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 Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2018 5:50 pm
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It was hard to say exactly when Ryah had become aware of Arcadin. He certainly did stand out -- towering height that he had -- but since she was often out on search (and everyone looked small from the back of a dragon), it had taken a few run-ins before she began to recognize him. The first time, she had gone to him for a minor injury after Threadfall when the healers were overburdened and drowning in more serious injuries. He had wordlessly and effectively healed her with a professional distance that put her at ease, sticking little pins in to a muscle here and there until the throbbing finally subsided. After the thrum of battle, having a chatty healer sometimes made her wish the Thread had bored out her hearing.
For awhile, she thought he was just that -- a healer -- but then another day, she spotted him in a lesson with other Candidates when she had returned from Search with Kairinth. However, it was a much more unexpected meeting that had caused him to truly register on Ryah's radar: herb picking. With Thread returned, it had become harder and harder to find wild herbs, and Ryah dare not chance attempting to grow the sunlight dependent things indoors. But, despite her status as a dragonrider, cookingcraft was still a passion, and the kitchen workers were happy to have a few extra hands. It had been there, wading through grasses and snipping a bud here or there, that she had run into Arcadin time and time again. They both preferred the early morning, it seemed.
Ryah had been the first one to start conversation, of course. The first few days it was about herbs themselves, sharing knowledge, assessing each other's picks, and somehow that had led to some related bits of information: how Ryah had learned to do this with her sisters from their father. How her stupid little brother had never bothered, the type to trample over a choice bloom rather than notice it. Somehow, a casual friendship had formed. Well, at least Ryah would call it that.
Now they often coordinated their herb gathering, especially with Thread in the air and her great blue Kairinth able to sweep them away, if that ever was necessary. It was easier to work as a duo. That was where they stood now, a few lengths apart, working their way across the cold soil in the Reaches. They had been silent for a time, but Ryah broke it (she mostly always did) and said, "You know I went to Western last Sevenday. I was running provisions; they were low." She had volunteered for it. The girl never could help making herself valuable, even if it meant taking boring jobs. "I kept thinking I might run into him, might see Lorrox in the hallway and finally get to reveal it: how his selfish a** had missed out on his sister being a dragonrider for three Turns now. I had a whole speech ready and everything." Bitterness lingered in the creases of her words.
"Of course, it didn't happen. Typical." She snapped a frilled bloom with added force.
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Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2018 11:47 pm
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Good. Good. Decent. Bad. Decent. A mental tally droned in his head as he examined each possible candidate to be plucked from the ground. Was that how dragons felt in the egg? Less intrusive, at least, with no Candidate trying to break them out. Arcadin's mind wandered as it often did now to the Touching, his first since arriving at High Reaches, enough so that he almost didn't catch what Ryah was saying.
It wasn't that he meant to ignore her most of the time. Sometimes people just talked, the way sometimes dogs wagged their tail, or flits twitched this way and that: like reflexes, but not meaningful ones. And so he let her talk, sometimes with something to offer and sometimes not. It was an odd but easy sort of give and take, which was how the woman had become tolerable over time.
"Who cares what he thinks?" That was typical of Arc's answers: disdainful of anything and anyone lesser. Not that he could blame Ryah for wanting that satisfaction.
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Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2018 2:11 pm
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"My parents," Ryah quipped.
She fell back into silence for a time, funneling her irritation into her work. And then: "He's so lucky, you know, just to have a family that cares about him so much, that wants him to succeed -- good patch for you over here, by that brush -- and my blessed parents will go to their graves still worrying if that little whelp is alright." It was plain that Ryah wanted that consideration for herself. "How many second and third and fourth chances has he gotten? Most people don't even get the second."
She moved to Arcadin's other side. "And now he's standing at these Impressions and, surprise, surprise, not Impressing. Because dragons can smell wherryshit, and they have a choice whether to be bonded to him for life or not. Lucky them."
And the mention of Impression, the girl regarded her massively tall companion curiously. "How it'd go, by the way? The Touching?" Somewhere in her diatribes, she always did find a way back to Arcadin.
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