Ridahne didn't want to, but while she waited and watched her new charge lie there and breathe, she slipped into a very light doze. Light enough that anything but the rustle of the wind would have made her stir, but just into sleep enough that her mind wandered through gardens of sound and color that could not exist in real life. But then she dreamed of home. Of Azurei. Of the red sands that turned deep purple under the bluish light of the planet's two moons, of the cool, clear seas and the bright creatures within. She dreamed of family--first her brother and father, and then her mother. Her mother. She was the reason she was in all this mess, in some way. Ridahne knew it was all her own fault, but some part of her thought that if her mother hadn't been white, if she'd been Azurian like her father, there would have been nothing to drive her off her home planet when she left Azurei. If she never left, she never would have been here. Never would have been dirty, hungry, and broke in a beyond-dilapidated wasteland of a planet.

The wind gave life to her dark wavy hair, one near-sentient strand sweeping up to tickle her nose. Ridahne blinked, stirring fully awake. The man was still out cold. Drunken idiot. At least when Ridahne got that drunk, she had the good sense to do it in her own home. Or...waste hole, as was the case now. That's what she liked to call it--a waste hole. She didn't go stumbling around town spitting blood into people's faces. Ridahne wiped her face clean again even though she'd managed to wipe all the blood off earlier. It wasn't that she was averse to blood--she was hardly any stranger to that--but her [i]ojih[/i], the intricate tattoos on her face, needed to be clean and unobstructed. Always.

Ridahne's thoughts turned back to the man and what might be ailing him. Drunkards didn't spit blood. Hm. Curious, Ridahne squatted beside him and leaned in close, hovering her ear just above his chest to hear him breathe. A little on the shallow side maybe, but no wheezing or gurgling. Ridahne rocked back onto her heels, watching him loosely. He was dressed for work. What kind of work exactly, she couldn't be sure, but she knew the look of hard-worn clothing with an emphasis on practicality; this man was often outside.

The woman rose, kicking her shoes off to one corner of the little concrete slab floor. She hated shoes. About thirty feet from her excuse for an encampment was a rusty water spout, the kind that might have existed outside a building once, that still pumped water as well as the day it was made, much to Ridahne's surprise. But it was one of the reasons she chose her current living place; with a hose, she could have running water directly at her campsite. And [i]that[/i] was nothing to balk at. The beauty of it all was that she did not exactly have prime real-estate--she was living in a sea of rubble that once was probably a road and a building of some sort and it was terribly dirty and got cold at night, so nobody wanted to steal or fight her for it. The water spout, she kept a hidden secret. It was to her hose that she strode to, squeezing the little nozzle a little until a small, lazy stream shot into her mouth. She thought about washing the dust from her hair when she heard movement behind her. 

Ridahne sat back down to her place opposite the man. Slowly, he began to regain consciousness and she imagined he took a moment to evaluate his surroundings. And then he sat up and acknowledged her rather casually right away. Staring back at him were a set of honey eyes bearing the intensity of a hunting wolf, set into a russet face marked with ornate tattoos of black, white, and blue. She had piercings--a hoop in one nostril, two hoops near the middle of each ear, bone gauges in her lobes, and a curved plate of silver that followed the shape of each inner helix perfectly. Beyond her facial tattoos, she had a few others on her arms and body, most visibly a  pair of black bands around her right bicep. She had the cold, hard look of a woman of experience.

Ridahne filled a plastic cup with water and handed it to him unceremoniously. "Here." Her accent was thick but her English seemed good. "Drink it all. I don't have any food for you." Her tone as all business and not at all warm, though not unkind. "I thought about leaving you in the street. But you spat blood in my face. Seemed like you needed at least some help."  She didn't take her eyes off him, though she was not afraid. "You should stay down a bit, sit there 'till you sober up more. And drink water."