does not work with personalities."

A smile might mean anything, depending on the person; a frown, the same. It is all too confusing.

[wolflord_andain]

"That one is a more complicated lexicon, I grant you."

He's had to, after all this time of trying to teach her.

"Still, perhaps there are a few broad strokes that you may learn to differentiate."

He will give up when one of them is dead.

(And he is well aware of who is likely to go first.)

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Or perhaps," Mary retorts, "I ought simply to mistrust everyone until I have more solid proof of what they are likely to do than a facial expression would grant."

This is not a sarcastic suggestion; it seems eminently sensible to her.

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan gives this all the consideration it deserves, coming from Mary.

Which is to say --

"Provided you learn to keep that mistrust off your face and out of your speech, I have heard worse strategies for prevention."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary hesitates.

"It would be good strategy to do so. I see that," she admits. "But -- even if it is safer to believe the rest of the world dishonest, I should rather not be dishonest myself, though I know it to be a handicap."

She meets Galadan's gaze. "I am playing with an advantage, after all -- I shall have had a far better teacher than most anyone else."

[wolflord_andain]

"Well," Galadan says, inclining his head a fraction in acknowledgment, "There is that."

He returns her look in kind, serious, but not cool.

"But you know yourself full well as any, and in addition you also know who and what you have chosen to be. I would be a fool, I suppose, to doubt your intentions now, or your capabilities."

He huffs out a quick breath.

"Handicap or no. So. Are there any other methods you might consider, that require neither lies, nor evasions, nor half-truths?"

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

The startled smile that appears at this is gone again in an instant -- but Mary's face stays brighter than it was, even after it disappears.

"I am not sure it would quite make you a fool to doubt me," she says, truthfully. "But -- but I am very glad you do not."

She takes a deep breath, and goes on, more steadily, "Preparation may go far. Facts may, as well. I have no objection to using the truth as a weapon to my advantage."

[wolflord_andain]

"Well, then."

Galadan and feelings are not two tastes that taste great together, shockingly. But he does not look displeased by Mary's gladness, which is something.

"Now that we have something to be going on with, shall we get started? Or shall it wait until the both of us are fully recovered?"

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary thinks she is quite recovered, and she would very much like Galadan to know so --

-- but even she can put two and two together enough to know that if she announces her perfect state of health, his pride is not likely to allow him to cry off if he does not feel well enough.

However, she certainly can't admit to weakness herself, which leaves her with something of a dilemma.

"How much time," she asks instead, "do you think we shall have here, to take advantage of?"

Her return to her studies is rather dependent on a lift.

[wolflord_andain]

That was in no way something Galadan was counting on.

"A few more days, I should think. Perhaps three, at most."

Some of this may depend on Mary's skill with her lessoning, such as it will be.

"Will that be enough to be going on with, on your part?"

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"It shall have to be," Mary answers, with a small shrug.

They both have other responsibilities now. One makes the most of the opportunities one has, that's all.

[wolflord_andain]

Galadan arches one eyebrow half-way to his hairline.

"Why so?"

Surely Mary would not acquiesce so easily if she really required the additional time.

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

Mary blinks at him, puzzled.

"Because that is the time there is," she says, as if it should be self-evident.

She will learn as rapidly as she is expected to learn, or faster.

[wolflord_andain]

"And should you have judged that more time was required?"

The Wolflord's eyebrow remains fully arched.

"Or, as it might happen, less?"

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"It is not that I would not like more time," Mary says, still startled.

"I am sure I should not be through with all you might teach me for much longer than three days -- so that does not much signify. But I am not your full-time pupil any longer. I must return to Dr. Hamm, who had not known I would be gone, and had not prepared for it.

[wolflord_andain]

Must she, really?

Well, so be it.

"If you deem you must, though you are right in that three days is woefully little time to see you up to speed, as it were."

Hmm. Some might consider this a quandary.

"Perhaps a series of slightly less irregular visits will allow you the opportunity of additional practice."

[mistressmaryquitecontrary]

"Additional practice would be welcome," Mary agrees, solemnly.

It is very easy, when one is in a place doing a set thing, to think only of that place, and of that thing; sometimes Mary needs to be reminded that there is a wider world out there beyond the small clinic.

"Would it be an inconvenience to you, to arrange for it?"