Prosy: Clan Doctor
Sep. 21st, 2011 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clare_dragonflyTitle: Clan Doctor
Word count: 813 (total: 3,238)
Rating: PG
Prompt:kayim's: anything post-apocalyptic in which a doctor character is having to rely on herbs as medicine. ... make the character one who isn't actually a doctor - just kind of thrown into the role...
Notes: This is incomplete, obviously, since I barely reached a mention of the herbs!
Asraidh woke up with a start. There was something—but even in her sleep-addled state, coming out of a dream in which she was back in her old house and her sister was making her pancakes, she recognized it quickly. It was a cough, and it didn’t sound like a good one. It was coming from her left, which meant it was one of three people: Yenul, Kaesh, or Adhe.
Nothing in the sound told her who it was. It was only a cold feeling in her gut that told her it was Kaesh. At eight years old she was the youngest member of their little clan. She was Asraidh’s niece—the daughter of her dead sister.
She sat up and looked around. There wasn’t as much light as there used to be—no electrical grid lighting cities at night, no light pollution reflecting off the clouds, no streetlights illuminating the highway that they’d holed up near. But there was still some light, even in what Asraidh guessed, from her feeling of how much sleep she’d had and the smell of the air, was at least two hours predawn. The stars glittered patchily in the cloudy sky, and the moon, more than half full, had found a clear space. She could see that no one but she had been awakened. She, and of course, the tiny form sitting up but hunched over. No question now: that was Kaesh.
Asraidh looked around helplessly one last time, then squirmed out of her sturdy, army-issue sleeping bag (Yenul had once worked the supply lines) and crawled carefully over to Kaesh, avoiding bumping into the people sleeping near her. She put one hand carefully on the little girl’s back, wincing as she felt the knobby spine and the practically exposed ribs. She kept her hand there, hoping the warmth at least helped, until the coughing fit let Kaesh go. Then she said in her softly, most motherly, most Lehawus-like voice, “Kaesh, sweetie? Are you okay?”
Kaesh looked up, her big blue eyes shining in the moonlight. “Auntie Asa?” Her voice sounded strained and cracked. The cough wasn’t doing her much good. How long had she been coughing?
“It’s me,” Asraidh said, still gentle. “When did you start coughing?”
Kaesh lifted her arm and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “After bedtime? I don’t remember. I keep going to sleep again.”
Asraidh nodded and lowered her head to the girl’s forehead, pressing her lips to it to check the temperature. “Do you feel bad? Or is it just the cough?”
“My nose is runny.” Suddenly another coughing fit took her, and Asraidh tensed, but at least this one didn’t last as long. “And my throat hurts. From the coughing.”
Asraidh nodded, pushing her hair back from her face with the hand that wasn’t on Kaesh’s back. “Are you cold?”
“A little.”
It was late spring, warm during the day, but still a little chilly at night. But wrapped in her sleeping bag and two layers of clothes (the one benefit to having only one child with them was that they had several sets of clothes for her, though most were too big), Kaesh should have been, if anything, uncomfortably warm. But with the fever it made sense. At least, Asraidh hoped it did.
“I’m going to bring you over to the fire, okay? You want to do that?”
Kaesh smiled. “I can walk to the fire, Auntie Asa.”
Well, at least she wasn’t too sick to be her usual independent self. “Okay, but I want you to get back in your sleeping bag once we’re there. To keep you warm. I’ll bring the bag over.”
Kaesh nodded and scrambled out of the bag. Asraidh waited to make sure she was walking normally—she was—before picking up the sleeping bag and following. She set down the sleeping bag about a foot away from the banked fire, then picked up some of the kindling they kept beside it and got the flames going again. Soon it was blazing, and Kaesh got into her sleeping bag without much complaint. Now the real work would begin… work Asraidh had hoped she’d never have to do.
They didn’t have any medicines with them. Medication was hard to come by in the aftermath of dozens of plagues, both man-made and natural; even the more generic items were hard to come by. They’d used up their last decongestants over the winter, when a flu had threatened to demolish them.
But when the first bombs had hit, Asraidh (as well as her sister and several of the others in her family) had put together a bug-out bag, and one of the things she’d decided to include was a book, an heirloom from her grandmother: a dictionary of healing herbs. She’d never used it before. But now she would have to.
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Word count: 813 (total: 3,238)
Rating: PG
Prompt:
kayim's: anything post-apocalyptic in which a doctor character is having to rely on herbs as medicine. ... make the character one who isn't actually a doctor - just kind of thrown into the role...Notes: This is incomplete, obviously, since I barely reached a mention of the herbs!
Asraidh woke up with a start. There was something—but even in her sleep-addled state, coming out of a dream in which she was back in her old house and her sister was making her pancakes, she recognized it quickly. It was a cough, and it didn’t sound like a good one. It was coming from her left, which meant it was one of three people: Yenul, Kaesh, or Adhe.
Nothing in the sound told her who it was. It was only a cold feeling in her gut that told her it was Kaesh. At eight years old she was the youngest member of their little clan. She was Asraidh’s niece—the daughter of her dead sister.
She sat up and looked around. There wasn’t as much light as there used to be—no electrical grid lighting cities at night, no light pollution reflecting off the clouds, no streetlights illuminating the highway that they’d holed up near. But there was still some light, even in what Asraidh guessed, from her feeling of how much sleep she’d had and the smell of the air, was at least two hours predawn. The stars glittered patchily in the cloudy sky, and the moon, more than half full, had found a clear space. She could see that no one but she had been awakened. She, and of course, the tiny form sitting up but hunched over. No question now: that was Kaesh.
Asraidh looked around helplessly one last time, then squirmed out of her sturdy, army-issue sleeping bag (Yenul had once worked the supply lines) and crawled carefully over to Kaesh, avoiding bumping into the people sleeping near her. She put one hand carefully on the little girl’s back, wincing as she felt the knobby spine and the practically exposed ribs. She kept her hand there, hoping the warmth at least helped, until the coughing fit let Kaesh go. Then she said in her softly, most motherly, most Lehawus-like voice, “Kaesh, sweetie? Are you okay?”
Kaesh looked up, her big blue eyes shining in the moonlight. “Auntie Asa?” Her voice sounded strained and cracked. The cough wasn’t doing her much good. How long had she been coughing?
“It’s me,” Asraidh said, still gentle. “When did you start coughing?”
Kaesh lifted her arm and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “After bedtime? I don’t remember. I keep going to sleep again.”
Asraidh nodded and lowered her head to the girl’s forehead, pressing her lips to it to check the temperature. “Do you feel bad? Or is it just the cough?”
“My nose is runny.” Suddenly another coughing fit took her, and Asraidh tensed, but at least this one didn’t last as long. “And my throat hurts. From the coughing.”
Asraidh nodded, pushing her hair back from her face with the hand that wasn’t on Kaesh’s back. “Are you cold?”
“A little.”
It was late spring, warm during the day, but still a little chilly at night. But wrapped in her sleeping bag and two layers of clothes (the one benefit to having only one child with them was that they had several sets of clothes for her, though most were too big), Kaesh should have been, if anything, uncomfortably warm. But with the fever it made sense. At least, Asraidh hoped it did.
“I’m going to bring you over to the fire, okay? You want to do that?”
Kaesh smiled. “I can walk to the fire, Auntie Asa.”
Well, at least she wasn’t too sick to be her usual independent self. “Okay, but I want you to get back in your sleeping bag once we’re there. To keep you warm. I’ll bring the bag over.”
Kaesh nodded and scrambled out of the bag. Asraidh waited to make sure she was walking normally—she was—before picking up the sleeping bag and following. She set down the sleeping bag about a foot away from the banked fire, then picked up some of the kindling they kept beside it and got the flames going again. Soon it was blazing, and Kaesh got into her sleeping bag without much complaint. Now the real work would begin… work Asraidh had hoped she’d never have to do.
They didn’t have any medicines with them. Medication was hard to come by in the aftermath of dozens of plagues, both man-made and natural; even the more generic items were hard to come by. They’d used up their last decongestants over the winter, when a flu had threatened to demolish them.
But when the first bombs had hit, Asraidh (as well as her sister and several of the others in her family) had put together a bug-out bag, and one of the things she’d decided to include was a book, an heirloom from her grandmother: a dictionary of healing herbs. She’d never used it before. But now she would have to.
Did you enjoy this story? You can read more stories in this world or see all my fiction posted at Dreamwidth!
Feedback
Date: 2011-09-22 07:38 am (UTC)Re: Feedback
Date: 2011-09-22 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 07:33 pm (UTC)I love what you've done here, and the world is so interesting. I definitely need to sit down and read the rest - maybe I should just try and download them to my ebook reader! LOL!
Thank you for this!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 07:58 pm (UTC)I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Hmm, there isn't a way to easily download DW posts, is there? (It just seems like a pain to me!) Most of the others are pretty short.