These weyrling barracks are fairly spartan. Couches line the walls at neat intervals, and all around are hung instructive yet decorative tapestries depicting various things; A weyrling feeding his dragonet, A dragon taking his first flight, Weyrlings oiling their dragons, and several different flight formations. In the middle of the Barracks, there is a large vat of oil and a barrel used to hold chunks of meat for feeding.
Jenibeth looks half asleep, eyes a slightly muted blue, from the secondary lids being closed. A wing is held down and across her couch though, and Elfarran is busy slathering on oil, the wing looking to be the only part of the growing green that hasn't been oiled yet.
A rather young weyrling, maybe less sixteen turns, comes running up to S'renn just as the brownrider enters into the barracks. Apparently the weyrling had asked a question of the lad, since slowly S'renn's head begins to shake and he responds with, "No, you may not fly with Ferath yet, no matter how much you want to." Sighing, and still shaking his head, S'renn leaves the boy, only to make his way towards the nearest couch, inspecting the brown dragonet lumbering there, then moves on to the next, checking over each dragon and weyrling as he does so.
Elfarran keeps working on applying oil, making certain that she doesn't miss a single inch of her lifemate's hide. At the sound of questions, she looks up and smiles, before getting back to work.
T'gan has little more than a tight-lipped non-smile of acknowledgement for S'renn's arrival -- and a roll of his eyes for the other weyrling's questions -- and very quickly lets his eyes stray back to his reading. Well-tidied couch and comfortably well-washed and well-oiled lifemate behind him; and Coluth's ensconced in his typically detached, magisterial air, watching his clutchsiblings with a thin veneer of tolerance in turquoise-glinting eyes.
"Hard at work?" S'renn says with a grin as he comes up behind Elfarran's form, his hands coming down to fall into their respectable pockets. A light chuckle slips from the tips of his lips as he leans over slightly, "You seem to be oiling her every time that I see you, but your work looks to be paying off."
"Well, she's bit big and I'm a bit small, so it seems to take more work." Elfarran finishes one last bit of oiling and hops down from the couch, turning to look up at the brownrider. If nothing else, all the time working has left her so little time to be moody the past months. "Besides, she won't sleep if she's busy complaining about the itching."
T'gan doesn't look up from his reading, but his jaw does begin to work with the effort of biting down comment. Coluth stirs briefly; flexes wings, stretches jaws in a wide yawn, and then settles back into that arrogant crouch.
Elfarran glances over at T'gan, for no real reason, even in her mind, and catches the clenched jaw. She shakes her head a little and speaks up, "If you have something to say about me, please, don't hold it back. I know you don't like me, so its not like it could make things worse." Right.
T'gan lifts his shoulders in a mild shrug, and makes a great show of turning the page in whatever volume he's studying. "I was just wondering," he offers, ambivalent, "if you actually have to work at fishing for compliments the way you do, or if it's just a talent you were born with."
Elfarran just blinks, looking speechless for a moment, before responding, "If I _was_ fishing for compliments, then I'd obviously be working for it. Since I'm too busy trying to take care of a growing dragon, chores and other things, to the point I don't even have time to study healing, I certainly wouldn't be wasting my time with something so trivial." A soft snort from the half-dozing dragon in question, seems to be the only comment from that corner, and a moment later, the girl looks abashed, looking up at her lifemate, "No, dear. I don't mind."
T'gan permits this little tirade to run its course before lifting his shoulders in another careless shrug and pointing out, "You asked," before falling silent again, before leafing to another page in his book.
Elfarran sits down on the edge of her lifemate's couch and just looks at T'gan, "Look...I'm sorry I said I didn't like you. I guess I shouldn't have." A slight shrug of her own, "I doubt you'd understand why I was so upset back then, but if we have to work together, its best we're not always sniping at each other."
"Who says we have to work together?" wonders T'gan, and dances his attention up from the written word and toward Elfarran.
A disbelieving blink, "You are aware that riders in a wing work together, just like wings in a weyr work together?" Elfarran shrugs again, its not like she hasn't tried now.
With a tight-lipped smile, Teague points out, "Neither of us are real riders;" not even a 'yet' to qualify that, "and this isn't a real wing." Once more he shifts his attention back down to his reading. "You want to get along better with me? Stop trying to be perfect, stop trying to show up the rest of us, stop trying to be my conscience or my friend, and stop kissing S'renn's rear end every chance you get."
Elfarran shakes her head a little, "If I were trying to be your conscience, you'd know it. As for being your friend, I never even gave it a thought." An angry flip of her hair, "And I am not a kiss up. S'renn just happens to be one of my friends, since before he was even a rider."
"Not my conscience, right," ripostes T'gan, this time without even looking up from his reading. "I suppose that's why you take it upon yourself to endlessly lecture the rest of us about The Way Things Are; what we *should* be doing, how we *should* be acting. I have one mother already, thanks very much. As to S'renn? Do you always go so far out of your way to try and earn your friends' approval? Sure looks like kissing up from where I'm sitting."
Elfarran snorts softly, bending over to retie her bootlaces, "I said something, out of anger, over half a turn ago and you are still holding it over my head? Sorry, I haven't had the time to hold a grudge, must be nice." She looks up, eyes a bit brighter then usual, "And if I've gotten his approval, its not been from trying. I'm too busy trying to make sure Jenibeth doesn't grow up with a patchy hide, and that our share of the mess is cleaned up, our share of the work is done. Sorry if it appears so horrible to you that I make such an effort."
Abruptly, T'gan breathes a tense sigh and closes his book, and rises fluidly to his feet. "It's not the effort that you put in to taking care of business that offends me," he explains, clipped. "It's the effort you put in to making sure everyone *knows* you're putting in such an effort to taking care of business. The rest of us all do exactly the same work you do. We just don't make such a sharding production of it." He turns toward Coluth, then, and startles the young bronze from his crouch with a characteristically-sharp, "Let's go. *Now*;" this harsh, disciplinarian manner he's adopted in virtually all interaction with his lifemate, who stretches from his crouch and makes to follow, however unhappy.
Elfarran hops up, and out of the barracks, a suddenly awake Jenibeth bugling softly, eyes whirling red/orange. Yes, the girl does have a temper, and the last straw to keeping it has been snapped.
This green is the hub of activity at the Weyr. The area extends along the base of a cavern-pocked cliff which rises southeast to northwest from here. The grubbed soil has been allowed to grow to a trampled turf, but hard stone walks bound it on all sides.
Weyrfolk and support staff move occasionally from the elevated, slate-topped infirmary complex that bridges the river on the eastern edge of the green to the open multiple decks of the sprawling, two-tiered Weyrhall to the north.
South and west of here, the cliff face looms high, with a wide opening leading into the Hatching cavern and a cut-stone path rising to several weyrs housing the Weyr's leaders. Emerging from the hatching opening, an oft-trod path skirts the cliff to an opening a bit to the west.
More directly west are more caverns and finally the swath widens in the northwest into the landing field used by visitors to the Weyr.
Elfarran comes stalking out of the barracks, looking fairly livid. From the barracks itself can be heard a soft, angry/startled bugle rather low in pitch. "Look. I don't care _who_ you think you are, and I don't really care if you are a bronzerider or a stablehand. But you will _not_ talk to another living being like that, and you _won't_ make your lifemate unhappy, or I'll tell a weyrwoman." And instead of yelling, this is all said in a rather deep, almost ominous tone, "I mean it. How _could_ you? He's still a baby!" Another, more purely angry bugle from the barracks.
Zabrenevath cracks an eyelid. Just one, still mostly asleep, though the tip of her tail twitches lightly. No glint of inner eye can be seen, still covered by the inner lid for the moment.
Elfarran stops as she notices the sleeping gold, then with a last look at T'gan and Coluth, goes back into the barracks, realizing that her mood is bothering her lifemate. Time to go and try to settle her back down.
