A Cry in the Night (Maggie!)

[Jester]

{desc=Screaming monster wher time}Jakran had been at Dalibor for nearly a sevenday. For having never lived in a Weyr before, he thought he was settling in rather nicely. Even though he still wished that the Masters could have at least sent him to a Weyr on the Northern Continent, he had seen a few weyrfolk and riders who looked like they might at least have some degree of taste, and at least he was away from that sharding boat. Jak was now considering staying on the Western Continent just to avoid ever having to set foot on a boat again.

His room was fairly close to the smithy, and the route wasn't too hard to memorize, even for someone with as lackluster a sense of direction as Jakran. The difficulty came when he worked a bit late and decided to try and get to the dining cavern without going out to the Bowl first.

It seemed a perfectly sensible plan. It was still cold outside, but the Caverns were kept at an almost-comfortable temperature (if still a little cool for someone who had most recently spent several turns at Igen) so avoiding the Bowl wasn't at all an unreasonable decision. And, in theory, it was a shorter walk through the Caverns. In theory.

Jak was pretty sure he must have taken a wrong turn somewhere when he started encountering glows that were starting to get a bit dim. The question was which turn had been the wrong one. He had blithely went past several turnings, and he had no idea where any of them went, save that one (presumably) led to either the Dining Cavern or the Bowl. At this point, he'd take either.

He scowled as he turned around and trudged back towards the last crossroads. All he wanted was some sharding klah and a decent meal. Would it kill the weyrfolk to put up some signs? Or put the smithy right next to the Dining Cavern, where even he couldn't miss it?

[Maggie]

Tamarisk had decided that despite the fact that they weren't even graduated from wherlinghood yet, it was her sworn duty to patrol the halls of the lower caverns that the whers inhabited. Tamarine mostly humoured her, although she had learned early to impose limits. It wouldn't do to have Tamarine jumping out at every handler. That could go badly, unless the handler was Kire and Tamarisk would be facing off with Kisk. They had reached the agreement that handlers were not wrongdoers or tresspassers, but everyone else was fair game. Weyrfolk didn't come into the handler's caverns often enough to be terrified about it and dragonriders... Well, they would know how to deal with a pint-sized cyan terror, if they were comfortable enough to venture into the whers' lairs.

Patrolling was mostly uneventful, which is why Tamarine was surprised when she felt her wher's focus suddenly sharpen. She cursed under her breath, hurrying towards the hallway that she knew Tamarisk was currently lurking in. Not soon enough. The tiny monster leapt out in front of the unfortunate smith, bristling and lashing her tail round like a club. GOTCHA! STATE BUSINESS! TRESSPASSING! TAMARISK APPREHEND! She screamed into the poor man's mind.

Tamarine skidded to a halt, then sighed, seeing that her wher had definitely cornered someone and was advancing on him like an angered attack-canine. "Tamarisk, stand down," she snapped. "Uh, sorry about her. Are you lost or are you looking for someone in particular?"

[Jester]

The shells?!?! Jak jumped as a wher--he wasn't experienced enough with them to identify it as young--leapt out at him and started screaming in his mind. He decided right then and there that he hated weyrs. And whers. Especially whers. Granted, it was only about as large as a decent-sized canine, but canines didn't have such an alarming number of teeth, or a tail that swung about like a club, and they certainly didn't scream in your mind calling you a trespasser when all you wanted was to find the sharding Dining Cavern and get some sharding food.

He glared as well as he could while pressed up against the wall as a girl, half his age, ran up to them. "Doesn't the weyr teach you how to control your beasts?" he snapped. Not the most tactful thing to say, especially since she had at least called off the monster, but shardit, a man ought to be able to get lost in peace. He eyed the wher, sure that it was just waiting for the girl to turn her back before it leapt for him and tried ripping out his throat. Tamarisk. They had both called it Tamarisk. A name to remember and avoid in the future if at all possible.

[Maggie]

Tamarine's eyes narrowed at the insults. Tamarisk had scared him, certainly, but that did not excuse such poor behaviour. She had not run into a lot of discrimination against handlers either at Nabol, since they were so useful in the mines, or at Dalibor, but she had heard stories. Many of them. "The Weyr mostly taught me to respect riders and other handlers," she snapped. "Although I suppose some people are naturally more polite than others because even as a hold-brat at Nabol I wouldn't have been so rude, especially to a wherling."

TAMRIMINE SEE TAMARISK RIGHT! WRONGDOER! TRESSPASSER! Tamarisk's eyes whirled a happy green. She had caught a real tresspasser! Tamarine, who usually corralled Tamarisk away, continued to glare at the man in front of her without calling Tamarisk back. He wanted to insult them, he could live with getting stared down at bit more, especially since Tamarisk was actually tiny and woudn't attack him.

"Yes Rissy, you were right," she cooed at her happy wher, moving a little closer to her tank-like, miscle-bound monstrosity. Tamarisk pawed the ground as she had seen the much larger Task do when he was unhappy and wanted to impress this upon others. "You're in the wherhandler's area, Tamarisk isn't wrong in saying that you're tresspassing. She's doing her job as a wher, guarding the caverns that she lives in. And as for control, I have her controled, thank you very much. If you can't take a little interrogation, you have no place down here at all, she's far from the worst you could run into." Not the best, either, but she had half a mind to "accidentally" send the man towards her aunt's quarters, just to see how he would react to a fully-grown blue charging him. "Now what was your business, we'll escort you there."

WRONGDOER GOTCHAED! ATTEN-HUT! the cyan ordered, requiring him to snap to attention to be marched elsewhere.