Difference between revisions of "Logs:Shorter"

One thing about High Reaches in summertime, the days last awfully long; so it is that it's still dusk well after dinnertime, when a newly-shorn weyrling hops off Telavi's high stool and Tela takes the opportunity to unlid the glowbasket a little more before going in search of the next 'volunteer.' Who will happen to be Yesia.

Pretty Yesia sits, prim and straight-backed even though she is on the floor with Aeaeth. The young dragon is dozing quietly, thanks in no small part to the ministrations of Yesia's oiled fingers on her eyeridges. Her hum of pleasure is low and drowsy, and her fledgling rider seems to be lost in the vibration of it, smiling...that is, until she sees Telavi coming towards them. If she's panicked, it does not show; instead, she points, towards the rest of the barracks. "They're in there," she offers helpfully.

Tela's gaze is first for the pretty picture they represent, girl and dragon; "Aren't you sweet," she says, genuinely, before blue-today eyes lift to Yesia herself. Yesia, not Aeaeth. It takes her a moment, then, "Oh! No, no, that's all right; you're next." Her smile brightens. "We aren't even going reverse alphabetical this time."

Yesia doesn't quite look stricken, but she manages at least to make her expression something that isn't completely scandalized. "No," she says, just firm enough, not quite disrespectful. "Thank you, but no. I can do all sorts of things, to keep it out of the way." Demonstrably, the girl reaches back to part her hair into two, twisting each and then drawing them around her head in a crown: pinned, they might even stay under a helmet, when the time comes. Beside her, Aeaeth has done the uncanny awakening of children: one moment asleep, the next awake, her eyes fixed on the weyrlingmaster.

There's sympathy in that sea-blue gaze; Telavi's been there. "I know," she says, touching her own blonde mane, by now done up in an intricate braid after the morning's ponytail. As she does, she relaxes her stance from go-go-go, dropping her voice into something quiet and confidential. "You're not from a Weyr, are you? You're from Crom, right?"

Yesia relaxes her fingers, and her long hair drops back into ringlets down her back. Her gaze goes to Tela's braid, her eyes a little envious of the intricacies. She doesn't have time to study though; the question puts her on guard, and her voice reflects it. "Yes."

Tela settles further, into an easy crouch, so she can smile at Aeaeth for a moment-- and, what might be coincidence, not stand over Yesia so much. Her gaze lifts once more to the human half of the pair, and if she's noticed any wariness, her voice is just as soft as it was before-- softer, maybe. "It's awful, being a weyrling. No one ever talks about it. But at Crom, you never got dung on your clothes, did you? I mean, unless you step in the wrong place on accident?"

"No," Yesia admits, softly. "Coal, though, whenever my dad hugged me. It's...just gunk," she says, as if the word dung is beneath her. "And, I've already ruined two of my skirts with oil, because that just doesn't wash out, and the laundresses said it just doesn't come out of cloth very well. But I don't mind. It's for Aeaeth." A fond look for the dragonet, who has not quite settled again and is watching the interactions very closely. "Please?" she tries again. "I don't want it to be awful, and that," she points at the scissors, "would make it so awful."

"When he hugged you?" Tela's got a sympathetic wrinkle to her nose-- and yet there's something beneath it, something fleeting and wistful. More sympathy for the skirts, but at Yesia's further words she bites back whatever she might have replied; instead, quick and relieved, "Oh, it won't be. I've had Turns of practice. You won't wind up like," and here she names a woman who doesn't so much have bad haircuts as butch haircuts.

"Well, yeah." The weyrling crosses her arms, prepared to be offended or insulted, but it doesn't seem to come. She doesn't uncross her arms, anyways; she is very fervently against this, and now her body language is showing it. "I've already got the tailors making me pants, isn't that enough?" she whines, more to Aeaeth and her lap than to Telavi, but the very next lights her eyes slightly. "Oh. You mean like Laine?" she asks, oh so very innocently. So innocently, in fact, that the light goes away quickly, replaced with odd sadness. "Laine and Farideh and Keysi called me a dirty faced little boy, when we were candidates," she confides. "You can ask Paz. They'll make fun of me even more."

"Pants, I know. Such a pain," which hasn't stopped Tela from wearing short, summery skirts when the weyrlings can see her wear them, at least times when trous aren't required. That mention of Laine brings up a smile, a somehow knowing smile back at Yesia, though she doesn't overtly bite; rather, "That's awful of them. They shouldn't. Especially now that you're weyrlings together," like that means something. "I hope it'll get better. But really, everyone will have their hair cut, it's all the same. And it's not like you have the figure for a boy!"

This, clearly, is not working. Yesia's taken her hands to her hair, drawn the magnificent mane of red locks around and is brushing her fingers through them nervously. Aeaeth is agitated too; she's on her feet, trying her damned hardest to crawl into Yesia's lap with low, comforting croons. "Do you have to do it today? Really? Can't you...do the other girls first, at least? We don't have to have short hair to learn anatomy." Please is super implied, with the big, innocent, and moreover apparently mostly defeated look in her wide-eyes.

It is very pretty hair: enough to distract Tela momentarily, at least until Aeaeth gets all concerned that way. Telavi bites her lip, hesitating a moment. "Would it really make a difference if I did it tomorrow?" Really?

"Yes." Yesia says at once. Teenager logic, ahoy. "I would feel better. More...prepared?" One hand leaves her hair to rest on Aeaeth, her finger smoothing already smooth hide around her headknobs, like she's an overlarge cat. "And, when you do, do you promise I won't look...butch?"

A dimple shows briefly. "I can promise you that you won't look butch," Telavi avows. "And you'll promise me," just a little singsong, "you'll come find me after dinner, I won't have to hunt you down?" With shears.

"How short?" Arms still crossed, a little petulant, but Yesia's not promising anything without facts, it seems. "Right here?" she points on her hair, at a length that would put it just around her shoulders.

"About that," Tela agrees. "It's not like it has to be super short? Long enough to pull back in a tail. But," the important thing? "do you want the ends to turn under or flip up in back? Or, with your lovely curls, it could have a soft ringleted look..." She gives the girl a look, one of those looks that suggests she has ideas.

That, apparently, does something. Yesia's smile comes slow, like a cheshire cat's, and the hand doing the pointing curls into those ringlets, wrapping around her fingers. "Curls," she affirms, with a tone that says it should be very plain. "If my hair can still look as nice as yours, even when it's short, that would be very nice." Her defeat doesn't make her seem like she's lost, at least, even though she does sigh before, "I promise to find you after supper tomorrow."

Telavi briefly lowers her eyes, demure, at the compliment; "Tomorrow, then," she agrees as though it were an arranged meeting for a picnic instead of a hair-chopping. Earnestly now, "Do you know why Quinlys has us do it?"

"For helmets." It's a statement that subtly inflects like a question; at the very least, she's soothed Aeaeth down again, and her fingers slip between the neck-ridges between which she'll eventually seat. "It can't be for...lice, or something." Shudder. "If that was it, they'd do it right when we got here."

"For helmets, for hassle," Telavi half-agrees, half-answers, that last with a definite moue. "You know, that's a good point? Because they say lice is part of it, because it does happen in the barracks sometimes, even when o... the Weyrleader was a weyrling," she says. "So why do you think they don't have candidates do it?"

"Gross," Yesia laughs, a short sound. She thinks on it for at least a full minute, frowning at her lap while she considers, and then eventually shrugs. "I honestly don't know. Because she hates hair?" It's only half-joke.

"She?" Telavi's eyes widen, perplexed. "Quinlys? But she-- oh. I mean, why-- if it's a problem and it sounds like has been-- do you think the headwoman doesn't have the candidates do it?"

"Because...they're not dragonriders?" But she shakes her head almost immediately there, because, "But your hair is long." Still more thought. "Tell me?" she finally asks, because she is missing something.

"It wouldn't have been, if I'd have Impressed during a Pass," and for all Telavi is solicitous of her hair, there's a certain fervency in her voice just for that moment, that respect for the Pass. "Aren't we lucky that we didn't? I mean, aside from the obvious. But.... There's Tradition, of course. But also, I think, that weyrlings just don't have time to take care of their own hair, not properly, not like candidates still can; our hair takes forever to wash and dry and comb out, but we do it... but weyrlings don't have that time, and it can get greasy and tangly and awful, and if there is lice, it wouldn't get discovered until it was everywhere." She glances back at the barracks with a bit of a shudder.

Yesia takes a moment to swallow that, looking at Telavi curiously, like it's never crossed her mind that they would see Thread. "Tradition," she echoes, sounding dubious. "That seems a stupid reason to keep up things as humiliating as cutting off people's hair." Humiliating, Telavi. And it's come full circle now, because Yesia points out, "I've kept my hair nice now. I'm not like some of the others, who forgot to shower for almost a full week. I didn't stop my morning routines, even though I was tired. I just added Aeaeth to them." Still, "But if they get lice, I'd have to cut my hair anyways." She's looking at Telavi's hair, wistful. "At least I can grow it back."

Humiliating. Telavi sighs for her, sea-blue eyes sad for her; and, after a nod for how hair grows, she explains gently, "This is the easy part. It just gets busier from here. Busy-busy-busy, and busier more if you get into the silver thread program," given special emphasis if only in passing, "And it's also so it doesn't get caught in things, or catch on fire; my-- K'zin got burned when he was helping with weyrlings, even, and imagine if your hair caught."

There is a short whine for that. "The fire at the bazaar," Yesia says, remembering that tragedy abruptly at the mention of fire, like it was a trigger. On her lap, Aeaeth stirs gently, opens her eyes again, and stares up at her lifemate. There is silence - that characteristic, quirky silence of dragonriders with their dragons - and Yesia murmurs, "Yes, love, yes. We'll go get some." Her smile for Telavi then is apologetic, because she does seem to be enjoying her company. "Can I be excused? She's hungry." Demonstrably, Aeaeth rises and stretches her wings long, turning her head towards the barracks and then ambling that way. "Tomorrow. I promise."

It's only after she says it that Tela blushes, high color in her cheeks; if Aeaeth comes as something of a relief-- well. "Of course," she says, standing up herself, stretching, waving them off. She turns away. She has her shears to recover, and the rest of her composure.

Yesia rises only when she receives that dismissal: a perfect pupil. She stands, and a few long strides catch her up with the little green, and presently they disappear into the barracks.