Xanadu Weyr - Candidate Barracks
A long, low ceiling room opens off the entrance hall to the arena, one wall slightly curved as it is set against the outer wall of the arena itself. Cots are set evenly the length of the room, in two rows, each with its own small press at the foot, for personal belongings. Wide windows are spaced along the outside wall, letting sunlight in, while other lights are available for the night time hours.
Sitting on the edge of her cot with the white of her robe spread over her knees, Tecoah scowls at the fabric. The tip of the young woman's tongue peeks from between her lips as she focuses on the task at hand. She appears to be focused enough that she isn't paying much attention to what's going on around her for the time being, her voice a low, irritated mutter when she finally breaks her silence, "Stupid sharding sewing…" Seems that her tailoring isn't going as well as she might otherwise hope.
Ambling into the barracks in her sleepwear and with her damp blond hair sticking up at odd angles, Rylavi elbows her way through a tangle of young boys racing trundlebugs across the smooth floor and flops down on her cot. She pulls the towel off her shoulder and rubs it vigorously over her scalp in an attempt to remove all traces of water through friction alone. In between bouts of hair-drying, she does notice Tecoah's predicament. "What's gone wrong with your robe?"
Amelia is resting belly down on her cot, limbs stretched out and head propped up by the left elbow. She's not sleeping, but her expression is calmly tired. She, too, is in her sleepwear, and her unfinished white robe is draped over the edge of the cot nearest to her head. Every so often she lifts her head to scan the room, and Tecoah's outburst earns a lift and a quizzical expression. "Huh?"
Count another white robe, this one currently covering the face of the trader lass as she's lying flopped back across her cot, one leg draped over the edge, and absently twitching. "Eh?" The girl's voice is rather muffled, all things considered as she's not a fair amount of clothing being used as a breath shield, or whatever. There's a rustle of cloth, Natali freeing a hand long enough to tug the white robe down and peer over the edge of it. "What's going on?"
Tecoah looks up, almost startled, when the younger candidate's voice breaks into her concentration, blinking a couple of times before she responds, "What?" Blink blink, "Oh!" There's a faint blush and the slender woman shrugs, "I've just never been that good at sewing is all." Not that much of a call for it when one is a simple messenger, after all. She offers an apologetic grimace to the room at large, "Sorry, everyone…" Move along. Nothing to see here…
Rylavi shrugs and runs her fingers through her hair to make sure that it's dry enough. "I couldn't sew to save my own skin," she admits with her usual less-than-friendly tone. It's not openly hostile and those closest to her might be accustomed to it by now, some even so much that they'd notice she's not putting nearly as much energy into it now as she usually does. "S'why I took one out of storage and traded chores with one of the weaver apprentices who can sew." After all, Rylavi can card wool without a problem, and that's a chore most anyone would be glad to get out of. "Is it too big or too small?"
Once Tecoah's answered the queries, Amelia drops her face back onto her arm, groaning quietly. Rylavi's comments, however, earn another look up, and Amelia half-heartedly chuckles. "You're going to need to know how to sew eventually… saddles and bridles don't fix themselves. Or dragon straps, if you impress."
Natali's blue eyes remain fastened on Tecoah for a moment or two, before the trader-turned-candidate tips her shoulders up into an absent shrug. "Well, all right," she remarks, preparing to flip the edge of her own robe back up over her face, but then seeming to decide the better of it. "Oh? I thought I was the only one," she comments wryly at Rylavi. "Oh, I can hem things or embroider small projects, but then," she's scooting up then, leaning against the edge of her cot, and setting the robe across her lap. "I had laundry mending today, so I offered to do more darning and hemming if one of the seamstresses would fix my robe for me." Amelia gets a sidelong look. "I thought that you could trade those kinds of jobs too. You know, go to a tanner to fix your harness."
"It's just a little too long." Tecoah holds the white fabric up to show the other three girls, "I wouldn't be able to get out of my own way with this thing on." And she has no desire to trip and end up mauled, "I looked, but I couldn't find one that was shorter that would still fit." She glances over at Amelia and nods in agreement with the other woman's comment, "She's right, though. That's why I'm making myself do my own." Her dark green gaze turn to Natali and she shrugs, "I don't know if you can or not, but better know you can than risk it, right?" And she's determined to do things right.
Rylavi snorts, even going so far as to turn a lop-sided grin on Amelia. "Yeah, I'll give you that one, but there's a big difference between mending a bridle or a girth strap and tailoring a piece of cloth to fit a person." The latter is much more complicated. "Well there you go, Tecoah. Natali knows how to hem. Maybe if you barter with her a bit, she can show you where you gone wrong." Satisfied that the problem is easily solved, Rylavi reaches into the trunk at the end of her cot and pulls out a comb to run through her short, spiky tangles.
"Well /sure/ you could trade it out- if you're at home, at the weyr," Amelia props herself up on her front arms and nods to Natali, though her tone is just a stitch away from mockery. "But if you're out in the wilds or on some mission or doing something far from home and said traders and something snaps, you have to be able to fix things. It's not like your dragon can fix it, and having a partner doesn't guarantee /they/ know how to fix things." Amie's expression and tone become more serious as she talks, and when she's done she flops her arms and face into her pillow.
Natali swings her legs over the side of the cot, smoothing the robe across her knees. "I suppose," she starts, "that you have a point." She wrinkles her nose thoughtfully. "I suppose it might be good to learn anyway. But wouldn't that be like something I already know? Mending the hems and stuff? Rather than fixing it up all new?"
Tecoah shakes her head, "I'll finish this. It's really not that hard, just frustrating and tiresome." She nods in agreement with Amelia and turns her attention back to her sewing, "I guess it kinda would be, Natali, but it's good practice, anyway." That's her position on the matter, anyway. She holds the robe up in front of her again and wrinkles her nose at the faintly crooked hem, but just sighs and starts folding the garment up to stow away for the evening, "Well, I'll try to work on this more in the morning." And, hopefully, the eggs won't Hatch before she's finished.
Rylavi isn't bothered either way. "True, but knowing how to do a patch-job that'll tide you over until you get home takes less skill than these damn robes." She combs the mats and knots out of her hair and drops the comb back into her trunk. She doesn't seem to mind her lack of knowledge, merely accepting it as part and parcel of her life. Tossing a small pillow in Amelia's direction, she prods at her mentor's brain. "How big are these things supposed to be when they finally crack shell, anyway?"
"You do have a point," Amelia says, though it's muffled by the pillow. She groans when Rylavi's missile hits her, and rolls over so she's facing upwards now. "The dragons, you mean? Pony sized, I think?" Twisting to her side, Amie shrugs. "But they get big fast. Like any critter, I suppose. Anyway, I'm sleeping now. G'night everybody." With that, she reaches towards her feet to pull a blanket up over her body and curls up.
"Umm…" Natali wrinkles her nose, her gaze going vacant at the question that Rylavi has posed to Amelia as she wracks her memory. "I'm not sure if they're exactly pony-sized." she offers, on the tail end of the older girl's words, "unless it was a real small pony. Larger than a canine, maybe. But not as big as a pony you could ride." she frowns, "I remember the Hatching at Fort. Didn't seem like they were /that/ big." She scoots a little more upright then, her hands folding down over her robe to bundle it up carefully.
Tecoah shrugs and tucks her robe into the mostly empty trunk at the foot of her cot, "They aren't really big when they hatch. More the size of a really large canine than a pony." There's another shrug, "I couldn't say how fast they grow, because I've never spent very much time around them, but I know that Pest and Nuisance both grew really fast and firelizards are related to dragons, so…" She gives Amelia a little wave, "Sleep well." And it seems that it's time to start quieting down, "I think I'd better go get ready for sleep, myself." Since she isn't dressed in sleepwear just yet, having spent the last little bit of free time working on her robe instead of tending to the last few personal chores before bed.
Rylavi seems stunned by all of this. "But those eggs are big." Amelia's theory of 'pony' seems most plausible in her mind, but she continues to shake her head. "And, I mean, we've all seen the full-grown dragons lounging in the bowl. They're just too big to start out the size of canines." She thinks on this a minute. "Well, maybe one or two of the littlest greens might have. The size of really big canines…" She pauses, her forehead wrinkling as she tries to piece these bits of information together to come up with a logical answer.
Natali gnaws at her lower lip, the folded bundle of her robe dropped on the cot beside her. "Sure they're big, but not really /that/ big." she pauses, shrugs, and drapes herself over her cot once more. "Even the full grown dragons aren't really /huge/ if you really think about it." There's a moment of silence. "Look, maybe we could just compromise." she suggests to Rylavi. "Dragons are bigger than canines, but smaller than a pony. At least when they're hatched."
Rylavi blinks twice at the trader girl. "I didn't think you could compromise on reality." Yeah, okay. So she's got a bit of an attitude problem. Like that's news to anyone. "But whatever. I've got to feed in the morning, so I'm out." Flopping back to lie on her cot, she pulls the blanket up around her shoulders and rolls over onto her stomach. "Night guys."
Hey! Everyone's starting to fall asleep. And Natali is having a pretty tough time keeping her eyes open too, draped as she is along her cot, one hand tucked under her pillow. She reaches down with her free hand, tugging the sheets free to drape over her shoulders. "Well fine," she says to the girl with the attitude problem, "you don't want to compromise. Whatever!" There's a rustle of linen as the trader lass rearranges herself. "But I've been to a hatching and stood on the sands before, and you … well, I don't know if you have. Probably not." There's a sniff from the girl, meant for Rylavi to hear. So there, it seems to say "We'll just wait and see then." Another pause. "Night." And then she's going to go to bed, just like everyone else.