Who

Vasilissa, Verik

What

Vasilissa gets an unexpected tuber-sorting partner.

When

It is noon of the seventh day of the ninth month of the nineteenth turn of the 12th pass.

Where

Stores, Southern Weyr

OOC Date 30 Mar 2020 04:00

 

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"Candidates are being mean and tricking you now?"


stores.jpg

Stores

A vast and sprawling cavern, the main storage area of the weyr is well-tended by the loving and stern hands of those who oversee the bounty stored within. Depending on the time of day, it is a place of illuminated neatness, stacks of dry goods and foodstuffs labeled clearly… or it is a place of werelight and stygian darkness that taunts those who would dare challenge the depths thereof.


Just after a nice hearty lunch, Vasilissa is asked to go clean out some of the stores. Probably not a good combination, since her task is to look at all the foodstuffs and see if something is moldy or old and growing weird things to toss. There's a bucket provided for her, to take out and dump, and she's looking at some of the most gnarly looking fruits and vegetables that have been all but forgotten down here for the fresher supply. "Uuugh… Would you eat this?" she asks her firelizard with a wrinkled up face, trying not to look too green, and holds out a moldy sprouting spud that may or may not have been a tuber at some point. Rusalka hisses at the vegetable, spreading her wings out as if startled by something fearsome and then proceeding to growl at it. Yes, into the dump bucket it goes.

He's been freshly knotted as a Candidate for all of a few days now and Verik has, somehow, managed to avoid being spotted by Vasilissa in the barracks. It takes talent, mind you, and the few times their paths have crossed while in the Weyr at large, he's been quick to hide the knot under Annoyance's bronze self. But, that discovery is inevitable and better that he do the hard, ugly work rather than Vasilissa finding out on her own. Unfortunately, he's not given the luxury of waiting until a calm evening to sit her down about it: instead, he's assigned stores duties along with her. He drags his heels a bit but, eventually, makes his way down to the food stores with his own bucket, and a softly chirping Annoyance that does double duty of announcing their presence and living up to his name. The chirping intensifies when he hears the familiar growl of Rusalka, though. "Fuck's sake."

It helps that Vasilissa gets exhausted by the end of the day and just crashes on her cot. She's definitely not been paying attention to all the candidates around her. The sound of a firelizard makes her pause, not identifying him until she hears a familiar curse. "Verik?" she questions, turning to look at the approach of her brother with a raised brow. "They said this was gonna be a candidate-only duty." Surprised to find him instead, and doing grunt work. She had been pretty busy settling back into the routine of things and trying to remember to salute and be respectful that she didn't really pay too close attention to how Verik was dealing with settling into the Weyr. It's still a bit gloomy and she may be a little sleepy post-lunch to realize there's a white knot on his shoulder… yet. Rusalka's growl had cut off at the sound of Annoyance to give him a friendly chirp in response. But that growl returns for Verik himself. She's only nice to his firelizard, after all.

The bronze is just as friendly to Rusalka, too; he chirps merrily at her and even launches from Verik's shoulder to wing over to a nearby shelf to 'help'. Unhelpfully, he leaves Verik's shoulder and attendant knot exposed. "Yeah, well." He begins, then stops, then grunts and starts helping out, sifting through some other root vegetables for questionable additions. "Maybe I got tricked into it," is gruff and not at all what happened, but that should be plenty telling at this point. He briefly darts a dark look to gold and bronze alike before he focuses on the task at hand. "They must be keeping you really busy," he adds, though he doesn't look up at her, all scowl-faced and focused.

Rusalka is being very helpful with this task and appreciates Annoyance's arrival as well. She's all about sharing the fun with the boys. Hiss at the ugly looking food, chirp at the good stuff. Though right now she's not doing a good job at it, because it could be the foodstuff or it could be Verik she's hissing at. Vasilissa on the other hand missed the knot's appearance at first, looking at the tubers she had picked up after dumping that nasty looking one and replacing them in the front of the pile for the kitchenstaff, seeing that they looked alright. "Candidates are being mean and tricking you now?" she teases her twin. Then she looks up, about to reply about being busy and exhausted only to find a very similar knot on her brother's shoulder. Her jaw drops open without a sound instead. It's like being in shock at seeing such a familiar sight… and then she bursts out laughing.

Chirp and hiss! Annoyance is good at both of these things, which means he'll be extra good at helping. It's only when Rusalka starts hissing at Verik that the bronze burbles in confusion. "Not Candidates," he replies, sour-faced to the bitter end. "Goldriders. One goldrider in particular." Three guesses as to who; first two don't count, because, really, everyone knows who the truly tricky one is. "Don't-" he starts when she opens her mouth - but, really, if he thought that would be enough to actually make her stop, then he knows nothing about her. He shuts his eyes and tips his head back, facing the ceiling with a long-suffering sigh. But he'll endure the laughter, flat-mouthed and scrunch-faced and all. And, after sufficient time has elapsed, he finally mutters, "You done, yet? Or you gonna make me sort this trash by myself?"

Vasilissa has no doubt just who to thank for this surprise later and she isn't going to try to say that aloud right now. Not with the side-splitting laughter that she's unable to stop currently. Her hand goes to shake at him, as if trying to signal someting, but the laughter has yet to die off just yet. It does start to slow into giggles and she has to wipe the tears from her eyes, but then a look at the knot again makes her laugh. It's not quite as hearty, but enough to turn it into a groan eventually and push a hand on her side. "I'm going to break-" giggle "-a rib." He's going to be all alone in sorting the foodstuff for a moment, as she tosses the one she had in her hand into the bucket (was it rotten? Who knows, she defintiely didn't even glance at it). "That must have been some trick, cause I never thought I'd see this day, Verik. But not surprised we both got what it takes to be riders!" Her grin says it all, a very blatant 'I told you so'. "Excited?" she teases with a waggled brow.

"Gonna rupture a gut and bust a rib if you keep on like that," he mutters as the laughter persists for some time. But Verik waits, crouched and rocked back on his heels and with his eyes open enough, now, to eye her askance. Random things are getting thrown in his bucket. Some of it still looks okay, too; is he even looking at the stuff? Probably not. "She said the eggs were doin' stuff, that's what." Grumpiness intensifies; it wasn't even a good trick, the more he thinks about it. "That gold musta got in my head." Grump. "It's fuckin' stupid. Gotta go to bed at the same time, gotta get up at the same time, and we gotta do stupid stuff like this." But he'll be damned if her enthusiasm isn't catching and, towards the end of his mini-rant, he's smiling just a little bit, for all that he tries to fight it. He won't answer that question, no ma'am, but she'll see it clear enough in the quirk of his mouth and that troublesome spark in his eye. "I hate it," is just a lie he tells himself at this point.

"Oh, they definitely do stuff," Vasilissa agrees, her grin falters just a little, looking strained, but it's barely for a moment. While she generally gets weirded out by just what the eggs can do when they are just eggs, she's not going to give that away to her brother just yet. Why ruin this good thing? Now that she's distracted with her brother, this work is not going the way that the kitchen staff are hoping for. Some bad food is missed, placed back, and she's barely giving things a glance. "Got in your head? Did you hear Wrayth?" Vasi looks genuinely surprised at the thought. "And it ain't so bad; you're gonna be exhausted most of the time anyway. And you learn a lot of new and interesting things! And the training, lots of it, builds muscle and stuff you don't really do in the jungle." See, sister is helping him look on the bright side of things, but she sees the quirk and she can't help but giggle and point a dirty tuber at him. "You like it. Admit it."

He narrows his eyes at her for that, nose wrinkling. "Well, I ain't felt it yet, so." No touchings for Verik (yet). Faranth only knows how he'll do when he actually does. If they weird Vasilissa out, well. It doesn't bode well for the skittish half of the twinpair. All pretense of actually doing work is completely lost and his bucket ends up tipped back in the bin, the contents rejoining what's already in there. "Nah, she didn't say anything," he corrects. "But she was staring fit to see through me." The idea makes him shudder just the tiniest bit. He tries to suppress it and another person might be fooled, but she surely won't be. He starts sorting again, or tries to, but he gets the firelizardly cues wrong (or were they even right?) "I coulda been exausted in the jungle," he grumps, but there's no conviction there; the cots might not be great for most of the Candidates but, to the wildling lad? They're nice. The rest is met with a huff and a bit of bristling, but no refutation of facts. "Well, I'm learnin' I'm shit in the laundry, that's what." In the kitchen, though, he's not half-bad. Her dirty tuber wagging prompts the same from him. "I ain't and you can't make me," he fires back, stubborn-jawed and all.

Maybe the skittish twin will be amazed by the touchings and the colors and feelings instead? Who knew, Vasilissa definitely wasn't going to share it with him until he goes through that surprising first touching. She watches him dump the contents and then actually pays attention to her bucket. Ru is doing a bad job at helping out now, giving everything a hiss apparently. She plucks the topmost tuber and sets it back into the good pile, clearly nothing wrong with it. "She's an interesting queen like that," is Vasi's comment about Wrayth, a bit biased about that large queen over the others. The word laundry immediately makes her go from grinning to scowling. "Guess it runs in the family. I hate laundry and they had me there all morning already and clean my own clothes." Of course, she had someone else end up doing that but she can still sulk about it! The tuber she was waggling at him goes into the good pile. "Fine, I'll hear it afterward once you Impress with me," she says instead. Her grin finally does drop, though, as she seems to be thinking hard. "Then again… you there, that means one less chance for me to Impress." Suddenly Vasi is seeing a problem with this and she turns to study her brother with a growing frown. "But I guess they need boys for the bronzes since us girls don't Impress them."

It is a mystery! Verik looks at his bucket, growls a little, then tries again - third time's a charm, right? Right. This time, he's on it, while Annoyance joins Rusalka in the hissing party. All tubers are bad! All must go! Boo hiss! On Wrayth, he just grunts, focusing on his work with a deepening scowl. That scowl eases at long last at her admission and he glances over, relaxing visibly for the first time throughout the whole exchange. "Yeah? It's just all hot and gross and sticky, worse than the jungle in summer surrounded by gutted porcines." And he handles that without an issue, typically. He flicks one of his tubers into her bucket. It might be good, but it's hers now. "Look, I ain't here to take your dragon away from you," he says, turning a bit to properly look at her. He may have his reservations about her actual ability to Impress, but her confidence? He won't knock on that. "And it sure as shit won't be a bronze that finds me," is further asserted, all bristle and annoyance. "I'm just doing this because I want to know what those eggs are up to and see why you like putting yourself through this all the time. But, if you don't want more competition, we could always get rid of some. Or maybe tell those riders to stop bringing more in."

"Much worse," Vasilissa agrees about the laundry duty. "I'd rather do anyting else in the whole Weyr than keep having to go bath in there." Even stay here and stare at tubers all day, though Rusalka will object to that one. Down the tubers! Hiss hiss. Here's a firelizard that will probably never like tubers again after this, for reasons unknown since she's not the one handling them. Vasilissa sticks her tongue out when her brother tosses a tuber in her bucket, then proceeds to do the same with the most nasty looking one she recently found in the pile. At least it was a bad one. She's not bothering to really look over her supply, and hope that the Weyr can survive. "Thanks," comes her softened voice, happy that her brother isn't there to upstage her. Her smile starts returning, quirking. "But you know you can't stop the dragon or choose who is gonna Impress to you. Could be green, could be bronze— there's more greens out there though. And I do think it'd be great to Impress with you side by side, so hoping ya do stick through with it til the end." She's confident they'll both walk off with a dragon if so! "Eventually they'll stop, only so many candidates they can fit and seems it's always about double the clutch." This Wildling hasn't really counted, and being part of a double clutch before there were lots more than currently.

And where Rusalka goes, Annoyance is prone to following - ideologically, anyway. When Verik doesn't move fast enough, the bronze eventually drops down into the bin and starts digging through them, kicking a few from one bin to the next with no rhyme or reason. That gets Verik to cursing and reaching in there to pull the difficult beast out. "Sit on my shoulder and stop that, you cuss." He grunts and looks back to Vasi. A hand is extended, offering an awkward, one-armed hug given their positioning. "You don't know that, 'cause I don't think anyone does. It's just that most folks want the dragons that come to them, I think. You don't hear about someone that doesn't and is able to push them away. Who wants to talk about doing that?" Stories probably exist, though; he just hasn't found any. He shrugs, settling back into sorting. "I'm not givin' up the knot, even though Ryott said I could if I wanted. I told you, I'm sticking through this with you." Also because he's curious and can't help it, among other things. There's a grunt for the further explanation and a slight nod, though he pushes all of that away, mentally. "I guess we'll see. How much longer, d'you figure?"

Rusalka is definitely proud of the smaller bronze firelizard, watching as he really gets into the task. She does not debase herself just yet to actually attacking the tubers or even helping out in moving them. This gal is just going to do her thing from a distance while her human does all the grunt work. Vasi takes the hug, even going so far as to put her own arm (with a tuber in hand) around her brother and squeeze back. "I ain't sure about that," she admits, not really knowing how things truly work even after doing this two other times. "You don't hear it but I don't think you can stop it either…" With her brother's words planted in her brain, though, she really does have to wonder! "But you gotta Impress now, you know, cause we'd then be together through it." She leans away from him to grab at more of the vegetables, looking at them quickly before moving them to their proper place as she thinks. "Well, they're only just gonna allow us to do touchings… Maybe a few seven still? I can't remember exactly. Last time felt like a long time but also then felt like it went by so quickly. And the clutches hatched almost one right after the other." She tosses the tubers into her bucket and sighs. "What I do know is, there better not be any tubers at dinner tonight. These things stink and are bad. At least we always ate fresh in the jungle." Though they also ate a whole lot less. She's only just starting to put on a little fat to her bones again.

The hug turns into a squeeze and a huff on Verik's part. "I'm pretty sure a dragon knows better than to try to get at a person that don't want them." Unless they're every bit as hard-headed as Verik is; but he doesn't know anything about dragons beyond the stories he's been told. The lessons may set him straight, but who knows. "I ain't gotta do nothin'," he adds after a moment, releasing the hug and resuming the sorting of tubers for the second third(?) time. Her estimations of time are better than his and he nods, a vague noise rattling in the back of his throat. That noise turns into a low laugh at her protests and Verik flashes her a grin. "You know there's gonna be tubers at dinner, all mashed up with butter, probably." Not the worst thing in the world! "I don't see why we can't just sneak off and get somethin' from the jungle sometimes. Ain't like they can keep an eye on all of us all the time."

"You'd be surprised." Afterall, wasn't there a goldrider right now on the Sands that wasn't really into the whole Impression thing? Vasilissa may not know the details of what people are thinking or going through, but she has a feeling that her brother may be in the wrong here. "And you gotta want it at least a little. You know you'd be able to go anywhere with a dragon, too, when you Impress." There's no if talk here with Vasi! "And get to fight Thread." Because the actual fighting seems to be what Vasi is going for, grinning toothily at the idea. She's been in a lot of scary situations since leaving the clan and would love to be on the front lines and no longer fearful for her life. Verik then goes and ruins a good mood, making her cover her mouth with one hand in mock sickness. "They hopefully will be taking from this good pile now, unless they already grabbed tubers for dinner and got some of these nasty ones. Just look at this!" And she shoves one in her brother's face that's been sprouting, with mold attached to it and smelling funky. "I wouldn't try it though, unless you wanna get kicked out. But the last time we went out to the jungle for a trip, too. So ain't like we won't be going out there." Hopefully.

"Speak for yourself," says Verik of the 'wanting it, at least a little'. His views haven't shifted much - though the fact that he's wearing the knot betrays that something is slowly changing on his part. Glacial slowness is still movement of a sort! He'll endure her boundless optimism, though, even if it is with good-natured eyerolling and groaning and face-making. "Yeah, you would like fighting," he tosses in, a look angled sharply her way. But it's all in good fun and, with his lot of tubers finally sorted, he pushes to his feet to stretch out a bit. But, before that, there's a sprouty old tuber in his face and he swats at it, grimacing. "I don't think the cooks are gonna poison anyone," he points out. "And I'm pretty sure they know a good tuber from a bad one, more'n a bunch of Candidates do." Stretching ensues, with a snort. His hands lift, then drop, lacing behind his head. "I guess we'll see. Maybe we can show them how to really do things out there, hey?"

Vasilissa knows her brother well enough that this is a big step for him and definitely warming up more than he admits to be to thoughts about the Weyr. She still wouldn't hesitate to go back to the jungle should she walk off the Sands without a lifemate again, but she refuses to believe that is even a possibility. "Well, I'm glad that you're here, with me, doing this," she finally says with the warmest smile for her brother. Forget about the self-doubt of him stealing her possibility of a dragon. Fighting seems to give her a thrilling grin, excited about the prospect, even if it means sorting through more nasty food and doing more nasty laundry. "We can only hope that they are screening the tubers that the Candidates are likely peeling." She dumps the nasty vegetable into her bucket and sighs. "Lots of hopeless people go out into the jungle, we'll definitely teach 'em plenty." And then she's also standing up, the creaks and cracks of her back showing just how long she had been squatting there. "Guess we better dump these things out." Only to return to the cleaning task later.

He briefly kicks at his bucket, though it doesn't do anything. Verik bends to collect it after, letting it swing a bit and hit his thigh with a muted thump. And for as grumpy and grouse-prone as he is, he can't help but return her smile with a warm one of his own, boyish and lopsided though it may be. "Yeah, yeah, well, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be in this mess, so. Thank you." It sounds grudging, but it's not - not really. He snorts just a little at the rest, gesturing a bit as if to dismiss any further concerns; she might have her dietary preferences, but he's still in full 'eat all the things' mode with complete disregard for palatability or, in some cases, mold. "C'mon. Jays, you're slow," he teases and leads the way out, moving at a quick lope. There's more to do, so much more, but at least he's in good company for it.

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