Difference between revisions of "Logs:Taxidermy and Arm Hair"

Storerooms, High Reaches Weyr(#273RJs) Massive in scale, the Weyr's main storage passage connects to the kitchen on one end and the outbound tunnel on the other. Large enough to admit a wagon laden with goods, the tunnel easily permits the unloading and organization of supplies into the various storerooms.

Branching off from this corridor are multiple caverns, the nearer two being 'open' stores from which residents can readily help themselves, while the deeper stores are kept locked up tight with a posted sign and inventory hung on a hook outside of each. An alcove next to the public stores serves as a catch-all area for reshelving items whose destination is uncertain; two sets of stone shelving and several bins hold these items neatly until a stores assistant has a moment to deal with them.

Though the storage caverns vary in size, shape, and the smoothness of their walls, all belong to the same system: whitewashed walls, swept floors, and most importantly, neatly labeled and inventoried shelves providing ample space to stow all the supplies a busy Weyr needs. Though there's no direct internal lighting, a glowbasket may be brought in from the niche outside each cavern, the better to ward off pests and the inky dark of deep caves.

At least here, deep in the storage caverns, it isn't so obvious that summer's abandoned them for cool temperatures and clammy horrible fog. From within a pile of furniture that Tela's somehow wedged herself into comes the question, "Sabs? If you happen to see something... the sort of thing that you happen to know that another weyrling was looking for... but you like it... is it awful to not tell them about it? Hypothetically?"

Sabs isn't down here being too helpful, she brought her sketchbook with her and a pencil. She's not drawing though, it's been so hard with the good arm in a cast. Instead she's trying to jam the pencil up into it, scratching. "So itchy." She mutters before her attention is pulled away. "What? Oh, no. I don't think that is. We're all looking for things, the other person won't die without it. I'm sure."

"Oh good, then. It may not even be exactly what they want, after all." There's the sound of drawers being moved in and out, but no squeaking... and then again, more preemptorily. Still no luck! It's followed by a sigh, and then wiggling that eventually leads to an aquamarine-capped head popping out from between some of the tables stacked atop each other. Tela takes a moment to blink dust away and then peer down at Sabella. Her smile grows, seeing that scratching, but what she asks is, "Are you glad to not have to do wingsecond anymore?"

"Exactly. They won't miss it." Because they don't know it's there. Scratch. Scratch. It's been unbearable lately. There's only another seven before they're going to take the cast of her arm, or so they tell her. Sabs has the pencil shoved up her cast when Telavi pops her head up. The greenrider's smile is toothy and goofy, caught red-handed again. "Not really. I feel like I lost the entire month and I won't get the chance to do it again." She rolls her eyes and lifts her shoulder. "At least I'll be able to fly soon. And hopefully maybe get my weyr on time with everyone else. There's that at least."

"If you haven't scratched your arm off the rest of the way by then," Tela agrees, wiggling her eyebrows up and down. They're probably dusty too. Her eyes linger on her friend, and then she announces as she squirms back the way she'd come, "I am retreating into the forest of furniture so I don't see you, so that if some reason you want to scratch, you can do it in privacy and I don't have to see the dead skin flakes falling on the floor. But if you start bleeding, you'll have to yell for me, what with the not seeing part."

"Oh, it'll be fine. I don't need my entire arm." Sabella replies with a little smile. "The dead skin never comes out. It just stays in the cast. It's going to be amazingly disgusting when they cut it off. I bet it comes out in a cloud of skin." The other greenrider goes disappearing into the furniture and she leans back where she sits, crossing her legs over one another. "I saw you go into Meara's office the other day." She comments casually, leaving the rest for Telavi to supply. If she wants to. If she doesn't, she doesn't press.

"Just as long as it isn't the top half you get rid of, right?" is followed by a sudden bump as though of skull against wood, a pained yelp, and retching noises. Betrayed retching noises that have a few sputters interspersed for variety. "Remind me not to be there when they cut it off," Tela says woefully. "Cloud of... that's horrible. I bet you won 'grosser than gross' contests when you were little." All of which does nothing to answer Sabella's not-a-question, nor does the little silence that falls next. Finally, there's another sigh. "I don't know if you saw us flying."

"Yeah, if I got rid of the top half I'd have to lose the bottom half too. That would... unfortunate." Sabella withdraws the pencil from the inside of her cast and makes a few hopeless lines on the paper, sighing. She does smile devilishly when the retching noises reach her hears. "I'm going to save it after they cut it off. Maybe get it framed." She'd make framing motions with her hands, but well. "We did." There isn't anything like mockery in her tone, just an easy kind of concern. "When are you going up again?"

"Tomorrow." There would be silence there, if it weren't for the sound of wood sliding against wood. "Every day... I don't know about framing the rest of your arm, though. It might start to smell. Except my uncle knew this guy, he used to stuff dead animals and things, he had a big feline head growling off his wall and it had glass eyes and everything." By the time Tela's finished describing that for Sabella's delectation, her voice if nothing else isn't quite so tense. She can say, "I was wondering if you had any ideas. She, Meara, she was all, 'Let her in!' and 'Do you trust her?!' and 'You have to trust her!!'"

"Oh that's..." Kind of cool? Creepy? Sabella isn't quite sure what she thinks of taxidermy. It probably isn't going to have a place in her future weyr though. That must is evident. The useless scratching of her pencil against the paper continues, aimless. "Oh, that's good. Like when you're really nervous and people tell you to just relax. Good luck." There's silence from the greenrider as she tries to think up some piece of sage advice. "I think you just have to get on your dragon, strap in really tight and keeping doing it over and over again. Correcting the little things you can correct. The trust is going to come on its own, I don't think that you should worry."

"Exactly," Tela all but pounces, but at least she doesn't hit her head again. "You think?" There's a little pause. "What kinds of things? ...I wish I got to go flying where nobody had to see us screw up." Like N'ky got to. Lucky. "Do you think we're... do you have any other ideas? I'd take just about anything right now that I thought would work," which isn't just about anything at all.

"Yeah me too. It would have been great to break my arm in peace and quiet." Sabella says with mock wistfulness. She flashes a quick smile in the other weyrling's direction. As for anyone else that might have gotten to try it without an audience, she doesn't make a comment for now. "Like, if she makes a mistake or you make a mistake. Worry about communicating it well and making sure it doesn't happen again. I think sometimes trust is something that grows? You can't just go 'poof!' and make it happen." And then she lifts her shoulders. "I'm sorry, I wish I had better ideas. I sound like Meara, don't I?"

It makes Tela laugh, anyway, soft and barely muffled. "Oh, you. And no, you don't sound like Meara, you're much more practical. Though I think she might give me something more practical later. Right now... it's just embarrassing, and the more embarrassing it gets, well... you know." There's more wiggling going on now, but even if Tela's gotten further off, she lifts her voice a little so it carries back to Sabs. "So the Renai wagons are gone..."

"She probably has some tricks up her sleeve. She's only been doing this since we were born or something." Has it been twenty turns? Maybe. Who knows? Sabella doesn't know. She laughs lightly before saying, "Just imagine we're all naked and that the dragons are wearing clothes. Since you know, they're always naked anyway." When her voice carries back over she takes a breath. "Yeah, I know. E'sren skipped breakfast so that he could go and say good-bye to them. I would have gone with him, but I think he wanted to go alone."

Tela can't go without murmuring, "Before we were born," but after that and a brief laugh, she's quiet to listen. Only a little louder, by the time it gets to Sabella's ears, "What did you think of them, anyway? And him and them? They're so... so close."

Before they were born. Sabella laughs quietly and keeps her eyes focused downwards still. "I liked them." She answers almost immediately, there's no hesitance in that. "His mom is really nice, but she's sort of intimidating. I felt as if she was always sort of watching us when I went there, I don't know. His sister is great, I really liked her. And them altogether?" There's another one of her quiet laughs. "They're a real group. I don't know, is that what families are usually like? Mine was never."

More sliding movement has Telavi finally emerging from the forest, if further down the aisle, wiggling out with the help of one flat hand and one that's curled up like a fist. She peeks at Sabs, still halfway stuck inside, her cap askew. "A real group, or a real hoot?" but it's quiet humor. "Mine neither. Well, there was my uncle and me, but I was mostly in the nursery with the other kids, you know? Can't have toddlers falling off ledges, or bigger kids either." Sabella hadn't asked before. Telavi doesn't ask now.

Sabs rolls her eyes at the little rhyme and laughs, pulling her legs up to tuck them against her body. On her own family she's predictably quiet on further details, but she'll allow a nod of agreement for it. "Yeah, I don't get how any dragonriders keep their children for very long. I guess that's why there's the foster system n the caverns." She's not weyrbred, so what would she know anyway?

"Me neither. It's not... safe." Tela inches out until at last she can sit again, and begins to roll what turns out to be a button from hand to hand. Out of nowhere, "I was thinking, Sabs. If it were us? I don't mean different dragons, but if it were us, one of us was a trader spy and looking for revenge and everything and wound up liking it here after all... I like to think it would be okay, you and me, we'd still get it. That's all." The button pings out of her hand, and of course now she has to crawl after it.

"You were thinking?" Sabella begins and then her words filter through her ears and sink down. Her mouth opens to say something, but that button pings out of her hand and she goes to crawl after it. It's quiet this time, her little smile and laugh. And when she speaks again it's not of anything important. It's about what thing this or that person wants from stores for their new weyr. Where they can find it and whether or not the two of them would hide it away if they saw it first.