Difference between revisions of "Logs:To Make Sure None Of Us Froze"

Resident Common Room, High Reaches Weyr

Just off of the main passageway lies the small cavern that forms the hub of the residents' quarters, kept immaculately clean by the headwoman's staff and warmed in cold weather by a stone hearth to the left and well back from the entrance. Comfortable chairs and a plush fur arrayed before the hearth make an inviting spot to curl up with a book or handicraft, or just to sit and chat. Beyond, additional chairs stand in clusters throughout the room, some upholstered with age-softened hide, some plain wood. At the widest point of the cavern, a round table gleams with polish, though its surface is nicked and scarred from Turns of use. Beyond the table, the very back of the cavern often lies in shadow unless the glowbaskets there are unlidded to cast cozy pools of light. The commingled scents of klah, smoke and polish permeate the air along with the sweetness of rosemary and lavender.

Tapestries hang across the entrances to dormitories and more private quarters as well as the exit to the outer hall, colorful protections from drafts.

Outside, it's raining rather than snowing: miserable, bitterly cold torrents that make a mess of everything. In the common room, though, things are cozier, and if there's a faint smell of drying wool everywhere, well, that's hardly unusual. Madilla's damp hair is more likely to be from the baths than the outdoors; she crosses from the dorms with a book in hand, heading for the closest available seat. Given the afternoon hour, it's not as crowded as it could be - but it's far from empty.

Milani is not good at sewing, so why she's trying to, might be anyone's best guess, yet there she is, tongue stuck out to one side, legs folded up tailor style beneath her in one of the comfy chairs tucked a little out of the way. "Oh shards!" she exclaims as Madilla nears. She stuck her finger and promptly lifts it to her mouth.

The sound of Milani's voice alters Madilla's path so that she walks even closer to the Headwoman; after sliding between a few chairs and past some chattering caverns women, she comes to a halt a few steps away, one hand lingering on the back of a tall chair. "Milani?" And then, her book clutched towards her chest, her eyes catching what the Headwoman is up to, "You're supposed to sew the /fabric/ together... not your fingers." It's meant as a joke, her shy little smile evidence of that.

Finger still in mouth, Milani looks up at the healer and gives her a wan smile around it. "Imphty," she stops, pulls her finger out of her mouth, tries that again. "Would you believe I've been trying? Seriously, I have no talent for this." She holds up what looks like a shirt with a very bad tear in it and the stitching is ... bad. Uneven. Rucked up.

Madilla can't help herself: she outright winces at the stitching she's being shown. It takes her only a moment more to cross the remaining steps between them, and reach out to take the shirt from her friend - if she'll let her. "Couldn't you just hand it over to the seamstresses?" she asks, sounding surprised. "Rather than do it yourself? Or let me, now. It won't take long."

"No," Milani starts to tug the shirt back towards herself and colors a little. "I'm um -- I"m trying to learn see. It's for practice. It's not even anything that I need or anyone needs, just ... practice."

Madilla withdraws her hand as Milani starts to tug the shirt back, clasping it back on top of her book; she turns pink, too. "Oh," she says after a moment, sounding slightly mystified as she says it, though when she continues a moment later, she's distinctly more sure. "Of course. I understand. We don't learn if we don't do it for ourselves, right?"

"Oh don't feel bad!" Milani exclaims and bites on her lip tucks the needle away carefully and looks down at her 'handiwork'. "But yeah. I'm trying. Only, I really suck."

Madilla wordlessly settles down into a conveniently empty chair that's just next to the Headwoman's. Her book gets placed on her lap, and she tips her gaze away from the shirt and back towards Milani's face. "You'll get better," she offers. "If you try. Probably. But if you don't... is it just something you want to be able to do?" Her blush is fading, and her expression is sympathetic - warm.

"It's easier to give things to the seamstresses," MIlani agrees belatedly and pokes a finger at a really bad stitch. "But I'd like to be able to fix up things on my own sometimes. It's just -- it's one of those really basic skills you know? Seems like I should've learned a long time ago. But I never bothered."

"That's the benefit of the weyr though, isn't it? You don't /have/ to. You can pick and choose." Despite this, Madilla, grinning, adds, "I like knowing I /can/ do things, though. So I do understand. I tried to learn how to knit, a while ago... it was a /disaster/." She makes a face at the memory, then shakes her head. "I'm sticking to my quilts, now."

"True, it is," Milani agrees and plucks idly at that thread then looks up laughs a little. "Really? And you have such good hands ..."

Madilla gives her hands a thoughtful glance, but laughs, easily. "Good for some things, but apparently not for others. Maybe there's only so many things one can do with their hands, before their hands get confused. All I know is... the knots were /awful/." Her nose wrinkles, punctuating the awfulness of it, but she keeps smiling, nonetheless. "How are you, anyway, Milani? Aside from the sewing."

"Hmm. Just like brains?" Milani asks with humor in her voice and blows out a breath, leans back in the chair. "I'm actually really good," Millie says with a smile. "And you? Are things -- looking up?"

"Just like brains," agrees Madilla, firmly, that smile still in place. She looks pleased at the answer to her question, the corners of her mouth tilting warmly; she pauses before making her own answer, expression briefly thoughtful, though her voice is firm enough. "I'm glad. Yees-- they are. I suppose. Delifa's doing much better, back on her feet though not entirely back at work. I'm off to the Hall next seven, for exams. Nothing else really going on, though."

"Fairly smooth sailing," the headwoman says with a little hand gesture to indicate a boat on the waves, then nods seriously at Madilla. "I'm glad she's doing better, it's been a tough time for her." MIlani's tone is sympathetic. "I wish you best of luck on those exams. You might see my brother down there, actually. He's up for his Master's exams at Harper again."

"As it should be," decides Madilla, of the smooth sailing. "It has. I think she feels really bad, that she couldn't care as much for Delvana when she was teeny tiny... but it wasn't her fault, and L'van and I, we did our best." And it hardly looks as though Madilla was complaining; if anything, she looks wistful all over again. "Thank you," she adds, with a rueful smile. "I need to do well... Delifa really wants me to get a place in the advanced training session this summer. I'd like to, for her. Is he?" Milani's brother. "I hope he does well, then. Master's exams... sounds enormously intimidating."

"Things happen," Milani says quietly, noddng a few times about Delifa and her daughter. "Is that a good step up for healers?" she asks next then smiles wryly. "It's his second try. Fingers crossed!"

Madilla's nod is a sage one, her lips drawn tightly despite her agreement. "It would have been entirely counter productive for her to try and do things she wasn't fit for." Though that's still obviously at the forefront of her mind, she answers the question with more of a smile, "It helps. They've only started doing it recently: intensive training, to really expand skills. It would... help, I think. Give me a chance to prove myself to some of the Masters." Warmly, "Fingers and toes, then."

"Mm. Better to rest and get completely better to b e able to tackle it all really well," Milani adds and shifts a little in her chair, knee bouncing with barely contained energy. "Is that sort of an interval thing? The expanding skills?" Her smile about fingers and toes is wide. "Yeah, me too."

"Right. No point doing things half-heartedly. Particularly when it involves your long term health." Madilla confirms her words with a firm nod; she's got half an eye on Milani's bouncing knee, though restrains her smile to the barest of minimums. "Right. It's-- additional skills. Mostly still healer-focused, but things that not every healer has to know. Not having to deal with thread injuries gives us more time for it."

The headwoman puts a hand on that knee and shoots Madilla a wry smile. "I /still/ have too much energy even though I'm not a teenager anymore. My mother says it might just be the way I am." Her head bobs at Madilla's explanation. "That's interesting, how much it affects /everything/ I mean, you'd think healing is just healing but ..."

Madilla lets her amusement show more openly, now that the Headwoman has addressed it; she even laughs, as she says, "Nothing wrong with that. Better too have too much energy than not enough, I'd say." Beat. "Must be hard, too, with this weather... Can't even skate or anything, with this kind of rain." She spreads her hands flat atop her book, nodding in confirmation, "But it's not. Nothing is. Everyone can expand, think about things in different ways... a bit like the Weyr and Crom, I suppose. Only. We're still doing the same /type/ of work."

"Mm, it does mean I'm usually on top of things," Milani says with a laugh. "But -- yes. Rain like this is just ... yucky. I'd rather have the snow so I can go for a good run or toss snowballs with the kids." She quiets though, knee still bouncing a little to listen. Mention of Crom makes the headwoman's nose wrinkle, but she nods. "That's going to be a hard sell."

"I don't think it's good for people, being stuck inside all day. One of the nannies was telling me how awful it's been in there, too." Madilla's expression is entirely sympathetic; she shakes her head sadly for emphasis. "It just makes people gloomy. I--" She breaks off. "It is, isn't it? I don't know much about the situation with Crom in the past, but it seems as though it'd be hard even if it /weren't/ Crom. And that just compounds it. People-- don't seem to like it much."

"The kids must be going nuts," Milani agrees with a renewed poke at her very bad mending practice. "There's a lot of history there and well -- I can't really blame people for having doubts. It was going to be a really cold winter that turn without those tithes."

"Completely," says Madilla, with a wrinkle of her nose. She hesitates before responding to the rest of what Milani says. Finally, "I can understand, I think. Not that I was here, or I saw any of it - or knew about it at all, until much later. But. It must be an awful memory to have. And then to trust them again..." She shakes her head. "I wonder what they're thinking, to do this." The Weyrleaders, presumably.

"It was pretty rough," Milani says quietly. "N'thei and A'son and A'son's little brother went to jail for raiding the Hold, because we didn't have enough of things," the headwoman explains and pokes at the shirt again, eyes down-cast.

Madilla is very still, and very quiet, as she listens. Her expression remains thoughtful, lips drawn together. "Raiding the Hold," she repeats, quietly. "Oh. I know what it's like not having things you need... it must have been awful."

"Yeah," Milani says and tips her head back against the chair. "They gave away what was supposed to come here and so ... some Reachians took matters into their own hands to make sure none of us froze and starved to death. Not that, in the end it ever got /that/ bad, but we were rationing."

"And he just... decided to do this? Crom? It just doesn't... I don't understand why you'd do think. Intentionally, I mean. To the weyr you rely on. Because it wasn't even proper Interval then, was it?" Madilla's frown has lengthened considerably as she considers this. "I hope this deal really is a peace offering."

"No, it wasn't at all, it was the Comet Pass. It -- had to do with the Weyr refusing to cover all the territory that Crom wanted," Milani explains in very simple terms though her shoulders hunch a little with discomfort. "So he just up and decided to look to Telgar instead because he thought they'd cover what he wanted."

Madilla's gaze shoots up, and she says, after a moment, "I'm sorry, you probably don't want to think about this. Remember what it was like. I just... don't understand. That kind of attitude. He really doesn't sound like someone to be trusted at /all/." By now, she's clutching her hands together, holding one within the other firmly.

"No, it's okay, it's just -- well, the Weyrleaders wouldn't risk it if it weren't worth it," Milani says more firmly. It's the common room and there's too many ears to overhear. "So you know, this is about bygones being bygones, I'm pretty sure."

Madilla allows her only head to nod, a firm, determined nod. "Right," she says, with the faintest of smiles. "They're not stupid," she agrees. "They /must/ have weighed up all the odds, and everything. I like the idea that... that this is intended to mend things. And it will be better. And the Weyr will be just a little more self-sufficient, which can't be bad, right?"

"Exactly, if it all works out, it'll put the Weyr in a much better position for the rest of the Interval. Because ... well history shows that it gets harder to gather tithes the further we get from Threadfall." Milani takes a breath, lets it out. "So it should definitely be a good thing."

More brightly; "Right!" Not that Madilla doesn't still look concerned, but... she's trying. "And it'll be something more for people to do, other than beat each other up in the Snowasis." She looks a little disapproving of that; the roll of her eyes gives that away easily.

"Definitely, a chance to work up some muscles for some, or keep the ones they've got for others," Milani says with a giggle that takes on a touch of girlishness and a spark of mischief lights in her eyes.

Is it relief, that shades Madilla's cheeks, at that giggle? Like maybe the subject is okay again. Whatever it is, she laughs, too - not a giggle, but a warm sound, nonetheless. "/Muscles/. Mm, I take your point. Could be quite... appealing. For some of you."

"Muscle bound young men, doing heavy labor," Milani teases a little, eyes sparkling. "Quite the scenery," she adds and gives Madilla a brow-waggled look. "Who knows, could be one just for you out there."

Madilla's cheeks go pink, albeit faintly, and again, she laughs. "Anything's possible," is her response, though she doesn't sound entirely convinced. "W'chek still seems to think he needs to work something out for me. Your idea sounds like it could be more... fun, though." Darker blush, then.

Folding up the practice mending, Milani unfolds her legs to fish her shoes back onto her feet and leans over to pat Madilla lightly on the arm. "Definitely, a /lot/ more fun," she says with renewed mischief in her voice. "Just think about it and you know, come spring when they're planting, there's no harm in /looking/ at least." But she's rising too. "Come have tea day after tomorrow?" she invites. "But I should go get ready for bed."

After a moment: "Well. I suppose they /will/ need a healer on hand, after all..." Madilla's smile is shy, perhaps, but not unenthused for the prospect. "I'd like that," she continues, in response to the invitation. "Sleep well, Milani. I imagine I won't be long behind you."

"Definitely," Milani says about the need for a healer and her own smile is encouraging. "Good night, Madilla. See you soon." And the headwoman heads off, still grinning.