:Maybe your world has invented nicer beds: shrugs Belrun. Belrun turns out to really like dried pineapple.

"I'm pretty sure that a lot of very smart people in my world have put tons of time and attention into inventing better beds! Because if you're going to spend a quarter to a third of your life unconscious, it matters a lot that you do it as efficiently as possible? ....Um, I'm actually a little surprised that Leareth didn't just personally invent the optimal bed, but maybe he had enough other problems to work on first." 

:Well, I suppose it's possible he tried and then the gods destroyed all his work or something. He's never complained about our bed and the one we have in the palace isn't a lot different from the one in the underground lair. Plausibly the ones here are made of weird materials? They did touchsight kind of weird:

"Huh! I'm actually really curious about that! I couldn't tell much about the materials directly. Just that the sheets were...less good? I'm not even sure if I can describe how they were less good, just, they weren't all that comfy to lie on? And they didn't help with being too warm or too cold? ...My mattress was too soft but I think preferences for bed-consistency just legitimately vary a lot between people and there's no reason for the beds here to be how I like them." 

:Can't you just adjust the blankets if you're too warm or too cold?:

"...I mean, sure? But then you have to wake up at least enough to move on purpose, and slightly disrupted sleep is less good for rest than deep sleep the whole time...? ...Also I think a lot of people feel more comfortable and relaxed if they have a constant level of pressure over their whole body? Not everyone, but - I think it was around 60% in dath ilan who found that important -?" 

Merrin knows this because of STUDY DATA and PREDICTION MARKETS and also personal anecdotal experience from herself and patients she's personally worked with, but obviously that needs to be discounted accordingly. 

:Well, maybe in my copious spare time once I get home I will invent a magic hot water bottle that heats up and cools down automatically but I am not going to fault the hotel for not having those:

....Oops, Merrin feels like she said something rude somewhere in there? She's not sure what, though. 

(Merrin is perhaps, even by dath ilan standards, not the best at reading nonverbals.) 

She will continue to wait for their ride out of here. 

Eventually the hanggliders are done. The instructor packs up the equipment and the students get on the bus. Belrun and Merrin can also get on the bus!

A vehicle! Merrin is so curious. And, honestly, also slightly concerned? It's probably fine but she doesn't know that. She will jog around it and try to get a closer look at all the moving parts before they go anywhere. 

The moving parts are mostly inside. The vehicle has six wheels, and electrical contacts on the nose under a protective plastic cover, and it's painted shimmery ice-blue except where the logo appears.

The driver waves Merrin aboard impatiently.

Merrin is super curious about what the electrical contacts under the plastic cover do, but it looks like nothing is going to spectacularly fall apart as soon as they start moving, and also she probably can't learn much more by staring at the exterior, so sure, she'll get on and sit with Belrun.

The bus has ten non-driver seats and some flex-space without seats in it. There are six hangglidiing students (the instructor's in his own truck with the equipment).

The driver starts up the bus and trundles it down the hill.

Merrin sits next to Belrun and is very attentive to everything happening around them, even though she has no specific indications to be worried.

...Okay, fine, if she's paying attention to all of her thoughts including the more inconvenient ones, she - is kind of worried that the fact that Belrun's husband was absolutely a romance novel male protagonist, means that they are now probably going to have an Adventure? 

The ride is very boring for the first while. Trundle trundle trundle. The driver is slow and careful.

Then a deer shoots out of the trees on one side of the road, and the driver swerves, and hits the deer anyway, and the whole bus is tilting, and Belrun is clutching her head and screaming and the bus luuuurches back toward the road -

- but not far enough before she passes out.

They tumble down about twenty feet, everybody shrieking and thumping around inside the cabin like naughty pears.

Merrin is mostly paying attention to the view outside all of the windows she can see from her current seat - 

- which was apparently not the most useful strategy, which should maybe have been obvious but it wasn't - but if she were smarter  if instead of her it were someone else, here, who was smarter–

Not the point. Not now. 

Merrin is pretty sure that Belrun did some kind of magic just then - probably the telekinesis kind - but it doesn't matter, Belrun is the important one here, Merrin doesn't want to die but she was ready to less than 24 hours ago and it's fine, it's FINE - she can wrap her arms around Belrun and shield her with her own body and it's FINE - 

The bus comes to a halt in some miscellaneous shrubbery. The deer is crushed under it and does not survive this experience.

The screaming eventually gives way to sobbing and murmuring as people try to assess each other's conditions. Looks like broken wrists, lots of bruising, one woman had dozed off and hit her head pretty hard and is just now semiconscious while her boyfriend whimpers over her.

Belrun's out but not badly injured, just - apparently tried to do too much magic.

AAAAAAAAAH– 

- ok great they're still alive. 

Is Belrun still alive?

(Seems like a yes, she's breathing and Merrin can still feel a pulse?) 

Is everyone else nearby still alive? ...Well, everyone in Merrin's line of sight seems to be, they're at least making noises or moving–

...Merrin really doesn't want to leave Belrun. But...maybe it's okay to lay Belrun down across the seats they were sharing, and then check her pulse and breathing again, before forging out across the no-longer-very-horizontal bus floor to get a sense of the other casualties.

To start: who isn't moving? 

Head injury lady is fluttering her eyelids but not otherwise moving around; she's groaning while her boyfriend tries to - get her to squeeze his hand? - and fumbles with his phone (broken).

Everyone else is showing any signs at all of consciousness - good - oh also good the boyfriend is trying to do some reasonable things - 

- the language difference continues to be really awkward??? Merrin makes her way over to them anyway, and tries to catch the boyfriend's eye and nod reassuringly to him before she reaches in to check the lady's pulse. 

Lady pulls away from her hand and groans more emphatically. Boyfriend doesn't seem confident enough to interfere but he is definitely watching Merrin out of the corner of his eye while trying to help someone else whose wrist looks busted to get their bag open to check for a non-broken phone.

Merrin hasn't previously seen phones and she isn't sure what they're for! They look like some kind of electronics, though. Maybe for communication? Hopefully? Someone communicating in order to get some HELP over here would be great right about now. 

Does the woman have a reasonably strong pulse and is she breathing okay and does her skin color look mostly normal? If so then Merrin can move on and stop upsetting the boyfriend who (very reasonably!) does not trust her. 

Pulse is fast, breathing is shaky and quick, she's damp but not too cold or too hot or a weird color (modulo the local ethnicity, which is a bit darker than Merrin).

Okay she's not dying, which means it's a correct priority anyway to go check on all the others. This one at least has a partner who will keep checking on her and hopefully raise an alarm if her condition deteriorates. 

...Merrin is going to go check on Belrun again first, partly because it would be really awful if she ended up stuck here with no one who could handle the language barrier, and partly because Belrun is the person she knows and she's therefore more stressed about her.