peace of mind is less than never (Open)

[Ember]

Hers, Khiraeth had learned early on, nearly constantly worried about something. She had also learned early on that the low buzz of worry wasn't actually anything to really worry about. It was a bit bothersome to her Nana's mental health, perhaps, but as far as she could tell the worry used to be worse prior to her arrival. Which meant it could still get better and that was enough for the green to work with. She rather thought a mate would do wonders for Nana. Someone not bound to her to care about her. Well, a concrete friend would be acceptable too, but a lover was far more fun.

The problem for her was deciding who to try to set Hers up with first. She'd been giving it a lot of thought as of late. So much so that Hers had noticed and the green had been not-so-forced into encouraging Qaena to go on a walk while she accompanied her above. The green was almost lazily dancing just above the tree tops of the jungle while Hers explored. Khiraeth flicked her tail at a few leaves drifting in her wake. Hers naturally already had some fondness for a couple of males, perhaps one of them? Or perhaps she ought to try the fairer gender, since Hers didn't seem to care much about that little detail?

Khir, are you listening? This avian is exquisite! The green crooned softly in resigned amusement. Nana was practically married to her beloved nature as it was. Finding someone to make that buzz of worry vanish, as it had now that the girl was in the jungle, would be a worthy challenge for her matchmaking skills. Of course I listen! How could I not? Really, she couldn't not listen. Not when Hers was happily describing the colourful avian in great and perfect detail without even providing an image.

At some point the greenweyrling lapsed into spoken speech. Nevermind that she'd been bonded for over a turn now, mental speech did not come automatically to her and she was far too excited talking about the bird to remember she might not be alone. Qaena kept absolutely still on the branch and her excited murmuring wasn't enough to disturb her find for the day. Rather, it stared over at her with bright eyes while she spoke about it's lovely orange plummage. Khiraeth was might amused that at some point Qaena had slipped into a more eloquent mode of speech than she usually adopted. With no one else seemingly around to notice the girl was far more confident.

[Ruby]

Suddenly, the beautiful orange bird that Qaena was admiring called... from behind her. Without opening it's beak. Perhaps there was another one, in a tree just a few trees away?

Nope. If Qaena turned around, looking for the source of the sound, she'd find a colorful bird of a different sort. T'ri was up a tree (har har) a few yards back, where he'd been napping while Arheniayth hunted until a certain fellow greenweyrling's idle chatter had woken him up. A stroke of pre-cognitive genius meant he was wearing an orange v-neck exactly the same shade as the brid, and even had some razorclaw feathers twined in his hair, which had been swept all to one side today. Why not, after all? Feathers were tight, and free.

Something - perhaps the shadow of a dragon passing overhead, but who knew - startled the original bird into an explosion of plumage, so T'ri hopped down out of the tree as it took to the air. Bringing clasped hands up to his mouth, he repeated the call, then tossed his hair and beamed up at Qaena as he reached the base of her tree. Leaning casually against the trunk, he called up, "It means hello, or all clear, or something. I'm going with hello. Whatcha doin' up a tree, anything besides birdwatching," he asked, keeping his voice cheery. He hadn't really spoken to Qaena since the flight - not on purpose, they had lessons together and he was always pleasant, but they hadn't had any one on one time and he was pretty sure she was avoiding him, even if he didn't really know why. Maybe now was a good time to figure it out, T'ri was low on friends and Qaena was nice enough, if a bit vanilla. That could always be fixed, though.

[Ember]

Qaena knew the calls this particular bird made and the one that had just sounded was not it. Not to mention the direction the sound had come from had definitely not been from the same direction as the bird. She turned in the direction it had come from, placed a hand around the trunk of the tree, and leaned out a bit so she could see better past the tangle of branches impeding her view. All told, her surprised reaction was pretty mild. A T'ri. Ooh, how exciting! You discovered something you weren't planning to find! Khiraeth teased lightly.

The green made a low pass, out of curiosity, but did little more than scare off the brightly plumed bird Hers had been studying. Or watching, at least. Qaena made a moue of disatisfaction before glancing down at T'ri wandered over. She...didn't really know her classmate well. Not that she really knew any of them well at all. She was most comfortable with N'rik, likely due to his age, but for the most part she sort of unconsciously avoided them all. They were stuck with her often enough for lessons and she didn't really want to give them any reason to be annoyed with her.

"H-hello," she offered back tentatively, knowing he had just said the same to her, albeit in a roundabout way. "Just...ah, relaxing, I guess? Or something like that..." Qaena trailed off before shrugging nearly imperceptibly and asked, "Why were you up a tree? Bird watching too?" Because clearly anyone who ever sits in a tree must be observing nature or something. She kind of wanted to smack herself for being so presumptuous.

[Ruby]

She was still in her tree, so T'ri leaned against the trunk of it, fiddling with a small branch he'd snatched off the ground. "Nah, I was just up a tree to be up a tree," he said, then grinned up at the greenrider. "Heh. T'ri up a tree." Something caught his eye, though, and he leaned down to drop the stripped branch and pick up an orange and black feather. "I like birds, too, though. Nature. I mean, it's pretty sweet, you know. Want a feather," he asked, holding the perfect specimen up towards his fellow Weyrling. "I bet it'd look deck in your hair. You could rock it."

While T'ri was busy apathetically punning, Arhenaiyth's... well, to say that his interest had been peaked would be a lie, but he was coming, so that was a start. He never really was far from T'ri, after all. Khiraeth,[/i] he drawled by way of greeting, sarcastically proper. Making a lazy turn over his sister, he added, How are the skies treating you, or some other appropriate smalltalk.[/i] Flicking a turquoise tail in her direction, he added somewhat slyly, Been spending a lot of time with Romeoth? He your favorite dragon, these days?

Oh, that was right. Henny had mentioned the flight strategically, not just to annoy Khiraeth (he honestly wasn't trying to annoy her, although T'ri assured him that it would only be moments before he managed it). Shoving his hands in his pockets, feather or no feather, T'ri kicked one leg out, bringing the heel of one boot to rest against the toe of the foot he was standing on. "So, I've been meaning to say. Sorry about the flight. I mean, Henny, he just wants what's best for his sisters, and he hasn't quite figured out that what he thinks is best isn't always what they think is best. I mean, he's probably right, but... yeah. If you're mad, sorry."

[Ember]

Qaena thought over T'ri's admission. She'd never really climbed a tree just for the sake of it before. She'd always wanted a better view of something...but then again she was on the short side for a woman so it really changed perspective for her. She quirked a small grin at his pun. Kind of a bit like Gneiss and nice, though maybe T'ri had more resemblance to the plant he almost sounded like than her salamandyr did with the adjective. "Nature is very neat," she agreed with an amount of conviction she didn't often have in her voice.

"Deck?" She repeated curiously, not recognizing the usage for that particular word. Then again, from what she knew about T'ri, he was a pretty odd person. Either way Qaena leaned down a bit to take the proferred feather, taking a moment to look over it fondly. It really was such a pretty bird and healthy too if she was judging the feather correctly. She hesitated in putting it in her hair, not entirely sure how that worked really. She twirled it for a few moments before tucking it up into her thick hair and hoping it would stay.

Arry! Khiraeth greeted in pleasant surprise to see her blue brother. Largely forgotten flights taken into account, she didn't actually dislike her brother. At the time of her flight she had even understood his motives even if she didn't agree with them. The skies are wonderful today. But you don't care much for small talk, do you? The green was not unaware with where the blue took the conversation next but she did utter a small, surprised croon. Rommy's my friend, so yep! I see him lots. Don't really have a fave though. And she didn't. She loved all her friends equally.

Qaena was surprised by T'ri's odd apology. Apologizing for one's dragon's mistakes while also saying their dragon was probably right anyways didn't exactly strike the girl as particularly sincere. Not that she was about to call him out on it though. She wasn't that bold of a person. She'd really much rather forget about that whole thing anyways. "'M not mad," she muttered, ears pinking somewhat at the too-vivid memories of that night. Four months was long enough to severely dull Khiraeth's memories of it but not Qaena's. Deciding that it was probably rude to sit oup in her tree any longer, the girl grabbed the branch firmly and swung herself down with grace and strength she hadn't posessed before Impression.

[Ruby]

"Deck, it's like..." T'ri made a vague gesture, looking for the right word. "Like cool, but cool is so naughts," he finally said, somehow without a hint of irony. "Blossom slang, I guess. Or I picked it up on the road somewhere." As if he'd been 'on the road' for more than a few weeks, but Qaena didn't know that. For all she knew, he was raised by tunnelsnakes... actually, he was pretty sure that was the only story he'd told any of his fellow Candidates, so unless K'sel was ruining his rep, that's all anyone knew. K'sel was probably ruining his rep.

He smiled when she took the feather, letting her figure it out herself before suggesting, "You could braid it in, too. 's how I got mine to stay." But whatever worked for her was fine with him. Of course, the smile faded away pretty quick when talk turned to the flight. Uh, what a mess. She said she wasn't mad, though, so T'ri took her at her word. "Yeah. Sorry." There, it was done, apology made, and he could stop feeling like a jerk. That was a relief. So when Qaena swung out of her tree, he asked, "Wanna walk, I think there's a river around here somewhere and this is Henny's lunch time. I usually swim or hike while he's doin' his thing, he gets cranky... well, all the time." T'ri flashed a broad smile at Qaena, all tension he felt earlier dissolved.

"So, tell me about yourself. It's hard to get to know your fellow classmates when class is such a waste..." If she didn't want to walk to the river with him, they could stay here and chat, but if that was the case T'ri was all for going up the tree again. He was supposed to be in the kitchens for chores in an hour or two, but he wasn't worried about it. He never was. Getting to know Qaena was far more important.

Arhenaiyth,[/i] the blue corrected, no longer in flight and therefore no longer tolerant of nicknames. You're right about the smalltalk, though,[/i] he drawled, twisting into a lazy loop as he added, Waste of time.[/i] His human seemed to love it, though, which was endlessly annoying to Arhenaiyth. When T'ri was jabbering away, he found it impossible to focus on catching lunch. And, even better, that ugly lump Romeoth was her friend, now. Blech. Well isn't that just precious, another Green cozying up to some big ugly bronze, how typical,[/i] he huffed, although his irritation was more than obvious. It clearly wasn't Khiraeth's actions he had a problem with. Of course, the Blue didn't really care to soften his words, but Khiraeth was a sister and that counted for something. I guess he's a little less ugly than some of them, though, and apparently he has good taste, at least.[/i] Backhanded compliment? Check. But what else would you expect from Henny?

[Ember]

Qaena was rather bemused by T'ri's explanation. At least at first. Who used slang to explain slang? She was capable of figuring out the second word though so her bemusement quickly changed into amusement. "It's unusual," she commented, softly enough that she might need to repeat herself. As far as she could tell, T'ri himself was pretty unusual though not necessarily in a bad way. It would probably take getting used to him. That was, if they ended up crossing paths all that often. It would be one thing to avoid a classmate if she hasn't interacted with them much outside of class but something else if she turned the other way after holding a proper conversation with them.

She briefly considered his suggestion of braiding it in but her nose wrinkled slightly at the thought of taming her crazy curls into a braid of any sort. The bush of hair was difficult enough just to get a brush through it. Qaena shrugged off the second apology regarding the flight. It might be in her to repeatedly apologize but she didn't actually see the need for it from other people. A bit hypocritical she supposed but oh well. Everyone was a hyprocrite about something at some point, right?

Qaena met his suggestion to walk with enthusiasm. "There is," she said brightly enough, glancing at the surroundings briefly before pointing. "That way, I'm pretty sure. I go there often during lunch break with Khiraeth. We like to swim. Shall we?" Except she didn't really wait for an answer since it wasa rhetorical question and he had already suggested walking. If he changed his mind within those few moments the greenweyrling would be incredibly surprised. And maybe even a little bit annoyed. She started off walking, steps relatively quiet and her gaze kept flicking about, never really settling on anything. What was the fun of walking in the jungle if you didn't try and see its inhabitants, after all?

The girl made a noise of acknowledgement at T'ri's request before the words actually sunk in. She shot him a slightly sheepish glance in mute apology for not really listening to him. "Class isn't really a waste," Qaena commented before actually providing any information about herself. "And I come from Lighttower...um, nothing really, uh, interesting ever happens there." Unless you count having a father married to someone not your real mother but...that was not exactly information Qaena shared with just anyone. Especially because she considered her adoptive mother more like her real mother than the absentee one.

Khiraeth pleasantly ignored her brother's correction of her nickname. She knew she could try and remember his apparent dislike for it but she would end up forgetting or slipping up anyways. He could grow used to it. She was amused that there was a similarity between Arhenaiyth and Romeoth in that they had both skipped lessons, but she didn't bring that up. The green, far enough away from Arhenaiyth that he couldn't hear her physical reactions to him anyways, snorted in fond exasperation at him calling her friend ugly. Or her just another green. Arhenaiyth was certainly an interesting one. I'm happy you think so, she commented, almost dry enough to come across as sarcasm. Almost. I am missing your interesting company right now. Her compliment was a touch more open and certainly genuine. Maybe not always good company but he was definitely interesting.