Who

Doji, R'zel

What

Is it hard to leave your Craft to Stand? Doji and R'zel discuss.

When

It is afternoon of the seventh day of the second month of the eleventh turn of the 12th pass.

Where

Bazaar, Igen Weyr

OOC Date 03 Jun 2017 23:00

 

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Central Bazaar

All roads in the weyr ultimately lead here, to this center of commerce. Canvas awnings jut out over time worn, sandy cobblestone, sheltering customers and wares alike from the majority of Igen's elements, and funnel scents both mouthwatering and vomit inducing through the thin streets. Almost all store fronts are open air, delineated by sandstone arches with intricately carved facades. The insides of these stone-shingled buildings act as an amplifier for the salesmens' bawled enticements, and are held up by the chipped swirls of marble pillars.


It's a lovely winter afternoon in Igen, with temperatures just above freezing for once. In the bazaar, there's the normal hustle and bustle of daily activity as people go about their shopping and crafts and other daily business. With a double clutch currently on the sands, it's not unusual to see white knotted candidates wandering around carrying odd things throughout the Weyr and Doji's current task might qualify as one of those odd things. The girl is striding through the bazaar with a rather large pillow in her arms looking like she's heading back towards the Weyr proper.

R'zel is in flying gear, though his scarf hangs loose and his jacket is tied round his waist by the sleeves, concealing his insignia. He's wandering through the bazaar at a slow amble, looking at one stall or storefront after another but not really stopping at any of them. Occasionally he peers round, perhaps choosing his route, or perhaps just lost. He pauses to look at a display of basketware, then turns away - as it happens, straight into Doji's path.

Doji has a really bad habit of not looking where she's going. She should totally work on correcting that, but hasn't. Maybe it was the smell of some bubbly pies from one of the vendors or some sausages being grilled by another or any of one hundred and one other odd items that could have caught her attention, but she somehow misses the rider that's suddenly in her path until that pillow is bumping into him. At least she wasn't carrying anything sharp or pointy. "I'm sorry, sir!" She's going to stammer out an apology as she starts turning red and then shift the pillow so it's under one hand so she can perform a jerky salute. Should candidate's salute foreign riders? She's not exactly sure, but better safe than sorry.

R'zel raises his hands, more to fend off the pillow than to return the salute, though he's a little late doing both. "No problem. I should watch where I'm going." As he steps back to disengage himself from the blushing girl and her burden, his glance goes to her shoulder. "Ohhh, you're a candidate! Good luck with that! Is it your first time?"

The girl will mutter something that probably sounds like more apologies as she keeps her eyes on the ground, until the candidate question is brought up and she'll nod. "Uh, yes? And I think we'll all need the luck. We've already had two fires so far." She'll give a bit of a sigh at that and clutch the pillow a bit tighter. With the salute done, she's returned to holding it with both arms wrapped around it.
And Doji is horrible about forgetting to put her name in @emits.

"Fires?" R'zel's eyebrows shoot upwards and he sounds startled. "How did that happen?" Her defensive posture inpires him to add in a milder tone, "Sorry, nosey visitor here. I don't get to Igen much. I have to say, though, it's beautifully cool at this time of year. Last time I came, I could have fried eggs on my flying helmet." Said helmet is not in evidence today. His jacket has worked loose in the collision, and he gives the arms a tug to keep it in place.

"Yes? I'm not sure how the one at the Night Flight happened, but it was the same time as the first clutching…" Doji's eyes will dart back towards where there is a suspicious lack of a building in an otherwise crowded side street. You can't see the actual rubble from where they are, but the lack of walls there gives a hint. As for the second, she's just not going to say anything more about it and hopes he forgets… Weather talk distraction. "That definitely sounds like summer here. I did see some of the baker apprentices actually fry eggs in a pan in the street outside the dorms once." No fire, just that lovely Igen weather we all know and love.

R'zel grins. "Nice to hear of someone actually doing it, rather than just using it as a figure of speech. Not that Southern isn't hot: in fact it's been guite ghastly today: even hotter than usual and abominably steamy. I wouldn't have thought of Igen as somewhere to come to cool down if one of my wingmates hadn't suggested it, but it's working just fine." He appears to remember his manners. "Sorry - I'm R'zel. Bronze Verokanth's, of Southern."

Doji seems just a touch relieved when it seems the rider isn't going to pursue asking about that second fire and smiles a little about the talk of frying eggs and weather. "I've only been to Southern once and it was during winter. Very wet…" As opposed to Igen which being a desert seems to very rarely be wet at all, even when it's not boiling hot. She'll nod at the introduction and respond with her own, "I'm Doji. Candidate now, formerly healer apprentice."

"Healer." R'zel gives a faint nod of understanding before responding, "Yes, Southern's usually wet, when it isn't completely drenched." After a brief pause, he adds, "I was a harper before I was Searched." Amusement plays across his face at the memory of it. "All those years of training at the Harper Hall abandoned, and I'm not sure who was more relieved: me or them. But you must have a big candidate group, with all those eggs on the Sands?"

Doji will nod again as he restates her profession, or former profession and maybe future one again. "At least with healering, even before I was a candidate, riders kept reminding me I could become a dragonhealer if I were to impress. So it wouldn't necessarily be a complete abandonment?" Although the girl doesn't sound entirely sure about any of that. Impressing, dragonhealer, abandoning her craft. Her eyes widen at the mention of big group of candidates and she gives an exasperated sigh. "Yes! Seventy one eggs, so I think there's going to be well over a hundred of us." And they'll all get squished like sardines in the barracks until hatching day comes.

"Seventy-one! That's amazing - have you seen them yet?" His smiling enthusiasm modulates into a pensive frown. "I suppose…. It must be a difficult decision for most crafters who get Searched. You've put all that time into it, and if you Impress, you can't really keep it up. Dragonhealing sounds good, though." Another pause before he confides, "It was easy for me because being a harper wasn't my own choice, and I didn't much want to do it. Anyway, I can still play my instruments, which was the bit I really liked."

"I was at the clutching when the fire started, and had to leave. But I've seen them since then. Had to sweep the galleries the other day." And given how sand gets everywhere in Igen, that's a sisyphean task. "Well, I haven't put that much time into it… I've only been an apprentice for about a turn." For all that Doji is tall, the girl is still very young. But old enough to be Standing when Igen's trying to grab every able body they can for all those eggs. "For healing and harpering, there's ways to still keep up with the parts you like, if you're so inclined… but things like smithing? Or herders?" The girl will shake her head at that. "So why were you a harper if you didn't want to be one?"

R'zel gives a dry laugh. "In a word, parents. Mother and stepfather, both harpers. And not only harpers, but instructors at the Hall. And I was a really good treble, before my voice broke. They didn't give me a lot of say in it: they had me signed up as an apprentice before I knew what was happening." Honesty compels him to add, "I didn't really mind at first, though I'd rather have joined the Smithcraft. It was as I got older that I realised it really wasn't for me." In a rueful tone, he adds, "I'm afraid I wasn't the planet's best apprentice. But the thought of riding circuit and teaching kids for ever more…" He shakes his head. "Is there a particular bit of healering that appeals?"

There's a bit of R'zel's story that has an echo of familiarity for Doji. "All my family are weavers. Or herders working with animals for wool. I have to argue for so long for them to agree to let me come to the Weyr to be a healer." And she does smile at the mention of smithcraft. "Well, now you get to make your own straps. That's hands on work, kinda like what smiths do?" More like the tanners, but close enough for comparison. "I wanted to be able to help people." That really has been her main reason for deciding to be a healer.

"More like Tanners, maybe? But yes, I like doing that. I'm better at practical stuff than book-learning, I think. And, really, flying, and Threadfighting, and the Search and Rescue work that my Wing does - it's much more me than harpering ever was. And there's Verokanth, of course. Having him's better than anything." By the time R'zel's finished speaking, there's a fond smile on his face at the mention of his dragon. "Families. Sounds as if you did better at getting what you wanted from yours than I did from mine. I guess I take after my Father's side - he's a rider." He adds uncertainly, "And I think he was weyrbred."

"I like the book learning and the practical stuff about healing…" It's really the people that Doji struggles more with. And she tilts her head curiously at the mention of search and rescue. "So, what all do you do for search and rescue? I'm familiar with threadfighting, but the other wing duties…" Not so much. She will smile shyly at the mention of her family. "I was, uh, insistent." When the girl believes she's right, she's going to stick to it. And not being a weaver was one of those things and here she is. "Wait, you don't know your father?" she caught that uncertainty.

"Oh, I know my /father/," R'zel assures her. "But not his parents - they were back in the oldtime. He doesn't talk about that much." He shrugs. "And I didn't see that much of him, growing up." His lips wrinkle as he considers his lack of knowledge of his ancestry. "I should ask him. I must have met them, when I was tiny. But Search and Rescue - oh, that's fun. The first time I went out, we went to help a caravan that had got overturned on a narrow road in a storm - a real downpour. Everything was collapsing, and we had to lift them out of there before the cliff came down." This may be some new definition of fun.

Doji will nod at the clarification. "So you're an oldtimer then?" Cause clearly he's not young enough to actually have been born in now time from oldtimers. The description of the rescue mission has the girl's full attention, more so than any other topic they've discussed. "That sounds… amazing. Were there any broken bones? Or people suffering from hypothermia?" So she may just be a bit morbidly curious about the exact details. And have a very unique definition of fun herself.
In answer to the question about himself, R'zel nods. "I was six." He moves on quickly, preferring to talk about the rescue. "My wingsecond had blood streaming down his leg, and one of the drivers had his legs crushed under a wagon - that's how we found him. And one guy wouldn't leave his goods and got buried in a rockslide, but we got the rest of them out alive. It's rather satisfying, doing something like that."

And honestly, Doji would much rather talk about search and rescue. It's much cooler. "Crushed leg? Was it something that could be set or did it have to be amputated?" Bonehealing is hard, man. "And you would think after seeing the other guy with the crushed leg, that one would have been more understanding of the dangers and left when you were trying to help instead of getting stuck in a rockslide." She'll give an eyeroll for the stupidity of some folks.

"Yes, he'd have done better to value his life over his property," R'zel says coolly. "I'm afraid I don't know about the driver: we took them to Southern Barrier Hold rather than the Weyr. It didn't really occur to me that he might lose his legs: I thought at the time that we could have splinted them if we hadn't had to get out of there so fast. It must have been a ghastly journey for him. He was only young, too." He's frowning again, in an introspective sort of way.

"Bonehealing is tricky. That's why it's a specialty in and of itself. If it's just a clean break, it can usually be set and heal almost like new. But if it was actually crushed…" Doji's going to give a bit of a shudder and cling to that pillow a little bit. "Well, there's so many bone fragments that there'd be no hope of lining them all up together. And so attempting to save a completely crushed bone usually just results in an useless limb that's horribly painful for the rest of the patient's life. Amputation isn't always the worst option." And R'zel probably didn't expect to get a lecture on amputations when he decided to come to Igen today. Suddenly, Doji does remember she is holding this pillow and she does have things to do. "I should probably be getting back to the barracks before time for evening chores…"

"I won't keep you from your duties any longer, then," R'zel says, with a smile and a little bow of the head. "You don't want to get into trouble as a Candidate. Nice to meet you, Doji. Good luck on the Sands." He turns away, and continues his stroll through the Bazaar.

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