Could it be karma? {chores//open}

[Sheari]

It seemed almost amazingly ironic to Anusha. She had basically only just arrived at Selenitas and was considered "new" and her first chore assigned was....drum roll please....records duty. At least she had been assigned something that required her to be where she had been before. On almost all of her prior visits to Selenitas Weyr Annie (as she preferred to be called) had spent her time in this very same room doing this very same thing.

Copying.

Copying. Copying. Copying.

So much fun! The thought was bitter and sarcastic. With Gonan (or anyone else right now) this would have been fun. They could have light conversation so the time passed more quickly and she wasn't so focused on how much she accomplished comparred to what needed to be done.

Alone and with no one but herself to talk to? Not so much.

With a mug of once-steaming klah at her elbow, Annie diligently scribbled away on a piece of paper what was slowly fading away from a hide. The musty smell of old leather and old paper and the odor of ink surrounded her. Her nose took in every scent in the room from the dust on the shelves to her klah on the table and her mind ignored all of it. She dipped her stylus into an ink bottle, tapped it, and began writing again. When her hand finally cramped she set the stylus down and leaned back.

Nothing more fun than a bundle of flits., she though sarcastically, sipping her klah. She wondered where the other candidates assigned to records were. She glanced at her candle. If no one showed up before Emoyan came to check in on her they would definitely not get a warm welcome. Oh no, not a warm or happy welcome at all.

[topaz]

Ugh. Records again. C'vin's mind flittered back to his last encounter in the records room. It wasn't one of the most pleasant experiences doing chores, that's for sure. Luckily it had all worked out with M'ta, which C'vin was very glad of. He didn't want any enemies, especially not one like the brownweyrling . . . no, brownrider now. C'vin smiled fondly at his mistake. M'ta and Tr'esn had officially graduated from weyrlinghood, and C'vin couldn't be happier for them. They earned it. The fact that the blueweyrling had no idea if the two had actually gone to their classes and done all their chores well mattered little. They were riders now! And someday he would be one to. A proper rider, and not just a weyrling.

Ambling into the records room, with unusually high spirits for the location, C'vin found that again he would not be alone in his choring. However this time, he did not know anyone in the room; being that the only one inside the stuffy place was a female. C'vin knew a pathetically low amount of girls in the Weyr, he thought as he walked into the room, but he knew it was from a lack of trying than a lack of wanting. He was certainly not lacking any wanting. Plus, from what he could see of this girl, she was fairly attractive, sitting there sipping her klah.

"Afternoon. Choring as well, are you? Or . . do you work here?" C'vin's tone was distinctively skeptical as he presented the second possibility. She didn't look like a archivist. Although . . C'vin didn't really know if the archivists had an obvious look to them. He suspected they'd be pale and hunched over, never going out into the light of day. It was a very over exaggerated and stereotypical assumption, but C'vin didn't think he had ever met a person who even aspired to be an archivist, so he felt the need to make sure.

Taking a seat across from the girl, he absently looked over the papers that were lain out in front of him. One leaf of parchment, he saw, seemed to have been just begun by another person in very neat, precise letters. Only the title, the page number and the first few words were written, so C'vin eagerly took that sheet, matching it up with the faded piece it would be replacing. Looking back up to the girl after just a moment, C'vin smiled warmly. "I'm C'vin by the way." He said, reaching his hand over to hopefully take hers in a handshake.

[Sheari]

Anusha silently appraised the man that entered the room. Not one of the other candidates (which annoyed her further) but when he asked if she was either on chores or worked here she smirked. It was not sarcastic or bitter. At one point in time she did and in this room she truly felt right at home. The dust made one sneeze sometimes but she didn't mind it so much.

"Yes, I'm on chores."

She wasn't entirely sure why he was here and she was about to ask him why when he sat down and began writing. Finally! Help had arrived! When the man introduced himself as C'vin she had mixed feelings about her visitor. He had Impressed and was most certainly not one of the candidates. Anusha didn't recognize him but that meant nothing as she hadn't met all of the others as well anyway. In any case, he had either Impressed a dragon or a wher and wasn't anyone she was hoping for.

Anusha didn't want anyone to get in trouble. Really she didn't. But what happened, happened and she was no one to judge people on the things they didn't do.

"I'm Anusha," the nickname was reserved for certain people.

[topaz]

"Nice to meet you." C'vin said sincerely, a smile on his face as he lowered his hand back to his desk. The fact that Anusha did not return his hand shake barely phased the weyrling. He was already in such a pleasant mood, it would take quite a bit out of the girl to put him off. Besides, she had been holding her drink. Not the most convenient time to shake a persons hand, he supposed.

Shuffling his papers into order, C'vin set about to locating an inkwell and a quill pen. The former he found a few feet away on the next desk over, and the latter he found after a few moments rifling through the papers on that same desk. Dipping the pen into the ink, C'vin watched as the blue-black liquid rose in the white shaft, and then suddenly stopped a few inches up. Eyeing the tip of the pen curiously, C'vin then searched for a piece of scrap paper. Laying it down flat over the rest of the papers, he began writing as neatly as he could. His normal handwriting was quite messy, but he did try to keep his loops in check while he was up here on the records room. Writing 'C'vin' evenly on the scrap of parchment, the blueweyrling gave the pen tip an approving look, nodding subtly, and pushed the paper off to the side and out of the way of the records he would be working on.

Glancing back up at Anusha for a moment, C'vin smiled politely. "You don't look too familiar Anusha. Did you come to the Weyr recently?" He asked the question and then looked back down at his paper, but by no means was he no longer listening. The girl did not seem all that pleased with his being there, but she was pleasant enough. Maybe with a little conversation she wouldn't mind his company; even possibly enjoy it!

[Sheari]

"Actually I was just recently Searched, but I came here every now and again. Used to sort of work here, in fact." No denying she had spent part of her life with a stylus. The smell of paper, leather, and ink once clung to her clothes and hair for dear life. At one time she had wanted nothing more than to rid herself of it. To the point of even soaking her clothes after washing them. Now it felt sort of like a second home.

The smell, however, she was sure, would cling to her for the next day or two.

Anusha set her klah down, her hand no longer cramped, and looked at the piece of paper he had written on. Huh, so she had been right. "You Impressed," she said. She didn't know what colour he had bonded to and she hoped he would expound on her statement. She liked to know the people around her. Silently the candidate pondered what it could be. Anything except gold and she was sure she'd either helped record the hatching or knew the person who had.

Speaking of recording, Anusha picked up her stylus from the table and resumed the record she was on. Ironically enough it was an old hatching from many turns back. None of the names on it were recognizable to her as anyone she possibly knew and she doubted she'd meet anyone she wrote down.

[topaz]

"Ohh, a candidate huh?" C'vin grinned and nodded approvingly. "The best of luck to you."

Oh! So she did work here. C'vin was slightly surprised, but she had said sort of. Maybe she was only forced to work in the records room, and it was not her choice at all. C'vin honestly couldn't imagine someone actually wanting to do something like this for the rest of their lives. Stuck inside a musty old room, with boring records and toxic smelling ink; not what the blueweyrling would consider a good day in the least. If you were alone and in a bad mood, maybe it could be relaxing, even cathartic to sit and do something mindless candlemark after candlemark, C'vin mused. Even so, there were plenty of other things like that to do that offered a much more pleasant atmosphere.

"Did you like it?" C'vin asked, turning his head back down to his paper. Gripping the pen, which he had just tested, properly in his fingers, the weyrling looked over the faded record he was to copy. It seemed to be a wing formation, which was obvious once he looked at the title, but C'vin only recognized a few names, mostly the younger riders and the old leaders. As he began his copying, he suddenly looked back up to Anusha, realizing what he had asked might not have made exact sense. "Here, I mean. When you worked here . ." He smiled sheepishly, subtly gesturing with his free hand at the surrounding room. He could certainly never claim to be the most elegant of conversationalists.

As he returned to his copying - bold letters and narrow loops flowing from the quill pen tip, which would eventually dissolve into a mess of scribbles if he stayed there long enough - C'vin raised his eyebrows just slightly in acknowledgement of Anusha's statement. "Hm . . ?" Well it was technically a statement, but he could sense she wanted an answer, or else she just had a very strange way of speaking . "Oh, yes. My lovely Mallowth." He said, turning up to her and grinning with obvious adoration. "A blue." He hastily added, realizing she had never met, and had most likely never heard of, him. "He's outside by the river somewhere I think. He hates it when I have chores inside." He added with a chuckle and a little shrug, instinctively looking in the direction of the river. He would love to be with his dragon all day, every day. He really would. But the chore rotations just didn't allow for it. Only when he was on boat detail could he play around with Mal, and sometimes general weyr duty if only he could find something outside that was in need of maintenance. Otherwise, they were separated, for the blue was now far too large to fit in most of the Weyr's entrances.

[Sheari]

Anusha was about to post when C'vin began speaking. A blue? Hmm...Mallowth? She didn't recall the name which meant she more than likely hadn't written it down. She must have been back home when that clutch had hatched. Anusha mentally chastised herself. Selenitas Hold was no longer home for her. She now lived in the weyr as a candidate. The thought was something to get used to but she figured that, in time, she'd get used to the title of Candidate as opposed to a nameless and unknown archivist in a musty room. Yes, a musty room much like the one she was in now. She chased that from her mind and focused in her writing as well as the small conversation.

"I would imagine he would be upset with you being inside. Sounds to me like he's too big to follow you everywhere now," she said with a smile. Anusha continued to answer his question. "As for me liking the recordsroom, I did. My father was never much of a father and took my oldest brothers into the Blacksmithcraft. Taught them as much as he knew about it since he'd come from a cothold. Gonan was, essentially the father I looked up to and he just happened to be an archivist." Yes, he'd been the one in the kitchen at the time watching her doodle in the flour on the floor. Seeing potential and talent he'd taken her under his wing. Speaking of him helped ease the ache of still missing him. Perhaps if and when she Impressed she might visit him again sometime.

The candidate looped her pen into an "o" as she wrote down the fading words onto a piece of paper. What was Gonan doing now? Again she had to chase the thought from her mind. Now would be a bad time to worry about or miss someone.

[topaz]

"Oh yeah." C'vin nodded with a chuckle and a slight roll of his eyes. "He's getting to be a real monster. Still acts like a little hatchling though most of the time." The blueweyrling smiled warmly as he thought on Mallowth's little oddities. Like a big toddler, he was, still moaning and pouting when he didn't get his way. It felt like only a month ago he had Impressed the fun loving blue, but now he was only a few months away from graduating! They would be real riders soon, and the thought made C'vin giddy inside.

C'vin nodded as he earnestly listened to Anusha. She was letting him in on her personal life, it was only right that he turn his full attention to her. The weyrling was quiet for a few moments after she finished, returning to his copying. He read through the first few names of the old wing twice over, making sure he could remember them, and then began copying them down on the new sheet of parchment. The mention of her brothers' craft C'vin was sorely reminded of his own would be craft, had he not Impressed Mallowth. He was going to be a dragonhealer, but with Mallowth's care, lessons and chores the thought of it had been pushed to the back of his mind. He was rather old now, to become an apprentice, but maybe it could work . . He didn't want to become a master or anything like that anyway. Plus, Mal would no doubt benefit from it. Maybe when he graduated he could find a Journeyman to work under. Hm.

"Well, my hat of to you, Anusha." The weyrling smiled, now reading over the next row of names to copy down. "You must have a lot more patience than I do, to enjoy doing all of this. It really is a lot of work." He added, glancing up absently at the shelves and shelves of records all around the room.

Suddenly, nearby one of those shelves there was a pop, and a loud bugle. C'vin looked surprisedly towards the noise, but then sighed as Panties glided his way down to the table. "What are you doing here . ." The weyrling said, an annoyed tone edging its way into his voice. Panties strode across the middle of the table Anusha and C'vin were working at, head held high in a distinctly arrogant manner. At C'vin's question, the bronze flitter creeled, his eyes whirling red in hunger. "I just fed you barely two candlemarks ago, Panties. You've go to wait until I'm done now." C'vin said decidedly. The bronze flitter snorted, flicking his tail this way and that in his annoyance. He was hungry though. Whhyyyy could he be fed noww?

Angry with His, Panties then turned to Anusha, a curious bright blue amidst the red facets of his eyes. That one. The new one. She would feed him, wouldn't she? Did she have food for him? He was pretty, wasn't he? Pretty enough for her to give him some of her food? Yes! Yes he was! Obviously he was pretty. She should be showering him in food. Now . . where was she hiding it?

C'vin moaned softly as he watched his flitter try to ask for food from a stranger. "Sorry. He's such a pain when he's hungry . ." The weyrling said to Anusha while glaring at the bronze annoyance in front of her.

[Sheari]

Patience. It was an amazing virtue and Anusha had never thought of herself as having much patience since, compared to Gonan, she was short tempered. Now, as C'vin had pointed out, she realized she had some level of patience.

The bugle and flutter of wings distracted Anusha from her thoughts and her work as a bronze fire lizard came down to C'vin. From the man scolding the creature she discerned his name was...Panties?! She gave him a cockeyed glance about the name and then, seeing the top of the little thing's head, understood. On the crown of his head he appeared to have a pair of underwear resting. It was an odd and amusing marking to have. She watched Panties as he marched along the table and then looked at her, apparently asking for food. With a fire lizard standing on her paper she had no other choice than to pick him up.

"Now aren't you cute," she crooned at him. He was. "Yours doesn't want you fed and I have nothing to give you anyway, sorry little one," and she set him down next to her paper. Out of curiosity of what he'd do she crumpled up a scrap piece and tossed it. "Where did you get him?" Because now she sort of wanted one.

[topaz]

Seeing Anusha's strange look at the mention of his flitter's name, C'vin figured he should explain. There were some oddly named creatures in the Weyr, but C'vin was sure Panties, of all things, was original. He was about to explain, but he held his tongue as Anusha complimented his bronze. Oh boy. Now she'd never get rid of him!

Panties chirped anxiously as he was hoisted off of the table, wriggling with passive distress. She was picking him up! He did not need to be picked up! What was she doing, this silly humanthing . . ? She only needed to feed him and then he would let her be, didn't she know that? Flapping his wings as if to balance himself in her hands, Panties squawked at Anusha and pretended to snap his little teeth in a menacing way. Them still being so small though, it wasn't all that impressive.

Cute? She had said he was cute? Of course he was cute! Panties preened in light of the compliment, awkwardly flaring his wings out and puffing up his chest, feet scrambling to find purchase in Anusha's grip; being held was not impressive at all. But he was more than cute. He was marvelous! Wasn't he? She was just about to add that, he was sure. As the girlthing continued to speak, Panties watched her patiently, expecting another compliment but, to the bronze's disappointment, it never came. He whined angrily at her confirmation that he would not be fed as she set him down.

Happy to be out of the dumbnofoodgirl's hands, Panties returned to the center of the table, away from their oh so important paper things an- Was she throwing things at him? She couldn't do that! He was a ki- . . wait. Could it be food? With a squawk, Panties ran after the ball of parchment across the table, and expertly pounced on it. The ball quickly collapsed under the hatchling's front feet and was then under attack from his flicking tongue and probing nose. This was . . . not food. Not food! Stupidpaperthing was not food! Spinning around to Anusha once more, Panties screeched in anger, his eyes whirling red; more from hunger than from actual blood thirst for the innocent candidate though. Stooopidgirlthing! Panties lashed his tail behind him and flared his wings out in an imposing manner. Stupidthing did not know food from paperstuff! He would show her, yes. Images were then flooded into Anusha's mind, of various pieces of meat and other edible things that Panties would rather have than parchment.

"Panties, leave her alone for Faranth's sake! She doesn't have anything for you!" C'vin said sorely, swatting at his flitter's display. "Don't even pay any attention to him." He added to Anusha, shaking his head with a sigh. "He'll get bored with you and leave eventually . ." C'vin glared at his flitter, who was sitting determinedly on the table, his chest puffed out and his tail twitching irately. At Anusha's latest question, C'vin looked back to her and managed a smile. She wasn't the pesky one, after all. "I got him from a clutch. Uhhm . . about, two sevendays ago? Yeah." He nodded as he glared fleetingly in Panties' direction before he turned to fuss with the papers in front of him. "There'll be another clutch in no time, I'm sure. If not flitters, then those little salamandyr things." C'vin said, wiggling his fingers in the air and directing them across the table in a pitiful imitation of the critters. Strange, those were.

[Sheari]

She found the bronze's antics funny as he chased after the paper ball. His pounce crushed it and it fell prey to his exploring it. When he realized it wasn't something that was exactly edible he turned on her. His rage was plain and obvious and if his goal was to intimidate her he was failing at it. The images of the wanted food filled her mind and she tried to ignore them and return to her work. To no avail. When C'vin scolded his pet the images stopped and so did the threat of an oncoming headache from the sudden disturbance to her train of thought. What was she doing? Oh, right! She finished off the event she'd been recording and turned to another piece that had waited patiently this whole time for her attention.

"Salamandyrs?" She took the weyrling's advice and left the flitter alone. Anusha had heard of Salamandyrs but couldn't remember if she'd seen them before or not. C'vin's display with his fingers didn't help much either. "Hmm, maybe I'll go to the next Hatching and find out what they're like." It wasn't exactly a plan but now she had something to listen out for. If they were as amusing to watch as Panties was then she wouldn't mind having something around to keep her from being bored out of her mind.

She looked over at the candle to see how long she'd been here and absently sipped at her now lukewarm klah as she counted the marks up from the bottom. Without any windows to let in light, knowing the time of day was a little complicated and candles were the only way to know. Even then it was easy to lose track of time and throw your day off. With dismay she realized she hadn't been here very long and she grabbed another paper to copy.