[Log] One of Mine
Who: Iabri, Tiriana
When: Day 19, Month 13, Turn 19
Where: Records Room, High Reaches Weyr
What: Tiriana has a little talk with a hookie weyrling.
Records Room, High Reaches Weyr
&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;Books. Scrolls. Bound hides. Maps. If it's a record pertaining to the Weyr, it's likely to be in this roughly oval room with its floor-to-ceiling cherrywood shelves, its multitude of slots for scrolls, and its wide drawers for materials that shouldn't be rolled up or folded. A scribe is usually on duty at the tall desk up front with its good view of the room, and is able to help visitors find what they're looking for via the big bound index on its rotating stand. Past the desk, several tables stand in neat rows for note-taking, each stocked with glowbaskets, scrap hide, paper and pencils. Additional lighting is provided by a many-armed wrought-iron light fixture, its glows gleaming through luxurious glass containers in fluted shapes instead of baskets.
&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;&nbps;To one side of the room, a gap between two sets of shelves outlines where another set once stood, now replaced by a tapestry-covered aperture. Peeking behind the tapestry reveals another cavern, this one likewise full of shelves, but occupied by only a few boxes of older records and a somewhat musty air of disuse. As well, two narrow but solid doors are locked when the room is unattended and a discreet staircase provides direct access from the Weyrleaders' weyrs.
Contents:
Iabri
Obvious exits:
Weyr Entrance Council Chambers
Willowy, Iabri stands a self-assured five foot six, with the soft curves of a twenty-something woman attired in a weyrling's best. That is to say, dark pants to hide oil stains and a fitted navy shirt with a few choice buttons undone along her collar. Needless to say, her shoulder is weighed down by the simple loops of a weyrling, with the green thread of her dragon. Her loose, light brown curls have been shorn stylish to just above her shoulders, framing a pixie-like face comprised of a high brow sloping down to the delicate point of a small nose and sharp cheekbones and hollowed cheeks dropping into a sharply curved chin. Carefully groomed eyebrows arc over, while long lashes frame, greyish-green eyes, a hint of bon vivant mischief often times catching in the light.
It's clear Iabri never learned the life lessons that make the academic world go round. Instead of participating in classes and sitting through her morning lectures, the willowy teenager's playing hooking, having fled to the nominally quiet sanctuary of the records room. Without a knot on her shoulders, she's a nonentity, though the oil stains along her pants legs might betray her. Just a girl with a stack of workbooks to go through and the glaring red ink of mistakes crossing X's along many a math problem set. To just about anyone, she looks like a girl hard at work, head bent industriously, unraveling math in quickfire fashion on scrap pieces of paper and then copying it ever so neatly back into the workbook itself.
There are always things for a Weyrwoman to do in records, and of late there's more than usual, between trials and punishments, and seeing that every detail of those affairs finds its way into the appropriate records. Even now, with it all said and done, Tiriana is still here, setting a couple of books down with a thump on the table before she seats herself opposite Iabri and starts unfolding a pack of letters to get to replying to them.
The arrival of someone who means to share her table slows Iabri's pencil and lifts her eyes ever so casually, ever so slowly, to find the Weyrwoman's dark hair. Uneducated as she might be. Newer to High Reaches than most. But Tiriana is a far too distinctive figure to miss or fail to recognize and immediately the folded limbs, graceless in their industry, straighten to correct her posture, until she's seated a bit more properly. It's then that she allows herself more than a glimpse of the goldrider, her light green eyes having followed her posture up so she might look upon Tiriana unhindered rather than through the veil of her lashes and while many might shy away, give the Weyrwoman her peace, a clear voice extends a polite, "Good morning, Weyrwoman," that could be easily dismissed as her grip about the pencil, that indicates she could be as busy as Tiriana wishes her to be, tightens. At least her etiquette lessons seem to sink in well.
"Mm," says Tiriana at first, sticking her own pen in her teeth while she quickly flips through her mail and then pulls one missive from the stack. It's only then the greeting is really allowed to register, and Tiriana blinks up at Iabri finally, about the time her hand takes her pen back. "Oh. Hi," she greets her properly then. "How are you." The weyrling's not the only one who knows a modicum of etiquette, at least.
In the world of Pern, perhaps its leaders are celebrities and while K'del provided an opening to banter easily, Tiriana evokes a hitch in Iabri's solemn, polite exterior. The teenagers shoulders roll forward and through the open mouth of a little grin, a tiny laugh escapes, stifled as soon as it hits the air. But its existence was all too audible. Bright lights dance in the green-eyed girl's gaze as the slow bloom of that smile is allowed to crest up to infuse her cheeks and general expression. "I would say star struck given I've never spoken to a weyrwoman before, but that'd be a lie. Would you like me to lie or tell the truth?"
Flattery does wonders for one touchy Weyrwoman, and though Tiriana's brows initially lift in suspicion, there's little mistaking her slow smirk for anything but preening. Star-struck. "Which one's the lie, the part about never speaking to a Weyrwoman before or the part about being star-struck?" she asks. "Because I'd say truth generally but I kind of liked that last part."
The smile deepens, though it doesn't widen, and creases dimples about her cheeks. "I'm amused," says Iabri plainly, he smile dripping in its audible amusement, "Because I never would have expected you to say hi to me. So, in a way, star struck. And I don't lie that you're the first Weyrwoman I've spoken to outside of classes. And then you're not speaking to each of us but to all of us and..." Halting her babble, the weyrling offers another of her grins instead of an apology. "The truth is, Tiriana," and she dares to use name rather than title, "Even though I've seen you around, heard you, taken your self-defense classes, everything I've heard about you has inflated this view of you in my mind and that you, a goldrider who has the authority to sit and sentence a man to die, says hi and how are you, just like I might to my friends." Well, it's shrug worthy at least. Smile-worthy, definitely. Perhaps she's finally said too much and only seconds after she's spoken does chagrin sink in. "I mean, I only meant..."
The boldness of all that makes Tiriana lean back in her seat, even the pretense of letter-writing abandoned in favor of this most interesting weyrling. "So... what. You think just because I can happily execute a criminal--" that word stressed; not a man "--I'm some kind of monster who runs around eating people? The sort of person myself that they warn the bad kids about when they won't eat their dinners and go to bed." And the idea seems to amuse her still, more than trouble her. Curious, "Oh, I know what you only meant. Do you talk to your weyrlingmaster like this? --Not that she seems scary at all, but," is tacked on lamely.
Bold or stupid. Or both, as they aren't mutually exclusive designations. "Oh?" Iabri's earnestness betrays itself in the bend of her body over the table's edge and the deep lines that sketch about her young face. "What did you think I meant?" Narrow eyes widen to their limit and blink, curious, rather than challenging. "For the record," a smile slipping out for the unintended pun of records rooms an records, even though her situation may be precarious (amusement is sometimes more dangerous than outright anger), "I don't think of you as some monster. Criminals should be punished." It's all very black and white, except the rhetorical question that follows, complete with an air question mark and quotes of the end of her pencil to the air: "But who will punish the punishers?"
The former question goes unheeded; it's the latter that earns all of Tiriana's attention as she grows still. Her mouth purses, eyes on Iabri and amusement fading slowly. "Do you think," she asks, "we /need/ punishing?"
The light eyes go distant, in that way a rider converses with their dragon. "Have you ever thought," theorizes Iabri in the glazed tone of distraction, "Of how right and wrong isn't always the same for each person?" She comes out of her haze with a shake of her head. "I don't think you need punishing. It was... a question to think on. I try to think more than I should sometimes and it comes out all wrong." Oh, the trials of being ignorant, and yet, there's no apology for how her words might be heard. So, instead of stopping the foot slowly entering her mouth, she continues with an earnest knit to her brow as she thinks, dwells really, very hard on the subject at hand. "There is right and wrong. A code that everyone has to live by. For weyrlings, we should salute and respect those who outrank us, and I do respect you, ma'am." If there was any doubt. "For you, it's to serve and protect this Weyr. This home. And when people disregard those rules they should be punished. I wish I could have seen the hanging." Wistful, that last, in the way of a girl having never experienced such exciting things in her life.
"So you think they were right," Tiriana continues, in seeming deliberate misunderstanding this time. "Just because some bitter old man thinks he's right doesn't mean he is. Thinking you're right doesn't make it so. And he wasn't." A firm nod fixes those words, and she finally picks up her pen again, leans over her work like she's going to actually do it. Instead, she notes, "Wasn't nothing too exciting. He started ranting about us again, and I told 'em to go ahead and drop him. Tired of listening to that shit at every turn."
Her foot is halfway down her throat before the recognition of what Tiriana is finally sinks in, and the knit of Iabri's brow disappears. Not defeated, but merely ceding to whatever the Weyrwoman wishes to think without argument. Instead, the former Nabolese kitchen girl veers towards morbid. "Hundreds, thousands of ways to kill a man. I heard when a man gets hung, he foams at the mouth like a rabid dog." Her words carry in them distraction as, like Tiriana picking up her pen, she resumes her sums and problem sets. "I've never seen anyone die."
"Thousands?" says Tiriana. "Must have an inventive imagination, then. Course, the best ways are the easiest: hanging, stabbing, maybe letting one of the dragons flame them. Thread." She shrugs, relaxes slightly at the slight shift in conversation. As for that latter-- "Never?" She doesn't sound convinced, eyeing the younger girl for a long moment. "/Never/? How do you manage that?"
And, midst all the morbidity and Tiriana's seeming certainty that she has a raider sympathizer in her ranks, Iabri smile grows, renewed again for the opportunity to quip, "By closing my eyes." In copying her work over neatly, a few numbers change here and there, as if she's self-correcting as she goes. Still absent, for she's pretending enthrallment with her math book, she inquires, "Do you like being Weyrwoman? K'del said that there are parts he likes and parts he doesn't."
Tiriana snorts at that, shakes her head. "Scared? And you wanted to watch a hanging," she notes, but doesn't linger on that. Instead, she taps her pen against the table several times, thinking. "Let me guess: the parts he likes, girls throwing themselves at him. The parts he doesn't, me. I figure the good stuff like watching that /Vijay/--" she makes it sound like a dirty word "--swing makes up for the bad like having him going after my people in the first place."
There's a hesitant pause as Iabri digests that, her pencil falling slack as she regards Tiriana with openly naive eyes. Mouthed without the substance of sound is, 'my people.' Spoken, wonderingly and shy, despite the bold stupidity of moments before, "Am I one of your people?"
For that innocence, Iabri receives a withering look in turn, a sort of how-stupid-are-you expression from Tiriana. "Of course," she says, as though it's the most obvious think in the world. "You live in my Weyr, don't you? Impressed one of my Iovniath's dragons?"
It's only a split second's worth of uncertainty, that sense that this feeling of belonging is somehow different and not altogether welcome for Iabri. But what could a split second matter, for a look of marked relief is soon to follow in the slump of her shoulders and the smile that returns. She might have nothing further to say to intrude on the Weyrwoman's time or keep the much busier woman from her letters, but the young greenrider'll hum a happier little song under her breath as she goes about copying. She's one of /Tiriana's/ people. And sooner, rather than later, she ventures a very meek, but somehow still impish, "I think I'm star struck again."
Tiriana gets as far as a 'dear so-and-so' on her paper before she's drumming her pen again, in what's sure to be an annoying tick soon. But with Iabri interrupting, welcome this time, Tiriana casts a glance up at her again, lifts her brows. "Why?" she asks. "Everybody here is. Hardly anything special."
"Because," says Iabri, with the simple naivety of the part she plays, "I would trust you with my life."
"Oh really." That earns a pause, and while she might offer her protection to any of her people (at least from the outside world), having them return the gesture is not nearly so common. Tiriana takes a long look over Iabri then, as if seeing her anew. "You haven't heard I'm as likely to exile my own people as hang the people that mess with them?"
Aware she's being watched, Iabri's pencil scrawling halts long enough for her little chin to lift and the narrow-featured face to look to Tiriana squarely. "It's part of your job to look out for the greater good and if exiling one will protect the rest. I'll just have to remember not to do anything exile-worthy." It's simple enough, this math equation in her head: one plus one always equals two without deviation or changes in the base number count of ten. "The weyrlingmasters say that a wing is only as strong as its weakest unit, so I guess the question really is, would you trust me with your life?" Smiling sunnily at that, as if the answer is obvious, Iabri returns to her math and exhales a happy sigh of success as she finishes copying.
"Smart," is Tiriana's verdict. "Smarter than most of them around here." Her life, though. That's another subject entirely. Tiriana glances back at her paper, dashes off a few words while she answers. "That likely? Mine ending up in your hands."
"Is anything unlikely? I'm just a kitchenmaid from Nabol and I'm speaking to the Weyrwoman. I don't even know if any of Lord Ustelan's children, grandchildren have ever spoken to you or the former Weyrwoman." And it's an honor, should the careful flattery of her voice indicate anything. "Kaditseth...," a momentary loss causes her to close her text and drum her fingers against the top, "Has changed my life in all sorts of unlikely ways."
"A couple of the kids, the oldest ones," Tiriana remarks offhand. Darker is the addition of, "His wife." And then she's adding just a touch more to her letter and signing her name to it--not one to waste space on niceties, apparently. "Dragons do that," she says then. "But we're not like a Hold, anyway. Where the Bloods never come down from their lofty holes."
With her math done, Iabri seems to have no plans on moving onto anything else she has to do, her chin dropping into a loosely curled fist. Under the table, her lanky legs kick idly, girlishly. "I'm Iabri by the way." In case Tiriana doesn't remember her name. "In case you ever wanted to call me by name rather than 'hey you.'"
"I remember," Tiriana says. "Iabri and Kaditseth. Know all my weyrlings. Part of them being mine." And she looks proud about that fact, though the gloating's cut short by a jerk of her head toward the stuff the weyrling's been working on. "How are your lessons? You're one of the ones in remedials, aren't you."
Pleased to be known, only in that way an unknown can feel when acknowledged, Iabri's shoulders surge upward again in that girlish delight that's hard to contain. Then, her little balloon of joy punctures when reminded of her classes, but instead of responding, the weyrling inquires, "Did you have to learn all this as a weyrling too? Why do riders have to be educated? Do the kitchenmaids here know all this also?"
"Well. I had to know it, anyway. That and loads more," Tiriana says, with a shrug. "Knew enough of it anyway. The basics, math, spelling, writing. Satiet made me write better, but not because I /couldn't/, just didn't feel like it." Nosily, she reaches for one of Iabri's scratch papers, asking in the process, "What are you working on, math? Where were you for harper lessons when you were a kid?"
"Nobody really cared what I did as a kid," says Iabri, the warm vibrance of her voice flattening. "Lost my parents early to some sickness, just kind of kept to myself after that." Unsettled by this statement in a way none of Tiriana's prior accusations caused, the greenriding weyrling shifts in her seat, restless and then finally just stands to pace the short length from table to door and back. The work on the scratch paper, though quickly written, is easily decipherable, and though it's simple maths, is flawless. A look quickly slants to the sheet in Tiriana's hand and her cheeks flush crimson as she steps across to retrieve it. "I'm trying to catch up as quickly as I can. Though, sometimes, I feel stupid compared to the others."
A quick scan of the paper, and if Tiriana's no rocket scientist herself, she can still recognize good work when she sees it. A glance from pacing weyrling to paper and back earns an incredulous tilt of her head. "Why? Figure half the ones we let test out of it couldn't do it this well."
"They seem smarter, better equipped. I feel constantly weeks, months behind. Maybe even years." Self-deprecating, Iabri tugs the paper away, pulling to take it out of Tiriana's hands as her cheeks crimson. She's only nineteen, after all, slip ups and mistakes can happen and perhaps the idea that the Weyrwoman might see such flaws even if it's only in her math work doesn't sit well. Perhaps. "I... I'm catching up anyway. I... I should go tend to Kaditseth and find some lunch. Already skipped harper lessons this morning," pause and more crimsoning, "But you didn't hear that from me."
"Right," says Tiriana, letting the paper slip through her hands so she can dig up her next letter to answer. "Better to hear it from you than the harpers. Should I write you a note?" Her pen hovers, poised over a blank sheet as she pretends to scrawl a couple of letters in the air. "'Dear Harpers, please excuse Iabri because she was with me doing her homework.'"
Iabri's eyes widen as the green of them shift from Tiriana to the letter. An audible sigh of relief exhales when she sees there aren't any actual words being written and a smile is slow to fashion. "I think I'll be fine, Tiriana." She'll even give the Weyrwoman a half-way smart salute before shoving her papers together atop the workbooks. "I don't think the rumors of how fearful you are don't do you justice," she remarks. "But I like that. Good luck with your letters!" And then: escape.
"So, wait--" Tiriana begins, frowning. "Does that mean I'm scarier or less scary?" These are important questions! But the weyrling is already going, and so, with a sigh, Tiriana turns back to her own work for the day, and finally gets down to it in earnest. Or at least as earnest as she's going to get about this sort of work.