All in my head

[all_the_masks]

Who: Javeri and T'mic
Where: Candidate barracks
When: Afternoon in the middle of month 4
What: Javeri is looking for a book and finds T'mic instead. The assistant weyrlingmaster acts all asistant weyrlingmastery and Javeri acts like a worried candidate. That part would be Chadamalith's fault for being an odd duck.


Three sevendays after the Hatching and the weyrlingmaster's staff is still being run ragged by the twelve additional newcomers. Some of them are beginning to settle into a routine, which makes life nicer for everyone. Today T'mic is finishing a class with a handful of the older weyrlings, and as they file out of the classroom and out into the sun, Mic circles the desks picking up slates in his arms.

The last three weeks have been hectic for the new weyrlings as well. Some of them have been run more ragged than others with Javeri falling somewhere in the middle. She's been unbothered by the manual labor, uncaring about the butchering mess and couch cleaning mess, and dealing with dorm life continuing. But she's made up for it in the extra running Chadamalith has inspired in her. When she is in the barracks and not working she's usually got her nose in a book. Right now she doesn't have anything in hand, but she is heading for the area T'mic is at muttering to herself and poking into any area where something might be hidden.

T'mic places the last of the slates in top of his pile and heads for the opening, pausing at the sight of muttering Javeri. "Looking for something?" he wonders pleasantly, glancing back at the topmost slate and lifting eyebrows at whatever's written there. Then it's back to the young bluerider, his smile never wavering.

Javeri crouches down to peer under a table with no luck before straightening up to nod to T'mic. "I had a book and I am sure I left it on one place, but it is not there and maybe I didn't." She grins ruefully at the greenrider before letting out a sigh. "I was in a hurry when I set it down so maybe I remembered wrong? But I wanted to finish it and get it back and I won't have much time to do it before /someone/ wakes up."

"I can help you look," Mic offers, nodding permission for her toward the room. "I don't remember seeing any books, but... well, s'gotten kinda busy." Another grin flashes before he peeks past her into the barracks. Still quiet. Relatively. "I'll go take these to Bali and then come back and give you a hand, if you like?"

"Thank you! Yes, please. I'm about to go crazy." Javeri grins with relief and doesn't quite look ready to go crazy. Quite yet. "I was so close to the end too. Just another fifty pages and then I'm done. And who knows what I have to do next. Not, you know, lessons, but just Chadamalith not letting me be." She leans against the wall and lets out a sigh. Then she straightens up and smiles. "But, back to work and I'll look while you do that. Thanks again!"

T'mic nods again and ducks into the weyrlingmaster's office. A few moments later he's out again, shutting the door behind and giving the barracks yet another once over (it appears to be habit) before ambling back to the classroom. "How is he? Chadamalith." As if there could be another 'he' in her life just now.

Javeri's been busy while he was away and she's standing up from peering under a desk, like it might be magically stuck to the underside, and brushes her hands off on her pants. "He's great," she responds with a grin lighting up her face. "But, gosh, he's so-" She stops and frowns thoughtfully as she tries to find the right word. "Busy. He's real busy. Always wanting to know something or other. Which is why I am trying to find this book." She pauses and then shakes her head. "I never realized how little I knew about anything before he came along."

T'mic may not be looking for the book with the same zeal as Javeri, but he peeks under desks and looks behind hides nevertheless. "Curious, maybe?" he suggests as an alternative to busy, chuckles at the rest. "Yeah, your life's never going to be the same. Should settle down in a few months, though - he won't ask you the same questions over and over anymore." He lets her hope for nearly a whole second before breaking it: "Just new ones."

"It's not even the same ones over and over," Javeri says with a sigh. "I wish it were. Then I would always have the answers. Noooo." She drags the word out as she leans a hip against a desk. "He doesn't always repeat himself. Some, of course, but no. He seems something and it spawns a hundred questions with half of them new. And I don't /have/ the answers." Folding her arms over her chest after tucking a braid behind her ear she says, "He makes me feel dumb. Like I haven't ever been paying attention."

T'mic chuckles, not unkindly, and straightens a trio of books on one shelf. "Well, you can always ask us, you know. We might not know the answer, but at least it'd be more people looking. And anyway, I don't think there's a question we haven't heard by now." He sends a grin over his shoulder and continues his desultory search. "What sort of things is he asking?"

That he is not being such a great help doesn't seem to be bothering Javeri. She straightens off the desk and moves to the neck one to peer at the seat, on the floor under it, anywhere. "Well, let's see. He asked why fruit did not grow indoors as it would be easier to get. He wanted to know why herdbeasts do not come in prepared bite sized pieces rather than needing butchering. He wants to know why we live inside. Oh, and just yesterday he wanted to know why we needed furniture at all since it would give us so much more room if we emptied the whole room out." She stops and grins faintly. "Those are the easy ones. It's not even the questions themselves so much as the sheer volume of them. I've asked around and for every one question some of the other dragons have he has a dozen. It's not enough to have an answer either. He wants to know how I got the answer. Just knowing something is not good enough."

T'mic pauses in his search as Javeri goes into the questions, his eyebrows heading for the ceiling again. "I was wrong. Don't think I've heard -those- questions before. --Heard ones like them though," he adds before she can throw herself off the cliffs in despair. "Sounds like he's just, ah... you know. Curious. Going to be a big thinker, your boy. And that's good. Just means you've got to adjust to him. So you're... trying to read, s'that it? Learn about what he's asking?"

Alas for a lack of cliffs! That fact along with the greenrider's words save her from suicide! "I don't mind that he has questions," she says because it might seem like she is speaking poorly of the blue and she wouldn't do that. "I just wish- I guess that I just knew more. So I wasn't always having to tell him that I don't know something." A grin breaks out again as Javeri says, "The herdbeast thing was kinda funny. He had this whole mental image of hundreds of little bite sized beasts living in an indoor corral. It was cute. Until he started chewing them up." Her nose wrinkles at that part. "But, yes. I am trying to learn more so I can not feel so ignorant of everything. If only he wanted to know about pottery!"

T'mic has probably never been so grateful that the barracks are cliff-free. "Well, maybe we can get a Harper in here to help you with those questions. And you can always ask one of us, of course. --Or," he adds, struck by a thought, "does he like talking to the other dragons? Sulizath's patient; so's Jekzith." Pointedly perhaps, he doesn't mention either of the greens. "What's he say when you tell him you don't know? Does it bother him?"

"Oh, really? A Harper? Oh, that would be wonderful really." Javeri stops her search again to give T'mic a bright and quite relieved smile. "It's so hard sometimes and I had my harper lessons at the hold and did fine, but this is stuff we were never taught. I knew I'd have to be learning a lot now that I have Chadamalith, but I never knew it'd be about all this." She nods her head then as she begins her search anew. "He likes to talk to the other dragons too. Sometimes he asks them if I don't know. I just hate to tell him to ask someone else when I don't know cause I feel like I should know. It doesn't seem to bother him, you know. Sometimes though he gives me this- I don't know. Like if I get too many wrong or say I don't know too much he'll be eternally disappointed in me."

T'mic wanders over to a desk and pulls out a chair to sit in, leans forward to do the same with another before waving her into it. "Sit for a minute? --He won't be. Disappointed forever. You're always doing your best, with him, right?" He doesn't even consider that she might not be. "He can tell, you know. I'm sure he'd rather you didn't know and tried to find out than didn't know and didn't care."

Since she's having no luck anyway Javeri moves over to sit in the chair pulled out. "Sometimes he's kind of-" She scratches her cheek and pushes hair behind her ears and fidgets in her chair. "It feels like he's not sure about me. Like he wants to test me. Like maybe I'm not worthy." More fidgeting as she slides her feet along the floor and then tucks them under her chair and flops her arms down to her sides and then tucks her hands into her lap. "Is that normal? He doesn't say I am doing anything wrong and I'm doing everything I can for him, I swear it."

While Javeri fidgets Mic stays still, save to lean forward, resting on forearms balanced on his knees. "And what do you think?" he wonders, tone non-judgmental. "Then I'll tell you what I think, once you're done."

"I think if it were normal someone else might have mentioned the same thing," Javeri mumbles to herself as she balls her hands into her lap. Taking a deep breath and letting it out she looks up with a calm expression regardless of what's going on in her mind. "I don't know what to think. I'm doing everything I can. But sometimes it doesn't feel like it is enough. I don't want him to not get what he needs! He doesn't seem, like, sick or anything, but sometimes he just seems...more distant or unwilling to say something."

The greenrider's face is sympathetic, his mouth closed until she finishes. Even then he waits a moment or two before nodding and offering one of his hands across the gulf separating them. "I think he picked the right person for him," he says simply. "If you weren't, you wouldn't care about... about trying to answer his questions and making sure he's happy. He's still only a baby, remember; not even a month old yet. He's still trying to figure everything out, and you're really the only person he has to do that. It's not easy for either of you, but you'll figure each other out, I'm sure of it."

Taking in what is said to her Javeri is silent for several moments after T'mic is done speaking. Finally she grins as she says, "Well, he's obviously also just way smarter than the others." Lowering her voice and leaning forward she adds, "Not that I'd say that to the others. It's not their fault after all." With a wink she leans back in her chair. "I just need to learn more. If he's going to want to know so much I should try to learn too. It's not all pottery now and everything."

T'mic's own grin returns in answer to her own. "Smarter'n Aath, not that it's anything against her." He straightens too, resting one elbow on the desk as he considers her. "Nope, no pottery for you for... shells. Few months, anyway. Closer to a turn, probably. Doesn't mean you'll never do it again, but you've got other things to worry about these days. You want me to? See about asking Bali for a Harper?"

Javeri relaxes as she determines there is nothing wrong with her. For now at least. "A turn with no clay is horrid," she says with a shake of her head. "But I'm sure I won't forget it all by the time I can get back to a pottery wheel and such. I'll have plenty to occupy my mind until then." Fiddling with her hair she smiles with a nod. "Yes, please. Right now I'm sort of just going to the records room and trying to find stuff to read without knowing if it's even worth our time for me to do so."

Another of Mic's grin flashes and disappears, though it lingers in his voice. "You'll hardly notice it. Anyway, I survived longer'n that not working on the docks." He winks to her nod. "A'right. But like I said, ask me, ask Paddy, Bali, Fadra, B'ryce. And encourage him to ask our dragons, too. You aren't alone, either of you. Seems like it sometimes, but you're not."

"I'm going to miss the docks too," Javeri says with a sunny grin. "Not for working. Just for the scenery. There was always something nice to look at." Sailors, dockworkers, wait, no goods. Yes, shiny things. Not shirtless men. If she meant shirtless men she'd be embarrassed or something surely. "I don't want to be a bother," she admits. "I mean there's surely more important troubles than my ignorance. And I'll try to encourage him to ask the older dragons too. When he doesn't seem to be wanting /me/ to know something."

"Something nice to smell, too," Mic agrees, waving a hand in front of his face. "Shells, Javeri, you're not a bother. It's what we're all here for, a'right? Have to go through this every class." He sounds more amused than upset, and leans forward again, propping his elbows on his knees. "We're here to help you with what you need, and a big part of what you need is how to live with -him-. If you've got questions, we've got answers. A'right?"

"If the scenery is particularly nice who cares about the smell?" Javeri asks with a quiet laugh. "Besides, I hear you get used to it. Is that not true? I didn't spend that much time there cause my father did not approve." She brightens suddenly as she says, "Shells, not that it matters anymore what he approves of." Definitely a cheering thought for her. "Ok. I know. I mean I do know, but I still don't want to have to be asking questions all the time and seem dumb. Do they itch less when they're grown?" she asks with a sigh. "Cause I cannot keep up with him and he's oiled I make sure of it."

"There's -used to-, and then there's -enjoy-," the former dockworker allows, grinning again. "And there's nice things to look at off the docks too." Laying a finger alongside his nose for a moment he relaxes again, propped up on the desk again. "Little less, yeah. But think of how much he's grown in the last little bit. Used to be you could've picked him up, right?" A quirked eyebrow invites her to agree. "All that eating and sleeping he's doing means he's growing too. That'll taper off, and then he won't be so itchy all the time. He'll still itch, mind, just not constantly."

"I guess the good news is my hands are pretty smooth now," Javeri says with a grin. "There's definitely more of him to oil now too. Am I ever glad he's a blue!" She shudders as she says, "I cannot imagine having a bigger dragon. There'd be way more work to do. Chadamalith is perfect!" No matter the annoying questions he has less surface area so is wonderful! "As for nice things to look at, well, since all I can do is look for awhile I guess I'll have plenty of time to find out where to look."

T'mic twinkles the fingers of one hand at her. "Another good thing about being a rider, yeah. Be glad he's not a gold, or a bronze, huh?" That line never gets old. "There'll be plenty of time and more for doing more than looking, trust me on that. But you don't want to be confusing him, not when he's still so young. And," he adds, mock-warningly, "Just think how you'd feel if you're kissing some sweet young thing and Chadamalith hits you with all of his questions? Better to leave that and concentrate on him, 'least for a while."

Javeri shudders before she laughs at the image given to her. "Yea, well, I can wait. I'm used to waiting anyway. And there'll be a whole new crop of sailors by the time I graduate. They're always coming and going." A nod of her head to T'mic as she smiles again. "There's plenty to keep me busy, yea. I'm not worried about it. Besides I smell like oil and raw meat these days. Definitely not something that would attract many people. And if it did I bet they'd be the wrong sort. I could make it through candidacy and those horrid chores. This will be a breeze cause I have Chadamalith to keep me company too!"

T'mic only smirks - not unsympathetically, but it's a smirk nonetheless. "So how are things going with you two, besides his questions? You having any other problems? Figured out how to keep you separate from him?"

"Well, I think things are going ok. Other than the questions and all." Javeri scratches at her cheek before saying, "I think so? I mean it's still- hard. Having this other person in my head and all. Well, when he's hungry it's really hard to, you know, not be hungry too." Letting out a sigh she rubs her stomach. "There's something kind of nauseating about feeling so starved while handling gross gobs of raw meat."

The greenrider nods at this, his attention going briefly to the barracks at a mysterious thump. There's a call of, "Got it!" from an older man and Mic relaxes, turning back to Javeri. "I know. How about otherwise? Like... now, for instance? He's sleeping, you said? You feeling tired at all?"

"Not tired, no. Well, I'm tired because he sleeps at odd hours and wakes me up in the middle of the night, but I don't feel sleepy because he's sleeping in my head." Javeri peers over towards the barracks at the thump as well, but then she turns back to T'mic. "Sometimes he wakes up when everyone is dead asleep. Not because he itches or is hungry, but because he's thought of something he needs to know."

T'mic snorts wryly. "Already two steps ahead of me, then. Aath had her hooks in me so deep that soon as she was tired...." He mimes sudden alarm before falling 'unconscious'. From his head-tilted position he continues cheerfully, "Did it for... shells, months, before I got things straightened out. Fadra and Bali both helped."

"I would so rather be sleepy than hungry," Javeri decides with a smile. "Other than falling asleep at the drop of a hat. It still beats the hunger. Oh, and sometimes my wrist itches." She lifts her left hand and scratches it absently. "When his paw itches. It's weird though. It's the only one. My feet never itch when his back paws itch. So, I do not know if it is him or me. But it does before he says anything so maybe it is him."

T'mic recovers from his sudden attack of 'sleep', his omnipresent grin flickering back to life. "You say that now only 'cause you aren't in lessons yet. Got so I'd sit in the very back and I'd scoot back to our bed soon as I felt the least bit sleepy." There's a brief curious look for her scratching, but the greenrider only shrugs. "Could be. Keep working on keeping him out though, a'right? --Or not /out/, but apart. However works for you two."

"Well, I suppose you have a point. It would beat always hitting my head on something or snoring in the middle of a class." Javeri grins as she speaks, nodding her head. "Still I just look at meat now at meals and it makes my stomach turn. It's not so bad I can't eat it, but I have to eat something else first to get over it." Shaking her head now she lets out a sigh. "Well, he's not real, I don't know. He keeps to himself a lot. Mostly it's pretty easy I guess. Even if I'd love to know what he's thinking when he sort of zones out on me."

"Fell out of more chairs'n I care to admit," he says cheerfully, dropping a nod toward the chair closest to the barracks proper. "And it'll get easier too, once he's able to hunt for himself. Just a few more months." Not that she hasn't heard that before, but it bears repeating. And repeating. "He's... quiet, maybe? What do you mean, he zones out?"

Javeri's grin widens as she winks and says, "Yea, always just a few more months. I know those words already." It's said enough she can remember it and repeat it, but it still helps to hear it. After all it is just a few more months! "I'd rather not fall out of chairs. Although I would like to sleep through the night again. I like sleeping." She says all this to try to figure out what she means and finally shrugs. "Well, there's just times he seems all wrapped into himself. Like I can't hear anything. He's still there and all, but at first I thought he was sleeping and now I know he's awake. He just says he's thinking. Sometimes he does not sound like a baby at all. Dragon or otherwise."

T'mic knows she knows he knows, grins along with the home game. "I'd tell you when you'll sleep through the night again, but I bet you know already." He sobers, then, as she goes into the inner workings of Chadamalith. "--They don't, no. S'funny how fast they grow up, even when they're still young. But what about this thinking - does he tell you what he's been thinking about? Does it feel like he's pushing you away, when you can't hear him?"

It's impossible for Javeri not to say it so she grins and tries not to laugh too much as she says, "In a few months." Even if there's a trace of doubt in her mind like she's not entirely convinced that Chadamalith will ever let her sleep through the night again. That's a thought for another time and she focuses on the question, silently considering it for a moment or three. "It doesn't feel like he's pushing me away, no," she answers finally. "He just seems, I don't know, wrapped up in his own thoughts like he hasn't the energy to spare for me at the time. Sometimes he'll tell me what he's been thinking and sometimes he says he'll tell me later. But I think he forgers again just as quickly."

T'mic grins again, lays a finger along his nose again. "Got it. --That's... huh. Interesting. Well, if it ever starts to bother you, come ask one of us, a'right? And I meant what I said earlier, about trying to answer those questions of his. S'what we're here for." There's another thump from the barracks and he stands, attentive but not yet leaping into action. "You can keep looking for that book - and I'll ask Bali about it too. Maybe someone picked it up, cleaned it into her office."

"I'll come pester you guys from now on," Javeri says with a nod of her head. "Thank you." Standing up she peers at where the thumping noise comes from as well. "Yea, that sounds more important than my missing book. Thank you." He gets a grin and a wave before she goes back to her hunt for the missing book as she starts to scratch at her inner wrist.