Shavri isn't sure what to do next. 

She has some ideas, sort of, but they're all half-formed, and she's starting to feel blurry with exhaustion, on top of the headache. It would be tempting to stretch out right here on the floor, except that her overfull breasts hurt way too much to sleep. 

Eventually she sighs and hauls herself up. She...can go feed her daughter, once she's checked herself thoroughly enough for signs of Proto infection, and then she can haul a bedroll in here and get some sleep.

The stupid bowl of vomit is still on the floor. She doesn't feel very enthused about dealing with it right now. She leaves it.  

Once she's outside, she leaves the door ajar, finds one of the tavern-keeper's preteen daughters and offers her a copper coin, and asks the girl to stay nearby in the alley and get Shavri right away if she hears any call for help or other sounds of distress.

That accomplished, she begs a bowl of stew in the tavern back-kitchen, and sits down to check herself even more thoroughly for any sign of the Proto's life-force. 

She is Proto-free.

Then she will head off to snuggle and feed her baby daughter, and endure some painfully awkward chitchat with her mother. She's gone for about two candlemarks. 

Julie falls asleep, briefly, and wakes up from a horrible nightmare about being devoured from the inside, which is actually happening, so, great job there, subconscious, you really got into some deep stuff. She tries to sit up and immediately is overcome with nausea and lies down again, only in a moderate amount of pain but having a really hard time distracting herself from it because it's not going to get better and she's going to die because they haven't figured out a cure yet.

There’s water and cider within reach, plus the first aid kit and hand terminal still playing music. The door is ajar. Shavri isn’t back yet, and doesn’t arrive within the next ten minutes.

Well, doing any things would probably be very stupid, and also sounds impossible. She just lies there being miserable for what feels like a very long time.

Eventually Shavri gets back. She has another straw-basket-insulated cup of broth, and a second mug filled with warm, sweetened milk.

:Here. Try to eat or drink some of this. I’m...considering what to do next: She frowns. :Did you get an answer from the person you wrote a message to?: Shavri didn’t totally follow how the hand-terminal message sending works.

I didn't - there's no way to get it to him from here, whatever here is. But - if someone finds my world, eventually - if you figure out what happens - and I'm dead, then. You could send it once you're back in the right star system. You just, uh, post it to a dating site, he'll know to check.

:Oh: 

Shavri picks at her thumbnail. :You'll have to explain a lot more, if you want me to do that. I don't know how to use your glass thing and I have no idea what a 'dating site' is. But I think that's fine to do in the morning. You're not dying imminently, and - maybe we'll still find a way to cure it fully: 

Remind me - later - to explain? If I need to?

:Yes, of course. I'll keep track of all the important things like that, you don't need to worry: Shavri tries to project reassurance and steadiness in her mindvoice, which she doesn't entirely feel. :I think I have to get some sleep before I try anything complicated. I'm planning to sleep here, though, so you can call out if you need anything. And I'll have a thorough look first, to make sure nothing needs urgent attention: 

She turns her Sight back on Julie, first scanning her whole body and gauging if she's stronger or weaker than two candlemarks ago, then focusing in on various spots - the remaining clumps in her blood, her stomach and gut, the sites of the killed or dormant crystals including the one poking through her skin. Any significant changes? 

She seems stronger than she was.

There's more protomolecule than there was two candlemarks ago, but it seems to be ...impeding her less? The stuff in her blood is moving, not clotted; there's some in her lungs, but in a very thin spray that doesn't seem to be affecting her breathing yet.

There's more in her head. A lot more, the life-force very bright.

Well, it's better than it could be, but it still makes Shavri uneasy. And confused. She can't tell if the Proto is damaging Julie's brain, yet - if so it's at a very fine-detail level, not like the clumping crystals from before. She'll need to get a much, much closer look, and her head is pounding right now. 

:Drink some of this: she reminds Julie, pushing the cup of sweetened milk across to her. :You need nourishment. I'm going to get some sleep. You should too, if you can. Um, if the pain gets too bad again, wake me?: She could give Julie the rest of the vial of painkillers, but Shavri doesn't really trust her to be alert enough to keep track of time and space out her doses. 

She unwraps the bedroll she begged off the tavern-keeper's wife, and curls up against the opposite wall. Despite the worry curdling in her stomach, she falls asleep almost instantly. 

Julie sleeps poorly and wakes for good well before Shavri's back, coughing and having trouble clearing her lungs, and with an utter conviction there's a crystal growing beneath her ribs even though she objectively can't identify any evidence of this. The hand terminal is low on battery; she turns it off. WIthout the music everything seems a hundred times more hopeless.

She doesn't want to die.

By the time Shavri is awake she is making a list of her problems again. Maybe this is all a hallucination. Maybe the atmosphere is outside the ship's tolerances and it won't fly. Maybe I contaminated this planet and will get everyone here killed, and for nothing. 

Shavri sleeps like a rock. 

Eventually - still in the very early morning - she blinks open gritty eyes, lies on the floor yawning for a few moments, and then sits up and, realizing that she must have slept for quite a long time, immediately turns her Sight on Julie again. What's changed? 

She looks worse. Her life force is weaker, she's having trouble breathing, and the proto is everywhere, swimming through her veins, attempting to make crystals under her fingernails and in her lungs and in her tendons and in her nose. None of them are very large yet. 

She has her head in her hands and is muttering to herself.

:Hey: Shavri shuffles closer. :How're you feeling? You - don't look great, honestly. I want to just push you some Healing-energy and then - try something, um, I can try to explain if you want but if you're feeling too fuzzy...:

Scared, she says. Keep imagining it growing inside me - except it's not imagining, right - you can try stuff -

:I know. I'm going to try my best and - I think we're still better off than we were when I found you, overall?: 

Well. Maybe. Julie's condition is less precarious, and there aren't any huge crystals again yet, but it seems like overall there's more - and stronger - Proto. 

She checks again that Julie's skin is still clear of Proto, then sets up a link and starts pushing a steady flow of Healing-energy, mostly focused on Julie's heart, which doesn't seem to be the spot of most interest to the Proto right now. Once that's settled and needs less of her concentration to hold, she turns her Sight briefly on Julie's smaller veins and her mouth and eyes, checking her current level of dehydration, and then has a closer peek at her liver and some of her muscle tissues, both places where she knows how to look for signs of undernourishment. 

Julie's pretty undernourished! That's partially the fault of the proto but it's probably mostly just that she still hasn't had all that many calories in the last week, and she's spent them fighting off (or failing to fight off) an infection. She's also a little dehydrated, and - starting to get sick with a couple other non-proto things that wouldn't usually affect a healthy young adult at all?

:I'm going to get you more of that sweetened milk in a bit and I want you to drink all of it: Shavri says. :Just rest for now: 

Undirected Healing-energy will mitigate some of the effects of malnutrition, and she can knock out the other impending infections easily. It's worrying her, that the Proto seems to be - shutting down Julie's body's defences, or maybe just taking so much of her strength that she has nothing left? 

:I'm not going to try to crush any more of it right now: she explains after a little while. :It seems to - scare the Proto, I don't know how else to put it, and then it steals more of your life-force. But I figured out a way to sort of distract or confuse it, and I'm hoping I can use that to get it out of the places it's causing the worst problems: 

Right now she's worried about Julie's lungs. She dives in deeper with her Sight, focuses on one of the tiny forming crystals, falls down and into it until she can just barely see the ripples of something-like-energy traveling from the middle to the edges - she tests if she can push her Sight just a teeny bit further and closer, that's how she's strengthened it to this extent... 

Once she has a sense of it, she tries the same thing as before - a delicate poke, not breaking or tearing, just disrupting the pattern of those ripples. 

The proto moves like a startled animal, flinching away from her, but not aggressive, just confused, maybe startled.

This is really creepy. Shavri tries not to shiver. 

Hmm. Can she...sort of nudge it in the direction of not Julie's lungs? 

It doesn't flee in a wholly consistent direction when prodded but it does generally end up away from the direction it was prodded from? It seems reluctant to leave Julie's lungs entirely, though, because if it's not hijacking blood vessels then it needs mucus membranes. It spreads out a bit, trying to identify other good places to live.

(Presumably it is not actually thinking those things, but the reluctance is noticeable and so is the search for where to go instead.)

Well, she'll try to nudge it out of the major airways, at least, and push it toward the periphery, where it can piggyback on Julie's breathing for now but without reducing Julie's lung capacity too badly. 

Shavri guesses that a lot of her trouble breathing is inflammation and irritation responding to the Proto, and goes hunting for any of that which she can calm down, and any damage left by tiny crystals which she can repair. 

After a while, maybe a candlemark, she surfaces, and surveys Julie's overall condition again. :Hey. How're you feeling?: