Kel quickly made her way to the infirmary, aka Neal's realm.
"Hey!" called Kel as she entered the big building. Along one side of the well lighted room was cots for the sick, the other side entierly consisting of a workspace. Or what had once been a workspace. At the other end of the infirmary was the surgery, but that was unseeable behind it's impecably clean curtain (it was a cotton sheet stolen from the washing lines).
"Hey! I'm over here!"
"Over where?"
"Here" Kel finnaly got a glimpse of him as he stood up from between two cots. Kel did not want to know what he had been doing there. "I have those requests here."
"Looks pretty good. We're well withing our quota, even with the extra refugees. The only thing you can't get is the roots. You know how rare they are, and we don't really need them."
"Yes I do!"
"You'll live." Anyone who didn't know Neal as well as Kel did would assume that he was mad at her. In actuality, he was worried.
"You okay?"
"Why shouldn't I be?"
"We do have a guest that comes with lots of baggage"
"Did he really bring that much stuff?" (a/n i'm sorry, i couldn't resist)
"Emotional baggage"
"Oh. Yeah. Right."
"Did you even hear the story?"
"No. At least, not the whole story."
"Well, as you know there was a flood, so Cleon went home to get married. bla bla bla, but as you can probobly tell from the fact that he's here and he's unmarried, it didn't work out so well. It seems Leah, that's her name, had other plans. While Cleon was out saving our beloved country (insert Neal's snort here) she had fallen in love with her hostler (insert Kel's snort here). When the flood came and she got her orders to get married, she freaked. Tried to get the hostler to run away with her, but he talked some sense into her. Got her to talk to her and Cleon's mothers, but that didn't help. Finnally, as a last resort, Leah talked to Cleon himself. She could tell that he was as much in love with you, even after all that time you two spent apart, as she was with her hostler. Cleon tried, he really did, to get out of it, they both did, but the mothers would not budge. You know the drill, 'it's for the future of your land, boy!'. So eventually Cleon thretens to run away if his mother won't comply, but before he can get her alone, a wing of the castle fell into the swollen river. The wing she was in. So after that Cleon knew that even all the money in Leah's dowry wouldn't fix Kennan, so he petitioned the Government for some help, and they sent all of his people who would go here. And that's where we come in. You know the rest."
"Yeah, I do. Lots to think about, gotta go," said Kel as she quickly brushed past Neal. Neal looked over his shoulder. Instead of feeling reassured by thier conversation, he felt worse.