Exotic lesson 12

[Kisha-Ra]

‘Whoever wrote this clearly did not look at my class, which is, according to this list, one person. K’sel of brown Pettahth.’ Darya stood on the training grounds next to her dragon, flourishing two pieces of paper at the blue’s near eye, as if he was supposed to read them.

Azrath twitched his wings and looked obligingly at the paper, it was covered with squiggles of writing but that meant nothing to Azrath. Is that a problem?[/color] he asked.

‘Well since three man teams are supposed to be forming, yes, it might just present a problem unless this Pettahth is very fat or extremely fast. At least they’ve done the mating Flights lecture. I don’t think I could handle that as the first lesson I had to give. Why did I say yes to this again?’ Darya waved the papers at Azrath’s eye again and then folded them and stuffed them back in her pocket.

Someone asked you and you couldn’t say no?[/color] Azrath suggested mildly. Should I call them?[/color] He suggested mildly, anxious to get the show on the road so his rider would possibly stop waving pieces of paper at him like they’d mean something.

‘Good idea. Do that.’

Pettahth. Please bring your rider to the training field for a lesson.[/color]

[Lotty]

K'sel...

Hmmmmmm? It was a long stretched out mumble...even in his brain he tended to speak in a gruff manner. If anything his scathing cynicism was left to wreak havoc in the privacy of his head and those unspoken words were that much more harsh. Nothing that the brown wasn't used to though. Nothing that he wasn't hatched equipped to handle...and the best way of taking this on was to ignore it. You should never grace K'sel's negativity with equal or greater resistance. Unless that resistance was in the form of threats. My dear K'sel....Get out here before I drag you out here.

But for why my big freckle? K'sel liked to pick on his dragon and today decided to point out the dragon's sunbaked nature, Pettahth didn't miss this either, he was sharp enough to know exactly what his bonded was getting at. Unfortunately he couldn't come up with the proper physical threat to fight back with, We are being called to lessons... he sat up, expectant of his rider to pop out onto the ledge ready for drills. K'sel had a thing for disappointing and came out jacketless...and helmetless...the closest thing to riding leathers he had were the wherhide pants he was pulling on.

If he was a mess before then he was just trying to look homeless now. But now that he was out of the barracks and in his own weyr he felt he could afford to walk around in whatever degree of undress that he wanted. Usually that meant his shirts went unlaced and dipped low, pants were obviously optional as long as he was within his private abode, and he didn't brush his hair. No, he was going to show up to lessons looking rather cavalier if he did say so himself. K'sel...how about some riding gear?

"Oh? I suppose..."

After another few trips in and out of his weyr he was finally ready to head on down. He would be a liar if he said he was concerned about taking up Rayne's time with his tardiness...not that he had anything against her, he just found getting under her skin to be a passtime ever since the sir/ma'am debate. Little did he know that he had what would be his third Weyrlingmaster waiting on him. Oh joy. Pettahth landed with all the ease expected of a little blue sized brown dragon and K'sel followed suit with a rather seamless dismount. Was he apologetic? No. It was what it was. Was he surprised to have another master to handle? Maybe a little, but then again with Rayne's drinking habits he wouldn't be too surprised if he was to hear this mystery woman was a substitute for a hungover greenrider.

"Sorry I kept the whole class waiting...if you want you can send me out in the hallway and teach the rest without me...." he smirked and nodded his head at the empty field and his invisible classmates. A little hard to believe that K'sel of all people would be the last man standing...

[Kisha-Ra]

I am getting hot here, Azrath, and not in a good way. If there is a good way at my immense age. Darya grumbled, leaning against her dragon’s flank. She was dressed for drilling between, which meant she was sweltering and growing irritable waiting on her entire ‘class’.

Oh come on, you’re not that old. Oquith’s said so.[/color] Azrath poked his grumpy rider with his tail, if she was old, then Azrath would have to be old as well, and since he most definitely was not feeling old, his rider wasn’t allowed to be either.

Darya just snorted, having no reply to that. If this guy didn’t hurry up she was going to go and track him down. A one man class was pretty hard to skip.

Here’s Pettahth now.[/color] Azrath announced, very obviously, as a small brown landed nearby. If the blue hoped that would improve Darya’s mood at all that hope was quashed when K’sel spoke.

Darya gave a nasty smile in response to the boy’s flippant words. ‘Oh no, don’t worry, we’re just glad you two could make it this century.’ She replied, in that light pleasant tone that tended to mean she was being horribly sarcastic. ‘Now I hope you’re prepared for your first trip between woolly underwear and all that. Apparently some class work is supposed to be going on while everyone’s doing these supervised jumps, which just goes to show this sheet really needed revising before I got hold of it. I’m going to be interested to see how you form a three man team though.’

Behind Darya’s back Azrath eyed Pettahth apologetically, there was probably no way to end this verbal sparring short of actually sitting on his rider. This may take some time. It won’t occur to them that they could easily be done with this if they shut up and got on with it of course. It certainly won’t occur to Darya anyway.[/color]

[Lotty]

Don't frown. Don't show fear. Don't show emotion. The only way to handle this was with dignity, patience, and a liberal serving of sarcasm right back...oh and he loved it. As much as he feigned frustrations he did have a thing for butting heads (this was the basis of his relationship with Nephele after all) and so Darya would learn that it would be no surprise when he wouldn't quit. There were a lot of things in life he would sabotage and back down from, but not a smarmy comment contest. Not in his lifetime...so he coyly threw his head to the side and set his gaze to the ground for a moment before meeting the woman's eyes again and threw his hand to his heart in the most melodramatic gesture he could think of, "Oh good! I was worried you were going to be upset with me!"

All smiles - the sideways ones that cracked a sneak peak at his teeth - so perfectly smug to hide the bits of self doubt he always had inside. Was there that apprehension that she would smack him? That she would beat him up and make his life miserable? Well yeah, but that was just the kind of risks he liked to take. Mr. Defiant. Ah well, lets push forward and do the between thing shall we?

He was rather ambivalent about the idea. Sure, it was instant transportation, it was a symbol of his progress, he could come and go as he pleased...but it was also really cold and he should have dressed for it. Ugh. I told you about riding gear. Well, the dragon did, and it wasn't like he didn't listen. He did grab his jacket...it just didn't seem like enough. Between was sharding cold, as a son of a dragonrider he knew these things. What he didn't understand was why exactly he need to become a three man team, let's not even get started on his plan to accomplish this. Hmmf, the struggles one had to go through...

"Maybe I'll drag them out of between with me..." he offered pessimistically. Yeah, like there was anyway to make that lesson plan work. He was tempted to grab the sheet right out of his hands and do her the favor of disposing of it. He was the sole survivor of this hatching and he wasn't someone you could just teach out of the book. Special considerations? Yes please.

I was afraid of that. K'selmine takes much too much pleasure in going against the grain, and you just can't teach him any other way. Believe him, he already tried. Pettahth knew social structures. He knew his duty and the importance of lessons and drills and strove to finish whatever tasks were at hand. Almost the opposite of his rider who cared little about hierarchy. They did have one thing in common: they could both be sharding stubborn.

[Kisha-Ra]

Darya’s eyes positively gleamed as K’sel dramatically laid a hand to his heart. It was unfortunate and rather annoying for anyone who associated with her that Darya loved a good argument. ‘Now why would I be upset? There’s nothing I love more than slowly boiling to death while I wait for one tardy little boy.’ Darya’s grin widened just a bit, then abruptly fell off as she consulted her paperwork again.

‘All right, screw this.’ The papers were shoved away somewhere inside Darya’s jacket although she looked like she was thinking of doing something else with them. If she had a whole or normal class they might even have been helpful, instead she had the last man standing of a hatchling group, a single student with a sarcastic streak as wide as her own. There was probably no hope of doing things by the book.

Judging by K’sel’s expression he hadn’t dressed for the occasion, so… his first jump, enough drilling to make him feel miserable and induce him to wear his riding gear next time, then a break for classwork so he could thaw out before the next round of drills. Darya nodded to herself, she’d just discovered that what she’d suspected as a weyrling was true; weyrlingmasters were all sadistic bastards.

‘Moving on before you decide to answer another rhetorical question with a disturbing suggestion. Since this is the most important, not to mention the most potentially lethal, thing you’ll learn here, I’d like you to pay attention, we can row over the classroom stuff.’ Darya’s voice took on a more serious tone as she spoke and she fixed the weyrling rider with a stern look.

‘This will be deceptively simple.’ She continued. ‘Currently all you have to do is get a good fixed, accurate, image of the weyr in your mind, an aerial view is usually best. Then, excitingly enough,’ here Darya’s eyebrow quirked in a manner that suggested she thought this was anything but ‘You and Pettahth will be taking coordinates from us’ a hand moved up to pat Azrath’s flank absent mindedly ‘and then coming back here by yourselves. Did all that make clear and perfect sense.’ Darya was perfectly prepared to go over things again from a different angle if she had to. She didn’t want to be the person responsible for losing the last weyrling of the clutch.

[Lotty]

Little boy? Fair enough, K'sel had a childish streak from time to time - his body must have matured must faster than his mind, but what man wasn't victim to that anyway? He smirked at the comment, and held his tongue from lashing out with another one of this trademark comments and instead tried his very best to be a model student, even if his teacher was doing away with the original syllabus. The little boy wasn't going to complain though. About sharding time. Finally someone who realized that he - the sole weyrling of his class - couldn't just be taught like all the others. He took a certain amount of pride in the fact that he was the last one left and therefore special.

But now things were serious (well kinda). K'sel was convinced that he could play serious too, and his brow furrowed as he tried to stay intent, though the frown was from something else...this was going to be so cold. He looked over his shoulder as Pettahth waited and tried not to show how excited he was about today's class before looking again at Darya and doing something of a shrug in reply. Sure...he had this...maybe, "So ok...I go up into the sky get an image, get the coordinates from you, pop between...hope that I don't come out as a new piece of rock sticking out of a cliff face and then come back? Yeah I think I've got it."

He began to stalk off to his dragon...You should really be more respectful. I don't expect to have to apologize to Azrath every lesson...

I hardly think I am being disrespectful. I'm just going to keep doing me....ok?

A snort from the dragon ruffled his hair as he picked up a riding jacket - if only he had a scarf and some gloves and a hat and another layer of clothes after that - and put it on before mounting up and giving Darya a sort of droll look. One that said see this will be easy...no needs to worry. Although, he figured he could try and make her worry, he had devious little plans on his mind. "Let's go to infinity and beyond or whatever..." he told the brown as he fanned out his wings and reared for a moment to take a big leap into the sky. Only a moment of turbulence before he was aloft and circling the training grounds like a hungry scavenger. From the sides he coped out the sights of the weyr and wondered what exotic locale he could possibly be sent off to next.

[Kisha-Ra]

Darya nodded and gave a thumbs up, she would actually have preferred a slightly more serious confirmation of K’sel’s understanding but there was probably no chance of that. ‘Sounds like you’ve got it, of course if you haven’t we’ll soon know about it.’ Darya really couldn’t help the snide comment, that sort of thing was in her nature, and brought out by the presence of a similar mind.

Can you not make an effort to be polite for a while?[/color] Azrath asked exasperatedly as Darya settled herself between his neck ridges. Supposing he complains about you.[/color]

If he wasn’t listening to me, he’ll have no chance to go whining to anyone and I’ll probably be further up that well known creek anyway. Besides if can dish it out he’d better be prepared to take it as well. Darya replied as her dragon leaped into the air and spiralled upward, the only reply from Azrath was a sort of mental sigh of resignation. At least anything Darya had to say up here would have to be filtered through Azrath and Pettahth.

Darya carefully formed the image of the place she wanted in her mind’s eye, a small costal island, one of dozens too small for anyone but idle explorers to bother with. It could be walked across in under an hour but the important thing about it from Darya’s point of view was that though it was technically possible to fly straight back to Selenitas from there it was a long way. If that wasn’t an incentive to get on with it she didn’t know what would be. The image was duly passed to Azrath, and though him to Pettahth.

The bitter chill of between was actually slightly welcome, and even though she knew she wouldn’t see anything Darya turned her head to check if she had her students behind her. At least no one could see her making a fool of herself here.

A few moments later Azrath emerged over the small island and settled into a glide, the next part of the lesson was entirely in the hands of Pettahth and his rider, and Azrath could sense by her uneasy shifting that the thought of that made Darya uneasy.

[Lotty]

If there was ever a time that you didn't want to take a vacation to a tropical island it was now. Probably because going between was like a condensed version of the airline experience. Bitter cold and dank, dark, nothingness replaced bad food and on flight movies. Though the question could be asked who was the captain of this voyage, Pettahth or K'sel? Time to find out...

Was it bad that K'sel mulled over the picture for a moment? He just wanted to be a good student is all...and you know, not die...that would be good too. Enough of that though, he changed his grip on the riding straps before giving the image one last go in his brain before giving Pettahth the command. Before he could take another breath they had winked between and K'sel automatically found himself counting down the seconds three...two...one... The fact that between was black nothingness was pointless, when he had his eyes closed tight anyway, but he knew exactly when they re-emerged when the bright light of Rukbat flashed a red cast against his eyelids.

You can breathe now...

He had to wince when he came out...the sudden shock of light to the eyes was definitely something to get used to...on top of the cold. He wanted land right away and roll around in the hot sand to warm up again. There was no wherhide thick enough for these drills he concluded...he could only hope she wouldn't torture him with more of them. Outlook: unlikely.

Pettahth swirled around in the sky around the island's beach...K'sel was unsure about landing, it just seemed so pointless if they were just going to take off again. Instead from a dragonback he threw a sly grin to his instructor and another smart ass remark, "Did I do good? Do I get some sweets now?" Surely she brought enough for the whole class right?