[Log] Old Enough
Who: Reighley, Vendelin
When: Day 16, Month 7, Turn 8
Where: Candidate Barracks, Fort Weyr
What: Vendelin doesn't think Reighley's old enough.
Candidates Barracks
This large low-ceilinged cavern provides temporary housing for the Weyr's Candidates. Various tapestries hang from the walls, lending an air of color and cheefulness to the dark grey walls. Neat rows of cots fill the back of the cavern, a small press at the foot of each. Numerous shelves dot the walls of the cavern. Littered with various containers and odd items, they seem to lend themselves more to firelizard perches than anything else. A few tables with chairs have been placed towards the front of the cavern, providing a place to visit or do handicrafts.
Contents:
Vendelin
Fort Weyr Firelizard Perch
Obvious exits:
Inner Cavern
Vendelin
Vendelin is a scrawny, tall lad with oily blond hair, sharp and glinting blue eyes, and a hint of a mustache prickling above his upper lip. Acne pocks mar the long face of this older teen, though time may yet smooth his complexion. Bedecked in a mid-sleeve blue shirt with a single breastpocket and a pair of many-pocketed, lightweight and sturdy yet stained tan work breeches, he appears fit for a variety of chores, though the wear at his restless yellowed fingertips hints at tannery or leatherworking by trade. Any pride in his clothing likely rests in his leather boots. While uneven of dyelot, they're well-tanned, and the stitches that join the soles are neat and tidy.
The bustle of barracks preparation for the rapid arrival of new candidates has the place looking even more messy than usual, some cots not even boasting bedcoverings as of yet, others with press-drawers still crammed with trinkets of candidates past. One candidate present stands, surveying the place with one hand jauntily cocked on his slim hip, a toss of his head temporarily moving his oily hair off his face. "Where do we even start?" he murmurs.
Scrub, scrub, scrub. Reighley is running a damp rag over the wooden frames of the bed, picking up dust earnestly. Of course, she also has a habit of shaking the rag out on the floor, earning frowns from a mopper who has to follow around after her. Still, when Vendelin mumbles something, she glances around at him curiously. "What'd you say?" she asks. "What are you supposed to be working on?"
Vendelin frowns, his expression momentarily pinched. "I think something to do with the bedclothes. Shaking them out, fluffing them, or putting them back on after." He watches a duo go by with their arms full, and determines by elimination that he's the cot-maker. Or the press-cleaner. With a sneeze and a glance at Reighley's dust trails, he starts in on one press while the bedcoverings are away. "Did, ah, someone say what to do with the contents of these? I must've been daydreaming," he confesses, "cause I can't recall."
"Bless you," Reighley tells Vendelin solemnly in response to his sneeze. She takes a break from her dusting to follow him, peeking around at the bare cots and presses. "Hmm. Making beds isn't hard. Neither's cleaning 'em out. Huh. I don't know, either, though. Maybe we can just make a pile of everything that's been left and then take it to the stores. That sounds like a good place for it, right? There's all /sorts/ of stuff in there," she explains, wide-eyed.
The older teen smirks his lopsided smile, sniffling the rest of the sneeze away. "Do I look in need of blessing?" He gives himself a once-over, then exhales a low pff, "I guess I might at that," Vendelin allows. "Stores, right." He snaps his fingers, points the index one briefly at her before moving on to the first overcrowded press. "What's the strangest thing you've ever found in stores, Reighley?" he wonders. (re)
"It's what you say," Reighley says, giving Vendelin an odd look. "It's polite." She shakes her head, though, and peers at the beds again, setting her rag on the end of the nearest. "The strangest thing," she muses, tapping a finger to her lip. "I don't know. They have some really ugly clothes, but that's not very strange. My aunt and I were looking the other day, because she says my pants are getting too short." She glances down at her feet, shifting her weight slightly; indeed, the pants are looking a little shorter than they used to. She shrugs, though, and notes, "They're still comfortable, though. What's your strangest thing?"
"Just thought I'd ask," wryly grins Vendelin, adding a big smile to confuse Reighley at her odd look his way. "If you'd quite growing, you wouldn't need new pants," he quips, feeling as a tall fellow it falls within his rights. "You could always at lace to the bottom, off an old tablecloth or something, to make up the extra length so you can keep wearing those. Since you're a girl." He inventories: "Face lotion, hairbrush, bent ring, toenail clippings," he narrates, while starting stacks of 'like-ish' items on other still-empty cots. "Nail clippings so far. Think we can keep any of this if it's useful?"
"Eeew!" squeals Reighley, laughing. "Toenail clippings are /gross/! And I can't /stop/ growing. My aunt says I should be mostly done, though. I mean, I just turned twelve, right? Ha, my brother's hardly grown at all, and he's almost fifteen. It's funny--he hates that," the girl reveals. "Do you really think that would work, though? The lace thing? I bet my aunt could do it nice. She's a laundrywoman, you know, she knows all about clothes."
Vendelin indulges a moment, holding one of the clippings up and waggling it in the air, taunting the younger girl with the mussy braids. "Twelve?" He grimaces. "Are you really that young?" A headshake. "I thought you had to be older to, you know, be in here." The toenail dangles limply, then he tosses it aside to be swept up, thinking again about the lace. "Sure it could. It'd be decorative, but most have patterns so they wouldn't show the dirt as bad. I've got sisters." A shrug. "And brothers, but they're not so much about lacey pants."
"Older to be where?" Reighley asks, brows knitting as she stops and frowns at Vendelin. "I turned twelve two months and..." She trails off to count on her fingers. "Twelve days ago. I'm plenty old--that's like nearly grown," she insists, subject of her pants abandoned in her anxiousness to prove she's old enough.
"Old enough to be," he gestures to their current enclosure, cots and messy bedding, sweepers and tidiers helping prepare the space for those sniffed out soon by inquisitive dragons. "Here. A candidate." He pauses in digging abandoned items from another press to shrug helplessly. "I thought there was an age rule. Maybe you're old enough, maybe it doesn't matter." Placatingly, Vendelin laughs, "What do I know? I'm not a dragon. And happy late turnday." (re)
Reighley eyes Vendelin, still looking a little hurt. "I'm old enough. Arlyth said," she insists one last time. Then, picking up her rag, she notes apologetically, "I should get back to work." And she turns to do just that, resuming dusting the wood of the next cot over, rather harder than before.