Tempest Weyr

It was raining. Again. It had rained nearly every day since she'd arrived. Fortunately, she was a trader— or, had been. A little rain was an impediment, nothing more. And there weren't any wagons here to worry about getting bogged down in muddy traces. Without that concern, the rain was little more than a mild annoyance, dripping into her eyes and down the back of her neck, wetting her shirt even under the oilskin. She pulled the hood up, drawing it over her braids and settling it around her face. Probably should have done that earlier. Ah well.

She was exploring, as she'd spent every free minute doing, wandering through the caverns and along the cliff faces, peering into crevices and around corners. She'd found her way from one end of the weyr to the other, though she couldn't tell you how to get back again. She knew the woods like the back of her hand. Civilisation was a wholly different matter. She'd learn, though. Hence the exploring.

She wasn't wholly sure where her meandering had brought her now, and there weren't many folks around in the weather for her to ask. Not that she would have asked. She'd figure it out on her own eventually. Although, she wasn't actually the only one outside in the rain, which was interesting enough to draw her closer to the tarp-covered wagon. The scent of it hit her nose, sharp and biting with a particular itchy-in-the-back-of-the-throat feeling. Wrinkling her nose, she glanced towards the person walking alongside the draybeast hauling the cart up the slippery slope.

At a guess, he was hauling firestone. The smell— her family had never traded in the stuff, so she didn't have firsthand experience with it, but she'd heard it described a time or two. Then, there was the location: heading towards the weyr. At least, she was fairly certain the weyr was that way. It didn't take a clever person to put it together.

She'd been out in the rain long enough, probably. Long enough for her to be tired of it. She fell in step beside the miner guiding the cart along, tucking her hands into the pockets of her jacket, and twisting her torso slightly so that she could see him without lowering her hood. Taller guy— well, taller than her, anyway. Bald, and covered in dust which had quickly become mud in the rain, running in rivulets down his face into the mess of beard covering his chin.
Never shy, Rhish indicated the cart with a jerk of her head.

"Haulin' firestone. From th'mine? You're not comin' from the docks." She thought there had been mention of a mine in the "welcome to your new home" spiel, but truthfully, she hadn't been paying close attention to it. Busy taking everything in, y'know? No, she hadn't been gawping! She'd just been looking.

"Convenient for the weyr. Havin' a mine right there." She mused. Where was the mine? She should have paid more attention to the brief. She'd seen mines before, though she'd never been in one. Just seen the mining camps, or the towns when a camp had proved itself long enough and grown enough to call itself such. Traders didn't go into the mines. They stayed in the towns and dealt with the people.

It didn't occur to her to ask if the (she assumed) miner wanted company on the trip back up to the weyr. She just fell in step with him, matching his pace if not his stride, stepping neatly over puddles in the instinctive way of someone used to walking silently.

| ooc; |

"s'kind of a requirement for weyrs, i've been told." he had no clue to the veracity of such claims, but it made a good deal of sense to him. they needed the firestone for their dragonkin, what cause of the thread, and everyone needed jobs, what cause of capitalism and all, so it just seemed to work out one to one, having a mine where they had a weyr. basic ecology, or whatever. one of the younger folk had tried explaining how ecosystems worked to him, once, when they'd been tired at the tavern but still needing to work out energy- and dhagvin always had energy, so it just tended to be that he got all the good tidbits of gossip and the explanations about nature and the silly things like that. 

made life more interesting, so far as he was concerned. 

he'd not quite jumped at the arrival of a random someone-or-other at his side, namely because there was nothing to do or see aside from walk in a straight line, and there was plenty of open space to be seeing people in, but it was still enough of a surprise that he'd blinked past the rivulets and taken in his newfound companion with an air of awkward confusion, for a moment, before settling into accepting the person and the presence they carried and just continued on along the way. 

"nah" he replied in time, because she'd technically asked a question and people were getting on him for asking questions all the time and not answering them in turn. politeness, or some such thing. dhagvin yawned, a huge, bone-cracking thing, and then shrugged. "normally take the port and then they meet me at the docks. but they got a special shipment request, or they said it was special, i'unno how one lil cart is so important, y'know?" it didn't make much sense to dhagvin, but most of what the weyr did didn't make much sense to him. hence the questioning. at least people were starting to cotton on that he just wanted to know, and wasn't making any grievous offenses by questioning the why.

or, well, he was questioning the why, but in the i-wanna-know way, not the how-dare-we-do-it-this-way way. wasn't being mad about it or suggesting changes. they were all big about their traditions, this lot, and if they thought you were asking for change, they puffed up real big like corny did when dhagvin intentionally flicked mud at him. silly little guy. so cranky about his hide getting dirty. he was bonded to a miner, poor bastard. he was gonna get dirty. came with the territory. "but it's sorta fun. like taking a bath, but you getta haul around and do stuff instead of just having to sit there. plus the weyrpeople'll have a fit about the mud all about. dunno what they expected, asking for it now of all times." once more dhagvin shrugged, though, a sort of what can you do, as though people from the weyr regularly confused him and you just had to accept it as fact. which it sort of was. and he sort of did. they did weird shit and he nodded and accepted it (with a few probing questions to discern the why of the weirdness, mind,) and off they all went, doing the weird together. 

like watching babies haul out of eggs, or making people tromp down the mountain with firestone cause they had to have it right now, right this second, desperately, please, oh please, we need it. he sneezed, whole body seeming to move an inch back, and contemplated the person next to him. did she know weyr stuff? even if she didn't maybe she'd at least listen to him. "i'unno why they have us haul it, sometimes. i mean i get it, they're busy and all, but they got the between thing- y'know, go from one to the other all poof, boom, here i am! like. figure they got giant dragons, the dragons can just pick up the shipments, take it back home. or just fly normal." he squinted, suddenly suspicious. "d'you think their front legs don't grip well? they grip each other good for the mid-air chasing stuff, s'far as i've seen. maybe they just can't bend their elbows good enough? we could just make the shipments smaller, i guess." he trailed off, contemplative, before shrugging once more. "or we keep shipping it for them. on the boat, normally. but can't really dock good in the storms. so by cart we go, today." 

"Guess it would be, eh? Can't have flamin' dragons without't." Rhishava mulled that over for less time than it took to blink before she was dismissing the thought as something already hashed and moving on, to the far more interesting question of why, exactly, this particular delivery was so important it needed being delivered in the rain, and by cart rather than by boat. How far had the miner come, out in this weather? Not that mucking in the rain was new: the traders moved when they needed no matter the weather, which meant she'd spent her fair share of time trudging along in the mud, shoving at draybeasts and hauling on lead lines and coaxing stubborn animals through stubborner trails. Seeing someone else doing similar wasn't novel enough to wonder at.

"Dunno. I just got there, so m'not on the ins of anythin' yet." She shrugged, not particularly bothered by her status as an "outsider". She was a trader. Or, had been. They were always outsiders. And she hadn't been there long enough to decide whether being an outsider was a bad thing or not. She'd find out, suppose. No use borrowing worry over it until she did.

"Never thought of a bath as "fun" before. Used to they're cold an' you get them over with fast as y'can a'fore you go freezin' your delicate parts off." Cold streams did not make for lingering bath times, nor did they inspire much mood for frivolity. Get in, get clean, get out, as infrequently as you can get away with. Well, she would say, that was one aspect of weyrlife that might be appealing. Regular bathing, in water that wasn't threatening to give you pneumonia.

"They got dragons runnin' about, ya'd think they would'n be so fussed 'bout a little dirt," she said with a light snort and the shake of her head. Really, getting all stirred up over mud? Sure, it got everywhere, but it wasn't that bad. They had baths!

Ah. This was a question she did know an answer to. At least, she knew the answer the traders all bandied about, whispered behind their hands.

"The riders get all bent outta shape o'er thinkin' they're bein' used like draft beasts. S'a good thing, though, elsewise traders would'n have anything to do, yeah? S'where I'm from. Tradin' caravan. We'd be out of a lifestyle if th'riders were more accommodating 'bout deliveries an' stuff. So I reckon I'm grateful they're a bit uppity about it, y'know?" The grin she tossed his way was lopsided, careless.

"Guess I'll find out for m'self at some point, maybe." Strange to think, that. She wasn't here as a trader. She wasn't here for business. She was a Candidate now. She belonged at the weyr, learning all the things she'd never been taught before. Probably should have been studying instead of exploring, but here she was, and she'd found something interesting for her trouble.

"How far off is th'mine?"

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