Who Hanalee, Ryan
What Two of the eldest candidates try to stave off their growing nerves by being useful - right up until the beginning of the hatching.
When Late Summer, 2725
Where Lake Shore, Fort Weyr

 

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Fort Weyr - Lake Shore
This lake shares many features common to mountain lakes — a brilliant blue jewel nestled amongst the rocks. The waters are crystal clear, and the north shore slopes gently before abruptly falling away into the depths. This lake does have one significant differentiating feature, however. The south shore of the lake is a tumbled mass of rubble, rock and earth of an ancient rockslide smoothed only by the elements in the intervening years. This rubble, as well as the rather sheer east and west faces, makes for the north shore to be the only one easily accessible.


An air of expectancy has descended as the eggs approach the point where most expect them to hatch at nearly any given time, bringing an end to excursions and the beginning of near-daily reminders for what the candidates can expect at the hatching hour. In the meantime, all hands are encouraged to pitch in with a fairly standard chore rotation during these last sevens; regardless of when it'll be needed, there's a large number of preparations underway for the inevitable celebration that must be ready to start on short notice. One of a handful recruited to assist the serving staff in those hours between lunch and dinner, Hanalee has been carefully tackling a pile of cloth napkins and silverware over the past half-hour near enough to Ryan to allow for conversation, tucking her finished products into a large basket that's somewhere between them. "I think, " she remarks at length between greetings, likely pleasant exchanges and 'could you pass me a fork, ' "I'm either going to have enough folded for a quarter of the weyr, or all of it before this is finished." It's the first admission of nerves from the otherwise thus-far practical harper, who's certainly applying an intent amount of precision to her work.

Given that rolling silverware by all rights should be considered one of the cushiest gigs in the weyr right now, it probably shouldn't surprise anyone that these two end up with it, right? Ryan's face seems pretty remote through all of this, and she seems to come back to herself with a slight shake as she turns dark eyes upward to her fellow candidate. Hana's words are considered, measured, and Ryan nods once in agreement. "Maybe even for two meals," she deadpans. "The hatching feast and the leftovers breakfast." Her own silverware rolling shows the same painstaking creases, a militant precision, an outlet for nervy hands. Ryan keeps it from her face — unsurprisingly.

"Maybe even, " agrees Hana on the tail-end of a quick flash of smile for the handy-date's estimate. "Although it could well be leftovers lunch or dinner, " she supposes, shifting after a few minutes so that she doesn't quite stay in the same position for very long. "I'm glad we don't have to make our own robes. I assure you mine would look dreadful, " but there's one that fits well enough tucked into her clothes press and ready to pull at a moment's notice, as is likely the case for most of the candidates by this point. "What do you think you'll do after?" It's a casual prompt between setting down her latest neat napkin-roll and starting another, expression as placid as the tense way she folds and lines up the utensils isn't.

"You're not wrong," Ryan agrees, shifting on her side of the bench to lean over in a move now-familiar to acquire silverware to roll in the fresh linen square she's arranged to her liking in front of her. "A… friend got me a robe," she says, after a pause to contemplate that particular word; it's a hiccup noticable enough for someone like Hana, certainly. "A fresh one. It's probably best for everyone that I wasn't involved in the making of it." She shakes her head in something that's equidistant between puzzlement and self-depreciative laughter. "Me? Go back to fixing things, I suppose. If I'm not in the weyrling barracks." Ryan's lips flatten briefly before she rolls her lower lip in-between her teeth, then her upper; her first tell of the nerves that she must be feeling, no-matter how steady her hands.

There's a subtle shift in the angle of Hanalee's chin at that pause on Ryan's end, the slightest turn of it toward the other being the only visual indication that she, indeed, caught the break. "Mm. Fortunate, " she comments only after smoothing over and tucking in the corners of her present now-rolled square. "Sounds like a good sort, if they care enough about your comfort to help you get a fresh one." Blue eyes slant a brief look over toward the other candidate as she swaps her bundle for another piece of fabric. Curiously, "Do you think you'd want to be in the latter?"

"I don't know," Ryan replies with the rawboned hint of honesty scraping her voice; her eyes, meanwhile, don't leave the tidy cloth-origami going into securing a sensible stack of silverware within a new linen home. "They've given us all the information in the world about it, and I still can't tell if my butterflies are for or against the proposition." She disregards the entire commentary regarding her robe-benefactor, and furrows her eyebrows as she looks back upward to glance at Hanalee. "What about you?"

That edge to the uncertainty garners a longer look from the harper between reaches for utensils and methodical movements, brow knitting faintly as Ryan gives words to those self-same butterflies. "I don't know, " echoes Hana quietly, gaze darkening for a moment over where her hands have stilled betwixt spoon and knife. "There could be advantages in either scenario." Her movements resume, teeth catching briefly at her lower lip before they release it. "It's easier to suppose the outcome of the path where we walk away and return to our plans of before. But as my Bitran mentor often said, chance can be a fickle thing." She takes a breath, smooths once, twice over the same section of napkin. Almost as an afterthought, "Still. There are only six, and so many of us."

"So many," Ryan murmur-echoes, trading another wrapped bundle for raw materials with deft, practiced, mind-numb motions. But she fumbles the fork and recovers it after a metallic clang against the side of the bin, placing it back where it should be with a brow-furrowed, "Stay," told audibly to the inanimate object. "I was hopeful, I think, until this week." She pauses to chew on her lower lip again, worrying it and shooting an oblique glance upward to Hana at the same time. "Did you hear?" A beat as she smoothes out a wrinkle and starts to roll, fingers speedy. "About Maizin."

Hanalee looks up at the clang of fork-to-bin, long enough to meet Ryan's dark eyes, take in her own lower-lip worrying with a small frown that's more thoughtful than anything. "I might have been more hopeful when I was closer to Zurii's age, I think, " and that's as close as she'll get to the territory of admitting having some measure of it for either outcome. It's her turn to slip when Maizin's name is mentioned; there's a twitch of her hand that causes the roll she's holding to fall to the basket and come undone, corners jostling loose so that the utensils are all but prepared to spill into the available crevices in the container. "I saw him across the room, " comes in terse reply, hands busily excavating what was lost so that she can rebuild her napkin-roll. There's a tightness to her jaw line and shoulders that suggests it wasn't a stress-free observation.

"Isn't that the truth," Ryan murmurs in automatic reflex for Hanalee's commentary about perky Zurii and hope. The flicker of complex emotion that follows in tandem with the words probably says it all, really. "I suppose they'll just take anyone these days," Ryan follows-up regarding Maizin, her mouth twisting into some savage spectre of a smile - or maybe it's a grimace? She likely has more commentary, but said commentary is immediately halted by a sound that's more a feeling than something heard: a rumbling, a thrumming that pulses through the bedrock of the weyr itself. For being such a dusky girl, Ryan sure does go white as a sheet. Or maybe as white as a candidate's robe?

"Hmm." That's Hanalee's noise of agreement for the supposed standards of candidacy, lips pursing in response to the other's grimace. The low hum that begins to rise from everywhere sends the harper abruptly to her feet, hands trembling. "Ryan. That's — " The signal. Wide eyes move from the other candidate, to the staff nearby who have started to move into a whirlwind of activity, loudly encouraging the candidates to retreat to the barracks. Immediately. With a last look for the handy-date and a breathed, "Come on, " she takes off for the barracks at a jog, pace increasing as the seconds tick by.

And so it's Ryan's lanky shanks hoofing it after Hanalee: THE SIGNAL HAS BEEN MADE and so off she goes. In her wake, a single half-rolled set of silverware tips back and forth over the edge of the table, as if mulling very hard over the notion of it should stay or go. With a sense of finality, it tilts just far enough and lands in the dirt below. An omen of change… or an omen of ill-portent? Only the immediate future will determine the outcome.


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