Logs:Exams
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| RL Date: 10 October, 2008 |
| Who: Madilla |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: Madilla returns to the Hall for her exams. |
| Where: Healer Hall |
| When: Day 24, Month 10, Turn 17 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: K'del/Mentions |
| Armed with the memory of her trip home, months earlier, Madilla approached her upcoming return to Healer Hall for exams with some trepidation. It wasn't that she hadn't been glad to visit home, and didn't want to do it again, but it had made her wary. Nothing, she realised now, was ever the same. You... moved on. You changed. Even when you didn't see it happening, yourself. The examination period was scheduled for right around the same time as Rielsath's eggs were due to hatch, which was disappointing for Madilla, who had still yet to actually see a hatching. But exams came first, and there would be other eggs, and while she knew a few of the candidates, none of them were special. She'd had that drink with Kasadel, but there was nothing there, despite his kind words, his swaggering attention. He still dropped in to see her, but she avoided him, when she could. Half of her hoped that the eggs would hatch before she departed, but it was not to be, and she put the idea from her mind as she mounted the green designated to take her to the Hall, and put her thoughts back to more important matters. Exams. She was nervous about the exams. She'd not bad the benefit of real classes, this semester, not like most of her peers. She knew a lot, but she had no notes to study from, no structure. What if she knew none of what they'd learned? The bed that had been hers at the Hall now belonged to someone else, but she'd not slept in it for so long that she was attached; she didn't mind taking another one, though it was in a different dorm, with different people, and most of them she didn't know - they were older, closer to being Journeymen. All her old friends were still there, but they were different, too. A few of them had paired off with each other. Linde was talking about leaving the craft so she could marry her sweetheart, who worked in the gardens at Fort Hold. Madilla couldn't see the sense in that - Linde was only a few turns off walking the tables, surely, and what a waste to leave before then! - but she noted how the older girl talked of her man, and felt a quiet stab of envy. In eight months, she'd be sixteen, and that was when she would have been married, were she still at home. But she put that thought from her mind, too. She forced Daegan to lend her his notes, and made him go through things with her, again and again, until she was sure she had them in her head. Some of it was new to her, but a lot of it she discovered she knew, even though she hadn't thought she did. It was amazing how you picked things up just by doing them, she realised. There were other things, too, that she knew that the others hadn't even covered yet. None of this stopped her from fretting about the exams. She studied constantly, those first two days, following teachers around for advise on this subject or that, talking of little else, sleeping only when she was too exhausted to look at anything else. She slept soundly, though, and if she still woke up tired, it was nothing she couldn't push past. Exams were one seven, twice a turn: she could catch up on the sleep later. As it turned out, the exams themselves were a non-event, though Madilla fretted after each, sure she'd missed something important, misread, miswritten, done something stupid. But she hadn't, each teacher reassured her, as she went to them nearly in tears afterwards, sure she'd failed. "Don't be silly, Madilla. You're doing fine." She had a meeting with the Apprentice Master, too, reconfirming that she was happy with her posting, content with her progress, sure that she wanted to stay. Delifa, she was told, was very happy with her progress - but they always had to confirm with the Apprentice, too. "If you want to come back, at any time, just talk to us," she was told. Surprised, Madilla realised she couldn't imagine coming back, now. And then they were over, and it was time to come home. She knew, vaguely, that the eggs had hatched at the 'reaches, but she knew nothing more than that. It wasn't until she was packing to come back that it occurred to her to wonder about the results. Who did she knew who had Impressed? Kasadel? One of the girls? Though she knew people who had Impressed, before, it still felt a strange thing to her. One day, you're just another person. The next? Dragonrider. So strange. She returned to the Reaches reassured. Maybe nowhere was really home, now. But this was as close as it came. |
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