Difference between revisions of "Logs:Drawing Conclusions"

It's warm in the galleries, which might be the reason that there's folks littering the benches, instead of other areas. Already a gaggle of girls was giggling near the back, and there's a younger pair of boys leaning over the rail and talking excitedly in hushed tones. Edyis is perched down in the cushioned benches, pencil sketching quietly as she watches the dragons tending the eggs. A packed lunch sitting half eaten beside her on oil paper. There's a few egg diagrams, and some sketches of the queens and attendant bronzes.

Warm enough, at least, for Jocelyn to shed her outermost jacket from her seat a row above Edyis, folding it neatly with a low exhale. While it isn't her first time in the galleries since both clutches have been laid, it's her first stay of significant length; perhaps the temperature proved an irresistable draw, even for a native. Having alternated the past twenty minutes between munching on a well-wrapped pastry and steadily working her way through a basket of mending, she spares the occasional glance outward for the sands, their contents, and the artist below. "That, " she says wryly after some time so that it carries Edyis' way, "takes talent that I wish I had."

The words have Edyis looking up with a half smile, dark eyes focusing on the woman. "Practice, lots and lots of practice." The brownrider admits looking over the woman. "You decided to stand?" Unable to mask the mild surprise in her tone, "I thought the assistant headwoman gig was one of the most coveted jobs in this place. Don't tell me you've gone dragon crazy." It's warm, and lightly teasing. Her focus moved long enough for a little green to wink in and start to inch in the direction of the meat roll left unattended in its wrapper.

"Hardly, " Jocelyn's quick to retort with a sniff; dragon crazy, the very notion! "But I know that we'll need enough choices to present to all of them when they decide to go, and I'm still eligible, " if one of the oldest candidates, "as I've been reminded." Leaning over to peer down toward the rider's drawings, her eyebrows lift as there's movement near the other's lunch. "I hope you weren't planning on finishing that, " is her idea of a friendly warning.

"Careful, it's that silly sense of duty that landed me with a silly brown with a penchant for trouble." There's a furrow of her brow as she turns to look and catch the little food thief in the act. "Just like her dam and sire." Sounds irritated, but is mostly likely to show there's a whistle and the green, launches to land on her shoulder, where Edyis proceeds to feed her a small bit of jerky fished out from a pocket. "Faryn's about your age too, and I think they had one of the candidates a few turns back that was out of the accepted age range stand. And he impressed." There's a shrug, and the ghost of an easy smile. "It isn't an easy life any way you shake it."

Jocelyn gives a small grimace in reply, ducking her head down briefly to fish out the next item from the to-be-mended pile: it's a bright mitten with an inconvenient tear just at the seam where the thumb joins the rest of the glove. "If the harpers wrote a song about where the living is easy, this isn't the place to feature." Maybe that isn't quite what the brownrider meant, but the candidate's focus remains on looping stitches back and forth to fix the mitten at hand, pun unintended. "Was it what you expected?" Light eyes lift after a moment to better study Edyis, curious.

"No it wasn't." Edyis admits honestly, "If I had it to do over again, I'm not sure I would have made the same choices either. Don't get me wrong, Akluseth is a part of me I never knew was missing." She frowns then, pain flickering over her expression for an instant before it's gone. "But it changes everything, you wind up sacrificing things you didn't expect. It isn't something to do lightly." Glancing back at those eggs. "It's strange listening to people who dreamed of nothing else but a dragon, I understand it I suppose to a degree, but I was the sort of person who wanted to control their own destiny, and you lose that with a dragon, because it isn't just you anymore. You lose the right to fall apart when things go wrong."

"Most people seem to talk about what they gained, " Jocelyn observes evenly, pulling the last few stitches on the mitten taut before finishing it off. "I think I used to dream of nothing but, at least a few times as a child, but for all that they said 'the third time is the charm, ' it didn't quite play out that way." More wryly, "I'm not sure I see the difference between what you just described and a bigger knot. While everyone's losing it, you'd have to find it." Swapping the mitten for what appears to be a toddler's shirt, there's a frown for the faint stain still along the hem before she begins patching the rip at the shoulder.

"There are things to be gained." Edyis agrees amiably, and on multiple rounds of standing she laughs. "It's when you aren't expecting them that they flop into your lap." There's a exhale out, then, a thoughtful glance given to the candidate. "I was never very good with the politics of knot keeping, so I wouldn't know the difference there." She admits, "But you change when you impress, you can't do anything but change. You can never be the person you were before, no matter how hard you might try to or want to." She shrugs then, stroking the green's throat where she curls. "And finding things is wonderful, but it's also painful. If you think your ready for it, then by all means." A soft smile.

Jocelyn makes a low noise in response, although whether it's in agreement or due to discomfort with all this talk of change isn't quite clear. There's a glance for Edyis, then: "The indelibility's been - impressed upon me for a while." It's a dry, brisk delivery, but she permits herself an amused almost-smile for the younger woman, even as she gathers up her basket and unfolds her coat with a little huff. "Someone will be expecting these, " but pale eyes flick another look to the rider's artwork while she shrugs into her jacket. Mouth opening, then shutting again a moment later, whatever she was about to say turns into, "Good afternoon, Edyis, " before she begins working her way to the exit, cutting a look for the giggling girls in the back as she passes them.