Who

Kyara, Veresch

What

Having both skipped out of dinner in favour of the archives, a serious conversation results.

When

It is evening of the tenth day of the third month of the first turn of the 12th pass. It is the tenth day of Spring and 67 degrees. It is a clear night.

Where

Archives, Igen Weyr

OOC Date

 

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Archives

A grand room, lost to more pressing concerns, the Archives hold many treasures well past their prime, from instruments to examples of older flying gear and agenothree tanks. Faded and disused Records lean tiredly against their shelves, their bindings peeling and creating layers of dust on surfaces long left without maintenance. The floors are dirty, various footprints creating crisscrossing paths between rickety wooden chairs and drunkenly off-kilter tables. Columns rise upward to the ceiling, hung with glow-baskets scarcely tended and fast losing their strength. The hum of activity is duller, here in this forgotten space — few visit in search of historical facts.


With dinner still going on merrily in the Living Cavern some distance now, there are opportunities for those aware of them, and if there's one thing the teenaged messenger has learnt by now, it's to make the most of such opportunities. The Archives are large enough and dusty enough to hide her, but it totally doesn't help running across someone official at the door as she's trying to sneak in. Still, mischief managed: she got in without too much trouble, and ensconced herself in one of the more distant nooks, where the dust-bunnies sometimes laugh at a broom. There, with a small glow-basket beside her, she's perched on a sturdy basket, fingers reverently unrolling a record. Whether someone taught her proper procedure or not, she's careful to touch only its edges, even though it's one of the newer hides. To her side there's a small piece of what looks like slate, with a few scribbles on it.

Dinnertime is indeed opportunity time as well, for some. The opportunity Kyara is seizing, at the moment, is one to study in the Archives. A cold dinner is hers this evening - not for lack of anything warm, but just because it sounded good this time. With as much as she'll likely end up staring at hides, anything warm will just end up cold, anyway. No questions are asked of her as she enters, relatively familiar presence that she is in this little niche within the Weyr. The tiniest of noises from somewhere near the back of the room draws her attention, and she quietly steps around to the rear shelves, peering around an end to spy Veresch. "Hey there, Veresch" she says quietly, leaning up against the old wooden stack. "What brings you in here?"

Eek. Whut. Discovered already? Veresch starts at Kyara's voice, peeking up guiltily, but doesn't tear the hide in her shock. That gets tidily rolled before she stands; clearly she's cleaned up the corner with her face, giving the smear of dust over the bridge of her nose and down one cheek. "Evening, Kyara," she says, voice somewhere between guilty and happy. She totally checks the woman out though, eyes narrowed for Threadscore or any other wounds to suggest an injury. Then, stepping forward, she steps forward to try and give her a hug, tight and relieved. "You look good - I was worried, after the news of the bad damage at Keroon." It's slight, perhaps, but she's growing again, already about an inch taller than she was. "Um. I was just reading up a bit. Zeyta said something, and I didn't understand what she meant."

Smiling, Kyara gladly returns the hug, also rather tightly. "The damage was worse than it should have been," the greenrider concedes, nodding. Then she fishes around in her pouch and produces a small rag, handing it to Veresch and gesturing at her face with it. "Still, we flew well. Not a lot of injuries or otherwise." At the mention of Zeyta, Kyara's expression tightens slightly, though the slight tilt of her head in curiosity far outweighs it. "Oh? What did she say?" asks the Whirlie, brushing a bit of dust off a nearby chair and perching on the edge of it.

Veresch takes the rag, touches her face dubiously and turns around. No, she doesn't want to spit onto it in front of her hero. There's a few moments of frantic scrubbing before she turns again, skin pink but clean. "I'll, um, get this washed," she mutters, tucking it into a pocket. "My da wasn't there, luckily, but he says it's going to take some time for their breeding lines to be … I can't remember." She pauses. "She said something about overpopulation always taking care of itself. I … kind of had to find out what overpopulation meant first, and some of these hides are kind of old. But i'm not harming them, promise! it's just… well, you know. The refugees."

"Keep it," Kyara tells Veresch with a smirk, waving hand at the rag. "I've got a ton. And I don't know much about Beastcraft, but I think I know what the concern is. We…" With a troubled bit of a sigh, she rubs her forehead. "We did what we could. We'll just have to adapt something so it doesn't happen again." While she understands why W'rin grounded Sadaiya and Tuli, this is the first cause she's had to question that move. But since she can't see another solution, it's no use worrying about it for the moment, and she moves on. "Overpopulation, hm? What's got you worried about the refugees and the issues going with them?" Leaning back now, she stretches out her legs and folds her arms, crossing her ankles as her brows come together in a frown of thought. "Zeyta could have meant any number of things by that." Where her mind goes with it isn't pleasant, and she shakes it away. "Yes, we've got some overpopulation, but the circumstances are a little strange. We're straining a little, but no one is going without, as far as I know. Crimes in the Bazaar are up…" She eyes Veresch curiously. "Why are you looking into this, Veresch?"

Rather than dust another chair off, Veresch parks her butt back on the basket. "I… um, I heard Sadaiya and Sara talk about it and how some don't want to work in the Living Cavern one day, and then Sadaiya asked me what I would do about it, and I felt like a kid, y'know? I didn't have the faintest idea. So I came here, to try and figure out for myself how much people eat, and about clothes and other stuff, and then Zeyta said something about overpopulation and I had to figure out what that means." Curiosity is definitely skinning this cat. "I see kids in the Bazaar sometimes, and people going hungry, and I thought if I understood I could do something about it. It's … well, this is my place too, right? I can't just blunder in and try to do something and then make things worse."

As Kyara listens to Veresch explain, her eyebrows rise little by little, her expression becoming more and more sympathetic and even a touch impressed. "Of course it's your place, too," she says, a bit of a chuckle coloring her words. "It's our home. We ought to feel compelled to do something to help. But you're right - it wouldn't be smart to try jumping in and helping without knowing how and then making things worse. I think one of the worst things a person could do would be to try to tackle the problem alone. We all live together; it makes sense that we ought to work together to solve the problem, too." She unfolds her arms, flipping her hands palms-upward. "So you know overpopulation means a place holding more people than it was meant to, right? The Weyr was made to hold more people during a Pass than not…but something happened in Igen Hold's caverns that uprooted their Holdless, so we took them on as refugees. Sadaiya and W'rin wouldn't have allowed it if they hadn't thought we could handle it. If people are going without food, that tells me there may be other refugees taking more than their share, and I'd bet good marks that some of them are the people tht don't want to work. So if it gets found out that that's what's happening…" The greenrider sweeps a hand out to Veresch. "What do you think we ought to do? If it's true that people ought to work to earn their keep - unless they're sick or hurt, of course - then what should we do to make sure those people stay honest?" She smiles as she asks Veresch these things, her voice remaining low but firm. This isn't a test, after all! Simply a brainstorm.

The girl stares as Kyara talks, expression steadily growing brighter and brighter as her place here is acknowledged. Sometimes that's all it really takes. "It is? I mean… it is. Thank you, yes! It is." Her hands clasp together, tucked between her thighs, as she leans forward to absorb all the words. There's a twitch of her brows, and then a frown: "That's despicable. People should get along better than that. ButthenIwasattheWher," that part goes by awfully fast, "and people are still gambling like mad, like there's no Threadfall or anything. I have to save for ages to get enough fabric with a colour I like for a shirt, and they're just wasting it." That's a sulk, even a whine — she's not impressed at all. Her eyes flick to and fro. "They… mentioned a raid or something. But I don't think that's going to work, 'cause those people in the Bazaar, they just stare at you and you can totally see they're thinking in that 'You're weyrfolk, what do you know?' way, and it makes me think that you need someone a little less, you know, obvious, so." She swallows. "I suggested they have someone poke around first. Not someone six-two and muscled out the wazoo from riding all that much." Pause, blush. "Sorry. But you walk different." All those lessons are paying off, she's starting to use her eyes.

When Veresch finally hits her last observation, Kyara throws her head back a bit, laughing brightly. "Oh, you'd have been for the Hall in our time, lass!" she all but chortles. "You mean to say you're spying? Oh, Veresch…" Amused as the greenrider is, the thought also doesn't sit all that comfortably with her, and she leans forward, still smirking although she huffs a sigh. "If you're doing it with the Weyrwoman's blessing, that's… Well, I can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing at your age." She rubs her forehead and eyes the girl wryly. "I guess it's a good excuse to pack a little more into your lessons!" Nodding, her eyes find an ambiguous spot on a dusty cubby nearby. "You're right: people should get along better than that. But they don't. People are greedy and selfish and messy…but they also try. And they can do great things. It's the people that refuse to try the right things that mess it up for the rest." She shrugs. "So what do we do? We can give them the option to do something to help…or to leave. It isn't pretty, but when push comes to shove, we don't have much choice."

Veresch's toes curl a little with sheer happiness. "She suggested the guard at first, but then who'd believe me as a guard, right?" One hand lifts, wiggling an arm in Kyara's face to demonstrate the lack of tone, and the fact that her sleeves are at least an inch too short for her. She must be eating like a black hole. "I just spied, you know. A little bit." Her expression turns a little thoughtful. "If you manage somehow to get a little information on who's the worst, and get them out…" She swallows. "From what I read in the records, it's not going to work for long, because they say there's always someone as bad that comes back, but it'll give people time, right? Nab them when people won't pay attention, like at a Weyr-wide party or something to celebrate the Clutching and, you know, Igen's first good gold in so many Turns, and in the mix you can get people before anyone else realises they're gone." Yes. That sounds right to her, at least. There's a long pause, then, "Cha'el suggested the guard too, but. I didn't mention it to the Weyrwoman, and I'm telling you secretly, so please… um. Don't say anything? I think he just wanted me to stop nosing around."

"Oh, you'll get there eventually," Kyara states, reaching out and giving Veresch's slightly too-short sleeve a little tug. "But no, I wouldn't tap you for the guard just yet." Going thoughtful in turn, she drums her fingers on her knees. "There does always seem to be someone to come along and make a mess of things. No matter how much you hope it won't be true. What's easier to hope for, though, is that taking care of those most responsible will give you a longer time without trouble, if you play it right. Hopefully people will see just how stupid it is to have such things going on during a Pass. As for the Weyrsecond," she says, rising and slanting a small smile at Veresch, "I'm not surprised he wouldn't like you nosing around. He strikes me as the sort to get more concerned about someone snooping around than we might think necessary, especially someone so young. And a girl. Much as he respects us otherwise. Don't worry; I won't say anything. Now, what say we get out of the dusty corners here, yeah? Find somewhere a little…I don't know, brighter to be?" Since it seems Kyara's decided her studying can wait for now.

Veresch bounds to her feet, dusting her behind off with quick pat-pats. Then, stowing the scroll and returning, she sweeps Kyara a totally ridiculous, flowery bow, all wiggling arms and one foot back and head down. "After you, ma'am. If I arrive first, they're going to think I'm around the raid the kitchen again — I can do it if you distract them." There's even a wink such as any bronzer might have given, hilarious on the girl's face.

And it has its intended effect; Kyara laughs again, gamely gesturing out the door. "You're on. I think I've had enough practice now to be sufficiently distracting." That said with a wink as she leads the way out. Maybe she'll take them down toward the hot food she now finds herself giving consideration to - but not via the kitchen. Not on her part, at least!

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