Tue Mar 19, 2024 8:40 pm
- Link
Heiro had been at the Weyr long enough that she no longer had to work to recall what the colors of a dragon's eyes meant they were feeling. She smiled, delighted that the dragon seemed pleased and hadn't simply been thanking her to be kind. She felt less demoralized about how much slower than her peers she was at scrubbing dragons.
As a proper hold girl, one who'd been educated in the hopes of being married off, it had been ingrained into Heiro's mind that she was supposed to look people in the eye when they spoke to her. But she was trying to pay attention to her task, and that was more easily done if she was looking at what she was doing. She kept splitting her attention between A'yri and her task, so she started slowing down again.
Still, she was following fairly well, and nodded along with A'yri's explanations. "I think I follow, yes," she said. "It sounds a bit like...well, you know when someone yawns and you find the urge to do so as well? Or you don't notice you're hungry until someone else says that they are? That's a bit what it sounds like. Not nearly no intimate, of course, as the bond between dragon and rider, but the closest the rest of us would be able to get to what it is that you're describing." She shook her head with a smile when he said he hoped he wasn't butchering the explanation. "Not at all! I think I understand your meaning, as well as I can. It's always difficult to fully grasp an experience you've never had before from descriptions alone, after all, no matter how clear a person is. And you're quite clear, I feel I grasp how things are shared a good deal better now."
She nodded. "Yes, I imagine weyrlinghood is when a great deal of issues must be figured out. Adjusting to a dragon cannot be an easy matter." She gave a warm smile when A'yri asked if that scratched her itch, acknowledging the joke. "Indeed that has, thank you," she said. She considered her next question carefully. "I know what I'm getting myself into," she said, picking her words carefully, speaking slowly as she thought. "I want to make Pern a safer place for others. But..." She peeked at A'yri a little anxiously through her bangs before focusing intently on the patch she was scrubbing. "It is...daunting, to think of facing thread in the skies. We all know the damage it can do. Do you find it at all frightening? Or are you one of those lucky sorts who knows no fear? Perhaps you know of ways to deal with that fear, even if you don't feel it yourself?"