Dropped Homework [Open]

[Dragon]

It was a beautiful late spring day, and Siyanna found herself longing a little for the days she'd spent running wild in the Weyr and playing tag with Miss Priss. She'd been ten when she'd been gifted her flit; now she was sixteen and had been a Candidate for a little over a turn. The orangeish gold with her creamy swipe of paler color was in a mood right now, so even if Siya hadn't been too busy to play it wouldn't have been an option, but she could still wish for them.

Currently, Siyanna was running from her recently finished afternoon exercises to clean up for dinner, and after dinner would be her precious free hours, although even those weren't exactly free. There always seemed to be some sort of homework to fill them, or chores that were hers specifically like caring for Miss Priss.

She noted something on the floor - it looked like someone's homework, and she darted ahead to pick it up. Then she looked around, trying to spot whoever had dropped it.

[FirebrandPhlox]

Aneesa was walking through the candidate barracks before dinner, as she often did. She scanned the halls for any stragglers or folks who looked like they had no one to eat with and would invite them to join her on the walk to the dining hall.

She spotted a girl bending over to pick something up from the floor, she must have dropped something. Quickening her pace to meet with her, she called to the other candidate. "Hey, do you need help with that? If you're having trouble carrying things to your room, I'm more than happy to help!" She assumed the girl had dropped the paper and needed her assistance.

[Dragon]

"Oh! It's not mine," Siyanna clarified. "Someone must have dropped it." She had most of the pages picked up already and was still looking around for whoever had lost their homework while at the same time trying to pay attention to the other girl. The black-haired girl was taller than her and maybe a turn or two older; however, Siyanna was relatively certain she was a fairly recent addition to the ranks of candidates, something that had occurred after Siyanna had joined them herself. She felt a little bad that she didn't know the other girl on sight. Usually, she prided herself on keeping up with as many of the goings-on around the Weyr as possible, and surely a new candidate being brought in should have been notable!

She really had been busy lately, and she resolved to do a better job of keeping up with gossip.

"I'm Siyanna," she offered, peering at the pages she'd picked up in the hopes that they might reveal their owner through a name or some other such indication. "I don't suppose you've seen anyone else around? I'm sure that whoever lost this is going to want it back."

[FirebrandPhlox]

"Oh, let me help you with that," Aneesa said, bending over to help pick up a stray page. She didn't mean to look at what could have been someone's private writings, but a quick glance at the page showed it was mundane homework. She gathered a few more pages as she responded to Siyanna.

"I'm Aneesa," she said, picking up that the other girl didn't know her name. "I'm still pretty new here, so I don't recognize the handwriting. I haven't seen anyone else around since lessons for the day let out."

She stood, looking up and down the corridor, as if that would suddenly summon the author of the lost homework. No such luck.

"If I'd lost it, I would be looking for it. This is a lot of work," she said, holding the pages she had gathered out to Siyanna. "Maybe we can leave it out somewhere? Where the owner can find it?"

[Dragon]

Aneesa. {b]"That's a nice name,"[/b] Siya said vaguely as she took the pages from the other girl and tried to get them in some semblance of the proper order. "Leaving it somewhere sounds like a good idea." The common room area for the candidate barracks seemed like a good idea.

It really was a lot of work; Siyanna hoped that whoever had done it could find it again. "Let's try and put it somewhere it'll be found." She was a little distracted, vague-feeling; she wanted to get this problem solved. She didn't want to be rude, and it suddenly occurred to her that she might be coming off that way.

"Sorry - I'm not trying to slight you, I just really want to get this back to whoever it belongs to." She flashed a smile at Aneesa. "You said you haven't been here long? I've been a candidate for about a turn, now, and I was actually born in the Weyr. If you still need help settling in, maybe I can be of assistance?"

[FirebrandPhlox]

"If you're worried about making sure it gets back to the right person, we could try taking it to the dining hall instead," Aneesa suggested, sensing that the other candidate was keen to find the owner herself. "I think most of the other candidates went to dinner already. We could ask them if anyone recognizes the handwriting. I know I certainly don't!" She said with a self-deprecating laugh.

She was caught off guard by Siyanna's offer to help her out. Aneesa was used to being the big sister and helping others, not being the recipient of assistance. "Oh, thanks! Yeah, I've been here maybe half a turn now? Time really flies with all the lessons and chores here. Tell me, is it always so busy as a candidate, or are they just piling on the work to keep us busy during the cold seasons?" She asked the question lightly, more of a joke than a serious inquiry.

[Dragon]

Siyanna brightened at that suggestion. She had intended to take a bath before dinner; afternoon exercises tended to leave everyone sweaty. But she wasn't particularly bad today. In fact, while not pristine, she'd say that she was actually acceptable to be around. Barely acceptable, by her standards, but acceptable.

"That might be the best way to figure out who this belongs to," she agreed. She could get a bath after dinner tonight, and be nice and relaxed for bed.

She was a little surprised when Aneesa said she'd been a candidate for about half a turn. Surely Siya should have met her before now! "They keep us pretty busy,"- Siyanna observed. "I suppose we might be a little less busy if we still haven't Impressed and it's been long enough that we've been through all the lessons a few times? But really, I hope I'm not waiting quite that long."

As she spoke, she turned her steps toward the dining hall. Hopefully the owner of the homework would be there.

[FirebrandPhlox]

Aneesa fell into step next to Siyanna as she redirected towards the dining hall. "You're telling me!" Aneesa said with a laugh. "I thought I was busy doing all those odd jobs and taking care of my little siblings back home. Here I'm always doing something, it seems." She spoke casually, not upset by her schedule. She liked keeping busy and feeling useful, it was just a different kind of busy than she was used to.

"Yeah, I hope I'm not waiting that long either. If I have to, it's fine, but I just want to bond with a dragonkin already, you know? I can't imagine having to wait 5 turns or something to impress. Though if it takes that long I hope I can skip the classes on things like color." She said with a laugh.

[Dragon]

Honestly, Siyanna wasn't at all sure how life as a candidate compared to life outside the Weyr. She'd started her life as a weyrbrat, and she'd been ... well, rather spoiled. She had two fathers who loved her, even if Vi'n wasn't technically her father, and they'd always showered her with love and attention whenever they had the time. She'd grown up in the creche, yes, and she barely knew her mother, but she'd never had to work or wanted for anything as a child. Shards, she'd been given Miss Priss when she'd turned ten, and if giving a ten-turn-old a firelizard was a sign of anything, it was a sign of spoiling the child. The idea of a child as an integral part of making sure a household survived ... that wasn't something she'd had to deal with growing up.

"Oh, five turns even isn't that bad, really," Siyanna observed. "I mean, it's a long time, and I'd rather not wait that long - but some people wait twice that long or longer!" Rarely much longer, and the 'lifespan' of a dragon candidate was only fifteen turns. Some people who aged out chose to go for whers, but others fell into crafts. Siyanna didn't know what she'd do if she didn't Impress a dragon; she'd never thought on it.

At the moment, she considered the classes required of candidates and what she knew of them. "There's the basic literacy and mathematics classes - are you in those?" She hadn't needed them herself, being Weyr born and bred. "Those stop once you master the work. Colors, hatching, and weyrlinghood classes, everyone has to attend, but at least they must get easier once you've heard everything once or twice! Talk about aging out starts once you hit twenty turns." She made a face at that. Surely she'd Impress before that point! Then she frowned a little. "I don't think there's anything we get to stop going to once we know the material, other than reading, writing, and math."

[FirebrandPhlox]

"I am, yeah," Aneesa replied. "Not a lot of chances for the daughter of servants to learn letters and math. I haven't seen you in those classes, so you must already know all that already, right?"

Aneesa groaned. "I was really hoping they'd let us skip out on the stuff that doesn't really change the second time around. Or even the third." It wasn't that she disliked the lessons, she found them quite fascinating, actually. She could just tell it wouldn't be nearly as interesting to hear the same lectures over and over again until she impressed.

"At least I have another turn before they start talking to me about aging out," she said with a laugh. "It still feels like I just got here, it would be a downer to immediately be told 'oh, you're getting old, start looking at backup options,' you know?" Her tone was still light and playful. She wasn't worried about aging out, she still had more than ten turns before she would age out, and surely she'd impress by then. Even if the first hatching she attended had been more...violent than she had expected, she wasn't deterred. That searchrider had seen something in her, so she would keep standing in hopes to find the dragon that was meant for her.

[Dragon]

The daughter of servants? Siya knew that all sorts were Searched, but it was always interesting to meet people whose upbringings were so different from her own. "I do," she confirmed. "My dads are both dragonriders - well, obviously, they're not both my dads, but they might as well be. Papa Vi'n is Daddy's Weyrmate, and they've been together since I was little." What had she been talking about? Oh, right, basic education. "Anyway, since Daddy and Papa Vi'n are both dragonriders, and I always knew I wanted to be a dragonrider, too, and so I learned things like reading and mathematics as a child." She wasn't particularly gifted or anything; she just had advantages based on the circumstances of her birth. "Mother is a drudge, though; I'm not sure whether or not she can read."

As for aging out, well Siyanna didn't even want to think about it and she was glad she still had four turns before they started putting her into lessons about it! "You're nineteen, then?" she said lightly instead of talking about the subject at hand. "I'm just sixteen; I presented myself to the candidate master as soon as I was old enough to be a candidate."

[FirebrandPhlox]

"You have two dads?" Aneesa asked brightly. She had heard about people who had two mothers or two fathers, but there had never actually been any at the hold growing up. "That's neat. I guess they really do get all sorts here at the weyrs."

"That's nice that you've always known you wanted to be a rider. I've never known exactly what I wanted to do for a living, so getting searched was probably the best thing that could have happened to me," she said with a laugh. All that she had known was she didn't want to be a servant like her parents were, but she had never given any kind of serious consideration to any kind of vocation.

"I'll be nineteen later this turn," she confirmed. "So I have a bit longer before I need to start hearing those aging out lectures, but not nearly as long as you! I feel like I should be the one giving you advice, but I guess anything I've learned about the weyr would be old news to you at this point." She laughed again, feeling only a bit awkward that someone younger than her knew so much more than she did. She was used to being the big sister and the one who instructed her younger siblings. She didn't quite know what to do with the roles reversed like this.

[Dragon]

"I do," Siyanna confirmed. She adored her fathers, and the fact that Papa Vi'n had no claim over her but love made him all the more dear. He was more of a parent to her than Mother had ever been. "For the most part in a Weyr you can just be who you are."

It was always a little odd to her that people might make it to being Searched without knowing what they wanted to do with their lives. Certainly in the Weyr itself, it was mostly the choice of a weyrbrat whether to become a candidate or something else, but out in the holds? Wasn't nearly nineteen a little old to still have no direction?

"Well, they make you find a backup plan, I think. That's a lot of the purpose of the aging-out lectures." At this point, Siyanna thought that if she had to have a backup plan, it would be to become a wherhandler instead, not that she was planning on becoming a dual candidate next turn. Maybe when she was twenty, or twenty-five, if she was still Standing. "There are lots of options, and a lot of them involve staying in the Weyr! Although some candidates that age out go back home." Siyanna couldn't imagine doing that, couldn't imagine being Searched and then going home ten or fifteen turns later with nothing to show for it. "Some people stay on as wher candidates, if they get to old to Stand for dragons."