A Dragon Among the Wherries [open]

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Qosis followed Tasia as far as the feeding grounds, taking unbecoming, stunted steps in just so she could have the privilege of leading him. He eyed her choice of clothing for the Winter's brisk eve, but Tasia could always be counted on for her practicality.

"Good that you chose this instead of what I recommended," he said softly as they passed beneath the nature-carved exit from the kitchen caverns. The cold had been peeking at them all the way down the final straight of the tunnel, but now it soaked around their faces and limbs and noses like a small helping of Between. Qosis continued, philosophy undaunted by the weather: "This helps the Weyr, too." Obviously that previous suggestion had been a test! And Tasia might not have picked up on the ludicrousness of sending the man to dive in the cooling lake, but she had the instinctive lean necessary to correct the punishment to appropriateness anyway. It only occurred to Qosis as they broke the season's threshold how absent-minded his offering had been in the first place. He could not help it, he decided. Swimming had been his habit even past its recommended days.

When they reached the pens, the Candidate stopped beside Tasia. The cold quenched most of the death-smell outside the paddock, but he knew that particular stink would become his cloak shortly. "Perhaps you should only stay at the edge," he murmured. "The inside of a herdbeast is not quite so easy to the eyes as fish guts." He did not know how much dragons left in the wake of feeding. He had never paid attention to such a detail when he used to watch them in the Summer. Perhaps it would only be a bone in a marrow puddle, or scrap of flayed skin. "Get yourself some of those thick leggings and boots that they have for 'dung duty' at the stables while you're at it. They're mostly in men's sizes, but suffer that indecency for now. I know you aren't working, but it will be good for warmth. And some gloves. Big ones." He held up his hand to give her an ideal model. "Actually, I should probably go with you to get--"

And then some of the ink from the night wrapped itself around a face, and Qosis jumped as their fellow Candidate materialized beside them. It was the pokey point of Naraevhyn's nose that identified her as human, and girly, giving the trader leave to relax as she stated her piece. He blinked several times, both at her words and at the passing gusts of unbuffered cold. His breath snorted out of his nose in draconic steam-plumes as he glanced between Nara and Tasia. "What's this?" he said at last, his earlier compliance edging away from his posture and expression. "Brought someone to watch, Tasia? That is petty." Qosis weighed the concept for a moment, then cleared his 'headwoman' of charges without need for her defense. He smirked at her. "And she doesn't even look dressed for it."

As Qosis turned around to survey what he could of the damage on the grounds, he stripped off his jacket. With only an over-the-shoulder glance to confirm his aim, he tossed it at Naraevhyn. He did not really think to correct for her height, and the article ended up flying at her face. "Guard that," he said. "I'll not have it sullied." His gaze flicked to Tasia, attempting to imply through the weak starlight that it would be her head should Naraevhyn work her lone task poorly. Such was the responsibility of a minder! He was wearing a few layers of long-armed tunics beneath, but naturally he would not have minded owning another such jacket. One that he could bear to face dragon leftovers in.

With one hand on a fence post, he leaned toward the grounds, but did not enter. "Of course you are correct," he answered Nara. "The organization here could use improving. Tasia and I have had words on that very subject-- did you say you are from Western?" He actually turned around to address her at that, curiosity piqued. He did not know of other Candidates that had not simply been shipped in from the North. Sometimes of their own idiotic accord, he thought, an old pang for his caravan stirring to brief wickedness in his heart. It passed. "Where I come from, no child from babe to manhood learns a thing from scolding. It is always a physical transaction that breeds order. Tasia has been granted the authority in this matter. If you want to understand it more, ask her." Of course with Qosis running his warm but solidly loud voice over the brittle winds, it was hard to imagine when anybody else would get a word in. "Take her with you," he said, abruptly shifting his attention to Tasia. "Perhaps both of you together can manage the cart. ...I will wait." And so he ceded to the fish-girl's command at the end, though his tone suggested he was not a pinnacle of patience.

Nara's eyes flashed with fury as Qosis threw his jacket in her face. Without thinking, the Candidate threw the garment on the ground.

"You do not outrank me," she said firmly, frowning at Qosis. "You will not order me around, and yes, I am from Western. Born at Fort. Where you come from is clearly different then where I am from. I learned simply enough with harsh words from my mother's lips that were rarely accompanied by a cuff to the head." She glanced at Tasia, then shook her head. "Scolding fails to work if one is thick as a wherry," she said simply. "And one must certainly be a dimglow if they are less intellient than I am." She narrowed her eyes at Qosis then, making her implication clear: she thought the traderborn Candidate was an idiot. Naraevhyn took a deep breath and stilled her anger before it got out of hand. She tilted her head regally as Tasia half-asked, half-commanded her to follow and aid.

"You were placed in charge of him, miss, not of me. I do not see a rider's knot on your shoulder; in fact I know you to be the same rank as me. I would appreciate if you asked instead of commanded. I am no longer a simple kitchen drudge. I will not be commanded as one." Naraevhyn kept her voice level and calm, doing her best to keep her anger unheard. Leaving Qosis' jacket on the ground, she followed Tasia, her body language making it clear that she considered it a favour.

Oh no, not parental disapproval!

Qosis had to contain himself as the girls headed to the stables. The ferocity of Naraevyhn's cultural display was of enough strength to speed his blood and wake him from a long-standing chill that did not derive from the icy Winter. It reminded him there were lives outside the Weyr and its bland, persistent flavor of practicality. Hold and Hall and Caravan: that was where Pern lived and grew, free of necessities dragon-born that tamped down the many facets of human society. He should have put more enthusiasm in his earlier words of gratitude. If only he had known that was how she would respond!

When Tasia returned-- and incomprehensibly warded him off cart-pushing --Qosis accepted the coarse gloves she had found for him. They were a little tight, but they fit. He had to be thankful for those men with large hands that did not correspond with their height, or there might not have existed garments of sufficient size. His other clothing had always been tailored to him, and was expensive even without the dyes and embellishments he liked...save his jacket. That had been mostly free. He moved out to the fence gate and swung it open, bowing to Tasia and extending his arm out with an exaggerated welcoming flourish. He was not entirely surprised when the other Candidate departed, but he did regret the loss.

"That is the strangest drudge I've ever met," he said to Tasia as he closed the gate behind the cart. From his tone, he was giving Naraevhyn a compliment. "As I have always known, girls are not suited to this sort of life. They are too sensitive! What will she do when some mucky person is her wingleader? Fly away as she has here?" Apparently the trader was disregarding for the moment that Tasia, too, was a girl. He was about to continue on the weaknesses of femininity when a little tune made its way back to them, coloring the dark night just as Naraevhyn's appearance itself had: briefly, and merrily.

Qosis grinned. He straightened up to peer toward the barracks, but he had not even noticed Nara when she had been right upon him. There was no chance of him spotting her through an entire Bowl of gloom. "And she sings. With such vocabulary, for a drudge!" He leaned one hand on the cart, a conspiratory smile lighting his face. "You think she would take offense if I asked her to follow me around and chronicle all my exploits in song? Like mm...Moreta."

He fished through the contents of the cart, but there was not much left once Tasia removed the protective clothing and dressed himself. Qosis' cheer dropped like a steaming glob of Thread: "You forgot to bring a glow." He crouched down to check the cart wheels, and abruptly spotted a couple baskets stored on the cart's underside, along with the poles needed to mount them on the front. "Oh..." The Candidate pulled one out and tapped it open, but the lichen inside was shriveled and dim, untended for many Turns. He took out the other: it was bright, more violet than the usual green-blue. "Alright..." he murmured, eyeing the fisher girl skeptically as he rose and fit the basket pole into a gap on the front of the cart, then hung the glow from the end. He flexed the basket completely open, so they had a wide circle of illumination to work with.

"Yeah?" the trader scoffed, moving out to the edges of the glow's illuminating halo to collect his first herdbeast parts. Or part. All that was left was a bloody scuff in the dirt, and a head that looked like somebody had chewed on half of it and then changed their mind. "And is that supposed to be shameful? Yes, how threatening and embarrassing a thought, a man liking a woman." He was sort of gingerly poking around the head before he recalled the gloves protecting his fingers, and thus he seized it by the remaining horn and the lower jaw. "Maybe that is embarrassing, in a Weyr," he snorted, straightening his back and carrying the remains back to the wagon. Even just the head of a herdbeast was heavy-- it was almost difficult to think of a springy, light-boned dragon preying on something so thick and weighty.

He heaved the head over the side of the cart and it splattered awkwardly onto the bottom amidst its own juices. "You can still go back by the fence and wait," he advised the other Candidate. But by the time he had taken a few steps away it became clear he believed in her continued stubbornness, for he motioned her after him toward the next dark patch on the killing field. As the glow-light passed ahead of him, he noticed some of the blood had turned to frosted red patches, and when he tested his foot on one it almost immediately slipped forward. Qosis rocked his weight back and frowned. But as long as he could see, he would be fine.

Hopefully any nightcap seekers among the hungry dragons would see him well enough not to take him for a herdbeast too. The lessons said dragons could see a little bit at night, which surprised him. He had thought the late hour exclusive to whers, who he did not figure would venture out onto the feeding grounds just yet. Why? Because he was there. The whers never gave him more than a glimpse, as if they were all part of a scheme to keep him blind to them. "Lots of people look at me like that here. It was never that way before-- I think it is because these people have to live with me. I am not just a colorful guest spicing up an afternoon or two." Qosis could not say he minded, if what he saw at Dalibor was the more truthful assessment of how he came off.

A few more bones and other, squishier leavings and he came across a rather coincidental corpse. "Yeah," he muttered at Tasia's inquiry, not paying much attention at first as he sized up the kill. The herdbeast was drained of color, like it had frozen where it lay rather than been dragon-savaged. But pushing at the skin of its neck readily revealed the tremendous rents in its throat. A blooding. But the belly was opened a bit too. "Let her gorge," the non-dragonrider grumbled in what was perhaps overreaching disapproval. "Short Flight no doubt. I barely felt anything," he added, looking up to Tasia with both curiosity for her reaction, and concern for his own dulling sensitivity. But his face changed abruptly, breaking into humor. "Maybe she made me hungry, and that's why I ate the wherry," he offered with a wink at his inappropriately talkative minder.

He wandered around the dead beast hopelessly for a time. In fact he could drag it a bit by its ankles when he really put his body to it, but not far enough to put it to any use. "The dragonriders would know," he said of the Gold at last. "Especially the Bronzes. If you heard anything from them, it must be soon." Qosis did not give equal opportunity to the Ironriders. He had been dwelling on elements of their last conversation rather unfavorably. "From anyone else it's wherry teeth. But it will be nice when it happens...unless they lock us in our rooms." He abandoned the beast and stalked off in another direction, raising his eyebrows pointedly at Tasia as he passed the cart. "Or were you thinking about your dragon?"

"Well if I was fancying her it would not be for her love," Qosis countered. He sounded about as convinced of the concept as Tasia. He had meant male-female relations as taboo for a different reason than she had concluded, but he did not pursue that explanation. "I think you misunderstand what a Flight is like when you are party to it," was all he offered her. And he was very careful to say Flight, not Run. "Only a very immature person would take away anything but the pleasure."

Qosis smiled at his likeness to a never-quite-falling object. He had possessed such a toy a long time ago...till his father found it, and sold it off. He had never even needed to push it: inside a wagon, it rocked constantly from bumps in the road. His smile hardened as Tasia admitted her earlier susceptibility. "There is no 'getting used to' a queen though. Maybe they really will lock us in." His tone spoke nothing but lament for such precautions. "...or maybe just you girls. Yeah, that would make more sense." He had located a more manageable kill, just a few bones with frozen tendons sprouting off their ends like lengths of jerky. Qosis tossed most of them into the cart, but stopped to play with the material at the end of a shin bone, pulling on the once-flexible fleshy part till he broke it off with a grunt of surprise.

Turning the bone around, he briefly investigated the other end before at last tossing it into the cart. "Are you tired of pushing yet?" he inquired absently before turning right around and heading back out onto the grounds. He ended up striding a few feet ahead of the glow's reach, then paused and looked back at her as the cart caught up. Qosis turned around, walking backward at a slower pace and hefting his arms out to either side. "Obviously!" he answered. His heel came down on another kill's already-crushed spine and he started to slip, but managed to avoid falling again. Qosis wisely turned around and resumed a normal forward orientation.

He began carrying the spine back one vertebra at a time. Each had been meticulously cleaned of flesh. "'Dragon' and 'future' are the same word to me. And for all its failings, I do not believe this Weyr would torment me as it has without recompense. I don't get to be Headwoman if I fail."

When Qosis brought up the skull of the kill-- a wherry instead of a herdbeast --and tossed it into the cart, a firelizard squeaked out of the eye socket and flew off into the night.

Qosis nearly froze at her question, and ended up lowering the next parcel into the cart in slow-motion. He blinked at her a couple times, walked away to get another piece, then walked back grinning.

"You're joking?" he offered, desperately. Tasia could not be that ignorant. Not on what men wanted from women besides romance. She was old enough! But no, she was on to the other point he had made, and at her notation of his absent bonded the trader absorbed his grin, then shook his head and let it return again. "I have a dragon. He's just not Hatched yet." Or clutched. Well Qosis had intended it as a joke-- mostly --but he was still trying to absorb the utter seriousness of his fellow Candidate's inquiry, so his voice was flat and a little of the color gone from his face. She really was daughter of a fisherhold. Dead and iced!

It made her inquiry about the queen Flight almost funny. "I've heard it is..." he said, voice uncharacteristically shrill as he debated whether to add the qualifier for normal people. He was happy when she finally yielded the cart to him. He needed something to...push. It calmed him down. But first he had to finish clearing the bones of the wherry kill, and that head with a surprise inside. "I would, wouldn't I?" he mused on her first assessment, considering the order and organization he could accomplish in such a position. But he dismissed it just as quickly. He lacked the necessary parts.

Besides, as Tasia said, there was a king waiting for him. And the duties associated were far more appropriate to his sex. "I have to hope he is at least equally so," the trader sniffed. "I don't think I could stand one who just said 'yes' all the time." He wrapped his hands around the guiding bar for the cart and walked it forward, putting more than the necessary heft into it, and marching to the next corpse with excessive speed. It was the sort of work Qosis could happily lose his concentration to.

But Tasia's talking, and a particularly noxious word, brought him back. He shot a glare at her, the sort of expression she might have been expecting when she compared him to a child's toy. Then he stumped off to retrieve a bloody but empty ribcage. "You and the rest of the sharding barracks," he snapped as he tossed the cage into the cart, weakened bones shattering as it struck one side. "Runners have worked perfectly well for everyone since the beginning of Pern. There is no need to trouble yourself. Flits take Turns of training for them to get anything right. And the lesser ones never do." Qosis shook his head, then looked his punisher in the eye. "Better that you toss it in the lake."

He seized the cart and shoved it off toward its next grim destination, shoulders tensed beneath his thick tunic. They had sunk back to relaxation by the time he had to stop pushing again. The next body was in good condition, save its absent head, wings and legs. Someone had been picky. Qosis wrapped his already-bloody gloves around the head and tail end of the wherry and hefted the entire thing into the cart. Off to their right was the segment of the Bowl stream that bisected the feeding grounds.

Qosis had not escaped the most recent activity unscathed: there were scrapes and patches of food animal blood on his shirt. He did not appear cold or tired though. His breaths were not even deep, despite the added task of pushing the spoils about. He rested one hand on the guide bar of the full cart. "The other side too?" he asked, business-like rather than apologetic. "We'll need to dump this. There's no more room."

If Qosis ever dared to regard Impression as a salve for deranged minds, Tasia would have been his first choice for treatment. As it was, he knew that would be tremendously unfair to the dragon. At least she quickly grasped that his anger was not pointed to her firelizard-in-waiting specifically, but the whole species. Other people had been inclined to take it personally, on behalf of their brainless pets. When she did not respond to his scraped-together tone of professionalism likewise, without further prodding, his thoughts eased.

He nodded to her instruction, a domestic power unchallenged, and walked the cart all the way back to the grounds entrance. Qosis looked sharply to the post where he had left his jacket when they came close enough for the glow to begin reflecting sinuous patterns down the deep green sleeves. It was still in place.

"Get that for me."

The cart was taken to a refuse pile near the stables, emptied, and walked across the bridge to the other side of the grounds. This time as he approached the entrance, the wind was blowing over the cart and into his face, trying to choke him on the death smell from the earlier burden. His punishment was well-timed though, and the grounds shockingly maintained on a daily basis. Maybe even twice daily. There was not rot mixed with the blood-stink, and he could suffer the fresher odor.

A few steps in, the front wheel of the cart skipped on a massive glaze of iced blood and other fluids and Qosis had to haul it back up from a half-tipped position. The glow swung wildly on the end of its pole, the circle of blue-purple light around them veering about while the Candidate peered around to see the problem area. There were no parts to be picked up; just a massive bloody smear. Qosis stepped away from the cart and kicked it with the heel of his boot, fracturing the surface to make it more visible. Then he headed on to more promising gore piles.