A young musician and anyone & everyone

[menolly_harper]

[Menolly is trying to get her feet under her in Siren's Port, and is going hither and yon doing this and that, largely busking and people-watching. She doesn't know where to get started asking questions, and she's from a civilization which just (re-)invented the telegraph, so the NV is totally foreign to her, and she wants to have half a clue

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Busking with fire lizards - anywhere outdoors, daytime

[menolly_harper]

A teenage girl is sitting on a primitive folding stool playing guitar, sometimes singing and sometimes just playing the instrument. Several winged lizards are singing a wordless descant from perches on a nearby awning, and several others are similtarly perched and just watching.

The guitar case is open for donations. [How much of a crowd and how much she has in the case depends on when, where, how long she's been there, etc. - whatever suits what you want to do.]

Fellow Musician!

[of_frell]

It's been a while since Ella had seen someone busking - she'd done a little when she first arrived, but hadn't gotten much in the way of help. Thank heaven she found steady work after that.

She was just coming back from the music store herself, having had to get a new case for her violin. Spotting Menolly, she stopped - then made her way over to where the girl was, partially for the music, and partially for the sight of the fire lizards.

"You're pretty good," she greeted, fishing out a couple of tens from her belt pouch. "Have you played long?"

Re: Fellow Musician!

[menolly_harper]

"Played, ever since I can remember -- the old Harper used to have me play second parts in the Teachings back even before I was much good at it, and he did teach me to be good at it. Sang, well, always but I've only had lessons for about a year."

[It shows: she's really good with the guitar but only a couple notches above passable with the voice, at least to a fellow musician. She's also clearly not experienced with busking - she doesn't know how to draw in an audience which is predisposed to going about its way. But the firelizards help a lot there.]

[of_frell]

"It shows. But if you've had formal training, you already know that."

Ella grins, kneeling to drop the money into the case. "I'm Ella." And then motioning to the little critters around. "... Are those baby dragons?"

[menolly_harper]

She smiles. "Training, anyway. Not all of it formal, but all of it good. I -- I guess it was formal enough, just one on one, not in groups like I saw the apprentices get taught in the Hall.... Thank you; I'm Menolly. No, no; dragons are bigger right out of the shell. These are firelizards. They're fully grown, though Beauty hasn't mated yet."

[of_frell]

"Well, one on one sessions are better than large group sessions, I think. It's easier to work in a relaxed atmosphere. I never liked the circles."

Though she never liked them because the instructors - with the exception of one or two - didn't like her. Because she rebelled against status quo.

"I've never seen a real dragon up close. I've read about them, and seen pictures though. Sometimes heard stories from the knights about vanquishing a dragon - but between you and me, I think they were making it up."

She looked over the fire lizards, "They're all really cute. Er - which one is Beauty?"

[menolly_harper]

Menolly laughed. "Being instructed by Petiron - um. Being taught by my old teacher wasn't relaxed, much less the people who taught me after I got to the Hall. But it was constant instruction, not the waiting while everyone plays and the journeyman coaches them."

She blinks. "Vanquishing a dragon? Ah, what is a knight?"

Menolly reached up with an arm, and the gold winged lizard - the largest - came gliding down off the awning, ignored the arm, and landed on her shoulder. "This is Beauty. She's the queen."

[of_frell]

"Let me guess - he, or she, pretty much made you play until you had finger blisters and had scales playing over and over in your sleep until you were going made for it?"

"Knights are ... well, usually men. They're the King's Justice - they're stationed in town or around the castle, dressed in armor that has the King's Crest on it on the front - generally. Most knights are annoyingly chivalric, save the damsel, slay the dragon types."

Ella leaned forward as Beauty glided down. "Ohh... she is beautiful. But I guess that's how she got her name." She grins. "What about the rest of them?"

[menolly_harper]

"Scales and Teaching tunes playing over and over in my sleep, yes. Finger blisters, not often - he wouldn't do that to a little little, and then I had other chores too. And other instruments - the callouses are mostly different. But my father wouldn't have been pleased if I'd been unable to do my work because I'd been playing too much." She looks nostalgic. "Sometimes it happened anyway

[of_frell]

Ella flexes her fingers at the memory of her own lessons. Sometimes she did play until they blistered, but mostly because someone told her to play and forgot to tell her to stop.

"What kind of work do you do? Or did you do, should I say?" Ella pulled her gaze away from the fire lizards, amused. Whoever knew creatures that resembled dragons could be so tiny?

"Thread? Wha?" Ella quirked an eyebrow, confused. "Wait, wait - if you don't have knights or a King, who governs your country?"

The wheres would win?... That just sounded weird. Where? Oh she would ask about that later. She glanced at each fire lizard as it was introduced, committing the name to memory, and when the last one had been named, gave a light curtsey to the lot of them.

"Well, it's lovely to meet you all." That to the fire lizards, and then to Menolly. "How did you come across so many?"

[menolly_harper]

"I'm a Harper ... which does mean I play the harp, though I don't have one here. You don't have Harpers here the way I'm used to, I asked." Menolly stroked the wood of her guitar with an intent look. "Harpers back home are musicians and teachers and messengers and cross-crafters and some other things. Diplomats, drum relays, advisors, record keepers, gossip-mongers...."

"Mostly, the Lord Holders rule, but the Halls and Weyrs are independent. Technically any ruling made or upheld by a Lord Holder can be appealed to the Conclave, but by tradition, only rulings involving the Lord Holder himself or his family are appealed to the Lords' Conclave. The -" she stopped. "Ella, do you want me to go on? The senior journeymen have been teaching me law and precedent, so I could go on for hours, but that seems fairly silly when we aren't there

[of_frell]

"We have Harpers like you back home, in Kyrria. Although they're called Bards, or Minstrels, not Harpers." She paused. "I don't think we've had to many that were diplomats, on that note

[menolly_harper]

"Well, we don't have a lord of Lord Holders keeping things quiet? Harpers cross-craft a lot, and there are Harpers everywhere, so the Masterharper's got a better chance of understanding both sides of the story than anyone else, and one of the things a senior Harper learns to do is persuade people, so....

"Oh, I don't mind talking about Pern. But I don't know enough of either Siren's Port or your world to know where to get started." She pauses. "Actually, I can say that Pern doesn't have anything like Siren's Port's kitchens, and not much like its bathrooms. And I still don't understand this network thing."

Menolly blinked. "Our dragons aren't solitary. They can't be. A dragon which kept to itself wouldn't be able to fight Thread. Fighting Thread needs at least a wing even if all they're doing is protecting a tiny spot. A dragon trying to go at Thread by itself would get caught by one clump when it goes after another. And ... if the dragons are solitary, where do they get firestone? And where do their riders live?"

[of_frell]

"We're not too far off there. Kyrria doesn't have kitchens or bathrooms like Sirens Port does - and boy do I love indoor plumbing." She laughed. "But we don't have anything like the network - unless you count magic mirrors or crystal balls, and it takes a pretty powerful magic to pull this kind of thing off."

Now it was Ella's turn to look confused. "Well, the most our dragons have to worry about is other dragons or aspiring hunters, rather than Thread. But what are you talking about, firestone? Isn't that a type of tire for the vehicles here?"

She's thoughtful at the last. "I don't think there are any dragon riders - I mean it's possible sure, but the dragons aren't exactly domestic. I don't think they'd let anyone near them to ride them."

..."But I bet it would be amazing to be able to."

[menolly_harper]

"We have indoor plumbing, a little, but we don't have enough of it to use instead of chamberpots. We have a drum network, but it takes time to relay."

Menolly frowns for a moment, then relaxes and smiles again. "Your dragons look like our dragons," she says, nodding to her fire lizards, "but they aren't, really. Our dragons are ... well, it's just not right to call them domestic, but they're partners with humans. When dragons hatch, they look around and pick a rider-to-be from the candidates on the grounds; if the rider dies before the dragon does, the dragon goes between and stays there.... If the dragon dies before the rider does, the rider often suicides, too.... Firestone is what the dragons chew in order to get whatever they need to breathe flame."

[of_frell]

"We don't have a drum network, we have pigeons for relaying messages. Mirrors and crystal balls are too expensive for a lot of people."

She's silent at the explanation of the dragons, her expression turning dismayed. "They kill themselves...? That's tragic ... a bond like that... I could never imagine something that deep." That's kind of depressing, really.

"Our dragons don't need..er, firestone, to breathe fire back home. It's a natural weapon to them - they just breathe it. I don't know about the mechanics of how they do it though. I haven't seen a dragon up close to ask."