Noticing the look on Katie's face, Kay wished that she could take back that last sentence fragment. It had slipped out by accident, she hadn't meant to worry anyone.
Kay did _NOT_ want to talk about the nightmares that tended to come when she went to sleep feeling stressed. Firmly she turned her thinking away from poking at that particular sore spot in her memories. The nightmares were JUST products of an overactive imagination --- that's what Mother and Father and Grand-dad Malcolm had all told her the FIRST time she'd had them. And never mind the doubts that Gram Callisu had raised later ...
Nervously she fumbled in the pocket of her cloak until she found the second small can of meal-replacement. Popping the top open, she drained it in one long gulp.The sludgy sludgy rush of vitamins, minerals and stimulants hit like rain falling upon parched earth. Slowly, some of the fuzziness in her head sharpened to the point where nothing was seen with blurred edges anymore.
But there was a price to paid for this temporary improvement of function, which is why Kay hadn't dared to drink this one earlier. Admittedly, the cans were safer than stim-tablets, but a person could still manage to mess up their bio-chemistry. For one thing, the amount of stimulants would likely have exceeded the safe-dosage level if she'd drank both cans last night. And for another, this was her last can, and she wouldn't be able to get any more until she returned to the Base.
Kay softly chuckled to herself at the irony that she'd originally been carrying the two cans because of an old student legend about how you couldn't stay drunk with a full stomach. Now she was using it simply to stay awake. Sleep was getting to be quite a high priority again, but she didn't dare to do so yet -- not until she was certain that it would be safe to do so for a few hours.
Finally, Katie spoke. "The Terran Empire is a strange and silly thing sometimes." She said softly, looking at Kay. "They built ships that can travel to galaxies actoss the universe, and have advanced science and medicine in ways that would never have been believed, a few hundred years ago. Using this technology, they've established a foothold in just about every sector of the skies, and encountered hundreds, thousands of new races, species and cultures."
"But," she continued with a wry smile. "They draw the line at accepting or believing something that they can't take the credit for inventing themselves, and that they can't analyze into tiny pieces. What would our ancestors say, if they could see the places that many of us visit for vacations and shopping these days? If we tried to tell them about," she blushed slightly, "places like Vainwal? They wouldn't believe it. But that wouldn't make the places not real."
She fixed Kay with a sharp eye. "You're no stranger to magic - you accept the powers as you understand them, and embrace those who share them with you." She nodded at Dani.
"But you reject the one that is sitting in your lap, surrounding you in almost every single person you include in your life, and making you as sick a hell right now. Why? It's no different." She indicated the little kitten, Louis, Melissa, Dani, and herself, and then gently touched a finger to Kay's head.
"If laran comes out in someone who has no understandable way to explain it, and no known way to control it, then it's a terrifying and extremely dangerous thing. At home, forget it. you're a goner. They call you crazy, and stuff you full of drugs, or whatever. Imagine the way your head feels now, but home, where no-one understands what's going on?
Melissa listened to Kay and Katie speak, and intentionally left her barriers down, so that she could glean as much information from Kay as Kay would allow out - without prying, of course.
She was horrified when she caught the tiny tendrils of pain and sadness and fear that leaked out from Kay as Katie spoke - clearly, she hit a nerve here and there, which Kay resonated with.
She didn't really understand why someone would want to fight Laran so much, but she thought that now, she was finally getting an idea of what it must have really been like. She couldn't imagine it.
A memory-image suddenly flickered to the front of Kay's mind. An almost-femininely-pretty red-haired youth ... of a size that stated he was well into his teens, but barely showing any sign of puberty ... his violet-brown eyes glassy with shock as he lay dying of an uncontrollable fever in a barn on Terra ... and the steady darkening of his bright blue coat as it soaked up both his own fevered-sweat and the seemingly-endless flood of tears that poured from the eyes of Kay's own much younger self as she mourned the fact that there was nobody here who could save him the same way that she believed Mama had saved _HER_ years ago.
Biting at her lip, Kay abruptly shoved THAT image back into the depths of her memories, slamming a mental door so firmly behind it that her body shook with the effort. Desperately, she hoped that it hadn't leaked out farther than the inside of her own head. THAT was another thing that she did NOT want to talk about. The past was past, and it seemed little enough use to cry over wounds that had since scarred over.
Katie continued on "And later, if you survive the threshold sickness, your laran could hurt you, or someone else. Here, they understand it - it's a part of this world as much as the color of the sun, or the weather. We send people offworld to get special surgeries and treatments for different things - so Darkover is the place for laran. It's their specialty."
"Maybe _THAT'S_ part of why I felt so drawn to come here ...", Kay wondered aloud in a small soft voice that was almost a whisper. She sighed, then begin to explain "All I knew for certain was that I couldn't stay anywhere on Terra any longer ... they meant well ... but I couldn't handle THEIR grief on top of my own ... it was smothering me to the point where I couldn't find any peace outside the Circle ... and there were too many painful reminders at home ... we fought over my coming here ... and nobody fights longer or more bitterly than we Scots ... Da forgave me eventually, but I doubt that Mother ever will ...". The words tumbled over each other like leafs caught in rapids. Once the first of them had broken free, the others had followed.
"So why not let go of superstitions that are based on ignorance and old wives' tales, and allow yourself to learn how to safely work and live with this special gift you've been given, from the pioneers themselves?", urged Katie, "Laran is neat, not bad, not scary, and not some sort of magic mumbo-jumbo. It's just a nifty science that the Empire has yet to accept, but that doesn't make it any less real or any less amazing."