Takes on Spots: Three, by Sophonisba [backstory challenge]
-title- Takes on Spots (3/5)
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating- Suitable for general audiences.
-spoilers- Minor one for "Letters from Pegasus."
-characters- Teyla, Charin, Toran, Orin
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
-word count- 562
-summary- In which the traditional response to childhood infectious diseases is used.
Takes on Spots: Three
Teyla was eleven Athosian years, which is nine annu, when Orin of Eluva came to foster with Emmagan.
(Many annu later, she would learn that an anns was very nearly the length of a year on both the world of the City of the Ancestors and the world from whence it came.)
He was sulky and terse, and he complained that the air of Athos hurt his eyes. By the second day, it had become too cold for him, except when it was too hot.
Her Aunt Kina took him by the shoulders to scold him, and then, worried, laid the back of her hand across his forehead.
"He is feverish," she told them, and so Orin lay down in the tent and Charin took Teyla to tickle fish in the stream. (Teyla kept getting impatient and reaching too soon and losing them; Charin told her again and again to be patient, that patience was the single thing most needed in hunting and cooking and trading.)
That night, Kina slept with Teyla and her father, and Orin slept in Kina's pallet by himself, to get over it. Charin and Tagan talked in low voices, mildly concerned about something, as Teyla fell asleep.
The next morning, when Orin sat up, he had blue spots on his face and arm.
"Oh, joy," said Tagan.
"Well, sooner or later it must have come upon them," Charin sighed. "We had best tell everyone else and put up the larger tent. Teyla, Toran, go and sit with Orin."
Teyla very hesitantly went and sat on the edge of Kina's pallet. Toran shrugged, flopped down next to her, and poked at a blue spot on the back of Orin's wrist. It was the color of cheese mold and looked sort of hard and rough, like a scab.
"Oww," Orin said. "That hurt." He elbowed Toran.
Toran elbowed him back.
"Children," Charin said sternly, and waited until they had quieted down before following her daughter out to talk to the rest of the encampment.
"What's with this big tent, anyway?" Orin asked some moments later.
"Everyone who has not had bluespot ought to get it now and get it over with," Toran's mother Ethra explained, "and the best way to do that is to have you all stay together, preferably in a tent large enough to contain you all."
"It is quarantine, then?" Teyla said. Last season Halling Irrylar had had the shaking-fever, and he and his parents had kept within their tent while the out-tent Irrylar and their obligands brought them food and, masked and gloved, bore their refuse away.
"It is," Ethra agreed. "In reverse, if possible."
"It will not be so very bad," Tagan reassured them. "After the fever and the worst of the itching, you will have time to all play together if not the energy that would make it intolerable not to run outside."
And, indeed, it proved not to be so very bad, even when cooped up in a tent with Orin, although that might have been partly because of the Great Quarantined Pillow Fight -- it began on the very last day of possible infectibility, drew in all nineteen of the recovering cases of bluespot, and finished with Orin sitting on Halling while Teyla broke a pillow over the older boy's head.
After that they were friends.
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating- Suitable for general audiences.
-spoilers- Minor one for "Letters from Pegasus."
-characters- Teyla, Charin, Toran, Orin
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
-word count- 562
-summary- In which the traditional response to childhood infectious diseases is used.
Takes on Spots: Three
Teyla was eleven Athosian years, which is nine annu, when Orin of Eluva came to foster with Emmagan.
(Many annu later, she would learn that an anns was very nearly the length of a year on both the world of the City of the Ancestors and the world from whence it came.)
He was sulky and terse, and he complained that the air of Athos hurt his eyes. By the second day, it had become too cold for him, except when it was too hot.
Her Aunt Kina took him by the shoulders to scold him, and then, worried, laid the back of her hand across his forehead.
"He is feverish," she told them, and so Orin lay down in the tent and Charin took Teyla to tickle fish in the stream. (Teyla kept getting impatient and reaching too soon and losing them; Charin told her again and again to be patient, that patience was the single thing most needed in hunting and cooking and trading.)
That night, Kina slept with Teyla and her father, and Orin slept in Kina's pallet by himself, to get over it. Charin and Tagan talked in low voices, mildly concerned about something, as Teyla fell asleep.
The next morning, when Orin sat up, he had blue spots on his face and arm.
"Oh, joy," said Tagan.
"Well, sooner or later it must have come upon them," Charin sighed. "We had best tell everyone else and put up the larger tent. Teyla, Toran, go and sit with Orin."
Teyla very hesitantly went and sat on the edge of Kina's pallet. Toran shrugged, flopped down next to her, and poked at a blue spot on the back of Orin's wrist. It was the color of cheese mold and looked sort of hard and rough, like a scab.
"Oww," Orin said. "That hurt." He elbowed Toran.
Toran elbowed him back.
"Children," Charin said sternly, and waited until they had quieted down before following her daughter out to talk to the rest of the encampment.
"What's with this big tent, anyway?" Orin asked some moments later.
"Everyone who has not had bluespot ought to get it now and get it over with," Toran's mother Ethra explained, "and the best way to do that is to have you all stay together, preferably in a tent large enough to contain you all."
"It is quarantine, then?" Teyla said. Last season Halling Irrylar had had the shaking-fever, and he and his parents had kept within their tent while the out-tent Irrylar and their obligands brought them food and, masked and gloved, bore their refuse away.
"It is," Ethra agreed. "In reverse, if possible."
"It will not be so very bad," Tagan reassured them. "After the fever and the worst of the itching, you will have time to all play together if not the energy that would make it intolerable not to run outside."
And, indeed, it proved not to be so very bad, even when cooped up in a tent with Orin, although that might have been partly because of the Great Quarantined Pillow Fight -- it began on the very last day of possible infectibility, drew in all nineteen of the recovering cases of bluespot, and finished with Orin sitting on Halling while Teyla broke a pillow over the older boy's head.
After that they were friends.