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 Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 4:12 pm
Well, there was certainly no lack of dishes to be washed right now, that was for certain. In fact, as the young woman lifted a hand to push her sleeve up over her elbow again before also pausing to tuck a stray lock of dark blonde hair back behind her ear she thought quietly to herself that it wasn't very likely that she would ever have faced this much dirty table and kitchen ware if she had stayed at home. It was lucky she actually rather enjoyed washing up... the suds smelt nice after all, and there was something certainly very, very satisfying about seeing how clean and shiny the job could leave the crockery.
The fabric apron that she had fastened around her middle while to begin the washing up was already slightly damp, she had wiped her hands on it once having placed a few items in the water filled bowl, not wanting to wet her hair. Though she had been here a little while now, she still found that she didn't know very many people. It seemed a very busy place, bustling and overcrowded, but some of the people she had had a chance to speak with had been very nice indeed. Others... not so much, but that didn't matter to her, in cramped conditions you had to excuse peoples moods not always being perfect after all. At harvest time with all the additional help staying on at the cothold even the softest natured farm hand had been seen to lose his temper once in a while. It was just what happened.
Though she was on no level alone in the kitchen, for the moment it seemed that the young woman was going to be left alone with her task. She didn't mind... Enlali minded very little for the most part and had begun the job with a perfectly content smile on her lips. It would have been nice to have someone to converse with however, it did tend to make jobs feel faster than they were, and it may have meant she wouldn't have to dry as well... washing was one thing, but she had never been a fan of drying dishes... a slightly wrinkled nose showed this sentiment as she looked over at the small pile of clean dishes her task had already produced... oh well, when needs must any task would be done, and she had never been one to quibble when it came to duties. With a very quiet string of hummed notes murmuring past her lips she returned her attention to the washing for now... just a few more dishes... she'd clean just a few more before she stopped to dry them...
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Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 4:33 pm
Firyal was momentarily overwhelmed by the bustling in the kitchens after the meal. Z'nal had been quick to put her back on the duty roster after putting her through one of the most unpleasant interviews of her life upon her return to the Weyr. That was the way he was. After spending about a third of her life under his watchful eye, she was resigned to it, and a little relieved that no public fuss would be made about her return. She'd been away for nearly a turn, and she expected much to have changed in her absence. Clearly the kitchen was not one of the things that had changed. She had just grown accustomed to the much smaller scale at home in Nerat.
Fortunately, the woman in charge of the kitchen was more merciful than Z'nal, and greeted Firyal as though nothing had happened, then she sent her to do one of the perpetual chores of the kitchen: dish washing. There were worse chores, Firyal knew, and she was relieved not to have been assigned them. Z'nal probably meant to make her pay for what he'd called her fickleness, but it seemed the women of the kitchen were not so inclined. Perhaps it had to do with Favan's leaving. When E'rik had told her they'd given the woman a Weyr of her own to rule Firyal hadn't believed him. Only when Daramulath broke tradition and confirmed the story did she give it any credence. The mood at the Weyr did seem more genial than it had been in the turn before.
Determined to make a better start of it - How many times had she thought that? - Firyal made herself smile and go over to the washing area. On her way she picked up an apron from the peg on which all communal aprons were hung, the motion coming back to her with startling ease. Perhaps it wouldn't be so difficult to fit in once more after all. Even with all the changes she would have to adjust to. Maybe she could just pretend to be a normal Candidate. She'd been Searched and everything. The thought occurred to her just as she reached the dishes, bringing a smirk to her lips.
"Hello," she greeted the diminutive girl to her right. Firyal had never considered herself tall, but this girl was a good third of a foot shorter than she was. She wondered if this was how it felt to be tall.
"I'm Firyal." As introductions went, it wasn't terribly original or inspiring, but it was certainly functional. Besides, there was no point in wasting a perfectly good greeting on someone who may turn out to be dull.
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Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 5:07 pm
Startled very slightly by the unexpected sound of a voice so close to her Enlali looked around and flicked her eyes up, and once again, as was usually the way with speaking to anyone at her height, found that she was indeed most certainly looking up. At once a smile tugged at the young woman's lips, an expression that she didn't even have to think to bring about. She was clearly pleased just to be greeted, and the happy expression reached her eyes with no hesitation despite the slightly started expression the greeting had caused to settled there for a moment.
"Oh how silly of me, jumping like that, you startled me!" The young woman replied, her voice not raised, but lilted with a noticeably happy tone to it, clearly amused at her own silly startle. "I was off in my own little world there, it's nice to meet you though Firyal, uhm.." Without thinking she'd lifted a hand to hold it out to the other woman but now paused to examine it and withdrew it again. It was damp, covered in bubbles and certainly not in any condition to be shaken, she smiled a little more, she didn't seem to be doing very well thus far, never mind though.
"I'm Enlali, sorry about the almost wet hand there..." She wiggled her fingers before returning said hand to the bowl of water, picking up another spoon and dipping it into the water. "So, you've come to join me in the land of soap suds and dirty dishes then..? Please tell me you don't mind drying..?" Her tone and expression were both tinted by humour again, she was honestly delighted that she wouldn't be working alone for any longer than she had to. "We've a mountain to face however... still, I'm sure cleanliness shall prevail." In a slightly silly moment once more she brandished the clean spoon before setting it down on the side to drain, looking over at Firyal again. Why was everyone so much taller than her..? Never mind.
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Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 7:48 pm
Firyal hadn't realized she'd spoken so loudly, but she was out of practice when it came to pitching her voice for crowded rooms. Her family loved to talk and soliloquize, but talking loud wasn't the way to get a turn there. It was more effective to insinuate oneself in the span of the current talker's breath and just not stop to breathe until you had everyone's attention. Mostly Firyal spent a lot of time listening when she was with her family. There were so many little readjustments she would have to make, having given in to E'rik's demand that she return to Ista. Damn Harpers and their irresistible natures.
"I didn't mean to startle you," Firyal said. She continued with a playful grin, "But I can understand how you'd be startled. After all, I'm pretty terrifying."
She was in the process of reaching for Enlali's hand when the shorter girl withdrew it. Surely she'd just broken the standard record for shortest amount of time to offend someone, which wasn't really the distinction she wanted to have. Actually, there were so many distinctions she didn't want to have, it would be simpler just to name those she wouldn't mind. She was momentarily lost in her own self-doubt, and so it took her another moment or two to realize why Enlali had withdrawn her hand.
"Wet...Oh. Well, it's not like mine would've stayed dry all that long, even if I am drying - for which I thank you, by the way. I lack the eye for detail that washing requires." That was very true. She didn't mind doing dishes, but it was one of the more mind-numbing chores she could have been assigned in the kitchen, second only to stirring pots. Technically, drying required even less mental exertion than washing, but she preferred that, because it meant she didn't have to think about what she was scraping off the plates and utensils, which was not a pretty line of thought. She picked up a drying rag and reached for the nearest damp-looking dish.
"As for cleanliness prevailing, I sincerely doubt it. Not with me around. I seem to be an unwitting agent of chaos. Nothing stays clean or organized near me. You should see how my things have just exploded over my bed. Not that it's entirely my fault," she went on with a rueful grin, "my firelizards were 'helping' me unpack."
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Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 9:21 am
"Well, I suppose you are right, your hands will end up wet, but there still have to be more pleasant ways to greet someone than offering them a rather damp handshake..." The shorter woman lifted her hand to rub her cheek with her wrists, seemingly absently trying to remove an itch. "And I wouldn't say you were terrifying.. just that I'm spending today being especially unobservant.." She smiled again, certainly over any skittishness she had felt earlier. "I'm glad you like drying though.. I personally can' stand it..." She chuckled quietly, "At least that means we should get through this fairly quickly..?" She didn't mind doing chores, certainly not, but it certainly didn't meant she didn't want to get them done more quickly.
Putting the next clean plate down, followed by a couple of forks and a spoon. "I find a certain weird satisfaction in cleaning a plate I suppose, and I like the ability to be able to see the improvement as it goes on... it makes it easier to focus." It was always much easier for the girl from the Cothold to enjoy a task if she could actually see that her work was having. She probably should have just gone through with the handshake she'd offered, in hindsight at any rate... but it was a little too late now. The perceived insult seemed to have vanished fairly quickly at least.
"You have fire lizards..?" A new topic, a new train of thought, though she was still managing to wash up as she spoke, her attention fixed on Firyal once again. "How many..?" She didn't seem to have grasped onto the fact they'd been 'helping', she was just interested in the fact that her new acquaintance had such interesting pets. "Tell me about them..?" There was nothing like a story to help work progress.
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Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:34 am
"True enough." Firyal wasn't sure how long she could discuss things like wet handshakes and proper greeting rituals, and was relieved when Enlali returned to something Firyal had said earlier. Firyal couldn't remember her exact words because they'd really come out without her brain being fully engaged, but she could recall the context and that she'd been joking.
"I'd be unobservant, too, if I'd spent most of the day at dishes. Even being able to see the progress you make on individual pieces of tableware, for me, can't lessen the effect of knowing that even if you clean every single dish - which, I can tell you from experience, is impossible to do in the span of one work shift - there will just be as many more to do after the next meal. It seems sort of futile." She shrugged to lighten her dour words. She was not doing very well at avoiding making her darker observations. She told herself sternly to make more of an effort to be personable.
"For both our sakes, I hope we are able to finish quickly. Though they might just give us something else to fill our time. There's always work to be done in kitchens of this size." Herself, Firyal didn't care for most of the chores that took place in the kitchen, but she'd rather be seen to be doing chores and working herself hard than not. She got the feeling that her tenancy was only tolerated at best by those in command at the moment, and she dare not slip up even once.
Her firelizards. Those were stories she had been asked to tell so many times after coming home that she barely even had to think about the words anymore. The telling had become ritualized, almost. At home in Nerat, firelizards were uncommon, and so hers had attracted a great deal of attention, even from people who would never have spoken to her ordinarily. Many of them believed it wasn't right that a girl with no craft and no title should have two firelizards, and so her stories had come to emphasize how fortuitous it had been for her to acquire two of them. Luck being slightly less offensive, since it could only be controlled, seemingly, by Bitran gamers. Some people still thought she'd stolen Numenor from his rightful owner, but she'd stopped letting that bother her.
But rather than launch into the familiar tales, Firyal gave Enlali the opportunity to escape from her fond recollections. After all, nothing was more tiresome than a pet owner convinced of her own pets' superiority and willing to go on about it for hours. Firyal's stories didn't take hours to tell, but they did take some time, and Enlali might not be that interested. She might just have asked to be polite.
"Yes. I have two. Numenor and Chance. Numenor's a bronze, and I've had him the longest. Chance is brown, and he's younger, and generally friendlier toward strangers. Numenor's basically a one-person firelizard, for all that he's one of the smartest 'lizards I've met. I'd call them, but they're not generally welcome in the kitchens. After this shift, if you've free time, I could introduce you to them. If you like."
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Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:21 pm
"Oh I'd love that!" All other topics of conversation had flitted easily out of Enlali's head as soon as Firyal started talking about her fire lizards. It was something Enlali had of course heard of, but until she cam here she'd never had the chance to really see one... and here as she didn't really know that many people here yet, well, she'd still not really been able to see one especially close up so.. it was all rather interesting, and one of the nicest new things she had discovered here. Th chance to actually see a couple of them was really, really rather a good one!
"I mean.. I don't want to cause you any disruption if you have something to do after you're finished here, but if you don't mind, I would really like that, to see them I mean. Your fire lizards. They behave like little dragons, don't they? Or something like that, I don't really know that much about them I have to say... you must know quite a bit though, if you have two?" She gave the taller girl a very curious look. She was very much enjoying the whole... learning aspect of this big new place. "They're both Male, yes..?" She clearly was rather interested as it went, however... she was just about managing to carry on cleaning the dishes.
"I've never had a bet of any kind, not a real one anyway.. I lived in a Cothold you see, so.. we had things around, but.. no real pets.. there wouldn't really be that much time for them.." She smiled a little more at the taller girl. "Do they do funny things..? I know some people say their pets are quirky.. or that they're like their owners... I bet they've made you smile before..."
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Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:37 pm
As soon as Enlali said she would love to meet the firelizards, Firyal knew that she had found a ready audience for her stories about them, and maybe even a friend. She'd thought it before, and would probably think it again, but her firelizards were probably the best ambassadors she could ever hope to have when it came to dealing with other people. Even Numenor, who instinctively distrusted strange people, had an effect on people that made them want to impress him and be one of the chose few that he would deign to acknowledge as Not Entirely Bad, and possibly take food from their hands. Firyal always felt a bit sorry for such people, being taken in by Numenor, who would happy accept food from anyone, whether or not they were enemies. It amazed her that the bronze never seemed to get fat, with all the treats people offered him on a regular basis.
She reached for another dish and went at it with a rag. Drying was much faster than washing, but there was a bit of a backlog, so she was working on catching up with her rather industrious partner in cleanliness. Firyal smiled at the thought that her schedule would be disrupted. To have a disrupted schedule, one had to have a place, and Firyal's place in the Weyr was, at present, nebulous. As she set the newly-dried dish aside, stacking it with others of its size and type, Firyal answered Enlali, "I've nothing else to do. As far as I know, anyway. But Chance would love to meet you, and Numenor will at least be polite."
"I can't say they really behave like little dragons," Firyal said as she rubbed drops of soapy water from another plate. "They're significantly less intelligent than dragons are, though I've met a number of children who are less intelligent than Numenor, and a startling number of adults with less common sense than either of them. But they are similar to dragons, yes. Like dragons, firelizards all seem to have their own personalities and their color does determine their gender. If the color starts with a B -like blue, brown, or bronze- it's a boy, and if it starts with a G -as green and gold do- it's a girl."
She paused to pick up another dish - a bowl this time - and catch her breath. She was used to the onslaught of questions about firelizards, and unable to help feeling a little pleased that people assumed she was knowledgeable on the subject. She'd had her pair for a while, and she'd done a lot with them in terms of training, but she would have been the first to admit that she shouldn't be giving lectures on the care and keeping of firelizards any time soon.
"Actually, until I ended up with Numenor, who was an accident, I'd never had any sort of pet, either. At home, in Nerat, I lived with my mother and her parents. My grandmother grew up on a farm, and her view on animals was that they had better have a use. Still, I don't think she disliked my flits when I was at home. Mostly because they're pretty charming, I think. They're very good at endearing themselves to others." She smiled unconsciously, like any fond parent or pet-owner. The two firelizards were pretty much the lights of her life.
"But I'm doing all the talking. I'm sorry. Where are you from? What did you do before coming to the Weyr? I've never actually seen a cothold - I grew up in Nerat, by the wharf - so I know next to nothing about anything outside of the Weyr and my own few streets."
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