Camping? What are we, five?!

Talian didn't like change. He never had, and in his stubborn mind he imagined that he never would.

He didn't like stupid things, either, but he'd come to accept them from Katila. This camping trip was yet another stupid thing imposed on him, and after the bad news of his imposed inclusion in this candidate class, he was too weary to complain about it.  That was the thing with Talian; he hated being told what to do, but he always did what he was told. The morning of the trip, he showed up at B'jin's door, possessed of quiet dignity and a little hint of discomfort, and quietly asked for a ride. A few months before, he'd have insisted on walking. Today, he was wiling to suck it up and ride, but only for Larrikith.

After arriving, Tal had quietly set up his living space for the next few days, grimacing all the while. Tal still felt a little out of place in his nice room in the healer hall. He hated sleeping in unfamiliar places. This was going to be difficult to say the least. He rearranged it over and over for an undetermined amount of time before finally realizing it was as good as it was going to get. He sighed, crawled out, and looked out over the water.

The healer had to admit that the south was beautiful, if nothing else. Tal had never been the sort of person to sit and appreciate beauty. When he looked out into the jungle, he always saw a hostile and dangerous place, it's beauty irrelevant in the face of it's menace. Today, tired and quietly nervous about the days to come, he noticed the beauty simply because he was too anxious to lock on to anything that required more thought.

He smiled, for just a moment.

Afterwards, he wandered away from the others and seated himself beside the water. He was within line of sight and easy shouting distance, but far enough away that his classmates no longer made him uncomfortable. Talian didn't have the benefit of any friends in this class, and even those he had were still somewhat awkward to be around. B'jin was certainly busy, and there was no one else that Talian cared to speak to.

He'd made no effort to introduce himself to the others. He wasn't bitter towards them, he just wasn't interested. He knew their names, of course, because he paid attention to such details, but he would have been surprised if any of them knew his. The only exceptions were those who'd come to him as patients or shared his last classes with him, but that was over a turn before. He hadn't exactly spent a lot of time in classes, either.

He sighed softly and tossed a stone into the water. His mind whirled, trying to grasp on to something interesting to daydream over. He wondered what B'jin had in mind for this trip. Undoubtedly it was some sort of bonding exercise. D'ren had been pressuring the riders to make the northerners feel wanted and more at home, right? Good luck, old man.

Still, Talian wasn't exactly unhappy. It was nice to be away from the Weyr, and everyone he cared to talk to was at least around. He may have have wanted to socialize, but just being close to his friends and occasionally hearing their voices echoing made Talian feel much more at home than any edict or gimmicky plan ever would.

This is the worst idea in the world, Ellaira had thought as she gave instructions to the other beastcrafters, torn between the satisfaction of having the chance to Stand once again and the anger of being forced to leave her charges in the capable hands of people she hadn't fully trained.

She'd kept her mouth shut - barely - as she sent her camping gear off with one of the dragonriders offering to carry Candidates and camping stuff to the lake. Ellaira had declined that particular offer. Though she loved flying and dragons, she knew that she needed some time to vent before trying to socialize with Candidates for the next several days. So, with her gear gone ahead and her thoughts in a riot, Ellaira stretched and began the long run to the lake.

She passed a number of other Candidates taking the long trek to the lakeshore, but before long Ellaira was alone with her thoughts. The path was well-maintained, with the dense underbrush trimmed widely enough to allow several runners to pass abreast. Small songbirds darted in the underbrush, trilling at each other. It was spring, after all, and soon there would be chicks in nests. Her thoughts trailed back to her own birds - the quail would be breeding soon, and they would have to begin searching for wherry eggs within the month.

"This is the worst idea in the world," she said out loud, with no one there to hear. With a sigh, Ellaira turned her mind away from thoughts and just ran, letting the drumbeat of her footsteps on the trace moss and the thrum of her pulse command her world. The run was long, perhaps twelve miles, but the path was familiar and the air cool. When the lake finally gleamed through the trees, Ellaira's emotions were stilled and her mind was at ease.

She slowed to a walk, kicking out her legs and breathing easily, her runner's high still flooding her veins. Ellaira glanced around; some (but certainly not all) of the tents were up. It was early enough in the day yet that Ellaira felt it was unnecessary to pitch her own sleeping equipment. Besides, she was no lover of tents: a hammock and a bedroll were all she needed, and they took mere minutes to set up. With nothing else to do at the moment, Ellaira started strolling along the shore towards a figure sitting there, tossing stones. She didn't announce her presence until she was nearby.

"Good day," she said pleasantly, stopping perhaps six feet away from the Candidate. She recognized him as a healer, but aside from that, Ellaira had no clue. It wasn't as if she spent a lot of time with the other Candidates; she'd been at the Weyr far longer than they, and had gone through preliminary classes long ago. Being lumped in with the other Candidates wasn't particularly pleasant, as she had other things to do... but, then again, it meant she was able to Stand. "I don't know that we've met - I'm Ellaira. I generally spend my time at the aviary." She shrugged and squatted, picking up and discarding several stones before hefting a flattish one experimentally.

"Kind of irksome to take us crafters away from our work to, ah, bond with each other. I suppose worse team-building exercises have been envisioned, though." Ellaira twirled the stone through her fingers, then stood and spun it out over the water expertly. It skipped across the calm surface of the lake five times before sinking into the water. She smiled. Skipping stones always made for a lovely pastime before running the return leg. Too bad she'd be trapped here for days...

Talian was so focused on trying to come up with something to daydream about that he didn't notice the girl's approach, and it even took several seconds for him to realize she'd spoken to him. He jumped slightly as the realization belatedly reached him and flashed his tawny eyes towards the girl.

Ellaira. He knew her name before she spoke it, but only because he'd memorized everyone during morning roll call. It was helpful to know people's names. He nodded to her, both surprised and thankful that she didn't seem to know him. The Weyr-wide outrage over his master's status, and later his suicide attempt, still had an aggravating way of coming back to bite him. Talian didn't like the attention, and he certainly didn't like answering questions about it all, though he figured he couldn't blame people for being curious.

Shards, though. He was feeling better these days, but he still didn't like to think about it too much. Obsessing wasn't good for him, he'd proven that fact time and time again.

"I agree," he replied. "Though I suppose I should appreciate the riders' apparent intention to make us feel more welcome." There was little emotion in his voice to indicate whether or not he actually did appreciate it. The fact was that he did, but found the sincerity suspicious at best.

"I expect the hall will do fine without me," he lied. His concern was obvious, shadowing his face in the form of a derisive wrinkled nose.

Then, hi eyes flew open in embarrassment when he realized he was addressing her comments out of order. Shards, so much for making normal conversation! It was his first candidate cycle all over again, and apparently he was in no better touch with reality!

"I'm Talian, by the way," he mumbled, pulling his knees up and resting his chin atop them in n effort to hide his embarrassment.

Ellaira's lips twitched into a smile as the young man completely failed to introduce himself, instead making polite conversation. She couldn't entirely contain her amusement, exhaling through her nose in a sharp burst of air just short of a snort. She crouched back down and continued searching through the sand on the beach for stones which might be appropriate to skip across the water, glancing over at him as he ducked his head and introduced himself.

Talian... where had she heard that name before? Suddenly, the memory snapped into place, of the young master healer who had been stolen and who had tried to kill himself. Gossip and mess, and nonsense she did her best to remain aloof from. The bright idea of stealing crafters had never seemed the most delightful mess she'd been in before. Her fingers found a pair of flat rocks split from each other, and she brushed them off on her pant leg before looking over at the young man again.

"Nice to meet you, Talian," she said with an impish smile, perhaps a little bit teasing over the fact that he had introduced himself last of all. He looked embarrassed, though, and she had no reason to torment him. He was rather attractive, after all, and she had a certain fondness for conversation. "You're healer-hall, right? At least we'll have someone here who can deal with the inevitable burns and 'snakebite." She sighed, then stood and skipped one of the two stones across the water. Four. Cruddy rock.

"It's silly, though, to have us all away from our crafts and playing like we're all friends. Forcing interaction is no better than stealing Candidates." Ellaira shook her head, feeling moodier than she wanted to. She'd run here for a reason. "But why complain, I suppose. We're here regardless. Have you ever skipped stones?" She walked the second stone through her fingers before proffering it to Talian with a smile and a raise of one brow.

Talian heaved a longsuffering sigh. "I wish she'd get some bruises and burns," he said in a streak of morbid humor. It would have made things more interesting, for sure. He often thought of the lack of good medical action around here, though he wasn't exactly the sort of wish for a disaster just to spice things up. He made jokes about it, but he never actually wanted anyone to get hurt, especially since lately it tended to be people he cared about. The most interesting incidents to date were his father's bad flight and his own wounded hand, which he'd stitched himself. That had been interesting.

He nodded in agreement at her opinions, but he wasn't quite sure how to respond to the final questions. Skipping stones? He raised a brow and looked questioningly at her. "Skipping stones?" he asked softly, as if he'd never heard of such a thing. He took the rock and rolled it though his thin fingers, but he couldn't figure out what she wanted him to do with it, or what she meant by 'skipping'. Of course, it would have made more sense if he'd been paying attention only moments before...or had a childhood.

"Have you never heard of it?" Ellaira shook her head at him, and crouched back down to find more stones. Luckily the sand was relatively littered with small stones in this area, unlike many of the more beach-like locations along the lakeshore. In short notice, she had found a couple stones which might do. "I used to skip stones quite a bit. It's something of a soothing past-time, when you're alone."

She sorted through her stones, then hefted one in her right hand. Skipping stones across the Weyrlake as a child... There were many happy memories there, tinged with more carefree thoughts than survival and death. They used to have competitions, she recalled, trying to reach a dragon or a landmark. It gave her a touch of melancholy to remember her family and friends, but it was melancholy from another life.

"Most stones will just plop in the water when you throw them," she said, not letting her memories distract her from the conversation more than a long breath. Ellaira chucked the stone in her hand - a small, rounded stone worn from aeons of the lapping lake. It sailed through the air before plopping into the water with a loud Ploink!. "But if you have a stone about the size of your palm, and flat, it can bounce off the water. You just have to toss it out like you'd toss a pie-pan in a game of discing." Again, the woman demonstrated, flicking the stone out across the water. It skipped five times before sinking under the surface. "Want to try?"

The game bore no nostalgic weight to Talian, and he did not recognize the value it held to the girl beside him. Talian tended to attach sentimental value to objects, but memories like this were so foreign to him that he didn't even recognize his own lack of recognition. He blinked at her a time or two, awkward but not disinterested, and nodded slowly. His initial instinct was to ask what the point was, but he wasn't so socially inept to actually do such a thing. He just watched in wide eyed curiosity and listened like a student in classroom before awkwardly lopping the stone into the water.

bloop.

It didn't even try to skip. Talian cocked his head to one side, eyeing the ripples on the surface with mild disgust. That should have worked, right?  Hadn't be done it exactly as she had?

Well that wouldn't do. He narrowed his eyes a bit and picked up another, but he immediately noticed that it was too thick. It had to be smooth and flat, right? Still silent, the healer got up and shuffled down to the water, where logic told him he would find the smoothest stones.

Ah, there. He selected the flattest, smoothest one he could see and lined himself up for another attempt. He narrowed his eyes and let it go, watching as it skipped a single time before sinking into the water. The young man and smiled and nodded. "I did it," he declared, as if he'd fulfilled a requirement, before sitting down again.

He looked towards the girl again. "I had never heard of it," he replied, answering her question so late that he found himself blushing again. "...I believe this is the first time I've ever visited a lake." He tried to remember another, but there weren't any true lakes near his home or healer hall...only little ponds, all of which he'd avoided on the off-chance that his less than charitable classmates might toss him in.

Watching Talian trying to skip rocks was like watching a quail try to fly. They were capable, but they just looked so full of consternation when they were doing it. Somehow she managed to bite her tongue and keep the witty little commentary from slipping out. Ellaira couldn't prevent herself from twitching lips and a quirked brow as the man very seriously approached the art of skipping stones.

"Good job," she told him after he managed to skip the stone once. Probably more of her amusement than she had intended showed through in her voice and the crinkling around her eyes, but that couldn't be helped, Ellaira supposed. She was being restrained, here! And kind. All sorts of beneficial words that should inform one of just what a nice person she was being. Besides, he was kind of adorably awkward.

"Did you come from dry lands, then?" Ellaira asked, taking a seat near him and tossing a couple malformed stones into the lapping edges of the lake. Ploop, bloink, splish. "I grew up in a Weyr, so there was always water nearby, and always people. I suppose it was an unusual childhood." She shrugged. "But our past makes us, right?"

Talian suspected that the 'good job' was sarcastic. He tended to assume that other people were either pitifully stupid or generally meant him harm, sometimes both at the same time; she hadn't given him any reason to suspect the first, but the lack of first only supported the second. Smart people were mean.

He didn't say anything, though. He smiled a little bit, hopeful that he was wrong, and looked back out over the water. "Fort," he replied. "But I don't want to talk about it." And he never would. Getting over his incarceration at Katila took over a turn of endless drama and one spectacular suicide attempt. It didn't matter how much better he was. He never, ever wanted to talk about home with anyone, under any circumstances. He didn't decline rudely, but instead with a decided lack of emotion. Home was dead. His voice was dead. That was that. The past makes us, all right

Still, he didn't want to be unfriendly. He frowned and picked his brain for an idea of something to talk about, but he wasn't any better at small talk now than he had been a turn ago. He would think of something, though!

He opened his mouth and started to ask her if she had any interesting medical conditions, but he immediately realized how weird that would be and shut it again. Okay, so maybe he'd gotten a little bit better.


He cleared his throat a little bit. "Aviary, you said? I don't know much about birds." He'd rather listen to someone else talk than talk himself, and he always liked knowing things, even if they weren't directly relevant to his field. He turned his eyes on her and smiled just a little, demonstrating that he was all ears.

It was strange, talking to new people out here. Though she (of course) attended Candidate classes, the vast majority of her conversations were with other beastcrafters, her housemate, her children, or those who were involved with her children. Talking to other Candidates - for pleasure, at that - was not something that had ever really crossed her mind. Perhaps that sort of ideological breakdown was what the dragonriders were trying to create with this forced interaction weekend, but Ellaira was still a little grumpy about it. Even if meeting new people was proving to be, well, interesting.

"Oh," she said softly, her avenue of conversation shut down by the emotionless finality of Talian's words. Mentally, she kicked herself. Of course he doesn't want to talk about his home, Ellaira scolded herself. Sometimes it was hard to remember that, no matter how well-adjusted they seemed, the vast majority of the other people her age had been forced to the Weyr, taken from their homes, and physically forced to remain. Dumped on Candidate Island, punished for trying to escape... it was probably painful to remember the lives they'd once had, as promising Crafters with families and futures.

Plip. She dropped her last stone into the water of the lake, watching as the ripples criss-crossed across the slowly lapping waters. The silence was vaguely uncomfortable, and stretching longer, but Ellaira wasn't entirely certain what to speak into that void. She let out a slow breath, letting go of her self-irritation, and relaxed. There was nothing wrong with comfortable silence, she reminded herself. Animals spoke with their bodies and their silence, and so could she. Before too long, Talian offered a topic of his own.

"I don't know nearly as much as I should about birds," Ellaira admitted. "But there's a lot of specialty knowledge that nobody in Katila knows. I'd have to be at Keroon to learn it all, and rediscovery is slow." She shrugged, then smiled at him. "I do a lot of the breeding for the flocks, and I maintain the flocks of ground birds, like the bi-winged quail, and the domestic ducks and geese." Ellaira wrinkled her nose. "Usually there's enough hands needing chores that someone else gets to clean the coops, but I'm always on duty when it comes to nest checks and incubating. Let me tell you, baby wherries are both loud and filthy. Thankless creatures."

Breeding birds? Now that was a prospect. He twitched a little bit at the thought. He'd never had pets before, so even something like a canine seemed daunting to him. Wherries, though? He had a had time even comprehending that people actually kept wherries as pets.

"I'd believe it," he muttered, wrinkling his nose at the thought. He imagined they probably bit and squawked. He wondered if the damn things were worth it for the taste. He wondered for a moment why anyone would want to be involved with birds, but he remembered his own numerous encounters with unwanted body fluids and almost smiled. He could handle any combination of blood, sweat, vomit and urine, and most people seemed to think that was some sort of special feat. It was nothing to him, and if this girl could handle disgusting baby wherries, well...cool.

"I had to take some general classes when I was small. We talked about animals a little bit...red-blooded versus green-blooded and all that...but it wasn't relevant to what I was actually going to school for, so I didn't get to take many." He knew most people didn't go through the strenuous focus he had, but he didn't want to make assumptions. "...I haven't seen many animals, but I've seen many plants here that I'm unfamiliar with. I've been collecting them."

He intended to make a journal and present it at the healer hall if he ever got home. That would be a nice boost to his otherwise-shattered career. Of course, now he was running the deadly risk of Impressing a dragon and really losing everything, so he didn't mention it. It did give him an idea, however. "...I'm trying to develop new painkillers. If you're ever hurt and numbweed doesn't take, I'd be willing to try them o-..."

Shards.

He spun around quickly. "Not that I'm trying to experiment on you! I just...I just..."

His face was on fire.

"I was an apprentice for a few turns at Telgar Weyr, but..." Ellaira's voice trailed off. She shrugged one shoulder, as if she didn't care. "We came south when I was only twelve. I never had a chance to take any classes. Everything I've learned has been on the run, either working under one of the beastcrafters or on my own." It was frustrating, not having the base of knowledge that she knew existed to pursue her own studies. The Beastcraft Hall at Keroon was famous - enough so that she had been planning to go there, even as a young girl. But those plans had turned to dust. She would survive. She would succeed.

"You do systematics, too?" Ellaira asked, excitement flooding her voice at the topic. "I've never done plant illustration, but I'm getting better at birds. There's, oh, hundreds of species of darters in the jungles - and if I ever get permission to take a runner out on a journey, there's so many other places to go." She grinned. "I have an herb garden with some quite odd things in it, if you'd like to see if any of it is new. And if I ever do get to travel, you're welcome to come with me."

Ellaira had always been somewhat of a perfectionist about her illustrations - they were used in breeding records, after all, so she was quite good at drawing a variety of avian species, in all their different poses. Drawing wild avians was much more of a challenge, but it was amazing to find something nobody had ever named, illustrate it, describe it, and give it a name and a family. It felt, to her, like an extension of some great breeding program, cataloging every type of bird out there, every breed, every form. An endless task, and a consuming one.

And oh, she couldn't help it. Ellaira laughed out loud at Talian's embarrassed expression, a gay and girlish sound. "Don't be silly! Most of the time, I don't use numbweed at all. I need to be able to feel when I'm working, and feeling pain is better than feeling nothing at all. If you could figure out a way to take away pain without taking away all sensation..." Her voice trailed off again. "Shards, that would be amazing. If you ever need to test something, I and my birds are at your service."

Talian listened quietly, more than happy to listen to her words but hesitant to accept the offers of travel and companionship without further thought. Talian trusted very few people, though her offer for the purpose of drug-testing was both surprising and welcome. Tal expected he'd be testing them on himself forever! It was a kind offer, and perhaps reckless, but Tal didn't imagine his ethics would actually let him take her up on it anyhow.

"Thank you," the healer purred softly. He was more relaxed now, though he couldn't put his finger on why. Maybe he'd just needed to get his worries out of his system. This was a more subtle method than he usually employed, but he found that he liked it. He sighed once more before slowly peeling himself from the ground.

"I'll think about it," he said softly,  referring to nothing in particular, and yet all of it at once. He offered Ellaira a modest, almost embarrassed smile before picking his way over the branches and stones littering the lakeside and looking back to the camp. "I need to get some lunch, I think. Thank you. It was...nice to meet you."

Was it ever nice to meet anyone in this place? Maybe. Somehow, and against his normal assumptions, he felt somehow better.