Welcome to Gaia! ::

Balt felt absolutely grateful to be doing something different with his day. Manual labor was fine, but it got so tedious after a while that he daydreamed through most of his chores. At last he had an opportunity to use his brain. More than that, this was an opportunity to help Trine. Balt's whole life was in this weyr. Even his mother, who really should have been doing more important things, set aside a few minutes to see him when she heard he was volunteering to pour through Trine's records before setting out on her mission. His mother's compliments gave him a sense of accomplishment and pride. One day he hoped to join her in the skies with a dragon of his own.

But that was all in the future. In the present, his only concern was finding useful information. He'd brought down five scrolls from the top shelf in the record room and laid them out on a desk with the others he collected. There was quite a lot to go through. This would run much more efficiently if he had a partner.

Just then Balt spotted another candidate coming into the record room. Upon closer inspection he recognized who it was. "Hey, Jaralrant! Come help me with these scrolls."

He didn't know Jaralrant very well. He saw him around the weyr and remembered seeing him at the last Impression. They talked enough to know first names but other than that they were total strangers. This didn't bother Balt. There were lots of people in Trine, lots of new candidates coming in all the time, he felt comfortable with meeting new people. He just hoped this holdborn could read well enough to keep up with him.

The look on Jalarant's face made Balt's stomach turn. If Jalarant thought he looked like a witless, graceless oaf Balt thought he more closely resembled a brainless ogre. He always thought that Jalarant seemed a little slow. Since he was the only other person in here he decided he might as well give him a chance. Maybe the orgre would surprise him.

Probably not.

"Ri-ight. How about you take this pile and I take this pile. When you're finished with a scroll put it over here so we know which ones we've been through." Instruction was key. He didn't worry about the order the scrolls were done in as long as they could tell the ones they had already looked at from the ones they had yet to unfurel. He knew where each one of them went.

Balt himself was not an average looking person either. He was thin with boney edges all over and small eyes that looked more like they belonged to an intelligent animal than a human. Even his teeth, namely his canines, looked as though they came from the mouth of a beast. Although he was not exactly pleasent to look at, he did not seem to care. Actions meant more than appearences.

Balt had a better education being born at the weyr. The first scrolls he learned to read mainly contained recepies. Once his infamous salty stew prank got him kicked out of the kitchen for good he spread himself all over the weyr. This was not the first time he volunteered in the record room.

"Let me see." Balt leaned over Jalarant's shoulder and stared at the scroll in disbelief and disgust. At first he thought Jalarant made a mistake, maybe the scroll was just old, but he was wrong.

"Ew. What kind of pig dribbles stew all over a scroll?" he grumbled, mostly to himself, and reach for a scroll from his pile. He hoped this one didn't have stew on it too.

"No kidding. You'd have to be raised by herdbeasts to eat stew over a scroll." He actually found himself smiling a little. At least this ogre knew a thing or two about proper table manners. Jalarant also had the wisdom to expect the worst from people, so he must be more intelligent than Balt first thought. People could never really be trusted on more than a superfical level. Some people can't even be trusted to carry out simple tasks.

After skimming the scroll for key words he rolled it up and put it aside. Even though it contained no relevent information he still treated it with care.

"Did you find anything interesting?" he asked as he unrolled another scroll. When Jalarant mentioned having the scroll re-copied it made him think there might be useful information in there. Glancing over he noticed that Jalarant had written something about the scroll on a piece of paper. Well, maybe 'written' was too strong a word. Scrawled was more like it.

"Here, put this one with the first one you read." He held out the scroll he had just finished. "We should keep the useful scrolls together. I think this one might have something."

He opened the next scroll and started to skim through the fancy cursive. If he spotted something interesting he would go back and read more into it; there was no point spending a lot of time on a scroll if the information was useless and the quickest way to gague that was to search for key words and phrases.

"Don't be so negative. Even if we don't find anything useful we still get work done." Not that he didn't hope to be one of the lucky ones to discover something really valuable. Shoveling through all the useless garbage in these records might not be galmorous but at least it seperated out the junk. They would never get anywhere without that.

((Random event!))

Speaking of stupid hold born oafs, another candidate - who seemed to think he had found the answer to life, the universe, and everything on a tiny scrap of hide - charged past the table the pair were working at. Well, he tried to charge past at any rate; he managed to catch his foot on one of the table legs and went flying, dragging the whole things over with him. The upset completely messed up the piles, and would no doubt cause a lot of extra work and frustration for the two researchers.

For a few moments the clumsy candidate just lay there moaning, but he quickly realized what he'd done and - after scrabbling to recover his bit of hide - he sprung to his feet and scurried away in an attempt to escape retribution.

Poor Jalarant managed to take a... Something hard and made of wood to the gut. He focused on getting his breath back as Balt chased after the offender. Rubbing the sore spot gently, he looked at the mass pile of scrolls. Ehn. Great.

The one that he'd had information from was easy to find, at least: it was the one with the stew on the parchment. He was also able to find his own scrolls and put them in a pile. The table was uprighted, as were their chairs. He put the remaining scrolls back on the table, not sure what had been Balt's and what hadn't been went through yet.

With that done, he followed after where he'd thought Balt had gone. "You catch him?" He called out. He didn't want to harm the boy, just glower at him a bit and stress the importance of watching where you were going. Now they had to look through the scrolls again, make sure everything had been gone through... It was a waste of resources to do something twice!

"At least you're not hurt." Jalarant mentioned, picking up a new scroll of his own. "Scrolls can be sorted, tables righted, but it's much worse to have someone injured by the stupidity of another." Especially someone who actually would speak to him without that tone of derision reserved for drudges.

"It's lovely to see people with so little regard for others. If you need help speaking with him...." Jalarant's voice dropped to a low, gravely rasp. "I've been told I can be somewhat frightening." He gave a little chuckle, looking back to his work. Would this one provide anything useful?