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 Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:04 pm
She'd taken it as far as she possibly could by herself. It had happened one night over winter, when the weather was mellow and cool. She'd sat up in bed and exclaimed aloud, disturbing Lyv into mumbled grumbles, and making Meridoth sleepily query in her head. She'd told her green to go back to sleep, and had lain the rest of the night turning the idea over in her head.
Over the next several months, she'd used her knowledge of smithing and metalwork to test out several prototypes. She discovered that certain metals were too brittle for her concept, and others too heavy. It had taken many notes to her parents and various packages sent back and forth before she'd found the right alloy. In fact, she had come to rue not having one of those nifty and helpful flits around of her own to help with the message-carrying.
It had taken another couple months to come up with suitable materials for the rest of it. She'd begun with rags, and had even tried foliage, but had discovered that greenery was too easily shredded, and too difficult to forage for. In the end, the contraption of thin metal wire and patched scraps of rags was to her satisfaction. It was time to hunt down S'kagi.
She hunted him down in the Weyr, striding the halls purposefully with her rather odd looking object in hand. It was half as tall as she was, resembling a massive twisted blade of grass, about a handwidth wide, flat, and with a crazy patchwork of sloppily stitched cloth covering the surface. Anxious to finally show him her hard work, she mock-grumbled under her breath, "Where is that man?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2009 8:33 am
S'kagi was sitting at a table, with his almost perpetual cup of Klah, chin in hand as he poured over documents of some nature. Lists of names of both dragon and rider alike, some of which seemed to include some of the recently grown Weyrlings, as well as the newly assembled wing.
He looked deep in thought, a faint frown on his face as he flipped back and forth between a couple pages, then picked up his Klah for a sip, realized it had gotten cold while he was reading, and grimaced.
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Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 1:33 pm
She burst into the room, giving a loud, "AHA!" upon seeing him. "S'kagi! I finally finished! Look!" And with no further ado, she shoved it at him, holding it out horizontally for inspection. Her face was lit up with excitement and pride. It had been quite the struggle to find a workable design.
"It's lightweight, so it'd be easy for any dragon to carry a bunch up high. And I only use rags for the exterior. with so many people in the Weyr right now, there are plenty of those from overused clothing and suchlike." She was rather proud of this particular detail. It allowed a final use for even the dirtiest and most stained of cloth from the huge Weyr population. It also gave a final disposal method for those that fabric that would not entail any sort of storage.
The frame is very lightweight, but is reinforced in a way that makes it quite sturdy, even from great falls. Course, if a dragon steps on one, it'll get bent, but I can fix that usually." She didn't add the "I think," that probably should have come after that, but she wasn't about to sabotage her effort with a little too much honesty! "The metalwork may take a bit to make, but once made, should be extremely reusable. The fabric skin doesn't have to be perfect, so any old stitching that will hold up works great." Which was evidenced by the rather sloppy and haphazard way the current 'skin' looked.
"So there it is!" She was panting from her search for him and her rapid speech about her fabulous new idea. She waited with glowing eyes and silly grin to hear what her friend thought of it.
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Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 2:28 pm
"That's um. Very impressive." S'kagi blinked, slowly setting down his mug of room-temperature Klah, and studying the curious and patchwork device. Things had been fairly hectic, but he vaguely remembered her enthusiastically discussing...
What had she been discussing? He'd lost track of it in the avalanche of revelations. She'd been very excited about it then too but he just couldn't seem to pull it out of his thoughts.
I don't remember, I'm afraid. Coriath confessed, though this wasn't unexpected to either of them. Dragon's weren't renowned for having eidetic memories.
"It's uh. Great." He blinked, still trying to remember, and then gave up, shoulders slumping slightly with the confession. "....Sorry. What is it?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 7:38 pm
Jevasi held stock still for a moment, eyes wide in surprise. Not everyone is focused on your pet project, mine, Meridoth reminded her with distracted amusement. She was right, of course. Jevasi collapsed into a nearby chair, letting out a gust of excited breath. "Well," she began, looking bemused. "It's a reusable contraption that can be tossed from dragonback up high, twirling downwards in a mimick of Thread for training dragons to flame." She shrugged a bit and gestured vaguely. "Think of it as a moving target for target practise."
She knew S'kagi had plenty other matters on his mind, and certainly more important ones than her special project. Still, the woman tended to see the world only as it revolveda round her. She wasn't so good at relating to how others felt or how they saw the world. It was one of her shortcomings, in fact. She wasn't the best choice for confidences or comforting. She bit her lip to keep herself from a disrespectful outburst due to the man not recalling her big, huge, life-changing project. The warmth in her mind that was Meridoth balanced her personal outrage with a sense of perspective. He had much to oversee, after all, and her project was probably nothing more than a trifle.
Still, she fought with her temper and her impatience for a moment before she returned to her normal sunny self. It was a good counter that she also had no trouble letting things go and moving on with things without a sour taste in her mouth. "The flames will of course incinerate the fabric, but the frame can be salvaged to be reused with relative ease. With my parents help, I can provide plenty of the metal frames to provide for steady use for practise." Her brows drew close then in genuine concern. "Seems to me that we'd better have something more akin to Thread to practise on for when the real thing arrives."
She knew many outside the Weyr doubted that the terrible, voracious stuff would return, but thankfully her parents were not among that group. She had been raised with the certainty of its return, and tales of why they tithed to the Weyrs. So from childhood she had knowno of the horrors of Thread. She personally took the threat extremely seriously, and was doing her own dead level best to contribute to the readiness of the dragons.
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Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 5:51 am
"Oh." S'kagi blinked again, for a moment, before the information filtered through his head far enough to trip the vague, half displaced memories of their conversation. "Oh! Right!" Now he felt foolish, and of course she was now irritated that he hadn't remembered. It didn't take a mental bond to put two and two together on that. He would have been, in her shoes. "Sorry, lots to do lately, I almost forgot about the entire project." he grimaced in apology, taking a closer look at the curious contraption.
"Have you launched it yet to see how it falls?" Of course, comparing it to thread fall was going to be speculative, but it was still important to know it wasn't going to send rider and contraption into a plunge too steep to recover from.
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Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 10:22 am
She nodded slowly, looking slightly uncertain. "Well, yes, I think so. It twirls quite well, and doesn't fall fast. It doesn't always fall where I want it to, though." She gnawed on her lower lip thoughtfully. "This is both a problem and an advantage, though. It's mostly only a problem if we practise near obstacles, or populated areas. I don't think it would harm anyone if it fell on them on the ground, but I haven't tested that yet." The corners were rather sharp, she mused. It took too much time and effort to smooth and round them for mass production to be valid in that case. She intensely hoped this didn't negate the project in his eyes.
"However, it works well over open land or water, as it means the dragons have to work harder to catch it before it hits the ground," she continued eagerly. "I'll admit that it does get bent up sometimes, and never is quite the same shape again, but in this case, that works to our advantage, as it makes them less predictable." Many times their current methods of flame-training were too easy to catch and destroy. "I'd really like to get your permission to have my parents make a small batch of these, so that we can try them out in a practise session. One really isn't enough to test their effectiveness."
This led to the next awkward part. She took a deep breath and tried to be diplomatic, though that definitely wasn't one of her strong suits. "They have asked me if they can make this part of their Hold's tithes, too." her parents had seen nothing wrong with her presenting this as a solution to the cost it would take to make them, but Jevasi herself was mortified at having to ask such a thing. Granted, they had to be paid for in some way, but she'd rather not be involved in those discussions. Despite that, she had become the unofficial liason between her metalcrafter parents and the Weyr.
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Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:56 am
S'kagi glanced back from consideration of the curious thing, and his consideration of how difficult it might be to retrieve if they did end up in the water, to give Jevasi a serious look.
"You know I'm not in a position to make that decision." He pointed out. "Thats something that would need to be brought before the Weyr Leaders themselves."
It wasn't exactly a secret S'kagi himself had some degree of ambition to become a Weyr leader, but then, how many bronze riders didn't? It didn't change the scarcity of golds, or the fierce competition. "But I can try and arrange to see if they'll at least agree to a wing like mine trying them out under observation. It might be the best chance of selling the idea, since the biggest obstacle to changing the tythes we get from -any- hold is the size of the Weyr at present."
If Favian and her clutch did what he thought they might, and petitioned to begin a new hold, that might change the equation, but that was still an guess at best.
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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 10:49 am
She bit her lip against a surge of disappointment at the skeptical tone that tinged his words, but she nodded compliantly. That unto itself said just how much she respected S'kagi, since she usually didn't hesitate to raise her voice when she disagreed strongly with something. She nodded also in agreement with the idea of one wing trying them out first. Taking this as a dismissal, she sketched a bow and ushered herself out as quickly as she'd come, leaving the model in his hands.
She fumed a bit as she strode through the Weyr's hallways, winding her way back to her own weyr for time away from everyone. He was right, of course. As overcrowded as the Weyr was, it kept getting more-so. It had caused all sorts of problems, not the least of which right now was the quality of food they ended up with. They needed every bit of the proper sort of tithes... food, supplies, cloth. It just grated on her that such things were interfering with one of her biggest, most creative ideas ever.
A soothing slip of thought helped her to quit grinding her teeth. Meridoth's gentle amusement at the silly human habit always helped break her out of her dark clouds. She took deep breaths as she shared a few mental moments of wordless communication with her nearest and dearest friend. It always helped, no matter what the situation was, no matter how angry or upset or distressed she felt. Meri was always there to soothe, to encourage, and to poke fun at her. While not quite smiling, by the time she reached her weyr, she at least wasn't looking likely to bite anyone's head off anymore.
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