Who

Amania

What

Follows The Dinner-Crasher. Amania's sojourn to Southern's Candidate Barracks has her pondering certain similarities to past journeys.

When

It is evening of the thirteenth day of the tenth month of the eleventh turn of the 12th pass.

Where

Candidate Barracks, Southern Weyr

OOC Date 26 Aug 2017 06:00

 

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There is nothing of the desert here but her.


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Candidate Barracks

Perhaps the safest place in the weyr, these barracks: the stonework here is old, perhaps as old as the weyr is itself, for the uncanny cleanliness of ancient stonecutters marks neat corners and perfect arches. Richly-lit by glowlight, tapestries reflect scenes of yore from the walls - dragons flaming, holders farming, and one particularly well-made that depicts the impression of a dark-haired girl to a light-toned gold dragonet, dripping and fierce. The barracks themselves are open-air, with not even a curtain to divide the space of male from female. Bunk-bed style cots line each wall, hammocks strung along the middle for those unfortunate enough to lack the privacy that an adjoining wall brings. There are privies in the back and locker-style item storage in the front, and one especially large table next to a book-case filled with basic Harper texts.


One night, a few months before Amania left Kurkar, she got up the courage to go to the edge of The Maw and look down.

It was something she’d refused to do when she was younger, no matter how much she was dared. It scared her. When it became her mother’s grave, she’d refused to go near it because it felt wrong somehow…and because the frightened child within thought she might hear the scream come up from the depths again. But when she’d decided to leave, she made herself brave it, to look over the precarious brink into the ever-yawning pit and dare her fears to rise up and run her off.

She heard no scream, though her mind throbbed with the memory of it. She didn’t fall; her feet were steady and her hands sure. She saw nothing but impossible blackness, heard no end to it when she’d tossed a nearby rock into the abyss. She’d wondered if it was giving her a glimpse of between.

In the end, she’d wrestled with her fear and won, stood at the brim of that portal to the unknown and whispered a goodbye to her mother. Then she’d walked away, her feet determinedly pointed toward a new life that she meant to make for herself.

Her first trip through the reality of between is far beyond anything The Maw could have etched upon her mind. The nothingness is so complete that it seems to pierce her straight through. She knows she screams but hears nothing apart from the echoing memory of her mother’s last night…and even that is soon swallowed by the pure, silent cold. She knows she breathes and shivers and clings with a white-knuckled grip to M’noq, sitting astride Ravaith, but feels none of it.

And then, with the passage of three slow breaths, it is over.

At least between has a definite end when the dragon wishes it, she muses through the quickly ebbing haze of terror that suddenly has no reason to exist. No one ever seemed to have that certainty about The Maw.

The thing that clears her mind after between is the smell. She breathes in slowly, the cool air whipping past in the midst of flight carrying a scent she’s never encountered before. It’s like the smell of rain on the desert after a cloudburst, but concentrated. Constant. Surrounding her as thickly as a warm cotton blanket and filling her lungs and nostrils with such verdant life that she feels like she can’t help but take it in deeply. Somehow, it reminds her of the overwhelmed feeling she’d had upon first walking among the Zingari, her eyes and ears overfilled with their color and vibrancy. This time, it’s as though she’s breathing it in and tasting it instead.

She cracks her eyes open from where she’s hunched against M’noq but can see nothing apart from the night, playfully twinkling stars soon masked by the edges of the Weyr walls rising dark against dark. The jolt of landing jostles her out of her hold on the brownrider, and she looks around, the only visible light coming from dragon eyes and various entrances and exits in the rock.

There is nothing of the desert here but her.

Amania can feel that truth, and knew it would be true coming here. But she won’t really get to see what that entails until the morning - not fully, at least.

She’s led on what seems like a short hike to a distant point of light past a cordoned-off section of the grounds, then past a wide threshold and through a vast, sheltered space. Another doorway awaits…and then she is in the midst of what seems like a sea of bunks and hammocks among clean-cut, tapestry-adorned stone walls. She gets to pick where she wants to sleep.

She chooses a bottom bunk in a corner, surrounded by as much wall as possible with a vantage on most of the room. It’s an unfamiliar place despite certain parallels, and she doesn’t relish the notion of being approached from behind.

There are others here. Others who have made this choice or are Weyrbrats with an expectation to Stand at the very least. She should make her presence known, say hello. But it’s late; she’s both wary and weary and needs some time to mull over just what in Faranth’s name possessed her to say yes to being a Candidate in a completely different part of the world in the seeming blink of an eye.

She tries not to think too hard about the fact that in the span of three breaths, she’s passed out of the desert, crossed the ocean, and landed in a place where it's spring instead of autumn. There’s a huge part of her mind wanting to rail at the fact that it doesn’t make any logical sense, and she’s working hard to drown it out with the part of her that knows it will be easier to simply accept the incredible right now.

Perhaps that’s all she’s going to be able to manage for tonight. She wants to sit and think seriously about all this, but tiredness is making her mind fuzzy. She’s been through a lot this evening, emotionally speaking, and sleep will help her accomplish her intent better. Her firelizards are in accord with the notion and come to curl up at various points along her body after she slips beneath her bunk covers to change and then stretch out for sleep. She stares at the underside of the bunk above her, letting her thoughts swirl themselves to a stop.

I was going to ask Willimina to read her cards about Maevra.

I was going to learn to dance.

I’m walking away from The Maw all over again.

I miss the Zingari already.

I must be out of my mind.

Yet the choice was hers. For the moment sleep demands that she leave deciphering it for the coming day.

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