Who

Cascabel, Tzielle, Sheridan

What

The Cold Storage is dark and full of judgemental ovines.

When

It is afternoon of the thirteenth day of the second month of the seventeenth turn of the 12th pass. It is the forty-third day of Winter and 40 degrees. It is a bright, sunny day with a gentle wind.

Where

Cold Storage, Igen Weyr

OOC Date 27 May 2019 07:00

 

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"We could end up locked in here and never see the light of day again."


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Cold Storage

Halite forms a thick, hoary frost on the walls, forever preserving the contents held within and offering up a somewhat bitter aftertaste to the still, chilly air. Frozen solid, carcasses are stacked like grotesque statuary against the far reaches of the walls, row upon row of foot-tagged herdbeast and fowl gleaming amid solid blocks of ice. The wintry chill of the place does little to dissipate the stench of blood that hangs,ominous, in the air; dry, coppery, permanent. The floors are covered in hides to contain any melt-off, while raised walkways between the aisles of food prevent contamination by human foot traffic and make it more difficult for the occasional pest to get at the Weyr's precious foodstuffs.


There are some tasks that are always left to Candidates, in part because no one else wants to do them and in part because it's impossible to say exactly who is responsible for them besides 'whoever Cremla assigns to the job.' The cleaning of over-frosting on the cold storage is the ultimate of those jobs; scraping ice off the walls and then cleaning it up while dealing with the sight and smell of livestock corpse. So perhaps it is not that surprising that Cremla assigns candidates to it whenever it needs to be done — a small and unlucky group known as the first candidates encountered. Among them is Cascabel, who does particularly poorly around dismembered animal parts, so as she works with an ice scraper up against one of the hides meant to prevent slipping (harder to do when it is covered in two inches of frost), she's making repeated little gagging sounds. Sorry, compatriots.

Poor thing, if this is how she feels about the cold stores, she'd never survive Sheridan's line of work. Then again, there's no telling how he survived it, either. "Here, this might help some. Just slip it around your neck and pull it up over your nose and mouth." A sage green scarf is held out by a waiting hand, while the rest of the limb is attached to Sheridan who's getting a good look of the place. His food always came from questionable sources and he learned quick not to question them in the bazaar. "Faranth, this place is creepy. Feels like I got frozen eyes on me. I prefer the warm and still breathing kind." Also, not the suspicious kind.

Some bad smells are better than others! Cascabel's issue is mostly the dead bloody things part as opposed to the particular angle of there being things that smell bad in general. But because the smell is the problem no matter its source, the assuaging of smell issues is met with a very grateful smile. "Oh, thank you," she says, immediately doing just that. Her hands are gloved, because Cremla is not that vicious and did give them adequate protection — candidates with frostbitten fingers are useless for egg touchings. "Er. Yes. I used to milk them, and before that hand-reared some of the fowl, and this — no," is all the conclusion Cas can come up with. Just no.

"It's understandable," Sheridan says, kneeling down beside her with his own tool in hand. The young man scoots over, angling himself so the results of his scraping don't go flying in her direction. He knows well enough that the ice isn't just water. There's other things mingling in with it and he'd rather not get a face full, himself. "I never really worked with animals growing up beyond cleaning up after them. Even then, they weren't our family's animals, we were just hired out to do the dirty work." Because someone had to do it. Sheridan stops for a moment, and stretches a leg out behind him, rotating his boots a bit before kneeling back down and continuing on with his task. "I should've broken these boots in sooner."

"Biting your toes?" Cascabel guesses, taking to the scraping with renewed vigor now that it doesn't smell quite as bad. Not that it doesn't really, it's just that she isn't as aware, thank you Sheridan. While she knows some ways to make ointments that will block scents from irritating the nose if she must, nobody mentioned what was down here before Cas came in. She managed to avoid it in that turn and a half in the kitchens, probably because candidates are usually the ones stuck with this job. "You could put rocks in them when you're sleeping, that might help if they were large enough, or so I've heard. My family had animals when I was young, and I started doing milking as part of the kitchen work, but I am really a gardener." A job that smells, but not a job that stinks; it might explain a lot. "I am afraid of standing all the way up, stepping backward and crashing into an ovine corpse now. With its eyes on me," she confesses with a tiny self-deprecating laugh. Bond in adversity.

"Rocks, huh? I'll have to try that. I normally keep a separate pair for work and another for anything not work related but that replacement time came just in time for Candidacy." No one wants to smell Midden's fermented leather boots, and Sheridan knows there's no saving those. When it's time to toss them, the Midden's already has a place saved for the occasion. "You know, now that you mention it, I might be a little weirded out by that, too. I mean, I'm used to food being already processed and cooked. I didn't spend much time in the kitchens, so um. Yeah, I don't like the way that ovine is judging me over there." Totally judging all of the Candidates.

Cascabel starts to instinctively look toward the judgmental (dead) ovine, then catches herself and looks at Sheridan, instead. Much, much better focal point. "When I was inside," she explains, "I did prep work with things I was helping grow anyway, or helped the bakers with cooling and frosting, so not meat, on the whole. I think I am glad. I think I will try to spend as much time away from uncooked meat as possible for the rest of my life." She probably should've considered that before accepting the white knot, but the intricacies of early Weyrlinghood are still mostly a mystery to her. How long before that bubble gets burst is also a mystery.

There's no need to keep checking, the judgemental face is frozen in place and will forever be judging until the ovine needs to be reduced to the next weyr meal. "Well, here's to hoping. There's no telling what we're going to be asked to do, given what we're doing now." The scraping continues, smoothing away chipped refuse so it's not slipped upon. Surely the weyr would not appreciate turning the cold stores into a blood slush slide and slide. He didn't think things through, either, given his circumstances. The feeding of baby dragons, should that even become a possibility, is definitely going to be a memorable affair. Sheridan pauses, brushing his brow with the back of his hand and he glances over towards Cascabel. "I suppose we can look on the brightside," he begins with a sigh. "At least it'll be a little bit warmer come hatching day."

For all they know, that's probably where the icy-melty combination floor hides started, and the group before theirs ended up with multiple head injuries. When walking, Cascabel has been very careful to check where her feet land, though she's been sitting long enough now. "I think it is a bit warmer now," she says, tone agreeable, "outdoors. I envy those who are given this task in the summer, though not enough to volunteer for it. But when we are stuck on sweltering sands, as I think there is no reason to think either of us will not be?" they could be killed by judgy frozen ovines, but it's not likely, "We will have to remember this moment."

"Yeah, I could see the Summer folk just eagerly coming in here to get out of the heat, all ready to go with scraping what needs to be scraped and getting stared out by food." All the food stares at them, though, Sheridan will stare at them back when they're on his plate. "As long as strange things don't happen to keep us off the sands, I don't see why we shouldn't be, either." Sheridan wrenches free a sizeable chunk and he peers down at it for a moment. The piece is tapped with the corner of his scraper but the young man just shrugs and slides it off to the rest of his refuse pile.

"We could end up locked in here and never see the light of day again," Cascabel says as if this is an utterly normal thing to suggest; it is a nice light, casual comment. "But I think then whether or not we would end up on hatching sands at any point would be the least of our problems. It would be a very strange thing, though." Her scraping has become more difficult, and so she has created something of a soundtrack: the clink, clink, clink of metal on highly resistant ice. The tiny chips coming off do kind of come at her face, but they never make contact, thankfully, for being so small. "I likely know about as much or less than you do," she finally volunteers. "My sister is a Wingleader but we were not in contact when she was … she was already long graduated when we found each other again."

Sheridan slows down in his scraping, peering ahead of him for a moment, then eyeing the meat warily before glancing over to Cascabel and then the exit. "I hope not! If they lock us in here, it'll be a hostage situation." He chuckles quietly a bit, though his face is still a little bit on the nervous side. "We'll just have to hold their precious meat supply hostage until we can negotiate our release from captivity." As for the talk of her sister, Sheridan just nods and keeps silent on the subject. He has a strained relationship with his siblings and friends that should be siblings. Being a dragonrider would likely not change anything. "I'm glad you found her again, at least you have someone to go to for guidance that isn't a Weyrlingmaster. Less sugar coating."

RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE: Tzielle sounds like nails in a trashcan falling down the stairs rather than a person descending from the cellar above. Why? Because she has scrapers and brushes galore hanging from both hands. She blinks into the darker room, pausing on the last step: "Hello?" she calls, wrinkling her nose at the smell of this place.

At least Tzielle's appearance is the opposite of Cascabel's delightful suggestion that they might get trapped down in the cold storage forever. "Hello," she calls back; she has a kerchief over her nose and mouth, courtesy Sheridan's kindness. "Reinforcements?" The other's arrival means she has ceased the annoyingly clinky scrape of that tough piece of ice for the moment. "Oh," she belatedly confesses, as regards that sister, "I have not actually seen her yet, since the Search. I assume she knows, but she might — not be pleased." A shrug; it's a guess, that Divale might be taking time to think before yelling at her.

"Ah, so maybe the distance is a good thing. It'll give her time to uh, process the whole thing. She's gone through it before so she should hopefully come to some conclusion soon?" Divale? Oh yeah, nice knowing you Cascabel. Sheridan has only heard of the frightening Divale from the local folk. The silencing of conversations and how quick shops are too busy to talk all of a sudden. She's an urban legend like Nessie. He's safe while he doesn't know that's who Cascabel is talking about, right? RIGHT. The additional voice attracts his attention and he offers the source a warm smile. "Hey there! Welcome to the party." Don't mind the judgemental ovines, they're just hating because they can only hang here and no where else.

"Oh, hi!" Tzielle's expression brightens when she makes out figures in the gloom, picking her way carefully across the cold toward the other pair of candidates. Her voice sounds subtly different than the accent of those here at the weyr; Igen Hold, then, raised and reared. "Who haven't we seen?" she chirrups, happy to insinuate herself into a conversation with a pleased, light smile on her face. Her attention swings to Sheridan and she pauses, even in the half-light, her expression startled. "Uh," she recovers, "Ah, um, thank you. What. What are we doing?"

"My sister — foster sister," Cascabel (whose own accent, for those who might be taking note, is as local as her blonde hair and faintly sunburned skin) remembers that the clarification is important to some people, just in case; it also changes the perspective of people who might be betting on her for Impression, and she'd hate to give the misapprehension that she has riders' blood. "Who has not shared her experiences about weyrlinghood." Tzielle is much, much nicer to look at than those ovines and their disturbing judgments. "We are defrosting the ground. It is not fun."

(Have no fear, Sheridan; Cas is not a namedropper. You're safe forever. Probably.)

Folks better not bet on Sheridan, that's too risky of a bet for some random bazaar worker. Marks are better suited for food and the drinks he'd have to wait post Candidacy for. "Nope, not fun at all. Haven't found any marks yet. Or other Candidates." He pokes at a decent chunk of ice enough to dislodge it and he glances down the way, lining up his aim before sliding the piece far across the room as he can go. It tumbles off to the side and the young man merely shrugs before returning to his work. "I think when we're released, I'm going to get the hottest mug I can get my hands on."

"Foster sister," Tzielle parrots, nodding along to Cascabel as if she knows EXACTLY what the other young woman is talking about. Her eyes go down to the floor when 'defrosting the ground' is commented on, and she shrugs her shoulders in a very philosophical manner. "Okay." It can't be nastier than some other random tasks she's been given in her time in the Smithhall, let's just say that. "I thought Southern was too-hot, but this place, it's freezing." Not only right here, but above, too: Igen winters are no joke.

Defrosting the ground isn't exactly the kind of thing anyone normally has to do, but in terms of strange Pernese chores, it's absolutely right up that alley. "It is too hot here in all the other seasons," Cascabel supplies helpfully. She's back to that scraper-against-ice-rock chiseling, and has to lean back quickly before she manages to brain herself with a particularly large (actually only a few milimeters, but way longer than the others) piece. "So for those with this job in the summer it makes for a nice change." This is not an endorsement of doing it right now.

"During the summer months, instead of dealing with this, we'll have to smell things baking in the desert heat. Not all of that is pleasant either." Sheridan continues to work on a particularly stubborn patch. He presses his lips into a straight line while he makes with the angry eyes, grumbling under his breath until the chunk is wrenched free and moved out of the way. "I hope the smell in here doesn't stick to my boots."

"I feel like there has to be a better way to do this than just chipping it away," Tzielle says critically, looking down at the floor. "An agent set down first, perhaps, or some form of regular mechanical debriding to loosen the bonds by the…" excuse her a moment, she's off muttering to herself and pacing the extent of the floor to get a grasp on the enormity of the task.

That look on Cascabel's face is hope when Tzielle makes such a suggestion. Could it be that they might be the candidate class to prevent future generations (and possibly also their own future selves) from ever having to do this again? "I hope you come up with something," she says eagerly, trying to make her voice louder than her chiseling. It's so good to have smart people around. At first she must not have parsed Sheridan's meaning correctly, but she pulls a sick face when what he meant by things baking dawns on her. Not, for instance, cookies. "Oh, new leather, yes, maybe we can … scent treat them with something else." But tanneries stink too. There is no escape.

"There's probably an oil I can use for that. I should just ask the person I ordered my boots from the next time I see them. Never bothered before, just kept a bad pair for bad work. Didn't think I'd find it here." The thought of the floor being made easier to clean is a good thought to have! Judge that, ovine scum! "We'll just have to run some experiments every time we're sent down here, won't we? I don't understand why they haven't come up with something already, given how many people they cycle through here." Sheridan pauses from his work and pushes himself to his feet, wincing with the movement. The cold isn't kind on joints, even if he's wearing comfortable layers.

"It is possible that no one else has had the idea that there might be such a thing in the first place," Cascabel suggests, vaugely helpful — for all that she doesn't seem at all enthused by the idea that they might have to come down here multiple times. This isn't a one day job? It's not a once per clutch job? No? "I would not have considered the idea either, since I would assume that if it had not been figured out by now it would never be." But that is why Tzielle is the smart one with the ideas here, and is getting less stink-eye from dead sheep (at least theoretically; Cas doesn't want to check). "I also — expected most of the work to be … bad, as you put it. But this is. Worse."

"Maybe a row of rowels mounted on a single axle," comes the commentary, muffled, from across the room; Tzielle, presumably, unless one of the frozen ovines suddenly became interested in how to crack this ice. "The big problem would be how to get that much force expended downward, and not just skate over the top. Oh, maybe if we put it on something with wheels," Tzielle's leveling up her rambling game because she's rambling at NOBODY. "And put a plate on top, and put people on top of that…"

Sheridan grins while he scrapes a little harder at a piece with his figurative name on it, and the man glances back and forth between his other two fellow Candidates. "Sooo," he drawls, shifting his footing on the ground. "If you had the choice between here and the Middens, what would be worse?" He tries to picture what Tzielle has in mind, though, because there's gotta be a reason why something with ingenuity hasn't been put in place already. Maybe the weyr does it this way on purpose just so they have something for Candidates to do?

"Here," Cascabel says without having to think for longer than a couple of seconds. The midden doesn't have the greatest ground texture, or the greatest smell, but it's not overwhelming frozen dead thing smell. The iced-overness of the blood only makes it worse-er. "Here is worse. Are we supposed to be on top of the plate or pushing it?" she asks Tzielle curiously, head canted a little as she looks in the other woman's direction.

"Yes," Tzielle replies to Cascabel's definitively not-a-binary-question, because that is who she is. "I think I need to speak to the miners," she concludes as she finally pops back over to the other candidates. "And maybe a chemical Smith. Diluted agenothree might do the trick, but I'm not sure if we'd be safe to handle the shards after it's done. But doing it mechanically… it would have to be heavy to crack this kind of ice sheeting." She'll pick up a scraper now that she's expended her mind, to join her muscles into the actual act of chores.

"That sounds like a lot of details. You're making me want to just make a rope bridge in here and avoid the floor altogether." Sheridan glances around the floor to figure something out but all he has on his mind right now is the ice chunks and what could be contained in them. So far, they're just discolored. One, though, looks like something froze in it. Perhaps it's a bug or a button off of someone's closed. MAYBE IT'S A FINGER. "Stranger things have happened in the bazaar."

It's the other candidates they didn't find earlier. "No one actually said," Cascabel points out thoughtfully, "that we could not lay down rugs, did they? I mean. We need a defrosted floor, a bridge may not be a bad idea if we wanted to get out of the work entirely — we could just put down new hides and nail them into the ice so they do not move — but a wheeling … plate … something with chemicals? Could be worth coming up with, if you need assistance." She still considers herself to be not that smart, but she has a knack for finding technicalities. Not that there's any suggestion of actually doing the thing with using rugs or new hides instead. Cas is still chiseling. "Not that I know how to do any of those things, but the spirit of the mission is a grand one."

"I say we make this our mission," Tzielle happily says, shoe-horning her way into Cascabel and Sheridan's lives for at least the next several weeks. "Fix this floor so nobody after us has to deal with this… ridiculousness." The last word comes through gritted teeth, before she gets up and moves across the way to filch a hammer that's probably used for things that nobody wants to know about, off one of the butchery tables. She starts at one of the already-cleared sections and uses her scraper as a chisel-pick, her hammer-blows at the end of that implement crackling the ice above it. Physics! Physics are AWESOME! "oh btw I'm tzielle" #fyi

Dat Physics doe. "Well met, Tzielle. I'm Sheridan. Maybe we can just figure out some sort of panel or texture that we can pull up by the edges that makes the ice already in smaller chunks if nothing else. Just take a heavy shovel to the underside and have the meat cubes already to go." Meaty red meat cubes full of meaty goodness. "Still, ice proofing would give us one less thing to do. You do have a good start. Talk to the riders and see what they do to keep their dragons from sliding off of their own ledges while they try to land. Never heard of it happening, but I'd imagine, it'd be rather silly looking. Bigger things slide farther, right?"

Names. Yes. Someone always forgets that part of the conversation, and her name is … "I'm Cascabel," she says, and then immediately is set to squinting, trying to create mental pictures of all of these concepts. "Oh, yes. The higher up ledges especially, I think, would get icy when it gets very cold?" She didn't even have rudimentary Harper lessons, so this is all based on observation of the fact that, say, mountains form ice caps. It's a guess.

"I'VE GOT IT," says Tzielle, sitting straight up, her eyes suddenly - and fiendishly - alight. "We have firelizard melt the crap out of this!" She points at Cascabel. "You look like the type to have a lot of firelizards. Can you make this happen?"

"I do have one firelizard, but she's a tiny baby so I don't think having her here in the cold would be a good idea. She's hiding in my cot where it's toasty." Glade is the most precious firebeans ever. Sheridan can just picture her peering up at him with sad eyes wondering why her beandaddy would bring her in the cold place with the food she can't eat. "Well, they're a bit of a smaller scale than dragons so there shouldn't be any defrost dangers to worry about. As far as the meat, I mean. They won't eat cold and frozen meat so the only thing would be to have well behaved and well trained lizards that won't contaminate the stock."

"… yes," is Cascabel's conclusion, with facial expression and tone of voice both conveying a little bit of 'duh,' because she does have a lot of firelizards and maybe should have thought of it, especially when she thought was being clever with the idea of just covering up the ice. "Four. I have four of them, and they are well-trained, but they still might — it would be possible some meat would be melted," can meat melt? "in the resulting heat." It's only two that actually ::between:: into the space when thought of, though: a small gold and a relatively average-sized brown. Cas doesn't actually tell them to do anything just yet — the physics expert should be directing the fire.

"They don't need to melt it all," Tzielle leaps to her feet again, looking tremendously excited about the prospect (and of being completely right in that Cascabel is a firelizard-keeper, ha, SCORE) of not doing this by hand. She beams at Sheridan, though the expression is a little more shy than the one she gave Cascabel a minute ago. "That's probably wise," is all she'll say about tiny babybean. "If we had fracture lines…" back to her speculative construction of this. She hefts her borrowed hammer and selects an ice pick from the selection of tools down here: she moves into the non-defrosted section, sets her pick, and hammers that sumbitch down until the ice shatters around it. It's the work of a solid minute, and Tzielle's breathing hard as she backs up. "Can," she breathlessly asks Cascabel, "Can they just… kind of… nuke that? That spot." She wants to see what it actually does, 'coz she plays a scientist on TV.

Sheridan just stops working and stands up, resting hands on hips as he watches Tzielle work with a purpose and a smile creeps on his face. Why? Industrious and impressive! Well, she's talking about playing with fire and in this cold, who wouldn't want to? Especially a scientist on TV! "I'd be curious, too, with how that turns out. Glade will have to sit this out til there's a good firelizard team to learn from." Is it bad that he's picturing them in little coats and booties to be in here? Even a little hat, definitely picturing a tiny scarf, too.

Cascabel's focus moves from Tzielle to the spot on the ground, and then she keeps looking at it instead of actually at the pair of firelizards. However, she did mean it when she said they were well-trained; while Island has a terrible attitude most of the time, it doesn't make her less useful, and so she follows those mentally-conveyed orders more confidently and does exactly as directed: adequate-sized flame, straight on that shattered part! Compost, the younger and browner, is a little off-center; Cascabel cringes, but he's still just flaming ice, so it's probably fine. Probably. Except that he singed the bottom of hanging raw, frozen beef ribs.

Tzielle is the scientist but has no idea how this is actually going to work. That's the best part about being an engineering-specific Smith, she doesn't have to have everything work, because any time she fails it gets her closer to a working hypothesis! "I don't think this is going to work the way I thought it would," she says, when the firelizard fire lends a MUCH more concerning rate of icemelt than one would expect. It definitely eclipses, say, what a hair-dryer would do… "I don't know, uh, I don't know how this is going to turn out," she says, and then: "Do we, um, do we… might we have towels?" She beseechingly turns towards Sheridan, because as the man in the scene he is expected to have his shit together. At least by Tzielle. Who has no idea about mentally-imaged scarves and hats.

And tiny little mittens, don't forget the tiny little mittens. Maybe even a little firelizard onesie, the possibilities are endless. "Mmm." Sheridan gathers his thoughts along with the collar of his coat. "Maybe we should have them practice on other cold frozen things that aren't near anywhere… edible. We can fill up some sand in socks and let them freeze outside. Make them a training course or something. We do get downtime, right?" Cause this is exactly what people want to do with their down time instead of settling down with a hot mug of klah, all toasty under not-sweaty clothes after a good soak in the baths.

"Er," says Cascabel, but remember she mentioned that she had four firelizards and previously only two had been featured? Her bronze is actually the oldest and smartest, and he does his best to appear with a towel. Unfortunately, it's a washcloth. Cas might wince again a little bit, but she does at least try to mop up some of the melty water with it. "I think we do, and I do think that — practicing might be a better idea. She still has a nest, if you wanted one to train — " That last part is the beginning of an offer to Tzielle, since certainly by the time the eggs hatch they'll be trainable, but she cuts herself off from the sound of footsteps. Her face falls, a little bit horrified, and appropriately too, because that is assistant headwoman Tierla now staring down at the partially-chiseled, partially-melted-and-full-of-water cold storage, three candidates, three firelizards, a washcloth, that vaguely singed rack of ribs … The miracle is that no one leaves this situation actually in trouble, whether or not Tierla believed that Cas' gold firelizard was irritated by a spinner (or if anyone suggested it). They did try. But they are probably not the group next assigned to help in the cold storage, so they'll have plenty of time to practice the plan.

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