I didn't wake up so much as I gradually realized that I was aware of the world around me once again. I felt very light-headed and I was tingly all over. Whatever room I was in was dim. My eyes were still having trouble focusing, but it didn't hurt to try, and it seemed more a result of the dim light than anything wrong with my eyes.

It was much easier to think, even though I still felt a little groggy and slow. I was having trouble remembering a lot of details. I could remember finding a ktari... and I could clearly recall that it had been eating shia fruit... but specifics beyond that were hard to remember. Somebody had been trying to keep it as a pet? No... somebody had been using it, to try and confuse me. For... some reason. And... I had been hurt, somehow. My head had been hurting so much...

It felt much better now, though. Minna must have taken me somewhere and gotten me help. That must be where I was now, wherever here was.

A wall of glass curved upwards in front of me. Even in the dim light the air seemed distorted and hazy around me. The glass seemed to curve through the entire length of my vision, probably forming a dome of some kind to cover me. The surface I was on had a soft padding, but I didn't have any other clues as to where I was beyond that.

The air was clean, aside from a faint metallic scent, and each breath felt easy and full. Rich. It was a refreshing change from the air on that ship. Literally. I took a few deep breaths and felt calmer with each one.

The effect wasn't as overwhelming as the sedatives, but it was still obvious that something in the air was acting as a calming agent of some kind. Which meant I was probably in a hospital. But... where? Was I still on the ship? Had Minna gotten me out, or had something happened to her? Had we been separated? Somebody had mentioned something about a reward, a prize for anyone who found a creature that could track sicora. The way that I could. Was I a patient in this dome... or a prisoner?

After a moment I tried to get to my feet to get a better look around... and immediately felt a wave of dizziness just from the attempt. I sank back down onto the padded surface and waited for the room to stop spinning.

"Shh. It's okay." I perked my ear tufts at the sound of Minna's familiar voice above me. She sounded tired and worried, but also deeply relieved. "It's okay. You're safe. Calm down. It's okay."

Her gentle voice added to the relaxed feeling that came with each breath. I felt safe. I was safe. I slumped weakly down and began to thrum softly.

I heard a soft beep come from somewhere in the distance, then Minna spoke again. "Doctor Senica? He's awake."

Minna made a few more reassuring sounds until I heard the sound of a door opening. It was still much too dark to make out who had just come in, but I heard their footsteps approach me. Something passed over the dome and made a few beeping sounds.

I heard a vaguely familiar voice somewhere above me. "This is encouraging. He looks to be in better shape now. Pulse and breathing are still low but are much closer to their resting rate."

"Oh, good. Thank you." There was more relief in Minna's voice. "Thank you." She grew quiet for a few seconds before speaking again, and I could hear more of the weariness in her voice. "Can I take him out now?"

I saw shapes blurring above me beyond the glass, followed by more beeping sounds. "He still needs more treatment. His blood had a lot more of the toxic buildup than we found in the others, and they are only just now recovering to the point where they can handle light." The vaguely familiar voice paused and I heard more beeping. A gentle hissing sound echoed around me and the haze in the air began to clear away. "I do need to take another blood sample to see how much more treatment he needs. A small break should be okay while I do that."

The dome seemed to split in front of me, in much the same way the Kymari doors did, and it folded up into a single curved panel off to my side. I saw a pair of hands reach towards me and saw the familiar scarring that marked them as Minna's hands.

She lifted me off the table and pulled me close against her chest, then began petting slowly over my back. Even in the dark room I could tell she was very tense. She had been badly frightened, and had spent a long time being worried.

Worried about me.

I still felt very weak and light-headed, but I lifted my head up to nudge softly at her chin. I felt some of the tension melt from her, and her hand came to rest against my back. There was a lot more of the happiness and relief in her voice as she whispered quietly. "Hi, Nate."

I tried to give her another nudge of my head, but the dizziness caught back up to me. I slowly lowered my head back against her and spread my wings out to relax against her.

I heard the doctor moving somewhere else in the room and heard the door open. Minna cleared her throat and lifted her head back up. "Thank you, Doctor Senica."

"Of course." The form paused at the door. I could barely make out a nodding motion in the darkness. "I will go check on the other fire lizards. I'll come back for a blood sample after that." The doctor left and the door closed shut behind her.

Minna shifted her hand to cradle me gently against her and began petting slowly over my back once more. I let the thrumming build in my chest and tried to remember everything that had happened.

The events gradually came back to me. The ktari on the ship. The shia fruit I had been forced to watch them eat. The headache that had gotten gradually worse, until it had literally become debilitating. Flying into the wall. The fright in Minna's voice, and in Ivy's. Tom's reassuring words when I was panicking.

"Ivy?" I tried to reach the green dragonet with my mindspeech. I wanted to let her know I was okay, and to make sure she was safe too. She might also have some more answers as to what had happened.

There was nothing but the strange mental echo of my own mindspeech.

I tried not to jump to any conclusions, but I couldn't help but remember how I hadn't been able to talk to her when I was hurt. I took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. It probably just meant that Ivy was asleep.

I focused on the general mindlink instead. "Hello?" I didn't get the echo sensation this time, but my mental voice sounded incredibly tired.

"Nate!" Serena responded instantly. She sounded excited, but I could also sense exhaustion beneath it. "You're awake! Hold on, I'll tell Trenil to wake up Ivy; she wanted to know when you woke up."

"She needs her sleep." Tom's voice sounded just as exhausted as Serena's and my own. "The doctor said her blood was nearly as bad as Nate's was, and she stayed up worrying for hours on top of that. She's exhausted. We should let her rest."

I tried not to show any reaction that might alarm Minna, but the idea that Ivy had been as bad off as I had been did not sit well with me. And even though I must have been asleep for some time, I still felt very weary and weak. My own voice sounded just as tired as Serena's and Tom's. "Let her sleep. I can talk to her next time she wakes up." Though... I was still pretty tired. There was no telling how long I would be awake, or how long Ivy would need to sleep. "Or the next time we're both awake."

A patient sigh came over the mindlink from Serena. "Men. Sometimes you're just so clueless." A tired chuckle came over the mindlink from the other scarlet at Serena's words, letting me know she was also okay, but she didn't add anything. I was still trying to figure out what Serena had meant by that when her voice changed in some indefinable quality, and I had the impression of Trenil being included in the conversation. "Nate just woke up. Ivy will want to talk to him."

The mindlink was quiet for a moment... then I heard Ivy's mental voice directed at me. "Nate?" She sounded even more tired than I did, but I could still make out concern in her tone.

I focused on replying to her instead of the general mindlink. "I'm here. The doctor just left; she said I'm doing better. I'm with Minna right now."

"Oh, good. Good. That's... I'm so glad. You had breathed in so much of that stuff, and you weren't waking up... we were all worried about you." There was a sense of incredible relief in Ivy's tone.

"I'm sorry. I'm okay now. The doctor said I still needed more treatment and is going to come back at some point to get a blood sample, but she said I would be okay." I tried to sound confident and hoped the weariness in my tone didn't upset Ivy.

If she thought anything of it, she didn't say anything. She still just sounded relieved. "Good. Well. About being okay, I mean. Though the treatment isn't that bad. We're all getting it. It's just some gas they want us to breathe, to help bind with the toxin and clear it out of our blood faster. You can't even smell it."

"What happened? Are you okay? Everybody sounds really tired."

"We are. It hasn't been easy to sleep, and any sleep we did manage to get hasn't been very restful. You were lucky in that at least; the rest of us had to muddle through with awful headaches. Though you're the only one who had it so bad that you blacked out from it, so that's probably not much of a silver lining." Ivy paused, and I got the impression she was yawning wherever she was. I could tell she was exhausted - she tended to ramble a little and go on tangents even at the best of times, but it got worse when she was tired. "The aliens poisoned us."

"What? How?" I felt a bit of panic and tried to squint up at Minna in the darkness. She didn't look like anything was wrong, at least from what I could make out of her... but she had sounded tired earlier, just like everybody else seemed to be. "Is Minna okay?"

"She's fine. All of the Kymari are. Whatever they used wasn't enough to affect themselves or the Kymari, or even those ktari. We've been getting bits and pieces of the story from the guards - Minna's father has been bringing us the most information, believe it or not, since the rest of the guards went home hours ago. Nobody will let any of the bond handlers talk to the aliens; all of them are too furious over what happened. I don't think anybody believes the aliens, but they're trying to stay diplomatic anyways."

I felt a bit of relief at knowing that Minna was okay... but Ivy's answer hadn't been that helpful otherwise. "What did they do to us?"

A mental snort of derision came over the mindlink. "Nothing! They've been very adamant about that. They all think they're so clever. They didn't do anything to try and hurt us, and would never do such a thing. But since they weren't hauling any cargo on this run, they took the opportunity to do a thorough cleaning of their ship, and just so happened to dump a chemical cleaner all over their ship that left fumes everywhere. To a creature with as much mass as they or the Kymari have, the fumes are nothing more than an annoying smell, even if they stay in it day and night for months. But we're a lot lighter, and take a lot more breaths because we need a lot more oxygen as part of being able to fly, so it was building up too quickly for our bodies to process."

I got it then. "Like spraying for bugs back when we were human. You could smother a building in the chemicals and the bugs would die from it, but you could go back in just a few hours later and be fine. Even smaller animals would be fine, but the bugs would continue to die from it days and weeks later, because they kept breathing it in."

"Tom compared it to paint thinner fumes and having to keep cats out of places you were painting, but that works too." She paused, and I felt a sense of mischievousness in her next words. "Are you hungry?"

I thought about it... and had to fight the sudden urge to throw up.

"Blurk... no. No. I don't even want to think about eating right now."

More sleepy amusement came into Ivy's voice. "Yeah... that was a fun surprise we discovered when they tried to feed us. The original plan was to give us some chalk thing to chew on, but severe nausea is a symptom of whatever this chemical is, so that's out. It's not too bad if you don't think about it."

"Thanks. I'll try not to." I glanced at the dark room around me. "I take it that's also why the lights are out?"

"Yup. That was the only symptom to actually get worse after we left; they had to shut off all the lights in this part of the clinic for us. Even faint light coming in from the hallway is enough to really hurt. The Kymari are all wearing something to help them see in the dark. It's actually kind of funny-looking if you can make it out." Ivy broke off for a moment, and I got the impression she was yawning again. "But that's what happened. Officially it's all a big misunderstanding, and the aliens are being extremely apologetic and calling it an unfortunate accident, but I don't think anybody believes them. We're not sure what's going to happen next." Ivy went quiet again and I felt more weariness come from her over the mindlink.

"You should go back to bed. Thank you for filling me in. We can talk more later, once we've managed to rest." I reached into my memories and sent her a memory of her resting beside me and extending a wing over me. It wasn't much, but maybe it would help her get back to sleep.

"Okay. I'm glad you're okay." I felt gratitude and more relief come back from her, along with a strange feeling of fuzzy warmth that I didn't quite understand. Ivy's voice changed as she spoke into the general mindlink. "Thanks for waking me up. I'm going back to sleep now."

The general mindlink was filled with several sleepy voices telling Ivy goodnight and wishes for sweet dreams, then it went quiet again. I thought about talking to the other dragonets, but they all sounded about as tired as Ivy had, and I wasn't doing much better myself.

I let myself relax a little more and tried to stop thinking about what had happened, and instead let myself enjoy the warmth and comfort of Minna's protective hug.