[SRP] Excuse me, young man (Drina, Vicortath & Tonori)

[Princess_Feylin]

Drina had never taken the time to learn to cook or bake well, but she had always found the repetitive nature of food preparation to be soothing, and so she would go to the kitchens and insert herself among the candidates and drudges and help pare tubers or fillet meat or whatever other form of unskilled labor needed doing. It was a habit Vicortath disparaged, pointing out that it was beneath the dignity of a retired goldrider to work alongside drudges and candidates, but Drina never took her gold's words to heart.

"At least I'm getting out of the weyr," she murmured under her breath as she sliced a redfruit for someone more skilled to turn into a tart. "Look at all the people."

It would be more noteworthy if you spoke to any of them, rather than to me, Vicortath argued. Really, Drina, I don't think those people even know who you are.

"And that's the way I like it," was Drina's emphatic response. "Oh, bother!"

She had brought her knife down hard to underscore her point and cut the side of her thumb. As she brought her hand up to examine the damage she saw blood well up in the cut and then begin to weep toward her wrist.

"Bother!" she exclaimed again and looked around for a rag or she could use to stem the blood, or better yet some plaster she could put on it. No rags that were clean enough, and the plaster was on a shelf in a cabinet that she could barely open, it was set so high on the wall. She wondered if she could just keep pressure on it with her other hand until the bleeding stopped.

Drina, Vicortath sighed. Tell someone to get the plaster down for you!

Cradling her bleeding hand to her chest to keep it from soiling the food, she turned to the very tall young man who had been peeling the redfruit for her to cut up. She had to look a good ways up to look at his face, given the vast difference in their relative statures, but she was accustomed to looking up at men, and most women, too. She took a quick breath and tapped him gently on the forearm, hoping that she wouldn't startle him into cutting himself.

When he looked down at her she took another breath and said, "Excuse me, young man, do you think you could bring down the small wounds kit from the healing cabinet? I've cut myself and I can't reach."  

[Princess_Feylin]

Tonori's mind was basically blank as he reached into a basket of redfruit and peeled one after another after another. Eventually, he supposed, they would become tarts or something pleasant to eat, but it would be someone else's job to take the denuded redfruit and turn them into proper food. His job was simply to apply a knife to them and remove the skin, and then pass the naked fruit to his right for someone else to slice up. He did his job with efficiency despite how small the fruits were in his increasingly sticky hands. He didn't mind that he was getting sticky. That was part of the job, and he would have an opportunity to wash his hands eventually.

His mind was not so blank that he failed to notice that the woman to his right was muttering to herself as she sliced the redfruits he'd peeled. She was speaking softly enough that he couldn't quite make out what she was saying under the general din of the kitchen, but she seemed harmless enough, whether or not her mind wandered. And it was clearly wandering. He noticed that the slices she produced were far from uniform and she didn't seem to be paying a great deal of attention to what her hands were doing. She would sometimes even put down the fruit she was working on to gesticulate along with her too-soft-to-hear words. Of course, Tonori was also guilty of not giving his complete attention to the task at hand: he was watching her, after all.

He had just decided to mind his own business when he felt a soft touch on his forearm that, to be honest, he might not have felt at all had his sleeves not been rolled up. He set down his knife and his partially peeled fruit and turned to his right, looking a long way down at the old woman who had been talking to herself just a few minutes before. Her clothes were drab and brown, but not a uniform shade, being oft-stained and much-mended in a way that honestly surprised him. Tonori had not seen many people dressed so shabbily since coming to the Weyr. It was possible, of course, that she was new to the Weyr and did not know that even drudges were given clothes to wear if their own was no longer serviceable, or maybe she was far enough gone that she was unaware of the state of her clothing.

More important than her clothing, however, was the fact that she was bleeding, although she seemed quite calm about it. And she was doing what almost every woman Tonori knew had done for as long as he'd been tall: she was asking him to get something down that she couldn't reach for herself. Well, that was easy enough. Tonori had been doing that forever. The only hangup in this case was that Tonori had never needed the small wounds kit before, or any other kind of wounds kit. Not at the Weyr, anyway, and he had no idea where the healing cabinet was.

"Certainly, auntie," he assured her. "Could you point out where it is?"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Although her thumb hurt, Drina was not incapable of finding amusement in the extremely tall candidate's response to her. In her youth she would have found him too intimidating to talk to, being so very large and bearing clear evidence of being a fighter, but she had become more confident in her old age, no matter how Vicortath fussed at her. The gold had always fussed at her for being unwilling to make a spectacle of herself or draw unwarranted attention and Drina had grown adept at ignoring it.

He called me "auntie," she reported to Vicortath, tickled at this sign that he had no idea who she was.

Her fussy gold bondmate was considerably less amused than her rider about the young man's ignorance. I don't know whether I should be more annoyed at you or at him for that. He ought to know who you are because of who you are, but you oughtn't to dress and comport yourself like a drudge. Doubtless he would not expect to find a goldrider chopping tubers in the kitchens.

Slicing redfruit, actually, Drina corrected absently. It took her another moment to realize he had asked her to point out where the healing cabinet was, and that made her squint at him. He seemed awfully old to be new enough not to know that.

"It's this way," she said, beckoning for him to follow her.

Mistaking her gesture for a summons, her bronze firelizard, Flyn, fluttered from his perch by the ceiling and sailed gracefully to her shoulder, from which he peered up at the tall candidate and cheeped remonstrance at him, clearly blaming him for the fact that his human was bleeding and giving no thought to the fact that most of the time when she bled it was because of careless firelizards' claws, including his own. Having given the large human a good talking to, Flyn settled with his tail coiled around Drina's throat and glared backward at his foe as the two humans crossed the kitchen toward the healing cabinet.

Belatedly it occurred to Drina that she could have asked Flyn to fetch her the plaster. He was very good at fetching things, given concise directions and a clear mental image to work from.  

[Princess_Feylin]

There was something very familiar about trailing obediently after a short woman and being shown what bit of physical labor she needed Tonori to complete. So far, this might have been the most familiar exchange he'd had with anyone at the Weyr, despite the apparent oddity of this particular short woman and her feisty firelizard. Since she had her back to him, Tonori tried one of his scowls on it and was rewarded with a hiss.

Tonori quickly blanked his face, expecting that the old woman would turn around to investigate why her shoulder companion was hissing, but she didn't seem concerned. She just continued walking, her posture perfect and her pace brisk. He wondered if her thumb was hurting her a lot, and if it was still bleeding. He hadn't gotten a good look at it when she'd held it up to show him why she needed his assistance, and now she was carrying it in front of her, out of sight.

It wasn't long before Tonori could see and recognize the marking designating the cabinet as containing healing supplies, but he was stuck walking behind the bleeding old woman until they reached it at her pace, which was brisk but not nearly as fast as Tonori could move if he didn't have to avoid running someone down. Still, they eventually reached their destination and the old woman stopped and looked expectantly at the cabinet which was, in fact, a bit beyond her reach. That seemed sort of stupid to Tonori, but he wasn't in charge of designing the kitchen. He was just here to peel redfruit and, apparently, be tall.

Dutifully, Tonori located and brought down the small wounds kit. There were pictures on it indicating its function, but he was proud to realize that he could actually read the words printed there, too, in a neat, bold hand. It seemed those lessons the candidatemaster insisted on were actually - surprisingly - paying off.

"Can you do your own wrapping?" he asked solicitously.