06-27-2021, 02:15 PM
a bright and dangerous spark
Anything was possible.
Cheri may have grown up from her childish behaviors, but she still clung to that desperate belief as the years dragged by. A late bloom herself, she always wondered when her time would come: would there ever be a moment all her own? A power she could wield that had the ability to affect others the way her siblings always seemed to do?
In time, maybe. In the present, she had the capability to change one horse’s life and she was determined to help Ledger at a pace that suited him best. His acceptance of her offer was only met with a quiet smile, and then Cheri carefully, deliberately extended her black nose toward the broad angle of his pale golden forehead once he’d closed his eyes.
This interaction … It reminded her of a similar occurrence years ago when she’d been a filly. She remembered wandering into Tephra on purpose during the eclipse, hellbent on practicing her craft even when the circumstances of survival were so risky a thing to tempt by toying around with fate. Leaving her herd had been a deliberately stupid thing to do, but it had led her to meeting a rather curious creature along the way, and she remembered the manticore in the dark - Sorren - with a grin.
Her nose made contact. Instead of a sparking light, her healing came to life more like a soothing wave. It had warmth to it, mentally and physically felt by the afflicted (She’d been told), and she pushed the small wave very carefully and very softly into the spirit of her patient before withdrawing again. Targaryen had usually been the recipient of this “revival” healing, and he liked to tell her it reminded him of waking after a restful, deep sleep. She hoped that Ledger might feel similarly.
But the truth of it for her was a much more different feeling. Cheri had depleted an incredibly small amount of mana in the exchange, not trying to exhaust herself. For larger acts of healing she might feel anything ranging from a headache to an entire depletion of her own energy, and when she’d first discovered the ability by saving Targaryen’s life it’d nearly given her a blackout. Each time, she also felt something reflected back.
A darkness. It’d taken her years to realize that the color she associated that feeling with was something that had no physical shape at all, but to her patients it was very real and incredibly damaging depending on the size and depth. Her dam Amarine had been most knowledgeable about the matter when Cheri presented her the problem, and had originally given her daughter an idea that soon became a close study. The horses she worked on … each of them had something they were harboring, be it loss or misfortune, and Cheri had always wondered if she could bend her powers to healing those as well as the physical injuries that ailed them.
If she could, what a marvelous discovery it would be. To help not only the body but the soul, and by effect restoring a horse to the best of themselves through her care. It was a refreshing hope to bolster.
But what she felt reflected back at her in Ledger was something Cheri wasn’t exactly sure he could’ve prepared her for, even with his careful warning. The young healer sighed after the contact was broken and waited with baited breath for her ward’s response, troubled deeply by the darkness she’d felt just under the surface. Ledger was permeated by it: there was no gentle way to put it. His trauma’s were some of the deepest and most heavy she’d ever felt, and they’d grown inside of him after so many years of repression.
“How’d that feel?” Cheri suppressed the urge to shudder, knowing good and well that she would need ample time to think over what she’d felt and how best to approach Ledger’s long-rooted pain.
Cheri may have grown up from her childish behaviors, but she still clung to that desperate belief as the years dragged by. A late bloom herself, she always wondered when her time would come: would there ever be a moment all her own? A power she could wield that had the ability to affect others the way her siblings always seemed to do?
In time, maybe. In the present, she had the capability to change one horse’s life and she was determined to help Ledger at a pace that suited him best. His acceptance of her offer was only met with a quiet smile, and then Cheri carefully, deliberately extended her black nose toward the broad angle of his pale golden forehead once he’d closed his eyes.
This interaction … It reminded her of a similar occurrence years ago when she’d been a filly. She remembered wandering into Tephra on purpose during the eclipse, hellbent on practicing her craft even when the circumstances of survival were so risky a thing to tempt by toying around with fate. Leaving her herd had been a deliberately stupid thing to do, but it had led her to meeting a rather curious creature along the way, and she remembered the manticore in the dark - Sorren - with a grin.
Her nose made contact. Instead of a sparking light, her healing came to life more like a soothing wave. It had warmth to it, mentally and physically felt by the afflicted (She’d been told), and she pushed the small wave very carefully and very softly into the spirit of her patient before withdrawing again. Targaryen had usually been the recipient of this “revival” healing, and he liked to tell her it reminded him of waking after a restful, deep sleep. She hoped that Ledger might feel similarly.
But the truth of it for her was a much more different feeling. Cheri had depleted an incredibly small amount of mana in the exchange, not trying to exhaust herself. For larger acts of healing she might feel anything ranging from a headache to an entire depletion of her own energy, and when she’d first discovered the ability by saving Targaryen’s life it’d nearly given her a blackout. Each time, she also felt something reflected back.
A darkness. It’d taken her years to realize that the color she associated that feeling with was something that had no physical shape at all, but to her patients it was very real and incredibly damaging depending on the size and depth. Her dam Amarine had been most knowledgeable about the matter when Cheri presented her the problem, and had originally given her daughter an idea that soon became a close study. The horses she worked on … each of them had something they were harboring, be it loss or misfortune, and Cheri had always wondered if she could bend her powers to healing those as well as the physical injuries that ailed them.
If she could, what a marvelous discovery it would be. To help not only the body but the soul, and by effect restoring a horse to the best of themselves through her care. It was a refreshing hope to bolster.
But what she felt reflected back at her in Ledger was something Cheri wasn’t exactly sure he could’ve prepared her for, even with his careful warning. The young healer sighed after the contact was broken and waited with baited breath for her ward’s response, troubled deeply by the darkness she’d felt just under the surface. Ledger was permeated by it: there was no gentle way to put it. His trauma’s were some of the deepest and most heavy she’d ever felt, and they’d grown inside of him after so many years of repression.
“How’d that feel?” Cheri suppressed the urge to shudder, knowing good and well that she would need ample time to think over what she’d felt and how best to approach Ledger’s long-rooted pain.
@Ledger