Even the sun sets in paradise. (Terilyn)

[Avu]

Riaren was looking for his sister.

It was, he knew, an extraordinarily common pastime of his, but he needed her help—Terilyn was, after all, infinitely better at manipulation and getting what she wanted than he was, and he had something he wanted really badly, so it stood to reason that he needed her. It was perfectly sound in theory, of course, but less so in practice, since—well, he couldn’t find her. He’d wandered from the Infirmary to the weyr to the Dining Hall, and it was just frustratingly and thoroughly lacking and he couldn’t figure out where she’d be.

Well, she could be anywhere, but he couldn’t figure out where she was likely to be, because Riaren kept thinking that the place Terilyn was likely to be often coincided with the places she was unlikely to be, and that simply didn’t help at all.

Riaren padded—prowled—between two tables, predictably unnoticed. Whether it was because he was just such a common fixture in the Weyr or because he was simply inconspicuous in general, Riaren was not interested in questioning; it suited him that for now he went unnoticed. He needed Terilyn before anything else. Or anyone else; if he saw Uncle M’ta first or found them together then everything would just be messed up. And it wasn’t even like he had forever to find Teri because he’d told E’rro he’d go back to the Infirmary to help in an hour, and ideally he’d have Teri and Uncle M’ta by then.

Just, ideally didn’t seem to be the same as realistically.

His wandering took him out of the Dining Hall again aimlessly, back into the weyrbowl, and Riaren turned in a small absentminded circle, scanning the sky for dragons automatically. Maybe one of them would know where Teri was, but it wasn’t like they’d tell him anyway. Riaren’s eyebrows drew together in grave disconsolation, and he veered to nudge a pebble with his toe, hands finding his pockets absently as he chewed on his lower lip—fine, he’d do it without his sister (even if finding Uncle M’ta was a different problem in and of itself), and it—well, it’d have to work out.

Wasn’t like he had any other…

Which was when Riaren glanced up and saw Teri on the edge of the lake, a small pile of stones by her feet and one clasped in her hand. Excitement pushed him into a gallop, and, impulsively irreverent of the potential of ruining his sister’s concentration, he skidded to a halt that was half a collision, his hands coming up to catch at her forearm. He paused to swat a particularly invasive curl out of his eyes, and then blurted—quietly, but the speed of the words was more than indicative of his excitement, “Teri, I was lookin’ for you, you gotta help me, please?”

[Rei]

Now really and honestly she wasn’t trying to escape her brother. She was just bored. Terilyn supposed that it was just the weather that was making everyone seem to darn lazy. It was overcast and threatening to rain or snow and that made the weyrbowl seem much darker then normal. Sure they had plenty of glows and fungi to light the weyr in general, but it still didn’t compare to the light sun provided. Even the sparse amount of sunlight that filtered in from the dragon sunning ledges and the few skylights in the weyrbowl was better then none at all after all.

The young girl had chatted with a few random dragons earlier this morning but most of them were now sleeping the afternoon away. She had even tried, once again, to crack the nut that was Salenth in an attempt to get the big bronze to talk to her. But either he thought it a game and enjoyed frustrating her or he was that stuck up. Mavenath, Terilyn knew, was just that stuck up. But with Salenth she never could tell. He was kind of fun to bother in that way. Though he clearly let her know when he had had enough of her prodding. She never pushed him when he signaled an end to her attempts. The girl may be stubborn as a mule but she wasn’t without any sense at all. Most of the dragons had no problems with speaking to her and even seemed eager. Not so much so with some of the metallics and more stuck up ones too she noticed. Though Terilyn was determined to talk to them all at least once. It was like a personal goal for her.

Right now however that personal goal was different. She was determined to break her stone skipping record. Two skips was just not something that she could boast about. So the girl had a decent pile of smooth and rather flat stones at her feet and was proceeding to wing them over the lake as hard as she could. Problem was she wasn’t getting very far in her goal. Which meant she was growing frustrated. Which in turn made her throws more and more sloppy until she simply stopped and glared at the water. Wrinkling her nose Terilyn resisted the urge to kick the pile of stones over and took a deep breath. Okay. She could do this. Picking up a stone she weighed it in her small palm, squinted in concentration at the surface of the water, drew her arm back to throw the stone. And…

Then squealed as she was suddenly grabbed by an overly exuberant Riaren.

“Riaren!” Her hazel eyes narrowed slightly upon him as she made the exclamation, her cheeks flushed and her voice slightly breathless because he had startled her. Not that she’d admit it. (Though the squeal pretty much made denying it pointless.) Terilyn’s head tilted slightly as the boy made his excited request. A confused look was given her brother before she glanced behind him, half expecting some bully from the creche to be chasing him. But no. The only person passing by, even distantly, was some random rider. Wetting her lips and trying her best to look slightly ruffled, and she was in truth, she put her hands on her lips. “Well if you wanted my help so bad you maybe shouldn’t have interrupted me.” But then with a wrinkle of her nose and a sigh her stern expression faded a little. She rarely saw Riaren quite this earnest and excited about something. “Okay fine. What do you need my help with?”

Now she was curious, and if she didn’t hear him out how would she ever know if it was something fun or not? Terilyn so did enjoy putting her skills to the test in whatever ways she could.

[Avu]

Riaren would’ve giggled at the squeal he got from Teri if he hadn’t already learned very well that startling Teri inevitably led to—yep, that look. At least there was no accompanying pouting. Riaren rocked back on his heels, gingerly letting go of Teri as his cheeks went faintly pink in embarrassment at his overenthusiasm, and he sighed, half-flustered and half-impatient, pursing his lips in the face of Terilyn’s thoroughly ruffled expression. “Sorry,” he muttered eventually, because giving in to Teri was just the easiest way to go through this kind of thing—his sister was a force of nature and who was Riaren to deny her the little petty things like apologies.

Still, she conceded fairly quickly, and Riaren tilted his head hopefully. “I just,” he fidgeted, “I want to ask Uncle M’ta if I can push back my bedtime a little, ‘cause there’s this wher that’s in the Infirmary that broke a leg, and it can’t do physical therapy in the day since it’s not awake and I wanna see. E’rro won’t mind, but it’s gonna be pretty late and I…don’t know how to ask.” He squirmed—he was pretty sure there was nothing in that proposition that would really appeal to Terilyn, because she certainly didn’t spend as much time as he did in the Infirmary, and he was also pretty sure that her interest laid (understandably) primarily with dragons.

But on the other hand…

“I’ll do whatever you want me to,” he offered hopefully. “Like—I don’t know, I’ll ask Rae for ribbons for you and braid your hair for the rest of the year anytime you want me to or try ’n’ teach you to skip stones if you want. Or…or anything else. Mostly,” Riaren amended, “Within reason.” Because agreeing to anything was never a good idea, even when dealing with people who were actually perfectly nice all the time, which Teri absolutely wasn’t, even if he still wasn’t stupid enough to tell her that to her face.

Riaren had learned the art of self-preservation in the face of the hurricane that was Terilyn very early on, thanks.

[/blockquote]

[Rei]

Terilyn bent her knees slightly to pick up another rock as she waited for Riaren to get to what he wanted. Rising back to her feet she turned the pebble over in her hand idly as her eyes fixed themselves on her brothers face. On his expression and his words. The fidgeting obviously made clear that whatever he was about to ask made him nervous. When he finally got to what he wanted her head tilted and she pursed her lips. Hmmm. She waited for her brother to finish and then tapped her finger tip on her lip her expression thoughtful. The young girl let him hover in the uncertainty of what her answer would be just long enough to increase the tension in the air a bit before she spoke.

“I see. So you want me to tell you how best to ask Daddy and get a yes.” Terilyn wrinkled her nose. Even she had trouble in that area a lot. Though to be fair her requests were a bit more complicated that Riaren’s ever were likely to be. Such as, can I please take Behruth to Selenitas hold to see Emitre and Dileina by myself? Yeah Riaren’s requests were much tamer in nature. The problem lied in the fact that M’ta was pretty stern about a lot of things. There was no doubt that he loved them both very much of course. But weaseling things out of him could be a challenge. Terilyn still was almost positive that all Riaren had to do was ask and M’ta would say yes. It was so rare that her brother really asked for anything anyway. But she wasn’t going to tell him that when there was the chance to get something out of it for herself.

“Okay I’ll help you.” The girl finally said brightly. “But in return you have to help me try and convince daddy to let me try for a mandyr. I really want one.” It sounded like a fair trade. Help for help. Never mind that what Terilyn wanted was much harder to accomplish. “And if we can’t get him to say yes then you help me sneak away to the hatching when it comes time for it.” Smiling at her brother she stuck out her hand for him to shake. “So we have a deal?” Her hazel eyes danced with just a small spark of mischief as she waited for her brother’s response. Surely he’d say yes. And she really kind wanted to see if she could see this wher too. She idly wondered which one it was. The dragons hadn’t mentioned anything about it. But then whers didn’t rank so high with most dragons. Unless you were Feyrianth anyway. Terilyn regarded her brother as she waited. There was something else she kinda wanted to ask him too. But she was scared to in the end cause she was almost certain she knew what his answer would be and she didn’t want to hear it.