Skinnydipping [OPEN]

It was warm, the sun was nearly hot, and Ellaira was tired of camping out here. The lake was all well and good, the weird eggs people had found along the lakeshore were quite interesting (though the decimation of their numbers would probably bode ill for the population of whatever had laid them), and the food was alright, but Ellaira had things to do! She was going a little crazy and she was more than a little dirty.

Well, there was a lake full of water.

Water was used for cleaning.

It had been niggling around in her mind for days, until finally she could resist the lure of the cold water gleaming under the sun no more. She went to a cove she'd been to before - screened by brush, with a number of trees and boulders protruding from the water, and with a nice sandy beach. Without any aplomb, Ellaira stripped down to her underthings. She glanced around, then shrugged; this was the beach and it was relatively private. She shucked those as well, laying them out in the sun across a stone.

Ellaira climbed up one of the stones, which jutted out into the deeper water in an outcropping. With a gleeful whoop more befitting of a teenager than a twenty-eight-turn-old mother of two, Ellaira sprinted down the outcropping, leaping off the edge and cannon-balling into the lake. She surfaced with a gasp, laughing at the chill of the water and the naughty glee of skinny-dipping. Time to get clean!

It was warm and beautiful, a fact that the Harper couldn't bring herself to bemoan after the lovely clouds of the day before. She was glad that she had come on this trip with the Candidates. It was good to get a bit away from her lessons- well, as such. Since she had been somewhat segregated from her classmates, she had spent an exorbitant amount of time sitting near D'ren and bouncing Tsereni on her lap. Tsuen's troubles, Weyr leadership, a young child- it all seemed to weigh heavily on the man who had become a father figure to Jada, and it wasn't very difficult at her to take at least part of that burden off of his hip while she was 'learning'. Poor D'ren, he was starting to list from the extra weight at his side. And she was learning! She had been made to understand it wasn't very traditional an education for a goldrider, but while Tsuen was indisposed, it was what she had.

Katila was good at working with what they had.

As she kicked her way around the lake, eyes darting from the shore to the glistening water, she collected a handful of small, flat rocks. Skipping rocks, she hoped, a fun little diversion. Here and there she would pause, tossing one out and counting the number of times the rock skipped. So far she was only at four bounces. It had been Kalem who had taught her to skip rocks. Kalem, who would have found the Weyr such an adventure. He'd told her in letters that he had hoped, before the Plague, he would be taken to the Weyr. He'd been 14 turns when the Plague had struck and the dragons believed to be dying out. He'd had the opportunity to dream about it, to see a few beasts in their heyday. How jealous he would be now!

She heard a whoop and a splash, and blinked golden-brown eyes out over the water, trying to see who was out there. Curiosity was something she possessed in spades! Her lower lip disappeared under her upper row of teeth, being pulled in fiercely as she followed the shore. What she found was a gem- trees and rocks, a pretty little cove... and a pile of clothing. And in the water, a- "You're naked!" she blurted out to the naked woman who was giggling in the water. Oh! That did look like fun, but what if someone saw! Modesty warred with jealousy on her face as she glanced back at the bushes.

If Jada had been practicing her manners, she would have excused herself and gone on her way, leaving Ellaira to dip in peace. However, Jada's manners were few and far between when it came to social interaction with a nude- err, new- face. Instead of stepping away politely, or averting her eyes, Jada watched the other woman with an open curiosity. "I'm Jada. And you're-" She racked her brain, trying to place the woman. 200 people in the Weyr, a whole turn to learn their names, and this one was a Candidate. Come on now, Jada. You know this. "El..." she said slowly, drawing the syllable out as if it were a nickname instead of a slip of the brain.

The water was cold (as expected) and rather deep. Luckily, Ellaira was rather buoyant from the little bit of extra weight she carried as remnants of her two pregnancies, and turns of running gave her quite a bit of endurance at treading water. She swam over to a submerged stone, diving down and grabbing some of the clean sand from the lake's bottom before resting on the stone, balancing on the tips of her toes. Ellaira started scrubbing her arms with sand, grinning in sheer tactile pleasure, when she heard a voice.

Her head snapped up with uncharacteristic sharpness - she'd thought nobody was around - and she pinpointed the source of the voice almost immediately. The girl was readily identifiable to anyone who paid the least attention to Weyr politics: Jada, the young goldrider. The woman on whose gold Ellaira's last hopes of Impression likely hung, for Tsuen's beast seemed disinclined to take to the sky here in the south. She certainly didn't need an introduction to recognize one of the three goldriders left on Pern, though it was (perhaps) a socially pleasant greeting. They had never been formally introduced, after all.

"Please, call me Elly," Ellaira said cheerfully, shaking the sand off of her hand under the water before brushing the hair out of her eyes. "My da was the only one to ever call me Elle, and it's far too formal a nickname for me." She flashed a smile at Jada, trying to be friendly. Apparently Ellaira being naked in the water hadn't phased the young goldrider - but then again, baths in the Weyr were somewhat communal, and no doubt Jada had seen naked flesh before. Ellaira wasn't particularly shy with hers. A body was a body.


"Would you like to join me? The water's cold, but the sand's clean and it gets the camping grime off your skin." Ellaira dove underwater again, coming up closer to the shore and holding up a handful of the fine white sand. She stood on the ground, digging her toes into the sand. Further out the lake weeds started, but here the sand was clear. "It's rather protected in this cove. I'm surprised you caught sight of me, really, with all the trees and outcroppings."

It was good to know she had started off Elle(y?)'s name right. Even better that the other woman was most likely taking pity on her and letting Jada refer to her by a nickname. "Didn't see you. Heard you." Jada told her, and gave her a wry smile. "Been skipping rocks while I wandered, so I've been tracing the water's edge." To demonstrate, she held up one of the flat objects as though the other woman didn't know what that entailed. Smart move. Right genius, you are. Her amber eyes glanced around the area, taking in everything except the naked person on the rock. It wasn't as though she had never gone to the public baths, but this was not a bath.

This was nature, and there could be... paranoia monsters, lurking under a bush or something. And if she had to run? What then? Other than the fact there would be tits flying in the breeze. And it wasn't as though Jada hadn't gone skinnydipping before... she had, in fact... but it had been dark, so no one would have been able to see the ass she and her compatriots made of themselves as they sprinted away from the paranoia monsters.

But oh, it was fun, and so very freeing. Jada's face twisted with the desire to give in. There was only so much trouble that could be gotten into in the short period of time it would take... it wasn't like she would be going for a long soak, this wasn't a hot spring and the weather wasn't warm enough that she'd need an ice bath...

And Jada was charmed by the fact that the other woman wasn't staring at her, stuttering, looking at her suspiciously, or shoving her away. Jada'd been getting rather lonely with the way that no one was quite sure what to do with her but the children. She may very much enjoy spending time with the young, but she wasn't one of them. "I'd love to join you." she said at last, a wistful note in her voice lingering on the breeze. So what was left but to actually do so?

She stripped down quickly, leaving her clothes in a pile with the rocks to weigh them down. With an embarrassed flush to her cheeks she darted into the water, shrieking with delight and surprise at the chill. "It's cold! Oh, shards!" Ah! Oh how she hoped to warm up soon!

Ellaira watched the goldrider with something akin to amusement and something akin to wistfulness. It wasn't hard to tell that Jada was reluctant - perhaps nervous, or afraid. Ellaira couldn't bring herself to judge the other woman for it, though. So many of the stolen Candidates had adjusted well, while others had not. If she hadn't spent so much of her life in the South, living off the land, losing everyone one by one and being shaped by the far south... would she be nearly so free? Loss had freed her. Pain had freed her. Sometimes she forgot that.

So she merely smiled when Jada gesticulated with a flat rock. Skipping stones was a favorite past-time of hers - and one she'd done quite a bit of this camping trip. Ellaira watched Jada as the young woman looked at everything but her.

"I suppose I was a bit loud," she said, rueful amusement in her voice and dancing eyes. "Privacy isn't what it used to be." Ellaira winked at Jada, hoping the girl took it as a joke, rather than a chiding comment. She tried to pick up sand with her foot and failed spectacularly, with all of the sand washing off of her foot before she could lift it high enough to be useful. Undaunted, she tried again.

As soon as Jada said that she would join, Ellaira grinned, and dove back underwater to grab more sand, surfacing with double handfuls as the goldrider dashed into the water with a shriek. She laughed gleefully, plopping sand on her shoulders and scrubbing grime away. "The sun's hot, though! Get clean and then we can sun dry, like grumpy old lizards!"

It seemed that both women were assessing each other, and it pleased Jada when the other woman smiled. So when she pulled herself up out of the water, dark waves moistened to straight, she spluttered briefly, wiping liquid from her eyelashes. "Privacy? I didn't know that was something that actually existed." Even before Katila she had been in such a close-knit family... and she spent so much time around other people... and now not much had changed. It was strange. Sometimes, the Weyr didn't seem too much bigger than the Hall. In fact, it might not even be! Teachers, students, journeymen and guests running amok at any point, families, and then the daily staff- kitchen workers and the like. She'd been told that there were less than or around 250 people at the Weyr!

She stuck out her tongue dramatically, pretending to gasp for breath. "Too cold!" she said sincerely, wrinkling her nose. "This takes crisp to an extreme!" Still, that didn't stop her from splashing about with delight, sinking her toes into the sandy muck at the bottom of the lake. "Have to confess, the sand is fantastic for the skin. Exfoliating, and makes you feel nice and silky." Not that Jada had to much worry about how silky smooth her skin was. No one was touching it except when she slept next to Krypth. Who was, incidentally, not exactly caring about how smooth Jada's arms and legs were so much as 'sharding colder than she thought Between might be' toes getting shoved near her wing joints.

Ellaira was right, however. Jada followed suit, gripping handfuls of sand and scrubbing at her skin. The sooner she was clean, she sooner she could- wait, what? She blinked at the older woman incredulously for a second, then gave an unladylike spurt of laughter. "Ehehehe!" The mental image of the two of them laying flat on their bellies on one of the rocks, bums up and wrinkled from the water... Ludicrous. And hilarious. And probably getting passed to Indivara by an amused Krypth.

"We're not old or grumpy. Can't we be young, nubile lizards? Doesn't quite have the same ring to it though."

"I came to adulthood in the wilds out here, with only a man and his green for company," Ellaira said, her voice touched with the barest hint of melancholy before she banished such emotion back to the past, where they belonged. "And now, well, you can still find places to escape in a Weyr so spread-out and odd as Katila." The beastcrafter scrubbed her arms emphatically, ducking back underwater to grab more clean sand for her neck and face. She came back up with a gasp for the cold.

"Young and nubile lizards?" Ellaira giggled at that. "I could get behind such an idea!" The woman glanced at the sand in her hand, pondering whether it was worthwhile to try and clean her hair, or if she'd just end up dealing with grit falling out of her tresses for days. Grit, she decided after a moment. With overly dramatic gestures, Ellaira spread the sand across her cheeks and forehead. She turned to Jada and batted her eyelashes.

"Don't I just look the desire of every handsome lizard about?" she asked, patting her cheek lightly in imitation of some of the more foolish sorts of women at the Weyr. "Why, I'm sure--" her comment was cut off as a clod of wet sand slipped down her nose to fall into her mouth. Ellaira sputtered.

"Pyeh! Ptu!" She tried to spit out the sand, finally ducking under the water and scrubbing her mouth with one hand, scrubbing her face for good measure before coming out of the water, laughing. "Sand tastes disgusting!"

Jada blinked at Ellaira, wincing. "I can only imagine that was fun," she said it lightly, considering. "Coming into womanhood with a man to try and explain the monthlies." she raised her eyebrow, giving the other female a look that said quite clearly how she expected that conversation had gone. Lots of stammering, Jada would guess by most the males she knew, possibly some handwaving, commenting on children, and proddiness (as he was a greenrider, he'd be a bit more familiar with dealing with hormonal shifts than most) and blood. Why had she never thought of that before? What it must have been like, being a woman mostly alone in a jungle with wild animals out to get you, bl- Oi.

"Of course!" Jada switched gears as quickly as she could, back to the discussion of their very nubility. Much more entertaining. She glanced around, then crawled dramatically atop a rock and stretched out. One hand palm flat under her chin, she looked at Ellaira and expanded her hand into a cup, then flattened it. "Every handsome lizard."

It was so hard to keep a serious face, what with her making herself ridiculous. So she didn't, letting herself crack into giggles. It only got worse as Ellaira choked and spluttered on sand. "You're supposed to wear it, not eat it!" she teased, gasping for breath. "Oh, Faranth, Your fa-hahaha-ce."

"Eh, I was Weyrbred," Ellaira replied with a shrug. "I mostly knew what was going on." It had been awkward, yes, though not for the reasons Jada was imagining. D'jen hadn't been looking forward to 'the talk' to his best friend's little sister - the man was gay, after all - but it probably was worse to have said little sister come up and confess her undying love and that she had 'blossomed into a woman.'

Jada's ridiculous imitation of a male lizard trying to woo mates - and her ensuing laughter at Ellaira's antics - slowly broke though the woman's irritation at sand in her mouth. Ellaira cracked a smile, then started chuckling, and finally laughing, a grin breaking across her face as she raked her hair out of her eyes and neatly swam over to Jada's rock, pulling herself up onto it and starting to wring out her hair with no attention for modesty.

"You should talk, Master Lizard," Ellaira said cheerfully. She finished wringing her hair out and tossed it back over her shoulder, sprawling out on the large rock in a manner not too far distant from a lizard spreading out its limbs to absorb the maximum amount of sun. "Feels good to be clean, though, doesn't it? Cleaner, at least." Ellaira wrinkled her nose and flashed a smile at the young goldrider. "I'm looking forward to a proper bath when they let us go back to the Weyr."

"Harper. An entire family of them, actually. Father, mother, one of my brothers." Jada's smile was wry. "Mum was too busy to tell me about the goings on, so I thought I was dying and ran away. Of course, that was aborted by me getting hungry and caught, sneaking into the kitchens." her voice trailed off, thoughtfully. "Food has always been my downfall. I am getting starved!" on cue her stomach rumbled, and she sighed, flopping forward dramatically.

She shifted a hair to make room for Ellaira, averting her eyes out of modesty, sliding off the rock to get some of her own sand, scrubbing vigorously at her arms and legs. She did rather want to get clean before they wandered back. She hadn't gotten naked just to sunbathe! She tried to be hasty and thorough, rubbing the sand through her hair and over her skin, even daring to spread a little over her forehead to get at some of the dry patches there.

"Being clean is wonderful." She was 100% in agreement with the other woman on that! "If I was able to Between yet, we could sneak back to the Weyr and get a bath tonight, not tell anyone." Against the rules? Yes. Did she care? Not exactly. "They don't want to risk her yet. But soon, hopefully, she'll be allowed to have some lessons."

"Mmm, food," Ellaira drawled, closing her eyes at the thought. She chuckled when Jada's stomach rumbled, glancing over as the young goldrider got back into the water to scrub herself off. "I wonder if someone will have cooked something up by the time we get back to camp. Hopefully." She rested her head on her arms and closed her eyes, simply enjoying the warmth of the sun and the stone as she dried. The light breeze was chilly, but the heat of the noontide sun kept the chill well at bay.

She picked her head up and looked over at Jada when the woman commented that she and Krypth hadn't learned to between yet. "Really? They haven't taught you yet?" Ellaira frowned. That seemed counter-productive - what if something happened, and Krypth was in danger? or Jada? Though a death or two per weyrling class was almost a given, the majority of dragons made it through the first dangerous months of betweening with no difficulties, and she had never heard of golds being prevented from learning to between. Panic, drunkenness, and exhaustion were really the main killers, so long as the rider had imagery training.

Or, at least, so Davijen and her brother had told her.

"I thought training for between was standard for all riders," she said at last. "Is it just because Nirnith Rises so rarely, that they're afraid to lose the one productive gold?" Regardless, it still seemed silly to Ellaira... but at least she could understand that sort of foundation, were it true.

Mmm, food. Jada's stomach quite greedily agreed with Ellaira's assessment. "I rather hope that they have. By the time we make it back, it'll be time for a snack, at the least." Jada dunked her head, rinsing her hair, and then pulled herself back out of the water and onto the rock. Was this what it might have been like, alone in Southern for so very long with almost no companionship? The sound of the wind and the water, one other person, and silence?

"No," she said, "They wanted to wait a bit before they taught us, and then the accident..." her voice trailed off. "I was told that overall, one in four Weyrlings die before graduation." her voice was dry, thoughtful. "Our class, and the one before, were doing well. Suppose they decided not to take their chances with their shimmering little prize." Oh, was that bitter? Jada didn't mean it to have come out as such.

"I think it was just a safety precaution, and it's not that bad, knowing my lessons are coming soon. I'm sure we'll get some very careful lessons, too. And once there are a few more Golds, it might be usual training for everyone. That would be fabulous, wouldn't it?" Her hands wrapped around her dark tangles, squeezing hard, sending water dripping.

It was strange, that the first woman in this place that Ellaira was starting to actively like as a person would be a goldrider. Growing up the daughter of a cavern woman, and later, with only a male greenrider for a companion -- well, Ellaira had taken to thinking herself far more akin to the green- and blueriders than anyone else. It was an unexpected pleasure, then, to find herself enjoying Jada's companionship. Maybe I should talk to women more often, she thought wistfully, watching the animated goldrider.

"I'd heard slightly better statistics than that," Ellaira admitted, picking at the stone with one finger. "But there's always deaths from learning between. My brother's class lost two of ten, before the plague hit." She managed to pry up a little piece of stone from the boulder, and flicked it out into the water. A fish jumped nearby, apparently thinking the little stone had been an insect of some sort. Too bad for it, though fish would have been a welcome lunch.

"It must be hard, though, being separated from the rest of the weyrlings like that. I mean, without between, you and Krypth can't take part in most standard Wing maneuvers, right? Not," she added thoughtfully, "that a gold would really end up flying with the fighters, if they're not even letting you between. Are they training you on a flamethrower?" Ellaira paused, and then made a face. "Do we even have flamethrowers?"

"They could have been trying to scare me," Jada allowed, and kicked at the water from where she sat, letting her hair drop down to dry. "Or Krypth, not that they did a very good job of it. She can't wait to learn to Between- the little fool is convinced she'll immediately do better then any dragon ever and never skip a beat." the Harper grinned, shaking her head. "You'd better hope that whoever you get doesn't have Krypth's ego, if it is genetic." Who knew? Dragons were a species all their own!

Jada frowned, leaning back on her hands and blinking up at the sky. "When we lost Iruvia and Unowth, I thought the sound was going to break my heart. Krypth didn't even like her much, but there was so much pain and loss, it was wretched." The sound had been bad enough, but feeling Krypth's sorrow at losing another dragon had made Jada physically ill.

She moved to watch the other woman flick the stone at the water, considering. "We'll probably not be with a wing. Not for a while. I'm learning to be a more organized piece of pencil pusher, though I think Tsuen and D'ren were relieved I came with good handwriting. And a flamethrower?" Jada grinned, shaking her head. "I don't think so. If we had any, they probably got left behind up North." It would be good to get to learn that though. Would make her feel more useful, for certain!

"Is it even possible to scare a gold?" Ellaira asked teasingly, a playful smile lighting up her face. Her eyes danced with mischief. "Everyone says arrogance and glimmer go hand in hand," she said, biting a flake of stone as if it were a metal mark and she was testing the material. She winked and flicked the rock into the water. It skipped once; Ellaira made a face. She was much better at skimming stones than that.

But she grew serious when Jada mentioned Iruvia and Unowth, wincing slightly at the memory. She'd been drawn into the gloom of the Weyr for a bit, sure, but she'd removed herself from it. Ellaira couldn't help but think about laughing and eating cinnamon buns with Z'ia in the sunlight, as untouched by grief as if it didn't exist. The tone of Jada's voice made Ellaira feel as if it was very clear that such a reaction would be seen as untoward. She held her tongue and accepted the next topic with relief.

"Pencil pushing is important, though," Ellaira commented. "I spend a lot of my time - more than you might imagine - keeping up records, particularly breeding and health records. Without that sort of dedicated focus on the domestics, the coops - and pretty much the entire beastcrafting operation - would fall apart." She pursed her lips. "I'm sure it can't be that much different for the Weyr as a whole. Each dragon and human in the Weyr must be identified and tracked, all the food, all the chores and projects. From what I remember of the North, the Weyrleader made the political and military rulings, the Wings and such, and the Weyrwoman the domestic ones. Seems a useful division of labor, at least."

"Krypth is nothing if not arrogant," Jada agreed easily, grinning back at the older woman. "But everyone has their weaknesses." Though not everyone liked to acknowledge them. And really, who could be blamed for that? Everyone liked to feel a little important.

She blinked her amber eyes lazily, feeling the sun slowly warm through her, spilling over her skin and warming her insides like a long drink. Pencil pushing was important? She supposed. It was, after all, one of Jada's better talents. "I was a teacher." her voice was growing thicker, and the sun seemed to getting brighter, so she blinked again, long and slow, watching the other woman skip a stone and wince.

"The last of the dragons was gone before I was old enough to really remember. All my 'memories' were stories, and 'do you remember' stories. I pictured them as so much more. It was overwhelming and underwhelming all at once. Of course, I was Stolen by Larrikith, and she's little. I'm afraid it may have ruined me." her lips quirked, amused, and her mouth opened in a sleepy yawn.

The noontide sun was hot against her skin, and would soon burn the parts of her that didn't see it often enough. Ellaira rolled her shoulder, which was nearing a state close to dry, and tried to gauge how long it would be before her skin grew reproachful enough of the sun's rays to punish her with a blazing sunburn.

She looked back up at Jada as the goldrider commented on the stories and reality of the dragons. "But they were so much more," Ellaira said softly, a hint of both surprise and melancholy in her voice. "Compared to the Weyrs before the plague... Katila is..." she paused, and shook her head.

"Katila is a shanty town compared to the Weyrs. I grew up in Telgar Weyr, and the horizon was the Weyr. Every direction, the cliffs of the Weyr sweep up to touch the sky, dotted with weyrs for dragonriders, unreachable except by dragon-back. It takes an hour or more to cross the bowl of the Weyr. We have not even three hundred dragons here, but a Weyr at full strength has twice that, and over a thousand folk without a dragon." She sighed.

"It's impossible not to be underwhelmed. This place is a camp for refugees, nothing more. Our fortresses, our strongholds, are in the north." Ellaira stopped talking, lost in memories of the vibrant life of Telgar Weyr, of the sounds and smells and scenery. She blinked, and the ghost of the Weyr was gone. "I do love the wilderness," she said at last, "but I don't know that it will ever really be a home I can take pride in."

"I've seen a few of the Weyrs when I was traveling." Jada smiled, thinking back to the large stone Weyrs. The towers of Fort, the smooth walls that had been carved to house more than three times the number of dragons that lived here at this 'shanty town'. "Yet strangely enough it was Fort Weyr I never got to see, even though I grew up in Harper Hall. So I stopped, on my way back from Ruatha."

She tilted her head, blinking at Ellaira as the woman spoke of where she grew up. "Never saw Telgar." But it was hard not to imagine it, as Ellaira described it. So many people, bustling about? So much life in one place? An hour, to walk across the bowl? It took an hour to walk across all of Katila, depending on your pace.

"Krypth never gives me time to miss home." Jada reflected. "I keep myself so busy, and I don't-"

She didn't miss it, not the way she should.

What was there for her, in the world that she had left behind? Her mother's life? A Master Harper, a teacher, a mother? What had she lost by coming here? Every so often she would have urges, was that all? She'd gained a partner, another piece of her, someone to drive her, to push her to be more than mediocre.

"Anyways," Jada shoved herself upwards, eying her clothing and running fingers through her drying hair, "I'm starting to get nipply. Nippy. Naked. Should we go see what grub we can scrounge up?"

Ellaira let Jada talk, listening to her voice and remembering dragons and people long gone. Home... her home was ash, and dust, and between. People always said glib things about home - 'home is where the heart is', or 'you make your own home'. Lovely, empty words. Everyone she had known, everyone she had loved, were dead these ten turns. Such devastation could not be recovered from quickly, or ever at all. She loved her children, oh yes - she loved them, and her work. And she had a house, and she thought of it as home. But Katila could never make her heart soar.

"Sounds good to me," Ellaira said, jerking free from melancholy. It was a habit, a terrible habit, to dwell on the past. But how could she not? There was too much locked in the past for her not to. The woman flashed Jada a smile and pushed herself up off the rock, rolling onto her hip before standing up, shaking her hair out. "I'm a bit peckish, though this is barely a hint of chill," she said with a grin. "Telgar is north! Some winters you needed snowshoes to get around outside." Ellaira leapt lightly to another section of the rock, and started walking to shore to pick up her clothing.

"What's it like, having a dragon?" she asked suddenly, looking up at the young goldrider as she shook out her shirt. "I just... it seems an impossible dream, these days."