0001-03-07 - Luck and Strategy

Mid-day in Igen spring is dry and not terribly hot, with the sun baking the landscape. Eoventh is nowhere to be seen, but any draconic reach would find the weyrling napping peacefully in the barracks. Eoventh would never believe you, but she does snore both in the real world and in the imaginary dragon telepath world. Freed of her duties to the dragon, Lo is seated, criss-cross apple-sauce in the bowl with a deck of cards she's laying out into a game of solitaire. Nearby, other weyrling riders, also taking a break while their charges nap, are chatting, and some giggle when the blonde teen swears vociferously at losing. Again.

Tall, built-like-the-back-of-a-barn Alendis is easy to spy across the bowl, even when she's without her (dainty, for the colour) queen as she so often is. The eldest of Igen's juniors strides across the bowl quite as if she owned the place, though she's quick to pause to exchange words with those she passes: a nod here, a comment there, and before you know it's she's on her way towards the weyrlings.

They, too, earn her attention, and if many of them are less comfortable engaging openly with the weyrwoman, that doesn't stop her from trying. And so it is that she ends up, eventually, approaching Lo.

"Losing again?" Her voice is low for a woman, but commensurate with her height and build: low, but still warm.

Lo's inability to assess dangers far and near also is a skill utilized when intimidating people in charge come upon her. She can deal with the giggles of her peers, laughing back at them and throwing teases back, but Alendis making her away across the bowl, while easy to spy for people paying attention and most not, Lo is completely unaware, even when the distinct voice speaks. She's staring at her new solitaire game, brow wrinkled now, and her chin tucked atop her now bent knee. "Third time's a charge, isn't that what candidates say?" She looks up, when she replies, and freezes in that incomplete grin. Flail. Hello, competence, meet... something not quite competent, yet. "Hi."

"Some of them," agrees Alendis, airily, quite as if she has no idea at all why anyone would flail in her presence, most especially this particular weyrling. "For some, it's more like 'first time'. And for others, never at all. Are you going to win this one, Lo?"

The young woman's grin never completes, before turning into pursed lips and her gaze quickly going back down. "I hope so. I've won my share," she asserts in an I'm totally qualified to win solitaire sometimes defensive posturing way. "Played a lot in between meal shifts in the kitchens, and sometimes it's how you play your cards, and not always taking the first one that comes out to be usable, and other times...," Lo's lashes flicker up to look at Alendis, tentative and watchful for the woman's moods, "It's just luck. I didn't stand three times." The last is not quite an after thought, laced with just the smallest hint of defensiveness, and still absolutely uncertain of everything, these five-ish months later.

Alendis drops into a crouch, because really, standing over someone when you're as tall as she is, and the other person is sitting, just makes you loom-- and that's not a great look. "Luck," she agrees. "And skill. The cards come up the way they come up, and it's just on us to decide what to do with them."

She rests a big hand upon a big, skirt-covered thigh, and then adds, "I didn't stand three times either. But we were further from the Pass, then, and there were fewer clutches to be had." And now the Pass is here, evidenced by the first handful of uneven 'falls.

Lo is playing the style where you flip three cards, as she turns over three cards in succession and looks at what she has. "I could," she starts, reaching to touch the just turned over card, the five of spades, "Put this here," she moves to point out the six of clubs, "Or wait. Because I don't know what else is coming yet." While it sounds like she's explaining things to a woman with far more experience in life than her, there are tonal shifts in her speech that imply thinking aloud, with a young girl's lilt, seeking reassurance. "I think I'll wait. I don't have any Lords or aces on the board."

Alendis assesses the cards, considering Lo, her choices, and all the possibilities with a practiced eye. "Rushing in to things is not always the best plan," she agrees, her tone far too even to suggest she's read the weyrling's explanation as anything other than thinking aloud. "Not my strongest skill," her grin is broad, "but a good strategy, I'm told. Sometimes when you see a possibility, rushing to pick it up feels like the right decision. And sometimes it is, sometimes it's not."

Beat. "Knowing the deck, that helps. What cards there are to come."

"Yes, but," Lo starts, then pauses, then looks up to Alendis who is now, alarmingly, too close to her face, and stares. She has completely lost her train of thought, when she blurts out, "Oh. Hi again. It's so funny," her dulcet voice remarks, "You never talked to me before I Impressed. And now here you are. Watching me play solitaire." The giggle that emerges is flustered and amused all in one. "Hi."

Alendis does not move back. Admittedly, that would be quite difficult: moving, when in a crouch, would probably involve waddling. She watches Lo, perhaps categorising those reactions: fluster, amusement. And she smiles. "How many people live in the Weyr do you think, Lo? It's unfortunate, but there are plenty I've never spoken to. But here I am, rectifying that. Big, bad scary Alendis."

Lo's protest is immediate, "Oh, no! You're not big. Or bad. Or scary. But you are Alendis." The young woman pushes a smile out, by extreme mental force if necessary. Her green eyes drop back to her game and her knee also falls back into a more criss-cross style. "But in these rules, you can only flip through the deck three times. And then you lose, so you could spend the first run through seeing all the cards and trying to figure out how to get the cards you need to come up, or," the gold weyrling shrugs her broad, but not quite as broad as Alendis' shoulders, "Just play and see what happens." She flips over three more cards and considers her options, then moves the red six to a black seven, flips three more and finds an ace, and crows triumphantly.

Is it surprising, that Alendis nods approvingly, that her expression has turned somewhat thoughtful? "Well, that's certainly true," she agrees. "I am Alendis. So what's your preferred strategy: do you hold off, and effectively lose a round? You have to judge each card individually. They all fit together, all those pieces."

It's strategy, and maybe it's a sign that there's something worthwhile beneath Lo's outward appearance.

Lo misses the approving nod, she may or may not be trying not to look too closely at this larger than life (both physically and by reputation) leader square on. Blinding light of competence and all. "I... sometimes, I just play what I get to see if it will lead to a win. Like, I just feel like doing it and I'm not mad if I lose. But sometimes, I try to think ahead and figure out if I should play this card the first time around and not wait, and then I get frustrated when I lose." A succession of cards comes down, none of them played or considered, but there must be some rhyme or reason to the way she plays this time. The swear words her fellow weyrlings heard before can't have been for not trying. Then a card comes up a king, and there's no place to put it and Lo looks back at her board, a sudden grin brightening her face and the absolute glowing look of pride (over a card game) she gives Alendis, "Oh! Oh! I missed that!" and starts rearranging the stacks on the board itself and bounces a little happily in her criss-crossed seat. "You're not scary," she adds as a weird after thought, thoughtfully, when she's pointedly not looking at Alendis.

"No?" Alendis is smiling, having watched Lo through her thought process with distinct, undeniable interest. "That was well-played. I wonder if we shouldn't start you on chess... do you play that? Strategy."

Lo flushes with such pride at the acknowledgement. "No. It always looked too complicated to do. You play." Statement. "Do you like your job?" Does it matter?

Alendis' laughter is hearty: a deep belly laugh. "No," she says. "I don't play. I'm absolute rubbish at anything like that. Cards-- fine. Dice-- fine. But they're games of chance, right? Luck. I've always been lucky. But you're bringing strategy into your Solitaire, and that suggests to me there's potential there. We're going to bring it out of you."

"I love my job, Lo. I fucking love it."

Lo looks floored Alendis admits to not being good at something. "You DON'T?" Her low voice rises with that shock. "I thought you do everything."

That shock? It makes Alendis laugh.

"You haven't seen me try and meet a delegation of holders," she tells the weyrling, still chuckling. "When all I want to do is punch them in their smug little faces. No. Don't get me wrong: I'm very, very good at what I do. But politics, tactics, strategy... that's better left to someone else."

"Will it hurt?" Lo asks, finishing the game with no more sounds of triumph, just flushed pleasure. She scoots her cards together into a pile and then starts to press them into a neat deck. "I mean...," she cringes, trying to think of the exact words Alendis used, "Bring it out of me?"

Alendis stretches. It can't be all that comfortable, crouching like this, but she seems disinclined to move out of the position altogether. "Hurt?" the repetition takes on a note of surprise. "I won't say it'll be easy. You're-- you were in the kitchens, right?" She doesn't pause for confirmation. "You're a little like a loaf of bread, young Lo. You've been proved and kneaded, but now it's time for some shaping, and then you'll need more proving, and only then can you be baked."

Possibly the simile went off the rails a little there. "I mean, point is: by the time we're done with you, you'll be ready."

Why does that sound so painful? "Gulp." It's a word. Lo uses it and is stupendously relieved when the weyrlingmasters call them back to duties. "I... I don't know about that. It sounds like it'll hurt." She knows it won't hurt physically. She can't be that daft. "Have a good day, ma'am." Quite belatedly, Lo salutes the weyrwoman and skitters away.

'Gulp' makes Alendis laugh, but the rest? It leaves the goldrider looking intensely thoughtful. She's silent, though: she lets Lo skitter away, and only then does she hoist herself back to a standing position, stretching out her shoulders as she continues to watch after the young woman. Interesting.