SUMMARY
The day after the storm with the tornadoes, D'son and Niva talk through the state of things post-storm and make plans on how to best support the coverage area.
Xanadu Weyr - Weyrleaders' Office
Office and retreat, this is the domain of Xanadu's Weyrleaders. The door is in the eastern wall, quite close to the southern end while the northern wall is dominated by big, expansive windows, framed by sumptuous deep blue drapes edged with a brilliant gold braid and tied back with a thick rope of braided gold and blue cord. In between, the eastern wall is covered floor to ceiling with shelves that house all sorts of records, manuals and supplies that are used on a day-to-day basis. The southern wall has the Weyrleader's desk — plain fellis wood, well polished and masculine. From behind his desk, the Weyrleader can look straight through the windows and out onto the main airspace of Xanadu. The western wall is where the Weyrwoman's desk resides: a lovely piece of furniture made of warm cherry wood. From her seat, a glance sideways gives her an equally good prospect out the window. There are a few other seats, some comfortably arranged around a low round table for small, informal meetings while there also some that can be drawn up to one of the desks.
On the south side of the door, the space is occupied by a low oblong table where refreshments can be set without someone needing to intrude. There is also an 'incoming' tray where incoming correspondence or similar items can be left.
The morning after the storm, in spite of precious little sleep, D'son is back in the office bright and early, going over the reports that have been coming in. The weyrleader is very, very focused, frowning a little as he flips over a printed sheet and lets out a sigh. "More missing …" he murmurs.
As Niva arrives in the office, a first glance would reveal nothing particularly out of the normal - her clothing is neat, her hair pulled back. However, closer inspection reveals dark circles under her eyes, still damp hair, and the stains of redwort that not even a long shower can rid her of. A soft sigh as she moves to look bleerily over D'son's shoulder, she blinks a few times, "We can only hope that some of the worse injuries happen to be our missing.."
D'son looks up as Niva approaches and looks over his shoulder. "I'll cross-check the lists," the Weyrleader says heavily and pushes a hand up to scrub at his hair. "Do we have a lot of unidentified injured?" And he moves over to the desk to pick up a different list, frowns down at its contents. "There could also still be people in some of these buildings …" he trails off. "Need to make a decision about where to focus rescue efforts for today."
"There are a handful at Black Rock, they had a touch down in the courtyard, which hit the guardpost, and perhaps two or three in the infirmary here, at least when I left this morning." She sighs softly, before glancing at this new list, shaking her head and retreating to her chair. "The Weyrlings can continue here, but, we can't pull the wings back, until we've check all the holdings.. If we don't look.."
There's a pinch of fingers to bridge of nose and D'son nods. "All right, I'll make a note there to check there first, see if we can knock those off the missing list." The weyrleader puts the two lists side by side and makes some notes. "It's — priorities," he says while he's scribbling. "I know we need to check all the holdings, but if there's places that are pretty undamaged we can pull the wings from there and bring them over to places that were hit hardest. Anyone buried, they're on a really short deadline," he says quietly.
"Just check, promise. If there are people buried there, if we didn't make it.." And Niva shakes her head, closing her eyes with a soft sigh. "We need more hands than we have, to search, and dig." She comments, before flicking her gaze to the map of Xanadu's protected lands, gaze trailing north to Rubicon. "Lady Ryeira, her crews are trained.. Have we sent to them, yet?" And even as she asks, she's turning to look at her own papers, though they are far more disorganized.
"Mm, everywhere /will/ get checked, Niva," D'son says quietly and makes another check mark on that list. "Yes, sent a rider over … we all have to pull together on this one."
"Ryeira won't let us down.." An unspoken feeling of 'she owes us' lingers for a moment before she turns back to D'son, shaking her head slowly. "Could we.. the older weyrlings are due to graduate, they're not yet tapped in wings, they could be riding sweeps." She murmurs, and shakes her head. "And, the herds.." A bit of panick, perhaps, is evident in the over-tired woman's demeanor.
To be continued …