Push and Shove (Vig)

Xanadu Weyr - Store Room
The storerooms here are carved into the stone, stretching back deep underground beneath the upper hallways that serve for residences and work areas. There is, after all, little need for natural light here; a series of electric lights are more than sufficient to illuminate smoothly cut walls and the assortment of supplies kept until they are needed once more.
For some of the things here, that time will be long in coming. Broken furniture and torn clothing awaits the opportunity for someone to repair it - or else the kindling and rag piles. Other items are more immediately useful; gently worn clothing and boots are neatly arranged in rows and on racks, especially in the quickly outgrown children's sizes, and an assortment of furniture and small appliances in functional condition await new homes.
A series of side rooms connected to the kitchen are the larder which feeds the Weyr through the winter. Sacks of grain lean against barrels of salted meat and wheels of hard cheeses stacked high. Refrigeration and dragonflight make for a more flexible winter diet, but it still takes a great deal of food to provide for this many people. The food is a tempting target for tunnelsnakes, and the occasional scuttle can be heard in the otherwise quiet depths of these caves.
Toward the southern edge, near the path leading down to the hot springs, there's the laundry rooms, a set of steam-filled chambers where water and soap are scrubbed into fabric of various sorts and the dirt and grime is scrubbed right back out.
Much of the stores are easily accessed, requiring only the appropriate permissions to be borrowed from. These supplies are, after all, here for the good of the Weyr and the people living here. A few rooms - those containing particularly valuable or dangerous items - are kept locked.


They walk into the stores…

No, that isn't right.

Y'riel walks into the stores….

Bhalahhaith is physically in his wallow, back in the barracks, but he remains a heavy presence in his mind, through their tight-knit overwhelming bond; surreal and unreal, young and ageless, too big, too much…

Pausing, he takes a moment to breathe, to ground, as he's been instructed so far at length. He ignores the sensation of building pressure in the back of his mind. One he's now footnoting as: frustration, impatience – not HIS, but his… Bhalahhaith's. Yet even then doubt worms its way in. Is it all his, though?

Scrubbing wearily at his face, Y'riel exhales roughly as his hand drops. Already he feels stretched too thin with the effort required for this seemingly inane task; seek, find and return. Not so simple! Not with Bhal riding his ass insisting on so much and Y'riel floundering and unable to muster up much of an argument. It is taking too much of his mental strength and energy to keep up with the brown and he can't shake the distinct feeling it's done on purpose. It's thoughts like that that bring about a whole new pitfall of questions and – he quickly locks that all down, before the brown gets 'wind' of it and meticulously tears it all apart for his own curious whims.

They've mastered the basics, at least. Feeding, oiling, sleeping … all of that came mercifully without much trial and error. The fault lies in him in the bond: unfathomably deep, too heavily overlapped and with Y'riel still shaken by much of the experience. He is left feeling like he has yet to find his footing, while Bhalahhaith has found his stride and more, content to leave him to struggle if it serves him to.

While his mind wanders, his fingers run absentmindedly over one shoulder and a little lower towards his upper chest. There are no bandages now, just the faint path of healing skin. His mind turns back to that moment of Impression: the sheer impact of it, and the visceral sensation of being undone and remade…

The hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise and Y'riel knows Bhalahhaith is there. He can almost taste the brown's smugness and is dismayed in wondering if emotions CAN be tasted? Abruptly, he shoves those thoughts aside and the memories with it, gritting his teeth while willing his mind to empty -of temptation.

If there are others in the storeroom, Y'riel ignores them as he furiously blinks his eyes in further effort to clear his head, and only half aware he's muttering under his breath. He'd come all this way to the storerooms for … what, again?

Clothes? Maybe. Blankets? No, plenty of those.

More pillows? A bigger one, better for screaming into and comfortable. Possibly…

His thoughts become slippery from lack of sleep or intervention of another kind.

For a fleeting moment, Y'riel has the urge to just let loose with a frustrated yell from a sudden overabundance of frustration and helplessness in the wake of lack of control. He resists. He – THEY – know doing so will only draw unwanted attention. That drowning feeling is quickly eclipsed by a rush of wonder and awe and … so much, too much. Over the bond, Bhal is practically beside himself in delight even while half-asleep. Y'riel doesn't know whether to count that as a blessing or thrice-over curse.

Clothes are found, ones he (or is it Bhal?) feels are NEEDED necessary … for reasons that elude him the moment he tries to pin it down. Y'riel is too tired to care by then, too tired to even argue when his hand is clasping next on something shiny and pointless unnecessary. Then, to his growing dismay, he finds himself unable to place it back. An unsettling stalemate begins through mental push and shove, near ruthless back and forth, over the triviality of a bauble – and, unsurprisingly, Y'riel relents to the brown's mental sleepy-crowing of victory. It's pocketed and Y'riel moves on, hurriedly dragging his feet trying to exit the storeroom.

There is no smooth escape for him.

All it takes is a haphazard glimpse and another seemingly innocuous object joins the clothes (and yes, a rather sizable pillow for screaming into). No bauble this time, just a well worn and used book. Y'riel doesn't even spare a thought to read the title, only that there was an impulse of MUST HAVE … and so it was plucked from the shelves with a sigh, a would-be spur of the moment bargaining chip, as he finally is permitted to exits.

By the time Y'riel returns, the book will be largely forgotten about. Distantly, some shred of memory will remain of his actions of putting it somewhere within his belongings (or DID he?) – perhaps to be discovered by any party at any given time. The completely unnecessary bauble meets a similar fate, and only because Bhalahhaith slumbers upon his return; despite the brown's utmost vexation on the issue, even he cannot fight off sleep forever.

Y'riel, however, gains a sliver of relief freedom and a handful of minutes to savor the ease in his overtaxed mind. He'll use the last of his energy to wash up and change, perhaps engage with the barest of small talk with any other weyrlings still awake; the pillow will, at least, see immediate use, tossed as it is with the other standard issued ones. Sleep comes swiftly once he settles in, where he'll dream restless wandering dreams that are not quite nightmares – at least, not that night.


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