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Post by meah on Jun 14, 2008 15:43:42 GMT -5
Iraink glanced suspiciously around the room he had come to call home. He knew the other boys who stayed there were all staring at him. They always did that. He knew they plotted against him. Every single one was a thread dropper. They hadn't even tried to keep it a secret. Sidhka had been able to even give him exact words when she got back from collecting them.
She was, in fact, at that moment squawking at one of the other young men of the dorm to pet her, and Ink assumed she was using it as a guise to collect more information for him. After all, Sidhka wasn't one of the thread droppers. She was one of about three living beings on Earth that Iraink knew weren't thread droppers, but she definitely wasn't. So why shouldn't she be collecting information. The boys all kept on talking with her around, anyway.
A few boys wandered in together laughing, causing Iriank to shudder up to the wall at his back. If they couldn't get behind him, he could at least see them all as they dropped the threads on him. He didn't see anything that resembled a thread in their hands, but that didn't mean very much. Sidhka had never told him exactly what a thread looked like, so he was fairly certain they weren't going to look the way he expected them to.
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Post by Felina on Jun 15, 2008 0:28:03 GMT -5
((Spent a little time fleshing out the story of how he came to find Iraink.))
Sounds like a crazy idea to me. There is no reason to do this, and I would rather fly than go on with this folly,[/color][/i] Tristiath complained for the seventh time. A'tair had been counting since the second repetition of the bronze's complaints. He understood the desire to fly, but he also had to deal with the consequences of flight, that odd boy he'd found at the hold being one of them. The way the holders avoided mentioning him had seemed suspicious to begin with, and when nobody matching the boy's age or description had shown up at the meal he had eaten there, he'd gone searching. The entire hold had turned out, it seemed, to greet the Rider, though he was only young. Tris had an aversion to flying in the deluge outside, and not yet being able to fly between, they had been stuck at the hold until the weather cleared.
Had he known what, or rather, who, he would find there, would he have stayed?
A'tair shrugged as his hand met the rough-hewn stone of the corridor that led to the boys' barracks. The hold had been no place for the boy, Iraink, that much had been immediately clear. He was emaciated, and pale from too long a time spent away from the sun. However, was the weyr any better, with its larger numbers of people and the cruelty of young boys around every corner?
They will not hurt him. He will be fine, I am certain of it, came the assurances in A'tair's mind. Not his own, true, but nearly enough. Nothing stopped him from doubting.
You speak with the surety of one who has never known what people can be like. They see one who is different, and... Surely you know how the weakest herdbeasts are always picked off first. They don't survive very long. It's like that, only the people rarely die. Though it's not like the life that they have is one well worth living...
The fire lizard's insistent squawking was the first thing to let him know where Iraink was. Not many of the candidates had one, and fewer had any that were so persistently loud as Sidhka. All the time that he had spent trying to convince Geoff to let Iraink go, the green had screeched away at him like he had been attempting to murder the boy. Geoff never had given his consent, but that didn't matter in the long run. Sure enough, as the door opened, he saw something rather like what he had half-expected to see. Iraink up against a wall, Sidhka flying around doing Faranth knew what and making more noise than wherry in its death throes, and the other boys pretty much ignoring their presence.
It was better than the alternative, to be sure. A'tair crossed half of the room in a few strides, putting himself between Iraink and the other boys. He smiled, tilting his head slightly so as to look him in the eye; though A'tair was short himself, the other was even smaller. "Hey kid, ya' doing all right here? Don't know if anyone really ever told you how to get around this place, and it can be a veritable maze at times..."
Though Corenne seemed to get around fine on her own. It had taken her only a couple of weeks to get used to a good portion of the weyr, the portions that she really needed to know about. He doubted she could find her way to the Riders' weyrs; however, that would never really be a concern for her. His smile fading slightly, he turned to less painful thoughts before he got completely derailed.
"Tris wonders about you sometimes."
Do not.[/color]
"He wants to let you know that dragons live to burn Thread. As long as you're here, we're not going to let anyone hurt you, all right?"
You should not practice deceit, for you are not very good at it. At all.[/size]
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Post by meah on Jun 16, 2008 16:35:39 GMT -5
When Sidhka started flying around in circles, Iraink figured something might be up, bringing himself closer to the wall. She wasn't telling him anything at all about why she was raising such a fuss, but he was definitely feeling very excited. He almost panicked when he realized that he had no idea what she was freaking out over. Halfway through his deep breath preparation for hyperventilation, the vivid picture of A'tair flickered in his head. Iraink spotted A'tair come in through the door a few moments later and relaxed immensely.
"Hey kid, ya' doing all right here? Don't know if anyone really ever told you how to get around this place, and it can be a veritable maze at times..."
Iraink shook his head. He didn't want to have to be led around, because then he would leave his bed, and they could hide underneath it to drop threads on him when he got back. It wouldn't be safe to leave the room at all. Once everyone else had left, it might be ok to leave, but not for very long. He had thought about it a lot, and had a schedule of when he was going to leave to do things like eat. He'd planned out when everyone else was gone to do anything and everything. Unfortunately, they weren't very big time frames. Sidhka was already telling him that there was no way he could take a tour of the place and get back before everyone else did.
When A'tair started babbling, even poor paranoid Iraink knew he was trying to make him feel better. He saw through the lies quite easily, and for once, although he didn't know it, they actually were lies. They weren't hostile lies, and Sidhka made certain that Iraink knew that. Even though she was unusually silent, he felt the warm and fuzzy feelings she was emanating, and he knew, like a parent inexplicably knows why his child is crying, that the warmth was associated with A'tair.
”I...” Iraink paused. He wasn't sure why he was even talking. He didn't like talking to people. It gave them one more thing to use against him. ”I think I'll be alright.”
He could feel the eyes of everyone in the room boring into him. He'd broken the cardinal rule and spoken to someone with other boys around. Even A'tair's attempt at comforting him, perhaps for another reason, did nothing to derail the almost terror he felt. He somehow managed to slide backwards from the edge of his bed to the wall again. Sidhka was already there, squawking as loudly as she ever did.
They're staring at you. They think you're a freak. Look at them whispering to each other. You know how much fun they have planning your death.
Iraink shuddered. She was right. They were talking about him. From the look on A'tair's face, he was probably talking about him, too. Iraink had heard that when a dragonrider looked like that, he was talking to his dragon. Iraink wanted to ask the man, prove to himself that A'tair wasn't plotting against him, too, but he knew that would be a bad idea. He still had vivid memories of what happened when he told people he knew they were plotting. That was how he had ended up living with his nasty father in the first place.
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Post by Flamewolf on Jun 17, 2008 20:21:32 GMT -5
Chores were done. Nobody interesting or vulnerable was wandering around out in the lower caverns, nothing to do there except for getting yelled at by sharding bored drudges with nothing better to do. Back off to the candidate barracks was where he ended up finding himself going to, and he just shrugged to himself and continued on. Perhaps he could find something interesting in there.
Proved to be right, to an extent. A new candidate (or at least one he hadn't seen before until then) was there talking to another boy. But the boy wasn't a candidate; he had seen A'tair around, but not near the barracks. Weryling, more than likely. Sun Yew's eyes brightened at the possibilities of this situation and he strode over to the two.
"Good day," he greeted both of them, hands at his hips as he turned to look at both Iraink and A'tair individually. "I haven't seen you around here before," he spoke directly to Iraink, not seeming to notice the fact that he was backed up against the wall and looked utterly nervous. "Are you new?"
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Post by Felina on Jun 17, 2008 21:44:05 GMT -5
((As McCaffrey never mentions how her characters go to the bathroom (save to note that dragons do so while between), I've taken liberties with an assumption that they have certain rooms where they can "go" without it making the whole weyr reek, likely downstream from their baths. Rather like in The Host.))
There was something seriously wrong here. Who actually thought that they could find their way around the weyr unaided so quickly? Either this boy had a serious case of egomania, which A'tair highly doubted given the circumstances he had found him in, or he was going into a state of shock due to such profound changes being shoved on him in so short a span of time. Now, A'tair was no healer- he'd been brought up believing he would be Lord Holder, not to take up a trade, and certainly not to be a Rider- but he figured it was probably the second. After all, there was no other reason anyone wouldn't want to see the weyr.
It is not the boys tormenting him, either; a possibility you overlooked. I asked the fire lizard, Tristiath noted, a certain smug note present in his mental voice. He always thought of things that A'tair had inadvertently overlooked, as the weyrling had a tendency to overlook the obvious.
The pause that had been present as Iraink replied was mildly disconcerting. There was obviously something the boy wasn't sharing, but A'tair couldn't for the life of him figure out what it was. There were no deep-held family secrets- Geoff had pretty much seen to that- that he could possibly want to keep hidden, there was no secret trauma in his past, since his past was pretty obviously traumatic and Tris had coaxed pretty much the whole story from the fire lizard anyhow. It was true, there were still things held back, but he doubted it was of any importance.
Well, it couldn't hurt to try again. After all, it wouldn't do for him to get lost in the weyr and end up finding that old hermit. Rumour had it, he had long ago taken up residence in the deepest, darkest, dankest bowels of the weyr, living on the occasional wanderer who found his way down there and using their bones to build his furniture.
"You know, it really would be a good idea for you to figure out where everything is here. Missing a meal because you can't find the food is never fun, and I can tell you now it's happened to me more than once. And, well, the privy's even worse to find. Don't be a masochist, kid. It's not a good id-" His well-intended speech got cut off by the arrival of some other candidate bidding them good day. Well, now, that was inconvenient, wasn't it? Still, it would do to show common courtesy, and it wasn't as though Iraink had likely been paying attention anyway. He had a certain stubbornness, and some leftover fear from the past.
Then again, it wasn't like Geoff would be popping out from in the privy anytime soon. Iraink was more likely to find that hermit than he was to find his father at the weyr.
"Hello," A'tair said, perhaps a tad more stiffly than he intended. The rest of his words came out a bit more naturally, and a lot less irritably. "You a candidate here as well? Be glad of it while you can; weyrlinghood's far from a picnic and rather more like eternal servitude. Nah, I kid. But it is a lot of work."
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Post by meah on Jun 19, 2008 16:35:00 GMT -5
Iraink shuddered away from the sound of a voice that was very clearly one of the other candidates. He was talking to Iraink. That dirty thread-dropper was pretending to be nice to take A'tair from Iraink. They were probably talking about him already and he just couldn't see it. The footsteps of the other boy had sent him shivering, eyes jammed shut (he didn't want to be a witness to his own demise) even closer to the wall than he had realized he could be. Sidhka, sensing his panic, flew over and squawked loudly in his lap, nudging his forehead with her nose in an attempt to figure out what was wrong.
”Hush, Sheek...He'll hear you. He'll know that we know...” Iraink whispered to the flit in what he considered a comforting manner.
He already knows, little one. That's why he is here.
Sidhka was in his head again. He wasn't sure if he didn't like it better when he was just getting feelings from her and occasionally pictures. He curled up into the fetal position, hugging her to his chest involuntarily as he had so many times before. This time, though, they had caught him for sure. His murmurs started off softly and crescendoed all the way to a yell that echoed throughout most of the weyr.
”Get away from me, thread-dropper! Go away!”
With every shout, he knew with more and more certainty that whoever this kid was was out to get him, and he was seducing A'tair with his fantastical ideas about the threads being something that couldn't be controlled. They were going to get A'tair. Iraink knew he had to save his friend, but he wasn't sure how. According the Sidhka, the first step was to open his eyes and show them that he wasn't afraid of their threatening advances.
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Post by Flamewolf on Jun 19, 2008 19:10:23 GMT -5
Sun Yew glanced back over to the other (older?) man as he spoke, as Iraink didn't respond as quickly as him. After a moment, he found that his suspicion was correct; A'tair was a weyrling. He smiled at his comments, but passed over the rather firmness of his greeting. "I don't doubt it," Sun responded. "I think I'd rather be a weyrling than a candidate, anyways," he added. "Candidacy may be easier, bu-"
He was cut off when suddenly the other candidate started yelling something. It slowly got louder and louder before Sun Yew actually jumped at one. He was baffled; what was he calling him? A thread-dropper. What, for the love of Faranth, was a thread-dropper? "Shards!" he exclaimed, taking a step back. He knew trying to talk to Iraink was probably about as smart of an idea as a dumglow, so he turned to A'tair instead. "What in the world is he talking about?" The boy was not angry, yet, just extremely confused and very curious at the same time.
Let's hope he stays that way.
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Post by Felina on Jul 7, 2008 23:27:43 GMT -5
((You really should shoot me, Meah. Just don't do it at summer school, because I'd rather you weren't expelled. Though I suppose that up against charges of premeditated homicide, it wouldn't really make much of a difference where you shot me. Um... YEAH. And I love A'tair. He has the potential to be absolutely brilliant, but he can be so... disconnected from reality at times. He also has a severe lack of common sense. Y'know, I really don't blame Corenne at all for dumping him. Haha.))
A'tair stood for a moment, utterly dumbfounded, glancing first at Iraink, whose usually blank face now held an almost indescribable terror and hatred, and then the other boy, who simply looked confused, and quite possibly a little afraid. "A thread-dropper? Kid, I was never a Weaver, really. I don't think he was, either. I was supposed to be Lord Holder, and we see how well that worked out. So even if he was a Weaver at some point, he isn't now; he's a candidate. So nobody's dropping any threads any time soon."
He turned to the other boy, shrugging apologetically. He had no more idea what it was supposed to mean than the other, and quite possibly less; maybe Iraink talked in his sleep or something and some of the other candidates had heard. Though considering the boy's paranoia, it wasn't likely that he'd actually slept with anyone else around. In fact, that could very well be the problem! Delusions brought about by a lack of sleep. It was no wonder he was having difficult adjusting!
Not threads, A'tair, but Threads. Nobody is afraid of pieces of string, unless those strings burn and must be flamed down! He speaks not of silly little threads, but the Threads that fall from the sky![/color] The bronze's mental tone took on more and more overtones of agitation and a deep-rooted desire to destroy those Threads, complete with the capital T, as he went.
Oh... Why didn't I see that?
Because that is why you need me, of course. If you did everything right, what use would I be? Good thing I actually like listening in on your conversations, because if I didn't you would never survive. I don't know how you got along before I found you.[/color]
It was true, sometimes. He really did have to wonder sometimes what he would do if Tris weren't there to pull him out of the holes that he seemed to dig himself into all too often. But at the moment, that was of far less import than the issue at hand, that being that Iraink was starting to get a little crazy and more than a little incorrect. Not that he really had any idea at all what to do with someone who was being so utterly irrational; he'd never been good with irrationality. Corenne's reasons had been irrational, and he'd been able to say nothing against them.
He was such a failure. Couldn't even help one kid with absolutely nothing wrong with him save a bad start to life.[/size]
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Post by meah on Jul 19, 2008 23:13:06 GMT -5
Iraink slid down hard. A'tair's strange blather had shocked him. Could anyone be that ridiculously stupid? The thread-droppers must have been doing a much better job of hiding themselves from poor A'tair than they had from Iraink. Of course, the only one they never hid themselves from was Sidhka. She had made herself cute and harmless looking on purpose so that they would tell her things that she could relay back to Iraink for his own safety. She even told him so.
But still. How could A'tair have no idea what he was talking about? Iraink had heard from one of the thread-droppers themselves that the dragon riders were supposed to destroy the threads (although he'd been rather confused by that because he knew that some of them were the ones dropping the threads). Surely A'tair would know what he was talking about.
Iraink took a deep breath. He would have to tell A'tair, save his friend from certain death. ”A'tair...thread-droppers are the ones that drop the threads. The threads that kill people. That guy is one of them. He—“
Sidhka had sent a very crude, rude message about what she was going to do to him since he'd told A'tair. He glowered at her, his brain smarting from her words. A'tair had needed to know; he knew that, even if Sidhka didn't think so. She had always told him not to tell anyone, but he had to save A'tair, no matter what the costs.
Something in him snapped as he reached out for the flitter, who wasn't saying any more, but was rather flying just out of reach and laughing in his mind. She thought he was being silly. Well, maybe he was. She was only looking out for him. Iraink sighed, oblivious to the presence of the candidate he had only recently stopped berating for being a thread-dropper. He'd protected A'tair from the threat because, according to a singsong voice he heard in his head, knowledge is power. That power, that knowledge, would save A'tair.
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Post by Felina on Jul 25, 2008 13:17:30 GMT -5
"...the ones that drop the threads. The ones that kill people."
A'tair sat down hard on the nearest cot, his head spinning with sudden revelations. The boy was utterly mad! And it was A'tair's fault that he would stand on the hatching ground Sands some day, to Impress a dragon. If Iraink were to Impress, the dragon would need to be mad as well, and he could only imagine the hideous consequences of such a pairing. A sudden image of Pern alight, flames dancing in the murderously hot winds as charred flesh fluttered grotesquely in the waves of heat rising off of baked ground, entered his mind. This was bad. This was very, very bad. With any luck, Sitareh would screen the Candidates again, and Iraink could go home to...
He didn't have a home. This was the only place he really had, and he could only be denied it. Where was the justice in that? But Sitareh would never allow this madness to make its way through the weyr, dropping its insidious thoughts of doubt and rebellion as it went.
How was he supposed to put this without offending Iraink to the point where he would do something rash? "See, that's where you're wrong," he said at length. "The Thread comes from a place called the Red Star, well it's not a star, really, it's a planet, but the Thread is an... organism... that comes from there. It comes through space and lands here. But there's no more Thread any more. We got rid of it all a long time ago. It's never coming back."
The explanation was perfect. It left only one thing unexplained. If Thread was gone, and the dragons' sole purpose was to destroy Thread, and the dragons had inexplicably returned from the dead, what was the purpose of the dragons' return? The menace they had been designed to eradicate was gone. They had no real purpose any more. Yet the dragons never did anything unless it meant something. Why were the dragons back? What were they here to do?
Thread was coming.
Thread was coming, and they were unprepared to do anything to stop it.
No, they weren't unprepared! They were training; he had seen the older riders flying patrol sweeps. Why would they do that if not in preparation for a time when they would need those sweeps or risk a barren Pern? Thread was coming, and only a few knew it. Who knew? Sitareh? M'kel? The older riders? This kid? How had Iraink seen it before him? Did the dragons know? Did the other people on Pern know? What was going to happen? What was Threadfall like?
The Red Star had been pushed away by those brave folk long ago. Everyone said so. If it was too far now, though... where did Thread come from?
Or rather, who did Thread come from?
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