Fire in the Walls (t'Tamarak)

[Jaiysa t'Tamarak 0]

Meritorious Achievement Award

 

The burned area of her lower back no longer chafed; Vilanne's treatment had numbed the pain. For all their usefulness in a treatment context, Jaiysa hated anesthetics, particularly topical ones. Numbing an injury was like gagging a screaming prisoner; the screams were there all the same, and the enforced silence made that knowledge all the more unnerving.

 

Vil was right, of course. The burns Jaiysa had sustained during the fire in surgical suite one, left untreated, presented an unnecessary additional risk of infection to everyone in the bay. But the numbness was...distracting.

 

She told herself, with great firmness, that it was only the numbness which was distracting her, but in this moment of calm, puzzled silence following the announcement from the lloann'na consul-general, with the critical patients beginning to dissipate and the maenekir finding a bit of breathing room, it was hard not to reflect. She found herself, in the moment's break she allowed herself, standing again before the damaged suite, running a hand along the burned inside of the bulkhead, remembering...

 

Llaiir...

 

Flames, licking at the walls, charring them and the components they housed.

 

Llaiir...

 

******

 

"Llaiir! Ri'nanov, llaiir! Dekon!"

 

Fire! Mother, fire! Help!

 

"Dekon!"

 

The young girl could taste the smoke like burned bread on her tongue. The playroom was stiflingly hot and flames sizzled across the ceiling, and as she curled away, her back touched the wall, and the heat that lay in wait there seared through her like a knife blade. She screamed in pain and toppled forward onto the ground.

 

The fire was rapidly spreading through the coastal mansion where the Tamarak'ir spent their summers. She did not know where it had begun; perhaps the kitchens…but in the space of moments it had taken possession of the walls, the ceiling, anything it could touch. And now it was here, like a monster emerging out of the closets, out of the ventilation shafts, out of the floor, closing on her.

 

Were she reading this in a storybook, Jaiysa would have dismissed her fears as stupid. Even at only six years of age, she had been taught to know the difference between fantasy and reality. Fire was no monster, and she was a Tamarak, no victim. But trapped in the upper rooms of a house crackling to pieces...she saw nothing but a vicious encroaching mouth, the aehallh, monster ghost of the stories Remal told her at midnight, and she screamed for her mother as it ate her room alive.

 

Where was the water? The air was dry, scorching hot -- they lived on the edge of the sea, she could hear the roar of the waves over the roar of the flames, and yet there was not even a drop to be had to smother out the blaze. Panic choked her, heated her green eyes with terror.

 

"Ri'nanov!"

 

She was alone...

 

*****

 

It wasn't really relevant, of course. In the surgical suite, she had not been alone -- indeed, at the time her thoughts had been primarily on the patient at her side, under her care. Vilanne had been outside to activate the suppression systems within a moment, and though the walls now peeled and collapsed under their own weight and her back was numb...

 

There had been no deaths. Neither the patient nor Vilanne were harmed. But the odd familiarity of it was still too close for comfort...

 

*****

 

The charred remains of the servant who had tried to save her was in fact the first death Jaiysa had ever seen, though it would not be last. It would be some time, too, before the young girl forgot the image of the body laying outside her door to be found after the flames cleared, when she returned to the house after saving her own life (and breaking her leg) via a panicked flight out the window. It all seemed so terribly unreal and her youthful mind struggled to process it.

 

The reason for the fire was beyond her comprehension or interest; indeed, the fact that it was probably intended against her father escaped her completely. What she knew were the bad dreams, the burned and angry skin on her back. The things she could see and touch and feel. Her room was a burnt-out husk of itself; the collection of belongings built up over six years of affluent existence charred and rendered worthless. Everything was just…gone…

 

Madness...

 

******

 

Madness...

 

The fire in surgical suite one had claimed no one, but the battle’s casualties elsewhere more than made up for it. The rapidity with which it began, ended, then passed and left them to clean up the mess was startling. She did not feel overwhelmed by it, of course -- tired and burned but not overwhelmed -- but she did wonder what battle the bridge had fought, why the Manticore had been sent against such great odds without anyone taking the pains to protest it, and in what condition the ship now stood. More, however, she wondered about what was going to happen next.

 

If this was how the lloann'na meant to approach all battles of this war...they would lose. The Manticore would not survive if a beating like this became a constant. It was a chilling thought. Just before their departure from Maturin Station, she had thrown her lot in with these people in the most final way she could have found. And almost immediately, the potential ephemerality of that situation was brought home to her like a hammer blow.

 

When would she learn that nothing lasted? That things earned in a year could be destroyed in an instant, and there was no reason to expect this would be any different...

 

*****

 

"Jaiy-sa...it's alright, au know. It will be alright. Mother and father will get us new things, and the house will be fixed."

 

"I don't want new things, Remal."

 

"Well, we can na have the old things back, that's a sure thing, ie. But we'll get au something better."

 

"I do na want it. Why take it if it will only get destroyed so fast?"

 

"It will na be destroyed...it's all over, a'rhea rinam."

 

"Na, Remal. Au are smart...but au can na be certain there will be na more fires."

 

******

 

a'rhea rinam -- dear sister (roughly)

dekon -- help

ie -- yes

llaiir -- fire

lloann'na -- Federation

maenekir -- doctors

na -- no, not

ri'nanov – mother

Edited August 19, 2010 by STSF Jami