WHO: Valmafra Lenande and Naminé Dincht. WHAT: Witches be convalescing. WHEN: First day back from Edea Mission. WHERE: Medbay. STATUS: Incomplete.
The medbay was familiar to Naminé. She was long-acquainted with the contrast of the white plaster of the walls and glinting metal of the apparati. The environment was strangely comforting, even. There were no secrets tucked under the sheets of the infirmary cots, no terrible monsters from which to hide. The medbay was a place of healing, had been Naminé’s place of healing.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t easy to see her mentor’s sleeping body tucked into the sheets. The image of Valmafra and the white of the room was almost paradoxical, incongruous. To the younger witch, the former knight was a paragon of strength and competence. Valmafra seemed the kind of person who could not be touched by the same vulnerabilities that beleaguered the majority. Transcendent, ethereal--not to be found in convalescence, for all her mortality to be exposed.
The easiest way to make sense of the scenario was to draw it. Pressing her pencils to the paper, letting the colors flow seamlessly from tip to page: these were the means by which Naminé numbed herself, distracted her thoughts from the inexplicably familiar memories of bloodshed and mayhem. Her new scars throbbed dully as she worked, but this sensation too she ignored.
She would be here for her mentor, without complaint or distress. Like Valmafra, Naminé would put on an unshakeable, capable front. She couldn’t allow room for her weaknesses, for the unexpected volatility of her emotions.
(But that was more easily said than done: her long strokes were made crooked by the trembling of her fingers.)