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Date & Time: Sometime after the battle but before Sunday. /makes vague hand gestures.
Location: Hold Infirmary
Characters: Shelke and Galadriel
Summary: Sometimes a patient gets bored and decides to go wandering through the clinic. Sometimes that patient happens upon an elf healer. Things happen.
Warnings: None likely. Will update if needed.

As is usual lately, the infirmary buzzes with activity. Galadriel has a part of it, making her rounds swiftly and with little fuss, moving from patient to patient offering what relief she could. It wasn’t easy; even once the most critically injured had been stabilized, there was a great deal to be done. She had seen this before- the aftermath of battle. It’s always gruesome, always frantic. The songs never mention that- there’s little glory to be found in stitching up wounds. But healers fight a war of their own, in a way, and it is exhausting.

So Galadriel takes some time to herself- just a few moments to gather her thoughts and to rest. She would be of no use to anyone at all if she couldn’t think clearly. She sits in a quiet corner of a waiting area, resting her head in her hands and just listening to her surroundings, breathing in and out.

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A nearby examination room door suddenly popped open, and a small redhead with half her face wrapped in bandages was ushered out by a rather exasperated nurse. "Miss Rui, as we have already stated, you are not allowed in here."

The girl frowned faintly, turning to object, but cut off with a faint wince, her hand going to the bandage on her side, which earned her an even deeper glare from the nurse.

"If you tear your stitches again we are going to tie you to your bed," the woman declared. "Return to your room. Now." She turned and vanished back into the room with a nearly slammed door.

Shelke sighed softly as she forced her hand away from her side, her good eye, considering the area around her. The nurse was probably right, but that didn't mean Shelke was going to listen...

Galadriel laughed, softly but suddenly. And a much needed laugh it was too. Under other circumstances, she might have been in either place. As a healer, she has certainly dealt with her fair share of patients who would just not sit still. But she had also been a young girl once and an active one at that- one who would not liked to have been cooped up indoors for long. She has not forgotten.

"I have seldom heard them resort to threats. You must have exasperated them greatly."

Shelke was not expecting anyone to speak to her, so her unnaturally blue eyes were slightly wide, if only for a moment, in surprise as she turned to look at the woman.

"...I was not in the way," she finally decided with a faint frown. "They are just...overly paranoid."

It wasn't true. Shelke might not have been actively in the way, but she did have a habit of intruding, and the staff here was getting frustratingly good at spotting the faint image distortions she left when she was invisible.

"From the sounds of it, they are concerned less for their convenience and more for your welfare." A smile played about her lips, though it never quite reached her eyes. "And I cannot say I blame them overmuch."

She actually sighed faintly, though whether it was out of frustration or just tiredness was hard to say with Shelke. "Perhaps," she could concede it might be true. From the bandage on her face and the other on her side, she was obviously more injured than she was letting on.

"But I cannot remain in that room constantly." She tried. She really did try. It just didn't work.

"Then come here and speak with me whilst I rest." She offered. "The company would not be unwelcome and I think to sit still a moment would do us both well."

Shelke hesitated, considering the woman again before she shifted, almost a shrug as she moved to sink down next to the woman, wincing faintly and pressing her hand into her side as if trying to hold her stitches together with pure will.

Of course, she has no idea what to say, because Shelke doesn't know how to shot small talk.

Fortunately, Galadriel is quite skilled at small talk; it's one of the skills that one learns as a diplomat. She turned to face Shelke, noting her injuries for later consideration.

"May I ask your name? I have heard it in part, I believe, but I would prefer a proper introduction."

"I am Shelke the Transpa-" Shelke caught herself halfway through the word and frowned, because she'd been getting better about using a title that was no longer hers. It was probably the medication they had her on...

"My name is Shelke Rui." A beat. "You?"

"I am called Galadriel." Shelke, for whatever reason, had stopped herself from using a title; it seemed only fitting that Galadriel introduced herself without hers as well. "It is a pleasure, though I wish we were meeting under more agreeable circumstances."

She just nodded. "I don't believe we are going to have many 'better circumstances' after this." But Shelke was a pessimist at heart.

And her attention is more on Galadriel herself, rather than the situation. "You are not human."

"It always seems so after a great battle- as if the sun will never shine again. Yet it does." And strangely, after everything, Galadriel was still able to hold on to hope. She's not an optimist, exactly; she doesn't assume the best of things. But she does hope for them.

The question, though, catches her slightly off-guard. She has grown accustomed to explaining herself here, in this world where so few knew of her people, but in all the chaos she had quite forgotten that her race was not self explanatory.

"I am not; I am, in the common tongue, an elf."

She frowned faintly at that, although she could sort of see the resemblence to the elves she had met here.

"Like the sin'dorai?" She had spoken to a few of them. They were...something.

"Something like. I know of them, though they are not of my world. We differ in a great many respects, but there is some resemblance." But not the same. They were mortal, albeit long-lived, and there could be no greater divide.

"My people call ourselves 'Quendi' and I myself am counted among the Eldar and the Noldor. But you hardly need concern yourself with such details."

"Mm," a quiet noise, it almost would've been thoughtful if she ever sounded involved at all. Which she didn't. "We don't have elves on Gaia. Humans were the dominant race. There were a few other sentient ones, but they were..."

How to put it.

"Mostly dying off."

Shinra was very effective at what they did.

If Galadriel was disturbed by that last part, she didn't show it, instead nodding again. "Few here seem to know of my race and fewer still know of us as we are in Middle Earth. It does not surprise me that we are strange to you."

"Everything here is strange to me," it was an oddly open admission from the usually quiet girl, but perhaps the medication they had her on was making her chatty. Well, chatty for her.

"Nothing works properly here. Science does not work properly here."

“I will admit, I have heard much of this science and know far less of it.” And it’s not easy for her to admit when she’s completely out of her element. But on that subject, she certainly is. All she knows is that people are occasionally very insistent that what they do is ‘science’ and not ‘magic’ and the difference is not always clear to her. “But I will agree that very little here is as it should be.”

Shelke wasn't quite certain what to make of people who didn't know about science, she'd spent a decade immersed in it. It was just part of who she was.

"Apparently I am the exception, not the rule. Science functions here the way it does on most worlds. Just...not on Gaia." She frowned faintly as she spoke. "I suppose it doesn't matter. But it is...frustrating."

Galadriel felt much the same about people who didn't know about- or claimed not to believe in- magic. For her, it wasn't just a part of who she was, but a part of how the world worked. It simply was. So she would be a bit more understanding of that than you might expect.

"Gaia is the name of your world, then? Ours we call Arda."

"Yes. It is an old name, most people aren't aware of it or use it." Shelke looked thoughtful.

"What does Arda mean?"

"Literally, it means 'realm,' though few would use the term in that manner these days."

Shelke supposed that made sense, which made her question seem sort of silly. "Everyone on Gaia speaks the same language. Discovering there are so many other languages has been...fascinating, in a way."

"Only one language?" That startles her almost more than anything else that has been said thus far. "It is difficult to imagine. I speak three myself and that is but a small portion of those in existence."

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