Not Again! (September Archive Chores, Group I)

[kysseh]

Fiona morosely stared down at the square of hide in front of her, wishing she could will the offending bit of writing material away. She had thought she had escaped this dull and dreary and awful sort of chore. Unfortunately, the rotations had been... reworked. Fiona moped a bit about her sorry lot in life. Well... it was not that sorry, but she was still moping. The perky greenweyrling disliked being indoors for extended amounts of time. She was a creature of the outdoors! Of the skies and the flying things and the pretty things and the shiny things and the flower-type things....

No, Fiona did not like being stuck in a dusty old room that made her sneeze every few minutes, and oops! There went another sneeze. One of the archivists was glaring at her, but she offered a meekly apologetic smile and then returned to staring down at the hide in front of her. To doodle or not to doodle. She was getting too old to be childish, but Fiona could barely resist the temptation for a little bit of rebellion. Besides, this song about firelizards would look far prettier with some drawings to go with it, wouldn't it? Oh, but that was overestimating her artistic skills just a bit. The poor hide did not deserve such terrible scribblings as were the stuff that Fiona's drawings were made of. Her drawings were worse than her singing which was.... well, not bad but not especially praiseworthy.

Focus! She had to focus! She heard Raiyth's amusement leaking to her over their bond, and she sent a feeling of discontent toward the green. I don't want to copy stupid things! I know it's necessary, but we'd be far better off being out practicing our aerial skills! she insisted plaintively, only yielding sympathy and a bit more amusement from her cheerful mindmate. What's so funny? Oh, do not be so sad, Mine! We can go flying later. I promise. I will not go without you. Raiyth teased her, eliciting an outloud whine from Fiona.

That earned her more glares, and she quickly gave a sheepish look to her fellow sufferers. Oops. She had not meant to do that aloud. Apparently, she needed to work on this mind-mouth connection thing, and she quickly bent her head to continue the laborious work of copying the scroll. Firelizards...... firelizards.... ooh, good thing Ego was not here. She would have asked him to pose for her doodlings.

[Kisha-Ra]

J’on sighed heavily and glared at the copies he was supposed to be proof reading, they were just as boring as the originals. Sadly none of it spontaneously caught light, as it should have done if there was any justice in the universe. It remained obstinately in existence.

‘This is all O’dan’s fault.’ He muttered, primarily to himself, as he reached out to pet his salamandyr. Triangle. Wraith solemnly agreed with her humanpet’s analysis, rolling over on the table so that J’on could scratch her other side. Indeed.[/color] Rinagth also agreed with a vein of annoyance. But the sooner you apply yourself the sooner you can get back to me.[/color] J’on snorted at having Rinagth lecture him on shirking work. It was usually the other way around, well when Rinagth didn’t want to best her gold sister at something. Still she had a point, and he was being glared at by some fussy archivist.

I’ll come back to you when these fussy dusty archivists let me go Rina. I hate it in here, we should be having fun. He replied, taking up a copy and laying it beside the original to examine. Rinagth’s presence withdrew, bored.

[glamourie]

Why she had shoved him on Archive duty, he had no idea, but clearly Kemma was out of her mind. Of all the chores to give him, that one was the one he liked best. The archives required little work that he wouldn't do on his own. Copying records, making sure things were organized, he enjoyed it. By nature Rawign was a meticulous entity; a casual viewer would notice the obsessive organization of all of his belongings and likely wonder what had possessed him to be so strange. But - everyone had their quirks. That was one of his. So it was that with the announcement that he was on Archive duty, the healer trecked down to the Record's Room with a heavy heart and set about his job. He was going for a double-whammy.

Retrieving the records on herbal remedies and basic healing (things he knew by heart so efficiently he could have copied them in his sleep), Rawign scampered across the room to an unoccupied table. There were two others making copies, but he did not appear to notice as he set his records down with care. He did not immediately sit, though, instead flouncing around the Record's Room to retrieve blank hides and writing materials. Only once he had all of his supplies did he plop down at his table, and he was soon joined by his blue firelizard, Stumpy. Green Roxie, on the other hand, appeared from between and promptly flew over to the source of 'speaking', only to land right on J'on's head and chirrup down at him curiously. Hello, hello, what are you doing? -- For once, Rawign did not scold her, instead settling for retrieving his first record to be recopied. Most people would deem it monotonous, but he did not. He liked copying.

The record he started with was a list of various herbs and their uses - and despite all of his urges otherwise, he copied it verbatim. Rawign's knowledge of healing herbs was extensive, as it was his own personal field, and he was tempted to add extra information and technical details that were of little use to anyone but another healer. How nice it would've been to have a detailed resource. It would have been a nice --

-- distraction. Whining. Blinking, Rawign looked up across the table at the source of the sound, recognizing it as coming from one of the senior weyrlings, a greenrider. A slender black eyebrow raised inquisitively and he twirled his writing stick in his hand before mimicking her whining noise almost flawlessly - except that his 'voice' was lower in pitch than hers, and thus sounded more masculine. He was vaguely reminded of the canines that some people kept as pets, as the sound was very similar, and it earned a curious chirp from Stumpy, who swiveled his head out from the back of Rawign's neck to look around at what was making that funny sound. The healer did not seem to notice, instead simply smiling playfully before going back to what he was doing.

Roxie, on the other hand, looked down at J'on and chirped again, almost as though to ask why he wasn't participating in the strange human sound effect game.

[Kisha-Ra]

Jon didn’t bother to look up as someone else entered the room, enough people came and went to and from the archives that J’on wasn’t really interested in them. He was aware of the newcomer fetching records and sitting at one of the tables.

Since J’on was paying more attention to his work than his surroundings for once it was a good thing he didn’t have a pen in his hand when something landed on his head. He looked up, moving just his eyes, it was probably someone’s pet that had landed on him and having the little beastie slip off and get hurt wasn’t high on his agenda. A cheery sounding chirrup gave him the information to identify his guest as a firelizard.

Wraith stood up and flicked her frill half upright, looking at Roxie. Mine bug no. Triangle not. Mine. The salamandyr warned. She was prepared to be forgiving, this green didn’t seem to be about to try and steal her pet like that large one had.

‘Silly Wraith’ J’on murmured and petted his ‘mandyr with one hand. He was about to try and coax the firelizard down from his head when a set of human voices caught his attention. Whining ones. Wraith looked disparagingly at Ragwin, then Roxie, as if to say that’s your human? J’on only made ‘hrrmmm’ sound at the enquiry from on high before trying to focus on his reading again.

[neeuqtar]

All the noise was bothering Vashti. Bad enough that she was required to do chores as a Candidate. Far, far worse that she had to do them with other people around. Annoying people and their little pets. Her riding palfrey was far less annoying than these... people. And Steelsong could be quite a mare when she wanted to! The young woman growled in frustration, gritting her teeth together as she tried to block all the chirps and whistles from the air. Sure, the harpers had flitters and such. But as a rule, they were well-trained, and the Archivist would NEVER let the beasties into her library.

At least the chore was one she was used to and even enjoyed. Harpers got very good at copying; even though harping had never been her first choice in profession--that would have been dolphineering, just like her parents--it was passable. She wasn't about to let something as simple as an assigned duty put her off from reaching her goals. Her quill left intricate tracings of ink on the page. As soon as it had been learned she had a copyist's training, she'd been given a set of very old, crumbling Records to re-ink for common use. To her delight, that had included illustrations: they were dragonhealing manuals.

But that... whining noise was the last straw. Vashti gently set her quill on the table, the tip on a pad of shredded bark to soak up excess ink, then stood up. Loudly. She glared at the noise-makers, her turquoise eyes flashing with anger.

"Will you please make those creatures sharding shut up," she commanded, rather than asking, her voice sharp. "Some of us are trying to work." She glared specifically at R'wign, then sat abruptly back down. Ignoring everyone else acutely, she picked her quill back up and got back to her intricate copying work, the nib scratching across the paper with the speed of long practice.

Sharding nitwits.