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It wasn't even that Marko was stealing!

He had gone down to the kitchens in an attempt to get his hands on a few meatrolls or a sweet roll or something that he could eat to tide him over until dinner. It wasn't something unusual; it was rare that you couldn't step into the kitchen and help yourself to a roll or two. But apparently the drudges were not in particularly hospitable moods today, and Marko found himself fleeing a menacing ladle and an extremely sharp serving fork. He was rather absorbed in the actions of avoiding trouble, enough so that he more or less crashed into someone.

"Oh, horribly sorry about this," he began, not even realizing that she had taken his elbow and was steering him off down the hall and she was...what? She was talking to him. What? Looking down, and then farther down, Marko looked blankly at whoever he had just collided with. Wait...he knew that face. Or at least that complexion. So yet another member of Harper Hall had arrived? Was there anyone left at home? "I wasn't doing anything," he began defensively. "I mean, there's still hours to dinner and I assumed the kitchen staff wouldn't mind me taking a roll but, apparently this is a big no-no," he went on. Then he caught himself and paused, beginning to wonder the precise nature of the question.

"Unless that was a more general 'how have you been' sort of 'what was it this time'," he said after a moment. "It's, ah...a surprise to see you here, Vera."

"The recruiting wouldn't be a big deal at all if these apprentices would just get it through their heads that Candidacy is just a recipe for heartbreak and pain," Marko answered, lapsing into his typical deadpan drawl and speaking only half-sarcastically. "Either they all think they're going to keep their craft and become dragonharpers, or they don't care anymore." He rolled his eyes. "When I was an apprentice, our craft came first. Everything else afterward. Apprentices these days. With the clutches getting bigger, everyone thinks they can just waltz off and get a dragon. Don't even think about their craft."

At least half of that statement was a blatant lie; Marko had stood as a Candidate and would have left his Craft completely if it weren't for the accident that sent him scampering (and left him terrified of dragons). But whether or not Vera knew the entirety of the story, he could put on airs and pretend all he wanted.

Her question about the goings-on in the kitchens made him wince. "Scolded is not quite a strong enough word. I'd probably have said 'menaced'," he remarked, and then shrugged. "Cooks are terrifying when they're focusing hard on something." Anything else he might have liked to say about the cooks and their wrath was completely lost when Vera made the offer of a new instrument. His expression brightened immediately.

"I would love that," he said, the words coming out in a rush. "The weather here is miserable on my poor flutes; all Northern, half from around High Reaches, and the only thing I have from the local craftsmen is a set of panpipes and they are subpar at best." Grinning, he shook his head in disbelief. "My best flute is starting to sound flat. It would be wonderful to have something I could use instead, that would sound right in this air. The climate is no place for my instruments."

Just to make Vera’s job easier, a most excellent distraction strode into the kitchen in the form of Xeran. An exceedingly shirtless Xeran, for no apparent reason. Well, ok… so there was a reason. There were a few reasons, actually. The first was that he wanted to mess around with Marko; it was always a good activity for those slow days. As for why he was there, well, Vera was alone. With other men around. And that just wasn’t right. Vera just had no common sense when it came to dealing with people, which led to Xeran glaring at men who eyed her a little more closely than he thought was appropriate. He also said things like, ‘Don’t mind me. I’m just. Flexing. Incidentally, my arms are thicker than your thighs’.

It worked remarkably well on the road, but these were Weyrfolk. They were a lot more unpredictable. Marko had been right about one thing: dragons did something to people’s minds, they really did. They were also harder to dissuade. Xeran was slowly learning that flexing at people who flirted with Vera only led to… well… it was weird. A certain type of person no longer flirted at her; they flirted with the prospect of getting flexed at.

Speaking of that sort of person, there was Marko. Xeran put on a wide smile and acted as if it was completely normal for him to wander around shirtless. “Hey, Marko!” he said in his booming voice. It was the type of voice that audibly slapped people on the back, possibly knocking the wind out of them. “How are you? It’s been a while! We got to catch up on old times, right?”

In other words, Xeran was looking forward to making Marko stare uncomfortably. Just like old times. To Vera, he added, “By the way, the harp pegs are sticking. Again. It’s this sharding damp, that’s what it is. Murder on my harp.”

Upon Xeran's timely arrival (or not so timely, if you were Marko or anyone else who happened to have eyes in their head) Vera pinched the bridge of her nose, staving off a headache. Oh, it was not as though the journeyman resented her teacher's presence. No, it was just that Marko tended to end up doing silly things like forgetting that the table was there and the thin air that he was setting his mug down on whilst watching Xeran was... well, here. Oh the calamities that her partner was about to cause!

"It may be murder on your harp, but your harping is murder on my ears," Vera returned, grinning cheekily. "Especially when the pegs are sticking. I'll have a look at Lady Fessi later, shall I?" Oh, the jokes that she could make. She had learned them from the best, of course! She gave a little bow, every inch the imp. "Hmm, Marko... I believe I can amend myself to being loved by you forever. If it's a burden that I must bear, then bear it I shall." After all, she was already loved by Xer. ... Not, perhaps, in a romantic way, but there was definite affection.

She had actually managed to speak with a straight face, too. Her old mentor would be so proud of that, surely, except that by this point they had gotten into a sort of pattern of making such remarks. "Anyway, sit down and tell me precisely what you want for your new harp." The prospect of a new instrument was such an exciting one. She was all but itching to have a new project to work on, and with any luck, she would soon have several. More than enough to keep her occupie-- wait a minute. That was probably precisely what Xeran wanted.

Glancing suspiciously between the two harpers, she finally decided that no, it must have been a coincidence. She had, after all, made the offer of the instrument. Worries firmly set aside, the young journeyman settled down beside her fellow and began running over the necessary adjustments in her mind. She would need to use that trick she'd learned for an instrument that would weather Ista's weather well. ... Get it? Weather weather? "It's not really so much that we're paired as it is that Xeran has taken it upon himself to be my own personal watch wher," she amended, clarifying the situation.

"Well, shardit. I'd been hoping to catch up on the local news. Tell me what you know, at least?" Sharding tropical weather, fardling sea air.

The crash of plates made the already slightly-uneasy Harper tense up for a moment, and he half-turned to see what had happened. Ah...clearly Xeran's fault. Marko, and approximately every Harper in the Hall other than Vera, had done the same at some point. Shaking his head slightly, he listened to Vera and Xeran banter with quiet amusement. "Well, you must admit," he said, fixing Vera with a solemn eye, "this Weyr is chock-full of dragonriders. Of course Xeran's worried about you."

It wasn't that Marko didn't trust dragonriders...not really, anyways. He just didn't think they were mentally stable. Anyone who willingly subjected themselves to the sharding great beasts couldn’t possibly be. And it was no good for Vera to be going off looking for love in men who would always put their dragons before their lovers. Whatever. Shrugging and finding something to lean on rather than attempting to sit down in a kitchen that was only barely tolerating him, he listened to Xeran’s contribution to the news and then added what little he knew.

“The Weyr is dreadfully overcrowded, Riders are grumbling, one of the Junior Queens is in a perpetually foul temper…notthatthat’sanythingnew,” he muttered before continuing on. “There’s talk of starting a new Weyr, and there was a truly dreadful lice outbreak that’s just starting to ease up.” Marko had (THANKFULLY) managed to avoid that particular disaster. Nonetheless he still smelled of peppermint, and probably would until the end of time. “There is also a Candidate outbreak of similar proportions, and nobody died at the last Hatching.”

“Also, some Candidates got in trouble for something the night of the Hatching. Possibly stealing. There may or may not have been animosity from others.” He shrugged. “Were you two at the Gather? I was, and I don’t recall seeing you.”

Xeran grumbled something in reply to the question about the Gather. Perhaps, if he had spoken a little louder, his words would have been differentiable as, ‘I was sick’. The truth was that his sickness was his own sharding fault since he didn’t stop eating the seafood, even after he realized that it tasted a little off. At least he could speak up proudly of his success of keeping dragonriders away from Vera. That was one thing that he agreed with Marko on: there was just something insane about a person who actually wanted to meld their minds with some great big flapping beast that could breathe fire.

Whers, of course, were completely different. They didn’t flap about or try and look pretty. They didn’t need to. Very stable creatures, Xeran thought.

At the mention of his chin, Xeran struck a manly pose, complete with jutting his stubbled chin out. “Indeed! She’s already asked Chinny’s hand in marriage. It’ll be a beautiful ceremony, Marko. You’re invited, of course. Write something pretty for the song, won’t you?”

Another Hatching? Well, no wonder so many dragonriders had been sniffing around Vera! They clearly thought she was some sort of a Candidate, despite her lack of height! As if Xeran and Marko would ever allow such a thing… this was their Harper, thank you very much! The Weyr had sapped away quite enough talent. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t feed their Candidates enough,” he grumbled again, although not very quietly. For Xeran, a ‘mumble’ was enough to shake the bones of an average person and possibly cause small avalanches.

“And all of this overcrowding! They don’t even have enough room for their Candidates, you know. At least at Harper Hall you get your own bed and enough food so the Apprentices don’t have to steal.” Of course, most of them did anyway. It was simply a rite of passage! There were even secret ways around Harper Hall that everyone learned as Apprentices, although the current Apprentices often forgot that, at one point, the older Harpers were also Apprentices and, therefore, also know about the secret passageways. This often caused confusion as groups met up.

“We’re not sure when the wedding will be. It’s all so sudden. I proposed over breakfast just yesterday, and he very quickly said yes.” Vera took a moment to pretend at being young and twitterpated. She was young, assuredly, but twitterpation was something that did not come easily to her. She was by far too sensible for such nonsense! (Or so she told herself, at any rate.) “It will have to be a lovely song, won’t it? Something that captures Chinny’s beauty and rugged manliness. That does sound difficult.” Poor Chinny.

“Ha! I’ll have you know…” Well, no, she wouldn’t have them know. She wouldn’t have them know that she already had herself a firelizard egg. That would remain a secret for the time being, but ah well. There was a little blue egg in a little pot, heating up on a hearth in an undisclosed location (her room, of course). “—That I did very well at the Gather. I won a hand of the cards I played, even.” Never mind that she had won by default. That didn’t matter. … Of course it didn’t matter! She’d gotten a prize for it anyway, hadn’t she?

The poor Weyrfolk were simply so confused by Vera that they never stopped to realize that she wasn’t the appropriate height to be a dragonrider. “I’ve heard that my cousin Sovann is here at Ista Weyr, and Impressed to a Brown dragonet, no less. If he’s anywhere about, I feel certain that they feed their Candidates. ‘Van always did like to feed everything.” True enough, but not really important for the time being. “However, it’s entirely possible that some of the Candidates feel that they have a better chance of Impressing if they don’t eat properly.”

There was the issue of all of the tall women, wasn’t there? Tall, and slender to boot. Much more so that she, though she was not by any means in poor shape. “For the record, I didn’t abandon Xeran. It was his fool decision to eat bad shellfish, and I certainly didn’t know he was feeling ill when I left for the Gather. I wouldn’t have gone if I had any idea that he’d had anything more than a hangover.” Which he could well have had, couldn’t he? It hadn’t been one, but that didn’t signify. What was important was that she had not left knowing that he was ill.

“Oh, I’ll give you that. I think the lot of them should come back to the Harper Hall. There are far better things for them to be doing than frittering away their time waiting to Impress dragons. But you see, if we do wait for them to age out, they won’t have Impressed, and they’ll want to come back to the Hall all on their own. … ‘Course, that doesn’t save them from the dragons, which I think is your primary concern.” Coming back to the Hall was sort of second place against the possibility of being mauled by a dragon or three.