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 Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:03 pm
"Faranth's sake," Sileny exclaimed, her volume reaching toward a screech. "You have got to be the stupidest excuse for a human being ever to be born. Have ever been told you resemble the man who raised you? If not, it's because your father was probably a braindead ovine."
It was the middle of one of the main corridors leading to the dining cavern, and a crowd was gathering around Sil and the hapless candidate who had earned her ire. Sil was not bothered by having an audience. She knew that she was in the right, and that the imbecile deserved to receive the chewing out she was giving him.
"I mean, really. How hard is it to see a solid body the size mine is while you're making your way down the hall. With all that extra weight you're carrying around your middle, I'm sure there's no reason for you to be in such a hurry to bring that food back to the dormitory. I'd guess you could sustain yourself just on your fat for at least a sevenday, probably two or three."
She continued her tirade, the venomous words coming to her as naturally as breathing or walking. Meanwhile, the young man she was attacking was trying to shrink in on himself and become invisible. He wasn't having much success at it. He was too large, though not quite as large as Sil's insults implied.
By the time she was finished, he was nearly in tears and the corridor was completely blocked by people who had gathered to watch Sil tear someone to shreds. And all because he'd run into her and spilled stew down her front. He'd gotten stew on himself, too, but that made no difference.
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Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:19 pm
One member of the crowd happened to be a new candidate. Only two days into his candidacy, Winderick was still getting used to his new surroundings and all the new faces. For the most part he kept to himself. He knew his superiors better than he knew the other candidates and spent most of his time on chores. Winderick preferred having older friends and hoped to get to know the riders well enough to call them as such. However, when he heard the commotion in the dinning cavern, he soon found himself standing amongst the onlookers, talking and trying to work out what was going on. It was probably the first time he said more than two words to the other candidates.
Seeing the look on the poor boy's face turned Winderick's cheeks a blazing red. With some of the crowd already dispersing, Winderick had little trouble getting to the front. "Hey, leave him alone!" he snapped at the girl, as if he had the authority to make her stop.
Hopefully the other boy would have the sense to run away once Winderick had her attention. He wouldn't fight his battles for him, but it was unfair for her to corner him in a corridor with no chance of escape on his own. Since no one else cared enough to put an end to this, Winderick felt he had to take a stand.
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Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 6:14 pm
At first Sileny didn't even notice the other candidate's intrusion. Oh, he definitely caught her attention when he spoke up, but while he was moving forward her attention had been wholly on the candidate who'd gotten stew on her, with none to spare for any in the audience. It was probably fortunate that the person who had taken it upon himself to break it up had been another candidate, and not a rider or the candidate master.
Once her tirade was interrupted, Sil's attention shifted partially to Winderick. Her eyes, which had been narrowed threateningly at the overweight boy in front of her, shifted to look at this idiot who had decided to present himself as a new target for her ire. Slowly she turned her head so that she was facing him, and not just looking at him from the corners of her eyes. The expression she wore did not make her look particularly attractive, but it might have given a person cause to wonder whether she was inclined to biting others.
"Did I, or anyone else, invite you to take part in this conversation?" Sil asked, her voice mercifully dropping from her scolding screech to her threatening hiss. Maybe mercifully wasn't the word.
"Did he ask for your help?" she pressed, pointing at her previous victim, who was trying to merge into the crowd. "I'm pretty sure I didn't hear him say a word. Intelligent or otherwise, though I'd probably be waiting a long time if I hoped to hear something intelligent out of him."
"Who are you, anyway, that you think you can give me orders? I can see you're a candidate, but I can't tell if your confusion is because you're new to the Weyr, or because you're just an idiot."
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Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 8:50 pm
"I didn't ask for an invitation. Who do you think you are?" Winderick snapped. It would have been a lie to say he wasn't intimidated by this girl, but he wasn't going to let her verbally beat him into submission either. Even though she was plainly older than him her age had no effect on him. He could tell by her clothes that she was a candidate, too. She had no authority over him.
Only the wicked look in her eyes gave him pause for concern. He saw that look in the eyes of the watchwher of the caravan that took him to Benden when he was twelve. When he tried to approach the watchwher, it had given off a low snarl and snapped at him. He wasn't hurt, but he learned a lesson about bothering watchwhers.
She might be as crazy as a watchwher, but she lacked the muscle and sharp claws. What was the worst she could do? Call him names? Been there, done that.
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Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 11:23 am
"Aren't you full of righteous indignation?" Sil said, an amused grin spreading across her face. Some people just had no idea when to butt out and mind their own business, though why she should find that amusing in this instance was beyond her comprehension. Ordinarily she would find him highly annoying.
"I'm sure he appreciates your heroic efforts on his behalf. No doubt he'll be falling over himself to thank you for butting in and defending him from a vicious b***h. But, you know, it's really none of your business."
She looked him up and down. He was definitely younger than she, in spite of the authority he seemed to command, she was not intimidated. He was only a candidate, and he was less senior than she was. There was no reason for her to back down from this confrontation. There also didn't have to be a confrontation, however.
"Look, I really don't take pleasure in making people cry, and this isn't any of your business. I think it would probably be best for everyone if you went off feeling like a hero, he went off feeling like the worthless piece of wherry s**t he is, and I went off to change my clothes. How does that sound to you?"
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity Sil was offering the idiot candidate. Probably she would never learn even to like the fool, but for whatever reason she was deciding to give him an easy out. Of course, if he wasn't smart enough to take it, Sil would feel no remorse while tearing him a new arsehole.
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Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 6:49 pm
Winderick sneered at her, hands clenched at his sides. As she went on her little tirade against him his fists gradually started to loosen. She sounded like his uncle scolding him for refusing to follow directions, except that Winderick had no reason to respect her opinion. When at long last she finished he wanted to shake his head in disgust. Instead he said, "I think you look a lot worse than I do standing there with stew on your clothes. And I don't care what you think about me."
He certainly wasn't in this for the heroics. Her victim could hate him for the rest of his life for all he cared. He just wanted to make the Queen b***h shut up. Unfortunately, getting her to shut up was turning out to be a lot tougher than he bargained for.
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Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 5:40 pm
"Am I supposed to be impressed by your indifference?" Sil asked, her brows quirking and her mouth twisting into an expression of disbelief.
"I promise you, your opinion is worth less to me - and probably everybody else here - than mine could ever be to you. Particularly since I'm right." What she was right about was unclear, but she was right, by the first egg.
She looked him up and down once again. There was nothing obvious to criticise in his appearance, but he had mentioned how she looked, and it had not been a complimentary way of mentioning it. Sil didn't react particularly well to being complimented, but she tended to react even more poorly to being told she didn't look good, which is what she heard.
"Why don't you tell your fat friend that? I certainly didn't do it to myself, you know. If you think I did, you're a moron." This didn't quite assuage her ire at being told she didn't look good and having attention called to the fact that she was no longer as scrupulously clean as she liked to be, but it helped.
Sil's eyes narrowed as she came to a new conclusion, or at least a new way to insult the maddening young idiot before her. "I know why you're looking out for him," she hissed. "He's your boyfriend, isn't he?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 9:00 pm
Right about what? Winderick hadn't accused her of anything except being a she-wher - in fact he hadn't even accused her of that, not out loud. She sounded daft.
While her declaration that she was right and he was wrong left him more puzzled than furious the implication about him and the boy all but dissolved his courage. Luckily with his tan complexion his blush didn't show up well. No one ever accused him of that before, not even Tanner. He could brush off being called dullglow and goody-two-shoes. He clenched his teeth. "No! I don't even know him, I just got here. And I am not looking out for him. I only stepped in because I was tired of your yabbering, like everyone else!"
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Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2010 10:33 am
Sil got the feeling she'd hit a nerve. Good. It was about time. Unfortunately, the idiot still didn't seem to grasp that the best and most expedient way to end this conflict would be to simply end it. Walk away, maybe with an apology first for wasting her time, and simply end it. Sil didn't often go chasing after people to prolong confrontations, and she never did that when she had other places she wanted to be, like changing her clothes.
"Love at first sight, then," she said, feigning a sigh. "How romantic. My heart is all a-flutter for the two of you."
She wasn't scowling anymore. Having found something she thought she could nettle the other candidate with, Sil was smirking. She was more attractive smirking than scowling, but it was not the sort of attractiveness which would have your average young man fantasizing. Not unless he was the sort to entertain abuse fantasies, which wouldn't make him average, really.
"I would suggest, since you're so tired of me, that you remove yourself from my presence," Sil said, thinking about pushing past him. If he wouldn't go, she would leave. "Go cozy up to your boyfriend and tend his poor wounded ego."
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 4:51 pm
"You're the one who has to insult people to feel better about yourself! If you had any sense in your head you wouldn't stand around with cold stew on your shirt," Winderick retaliated, now red in the face. No matter what he said she just kept pushing his buttons. He was starting to realize that it was no good trying to stand up to her, she would just keep flinging insults until something stuck.
He started to push past the crowd into the dining hall. Sileny's frustrating attitude was reminding him how hungry he was. Before he left, he turned to Sileny and said, "You're really pathetic."
He didn't care if she lobbed another insult at him as he walked away. No matter how much she annoyed him, he knew she wasn't worth his time. He turned his back on her and headed into the dining hall.
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