0001-03-23 - Weyrlings During Fall

The bowl is chaotic, but not necessarily actual chaos. The business could be misconstrued if an onlooker didn't recognize there was some semblance of order. Between a capable Headwoman and an experienced (and aged) Weyrwoman, there are sections to the bowl that overlap: healing, dragon healing, infirmary supplies and run, areas for backups to launch from and areas for fighters to return to, as well as the ever weyrling duty of firestone hauling.

The last few months have proven useful in growing muscles for the slightly plush weyrling Lo was when she Impressed. Leaner now, though she'd probably never be called angular or thin, Lo is racing breathlessly between where the firestone sacks are being replenished by her peers, hauling two over to a pair of older weyrlings who are returning on resupply. Hauling is generous. One is over her shoulders while the other is being dragged along the ground. "Here!" she exhales breathlessly before turning to begin the route again. She's grimy pretty much all over.

Healer trained as she is, Nashi keeps casting glances towards the healers, as if they might call her in to their numbers instead of leaving her, here, to haul firestone. Likely this is a deliberate thing, though: the healers could use the hands, but Nashi is of the Weyr, now, and her hands are needed-- for the moment-- elsewhere. Like Lo, she's grubby from head to toe, and looks exhausted as she falls in to step with the other weyrling on the way back.

"Surely they've got enough by now," she groans, barely paying attention to whom it is she's speaking-- yet another weyrling, no matter. "I swear we've hauled dozens of these." Try two. Three. Four at most.

Lo can't even catch enough breath to say much of anything as the pair of them jog -- no, more like race -- back to the firestone sacks. Something in her exhausted, bedraggled expression must tug on the oversight rider's heart, an aging brownrider who can no longer fly Thread. Or maybe it's just shift change time anyway. "You, both of you there, start filling bags. You two, take their place running." A bronze and blue weyrling grumble, shooting Lo and Nashi glares. They are very much not as grimy, despite shoveling firestone into empty sacks that have returned.

The gold weyrling picks up the shovel and gestures with a tired hand flick at Nashi to pick up an empty sack. "We can switch in a bit? When my arms feel like they'll fall off right and good, yeah?"

Nashi's relief at this swap in duties is plainly visible; her satisfaction in Lo taking first shift at the shovelling is no less obvious.

She does not stick out her tongue at the other two weyrlings, but it may well be a close-run thing. "Right," she agrees, gamely positioning the sack. "That's only fair. I hear it's only worse, when we're actually flying resupply, 'cause then you have to toss the sacks at people, and not brain them in the head. And the 'falls will be even more frequent." Not that 'frequent' is a word that can describe threadfall at all, so far.

Lo pauses mid-shove into the pile and stares at Nashi in horror. "Do you think that's happened before? A dragonrider getting beaned in the head by a firestone sack?" She notes, now, that her partner is Nashi and purses her lips inscrutably in a half-second look, then resumes the shoveling motion and heaves the small pile into the sack.

"Make sure it's filled about two thirds of the way, kids," the overseer calls to the new shovelers.

"Almost certainly," from Nashi, is said with utter confidence. Did she notice that half-second look? If she did, she's very deliberately not reacting to it. "Have you seen the injury counts from last time? I wouldn't be surprised. No one seems to know what they're doing."

She ducks her shoulders, repositioning the mouth of the bag in response to the overseer's call, as if that will make a difference. "By the time we get up there, hopefully they'll know what they're doing. Not that you'll be up there, of course, not in the same way. But the rest of us."

Lo's face pales beneath the grime and tan. "I did." Boy, did she ever, numbers and records, and more numbers shoved into her little head. She swallows and continues the shoveling, peering into the sack, before noting, "One more small one." And once that's done, nods for Nashi to tie it up. It's easier to converse in this duty. "Maybe, by the time we go up there, the Holds won't be such idiots about it all." An uncharacteristic vehemence colors her low voice. "Next bag. C'mon, Nashi."

Nashi's quick fingers, healer-trained to suture and cut, make relatively quick work of tying of the bag-- though they'd be quicker if she weren't so busy frowning at it in distaste. The bag gets set aside, ready for collection, and the brownriding weyrling hastily gets the next one ready for Lo (though not quickly enough, clearly).

"I hate hearing them come back," she admits. "The screams. And the ones that don't come back at all. Fuck Keroon, and fuck the others too."

The reminder of 'when they return' pauses Lo's actions again, before she's bustling super busy once more. Her motions are an agitation of forced busyness, over-exaggerated and faster than they need to be to do the small actions she's doing. "Eoventh-," she starts and stops and shakes her head. The gold dragon is not near her weyrling in the now, instead somewhere by Khataith, watching, listening, learning. Stalwart to her rider's mental horror. "I can hear them when I," don't, "Sleep," she says quietly, possibly not meant for Nashi, but voiced anyway.

That's worthy of the sharp glance Nashi aims at Lo. It's not quite sympathy, not quite empathy, not quite grudging respect at being able to deal with that; there's something of all three, and something more, too, that is less quantifiable.

Bluntly: "Well, that sucks."

Truer words, Nashi. Truer words.

"Nakaskioth doesn't notice, mostly. He'd like to be up there, I think, though half of it is a game. He doesn't like to be left behind."

Nashi being Nashi triggers Lo out of those unlikely deeper, less happy thoughts, and the would-be goldrider looks up and laughs, a completely incongruous sound for the situation around them. "Yeah, it sucks, doesn't it?" She finishes scooping the firestone for this bag and holds the shovel in a way to rest her chin, but really the weight of her entire body, on the handle. "How much longer, do you think, this time? I didn't pay attention to the starcraft lecture yesterday."

A healer with good bedside manner Nashi is plainly not.

She frows, carefully shaking the firestone down into the bag and tying it off. Doing that gives her something concrete to do, though that's not enough to stop thoughts from zipping around her head.

"I'm not sure," she admits, glancing up and out towards the skies where-- of course-- there are still dragons coming and going, some injured, some replacing others, some simply weyrlings on resupply. "I've lost track of time."

It's unlikely to be the last time any of them will lose track of time, particularly during Fall. A ripping scream rends through the area as a dragon appears above and descends into the bowl, haphazard to where he's going in all of the chaotic organization of where things should go. But by now, with whatever little experience the Weyr has had, the dragonhealers and other bowl inhabitants move, as if by some command, away from where the dragon might make impact.

Lo first looks like she might vomit, and then does so. Lucky for her, nowhere near the piles of firestone or the just closed bags.

Lucky for Nashi that she's paying attention to Lo and not the dragons-- even if her 'paying attention to Lo' may well be a dismissive 'oh geez, get over it' kind of thing. Either way: it means she's aware enough to jump out of the way just in time, letting Lo's vomit fall on the ground and not on the weyrling herself.

"Lo! Fuck, mind what you're doing."

Even paler now, for whatever voices might be in her head and for what she just do, Lo wipes firestone grimed hands against her face, streaking even more black around her mouth. "Ugh, I'm so sorry, Nash." Her eyes are now watery, possibly from throwing up or whatever else. "I'm so sorry."

Disgusted, the overseer, now minus any sympathy for Lo, waves his arms at her, "Go clean yourself up. And you," he points at Nashi, "Shovel up that mess somewhere else. Between for all I care. Don't get it on the 'stone."

A nicer girl would be full of sympathy for Lo-- but Nashi's not particularly nice, not really. Maybe she'll feel bad later?

"Just go," she commands. "I'll sort this out."

Gross.

Lo flees!