Difference between revisions of "Logs:Butchering Pep Talk"

>---< Weyrling Training Cavern, High Reaches Weyr(#392RJLs) >----------------<

 All the furniture here has been pushed to one side of the room to allow a 

 large pathway opposite: room enough to let weyrling dragons pass from the 

 bowl's archway to the cavernous barracks at the back. None of the 

 furniture matches, either: it varies from big cushioned, claw-footed 

 chairs to those of plain wood, while the most seating is at the two stone 

 tables ringed by low and equally hard stone benches. Without the 

 tapestries that decorate many of the Weyr's other interior spaces, the 

 room always echoes with noise, no matter how few are there. 

 What it does have, however, are several colorful murals: on one wall, a 

 detailed diagram of a dragon's anatomy; opposite, next to a creaky wooden 

 door, a number of painted and labeled wing formations. Near the entrance 

 is a large-scale version of the Weyr's badge, while the back wall, by the 

 barracks, features a detailed map of the continent. The latter area's also

 home to one big, beat-up couch, black or maybe blue -- the thing's so old 

 and filthy it's hard to tell, though it's certainly comfortable. 

 +views available 

 -----------------------------< Active Players >-----------------------------

 Faryn F 22 5'4" lean, brown hair, brown eyes 0s 

 K'zin M 24 6'1" muscled, brown hair, brown eyes 55s

Ostensibly, a fortnight after hatching is around the time when weyrlings must learn to juggle emotional demands and assigned tasks. So far, buckets of fresh meat have been delivered to the barracks by some nameless and faceless entity, providing a constant meal for the ravenous little dragons, but today is different. Today, a senior apprentice arrive not silent and unobtrusive, wheeling along a cart with a porcine carcass atop it. Faryn stops the cart just inside the cavern, hesitating, frowning at the huge cavern, at the furnishings, at the emblems on the wall. She looks...slightly lost, very uncomfortable, in limbo between the center of the room and the exit to the bowl, like she might just dart back out.

K'zin's approach isn't silent, though it's not overly noisy. He approaches from the same way she just came and means to stop beside her, "Since you bring offerings, they probably won't eat you," his baritone is bland, as if it's not a joke, but a glance at his face shows a half-encouraging half-sympathetic half-smile to complement the obvious sleep-deprivation colors under his brown eyes. "Mad at me?" is his quiet follow-up.

Judging by how she's moved the cart to the wall and is turning towards the exit, Faryn's decision was to bolt. Unfortunately for her, K'zin is there now, and the look on her face betrays the answer to his question, or maybe it's what prompts him to ask in the first place. She's pretty mad, or something that's very close kin. Even so, she forces the corners of her mouth to curve up at his first comment. "No," she says, softly, then, "Not at you."

"At them?" K'zin queries, nodding his head slightly in the general direction of the weyrlings. "Or just the dragons?"

Faryn shifts her gaze to the barracks, shrugging. "Everything," she finally decides, turning back. "I...didn't really want to be right, you know. All that 'extraordinary lives' stuff. I'd like it to be that easy."

K'zin's expression holds a touch of sympathy, but mostly just good active listening that must have been taught him by some woman along the way. "Sucks when it's not," he agrees. He clears his throat, his cheeks touching with blush. "Rasavyth wanted to be Weyrleader. Like, since the shell broke. That's never worked out for him. It's never been that easy," which is probably meant to say that while K'zin doesn't exactly have comparable life experience, his lifemate seems to have, sort of.

"Yeah," Faryn says softly, looking him up and down. "He still has time, though. He might still get it. Cadejoth will get old, some day." She sighs, glancing at her porcine, back at K'zin. "I'll get over it. I promise. The hope is just contagious. And months, now, of getting along and getting to know them," a vague wave for the weyrlings, punctuated by an abrupt snap, "gone down another path."

"I only wanted to be Weyrleader briefly," K'zin tells Faryn with a shrug, "In my misguided youth. I think we do better here, to be honest." There's a hand to gesture in the barracks. "You know, it may be for the best," he tries, "sometimes taking a different path gives you more life experience. And look at it this way, you can go wherever you like, kiss whoever you like, do whatever you like," within reason, "while they're all stuck with rules and regulations. And if you Stand again, you might find the next bunch better to your liking. This group..." K'zin feigns a dubious expression toward the barracks, as though he has some serious doubts, but he's got a lopsided smile a moment later so he must not think them an entirely lost cause.

"And Rasavyth?" asks Faryn, clearly not entirely sold on his explanation, but it matters very little, because she'll carry on, "There are pros, yeah. Drinking makes coping a lot easier; I see now why so many people are in the Snowasis. You have to wonder what it says, don't you? How many people just like the taste, and how many others...." A vague handwave - he can fill in the blank. As for Standing again, Faryn makes a face. "I'll think about that the next time there's a clutch, and not a second before," and for her friends, "They're rough, aren't they?" Commiseration with a small laugh; it's clear she's thinking of particular people when she says it. "They're alright, though. I miss them. And...I'm mad they left. And I want to not be jealous but..." Her face squinches down, closing off. "I should have had someone else come for this. Stupid."

K'zin clears his throat a little, his brow wrinkled in some combination of uncertainty and concern. "Rasavyth... was injured. Severely. A couple turns back. There may be someday when he would be suited for leading, but... not now. This is better," the bronzerider says with more resolve, meaning the cavern and the weyrlings and so on. "Yeah. There's a reason there are bars in and near Weyrs," the bronzerider agrees ruefully. He doesn't address the matter of Standing, but at least that means he's not presently pushing the point. "It's okay to be mad and jealous," K'zin says after a moment to think on it. "It's human, to be, I think. If you can be happy for them too, that's better, but... I don't know if it's better to stay away or get involved. I don't know if there's a way to get involved. I can't think that we've ever had non-rider helpers except for specific tasks." There's a pause in which his smile appears and then is immediately restrained, "I wonder if Quinlys would want you for an assistant. Not like, an assistant like me," probably, what with the dragon and all, "but like, for paperwork, and to act as a go-between with Weyrwoman Irianke," given how well the two go along. "But then, you're probably still happy in your craft, right?" He looks at her a little skeptically, as if he's not entirely sure he's right about that.

"Oh," she murmurs for Rasavyth, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize." And then silence while she listens - he's a weyrlingmaster for a reason, right? And she's looking at her porcine, smoothing the blanket over it, but it can't be mistaken for anything but absent movement. "I'm trying to be happy for them. T'mic. I saw him. He looks so exhausted, to his bones, but he was still so happy." Her smile is slow, apparently there without her knowing, because she doesn't tamp it down. "That joy, though, it's because of Jorrth, right? And all I can feel for that dragon is resentment." Resentment, maybe, but she sounds guilty sad. The look she cuts K'zin is suspicious, like she thinks he's goading her into something else. "She wanted me to teach them to cut the beasts, and - shit - I might have to get a journeyman." But his next question turns her look sharper. "I'm - yes. Well, no, but I could be. I was going to ask about testing and walking the tables. I could be happier with accomplishment." Right?

There's a shrug for the first, but no more details are volunteered just now. It's possible that it might be argued that he's the only one with a pulse and a dragon who really wanted to work for Quinlys, but there might be reasons for his knot beyond that. They may not include wisdom given his most recent suggestion. "I suspect it's probably as much T'mic's joy. In a way, it's sort of like when your friends fall in love." The bronzerider considers a moment, "It wasn't like that for me. Rasavyth wasn't like Jorrth seems to be. Some of my friends fell in love with their lifemates like that, and it was hard not to be jealous that mine wasn't that way. I think, you'll find, too, that they're sometimes jealous of each other even, the ones who get more sleep than the others, but are still happy with their lot. I think the fact that they're still, on some level, happy with their lot is a big piece of being able to be with each other. So if testing and walking the tables will make you happy, then do that. If it won't, find something that does. But, you know, not so happy that you won't Stand the next time Rasavyth asks," this last is tacked complete with impish grin.

"I do want him to be happy. I want them all to be happy." The rejoinder is almost too quick and absolutely a bit defensive, though he hasn't accused her of something else. And nothing more on that, because she's very considering of something - or everything - as the weyrlings start filtering in for their lessons. She quickly sketches a crude gesture to K'zin, appending it with a small amused smile and, "For Rasavyth." She finally decides, "It's so easy for everyone to know what they want, or, I don't know, to make decisions that will determine their futures and their lives. I don't know how to be so sure about mine. I'm good at this," she pokes the carcass. "I'd miss it, and testing would solidify where I belong, and I'm good at the reports." All noble reasons to test, yes, but, "I just want to feel like I'm doing something...useful?"

K'zin doesn't answer her defensiveness with anything more than an affable nod of his head. He listens to the rest, a touch of a smile for 'for Rasavyth,' and then some moments of silence before he asks quietly, "Do you feel doing this is doing something useful?" He's not implying it isn't, just asking the question.

Faryn makes a small, chuffing sound. "Someone has to shovel shit, right?" At length, then, "It's like seeing them so happy, even if they're tired and stressed now put my own happiness in perspective. Maybe I meant 'happy' or 'fulfilling'. I can be useful anywhere, if I try. I really don't know." She studies him. "Were you happy, in your craft? Would you have been, for your whole life?"

"Sure," K'zin answers the first, "but do you want that to be you?" He's looking at her as if he might have to reassess what he thinks of her as a person if her highest aspiration for usefulness is 'shit-shoveler.' "In a way, I was happy, but as a young man is happy. I still go to the forge and work on pet projects, help out with things around the Weyr that the Smiths would send apprentices for to help 'pay my way' for using their space and materials. I don't think I would be happier in the craft than I am now, especially since it would've meant leaving my home, and I'd've not liked to do that, not forever." There's a glance toward the movement of weyrlings. "I probably need to make sure no one over-feeds or chokes or -- you know." All that AWLM stuff.

"No, I guess not," says the herder, somewhat grudging, glancing at the weyrlings. The time to get a replacement herder for the lesson is gone, it seems; time got away. "You could still think about the test, though," she is murmuring to herself as she takes up her cart and starts wheeling it off towards them, sounding not unlike he's shaken something she's been considering as a fool-proof plan for two sevens. "Can you show them?" she asks on the way. "I...don't think I want to anymore." Good job, K'zin.

"Sure, could. Might yet," K'zin nods for the tests, but his brows go up when she asks him to show them. "Could, probably. Maybe wouldn't even lose a finger," given that he had to have learned how to do it himself at some point, didn't he? "Probably not anywhere near as well as you. Do they scare you?" He has to ask as he follows along with her.

"Who? The dragons?" Faryn squints at them. "No, they're tiny." She doesn't give explanation for why she's not scared of the riders. "I just..." she starts, but whatever she 'just', Faryn doesn't want to tell him, and her grimace suggest it maybe sounds too foolish or stupid in her head to put out verbally. "No," she supplies lamely. "I can just do it, if you're worried about grave injury."

"But they have teeth," K'zin points out gnashing his own in an exaggerated fashion at Faryn. Humor helps, right? "You would be my hero, if you could find a way to power through." He says after a moment, without as much levity as there perhaps could be. "Quinlys and Telavi would probably both be put out to have me in the infirmary over damaged digits." He wiggles his fingers at her.

Faryn gives him a withering look, stopping the cart in front of the weyrlings. "Wimp," she says, and the next thing she's clearing her throat, not bothering to introduce herself - they know her, mostly - as she pulls the blanket off the corpse, like the absolute worst magician. "I hear we're not going to be carving your meat for you anymore, so you'll need to know how to do it correctly, or you'll waste it, cut your fingers off, or both...." That last with a look for K'zin, but she doesn't seem like she's going to pay much attention to him as she continues, absorbed as she quickly becomes in her task.