0001-03-13 - Sandwiches

Alendis is not, despite her reputation, Igen's Senior. She's not the one who needs to greet Lanelle when she arrives, nor the one who is officially responsible for showing her the ropes or getting her settled in. Not that Alendis is absent, those first days: Alendis is hard to miss, and in more way than one. Still, it takes a little while longer before Lycaszaeth reaches out towards Sreyoth and suggests, ever-so-mildly, << Perhaps yours will meet mine for lunch. >> In the kitchens, which is surely safe, neutral ground.

And that is, sure enough, exactly where Alendis can be found: perching atop a stool at one of the long, open benches where meals are prepared. She's even ostensibly preparing a meal, spreading mayonnaise over a thick piece of bread with a practiced and even hand, a whole array of condiments and sandwich fillings set out in front of her. Another plate, too: company expected.

<< Perhaps. >> Sreyoth won't ignore the suggestion of the older queen, of course. She won't even imply disrespect by leaving Lanelle's intent to join ambiguous. But her response is sedate, lacking the need to ingratiate herself to Lycaszaeth. They're equals, as far as Sreyoth is concerned.

Lanelle is not quite so confident when she arrives to the kitchens and approaches the bench that Alendis has claimed for lunch. That's not to say she's timid, exactly, but she greets the older woman with something like suspicious uncertainty in her voice. "You wanted to see me?" It might make one wonder how her lifemate presented the situation to her, but Lanelle will settle into another stool without needing to be invited above and beyond the invitation she's already received.

Lycaszaeth finds that interesting. Perhaps there's even part of her that approves. After all, she is not the senior queen, and she knows it. << Mmm, >> she says, then withdraws from the younger queen's thoughts.

"I thought," says Alendis, without glancing up from her mayonnaise spreading (very serious business), "we might take a moment to get to know each other. And I thought doing it here might make it seem less an inquisition. You seem less the type I should be taking for drinks, though I may be wrong about that. We'll see, won't we?" She sets down her knife, pausing to consider the array of potential fillings, quite as if they are at the centre of her thoughts, and everything else is secondary. "Bacon?" she wonders aloud. "Or ham? Or cold chicken. All three?"

Lanelle's attention shifts from the mayonnaise spreading to Alendis as the woman speaks. There's no insight offered into whether drinks ought to be involved, so she's probably made the right choice at least so far as that goes for the moment. Besides, Lanelle hardly looks like she can hold a stiff breeze let alone her liquor. The younger woman glances at the fillings as she answers, "Bacon. And chicken. Thank you." There's another moment of consideration before she's asking, "What do you want me to know about you?"

"And mayonnaise?" Of course, there's mayonnaise already on the bread... but there's also more bread. Perhaps Alendis can decipher personality from sandwich fillings. Perhaps it's just filling space.

"What have you heard already? Or-- no, don't answer that. People will say what they want to say: that I'm too outspoken, that I know too much about everything, for better or for worse. That I'm the oddest woman they've ever met."

It makes the goldrider laugh. "Much more interesting is what I should know about you. I'm an open book."

"Please," Lanelle answers. Who likes a dry sandwich?

She breathes in like she could answer what she's heard about Alendis already, but since she's told not to, she only exhales her thoughts. Instead she spends a few moments chewing on her lip, struggling with what there is to know about herself. Then she shrugs uncertainly. "The most interesting thing about me is that I impressed Sreyoth." The implication isn't that it was an interesting impression, but rather, perhaps especially to someone like Alendis, quite the contrary.

Alendis' nod is approving, if succinct. Perhaps there is a right way and a wrong way to make a sandwich, according to the elder of the two goldriders, and so far Lanelle has not transgressed too far. She's not especially generous in her layering of bacon and chicken (and unasked about, salad), but then again, meat is not especially common in Igen's meal rotation: generous is relative.

"You did, at that. I understand you were with the Healers, before that. But not immediately before that."

She glances up then, finally. The sandwich is cut into two triangles, and the plate slide towards the younger woman. "Do I make you nervous? We're peers, remember."

There's a brief scrunch of Lanelle's nose when Alendis mentions the Healers, but maybe she won't even notice. "Of course you'd know about that." She doesn't sound surprised, or even displeased. Just of course. She also doesn't correct her, so Alendis must have gotten it more or less right.

"Thank you," says Lanelle as she pulls the plate the rest of the way toward herself, picking up one triangle. She doesn't manage to take a bite of it before she's looking at the older woman, though. "Is that how you view us? Me and Lo?" Because why not bring her into this, too! "As peers?" Forgive Lanelle for sounding a little doubtful.

"I know everything," is said ever so seriously, except-- well, except she begins to laugh, then. It's a booming, deep laugh, the kind that makes the kitchen staff glance up from what they're doing, even though surely they're used to it (particularly if Alendis invades their space on the regular, which is probably the case).

"No." It's very prompt. "But according to the hierarchy of this place, you are, and she will be. I'm not going to pretend that that's the most sensible system anyone ever come up with, but it's what we've got." Alendis begins work on a second sandwich, setting out another piece of bread to spread mayonnaise onto. "And maybe more to the point, you're an extra set of hands to help out, once we work out we're your best suited to be of use. Any thoughts about where that might be?"

That booming laugh does nothing to put the younger woman at ease, never mind the commentary that goes along with it. Does Alendis make Lanelle nervous? Yes. Obviously. She's an intimidating woman on a variety of fronts.

Lanelle nibbles at her sandwich, distracted by information and conversation. "If you know everything, I'd imagine you already have some idea where I'd be of use." It's a little more sullen than obnoxious. But then she's forcing herself to sit up a little straighter, as though someone is reminding her not to be a brat, and says, "I'm capable of assisting the dragonhealers. I'd like to keep learning with them. I can read and write and count as well as anyone." Helpful?

"Shells, but you are a teenager, aren't you?"

At least Alendis sounds more amused than dismayed by that. She adds ham to her sandwich, then a thick layer of salad greens, focusing on this task and not on immediately responding to the younger woman. When she does, however, she sounds almost approving. "You'd be well place to do that, I think, with your healer background. Of course," this time she does glance up, giving Lanelle an appraising glance. "Will you run into troubles, with your healer training? Things you cannot let us mere mortals know? Craft secrets? I suppose you'll know how to manage that."

No one tell Lanelle that only a teenager would look a little offended at being called a teenager. But at least she knows better than to argue a case for her maturity. She's probably tried with someone else in recent memory and failed.

"I'm not sure how they'd even know if anything I learned was applied to dragons." See, it's nothing personal. Petulance for everyone, evidently. "Anyway, if they don't want people to know their methods, they shouldn't release them from their apprenticeships after they've learned anything of note." Not that Lanelle probably knows anything worth an abundance of secrecy, but she does have an opinion about what she can do with whatever she does know.

This, too, makes Alendis laugh-- still booming, but definitely more in the spirit of collaborative fuck-'em-all (or the perception of such, maybe): she even nods at Lanelle, lifting her attention in order to meet the other woman's gaze. "Fine by me," she says. "Fuck 'em. And the holders too, but that's beside the point right now. The infirmary's a good place for you. We'll give you those records, too," 'we' may officially mean 'Alendis and her senior', but it's hard not to read between the lines: 'Alendis, period'. "and see how you go with them. Personally, I'd rather be doing than writing, but there's both to be done. Have you met Lo? What do you make of her?"

A small but genuine smile pulls at the corner of Lanelle's mouth, then she's taking a little more than that nibble from her sandwich. Any sort of solidarity against those she's no longer affiliated with is a win by her, apparently. "Thank you," she says, again, this time about the records. Or maybe just the support.

Lanelle looks down at her sandwich as she takes another small bite, and will suddenly adopt some semblance of diplomacy with the weyrling goldrider in mind. "Once. Not for very long. She seems nice. Maybe a little uncertain about everything." She can relate to that much, at least. "I think she'd probably rather be writing than doing."

A smile! There's no subtlety in the smile Alendis offers in return: it's as bright and brash as the rest of her. She cuts her own sandwich into squares instead of triangles, then sets down the knife.

"I think she'd rather be here," and the goldrider gestures around the kitchen, "than anywhere else. Hiding. But I'm hopeful. She displayed some kind of strategy in the solitaire she was playing, and I'm hoping we can encourage that a little. Maybe there's potential. And at worst--"

"Well. We need her dragon's reproductive capacity more than anything else, don't we. Capable Headwoman, capable Weyrsecond; the rest of us can come and go, and the Weyr will keep on going around us. We can't afford illusions about our personal importance, Lanelle."

Lanelle glances around the kitchen as though she's never considered it as a place to hide. Maybe she should. Before she can say anything to that effect, she's looking at Alendis with an expression that isn't really a frown, but close enough. "Are you from here? Did you impress Lycaszaeth at Igen?" They aren't meant to be rhetorical questions, but she still doesn't wait before adding, "I have no illusions about how important I am. But the Weyrs only exist because of our dragons' reproductive capacities. They might not need us to run things. But they do need us."

"They do," confirms Alendis. "Especially now. But they prefer it when we're something more than ornamental, otherwise."

Alendis' quirked, smirky little smile suggests she considers herself delightfully ornamental: like the prow of a ship, perhaps. Or maybe it's her utility that makes her smile, and that alone.

Conversationally, as she picks up her sandwich, she circles back to those questions. "I was born here, and yes, I Impressed Lycaszaeth here too. I'm a rare breed, as far as goldriders go: I've never ridden anywhere but the place of my Impression. I could argue that I made myself too indispensable; our fearless leader would, of course, have had reasons of her own."

Lanelle offers the older woman a quick, maybe curious, once over. "I'm not ornamental. But no one's even given me a chance to be indispensable. I spent all my non-Sreyoth time learning how to be useful to a Weyr in the only way I was already familiar, and I'm still here." So it didn't do her that much good to try in the first place, she was still sent away. "I didn't even get a say about it." Woe! Alendis wanted to talk to a broody teenager, right? "Are you planning on sending Lo away, too?" As though the other junior weyrwoman has any say in those decisions.

Alendis is silent for a few seconds. Then? Then she nods. "It sucks, doesn't it?" It's conversational really. "Not getting a choice. Not even getting a chance to prove yourself. To be honest, Lanelle, it's usually not personal, when it comes to queens, except when someone really can't or won't work with someone else. Fort owed us a queen; you're it. And you may not be thrilled about it, but think of it as a fresh start: now's your time to prove it was Fort's loss, our gain."

Of Lo, she has no comment. At least-- not yet.

"I don't expect you to understand, I guess." It's not obnoxious, just direct. "I don't care about Fort. I don't really care about Igen, either, honestly." Lanelle looks at Alendis to see how that sits, but then she's saying, regardless, "But I'd like to. I've never felt like I belonged anywhere until Sreyoth. And she thinks she belongs wherever she happens to be." However at odds their relationship can be, Lanelle still has that dumb little smile when she talks about her lifemate. "I just want some say in the course of my life. I'm tired of people making decisions for me."

Alendis is chewing, when Lanelle replies, and doing so with cheerful enthusiasm. Her mouth's closed, certainly, but her bites are neither dainty nor slow. It means it's harder for her reaction to be visible, though she lifts her focus from sandwich to goldrider, which certainly implies she's following.

She swallows.

"Good," she says. "Don't let them. Fuck 'em. You're a goldrider; that's not going to change. That's not all you are, though, Lanelle, and don't let it define you. Learn Igen. Get to know us. Let us get to know you, too. Wait until Sreyoth's babies are filling the barracks. Wait until you feel like something you've done has contributed to the happiness of other people. Wait until something completely unrelated to work makes an impact."

"It's completely up to you what happens next."

The idea of Sreyoth having babies is apparently enough to make Lanelle pull a face, wrinkling her nose, before she takes another bite to focus on that instead. And it gives her time to think before saying anything, even though all she ends up with is, "You're nicer than I thought you'd be, Alendis." Such a compliment. "I'm grateful I didn't end up somewhere with bitchy juniors." Or maybe that just means Lanelle will be the bitchy one.

That face makes Alendis laugh. "Oh, just wait," she says. "You'll see. I'm giving you a false sense of security, I'm sure. I am a bitch. But I hope I'm a direct one. If I have something to say, I'll say it. I hope you'll treat me the same way." She tips her head forward, acknowledging the younger woman. "I think we'll work together just fine. Sandwich okay?"

If Alendis is going to call herself out, Lanelle will take her word at face value. It even makes her smile, perhaps comforted to know the other goldrider is closer to her own style of communication than the other end of the spectrum. "I'll try." She means it. "I'm sure we will. And I love bacon." So thumbsup for the sandwich, too.

"Good," declares Alendis, bright and cheerful and booming. So far so good!