Snakes & Scorpions [Open]

Terror was the first thing that Danny felt when the terrible little beast slithered out from under the table. She'd just been cleaning the tables, minding her own business, when a little brown...thing appeared and sent her screaming. Or, to be honest, it was more of a squeak than a scream, but loud enough to scare the living daylights out of herself. A hand flew to her mouth--the hand that was holding the dirty dishrag, to be exact. She made another, slightly strangled, little sound as she stumbled backwards, pressing herself against the nearest wall as the snake crept slowly closer and closer.

Aeldan made a little gagging noise and pulled the cloth away from her face, casting a more than a little desperate look around the dining hall hoping for rescue in some form. The thing wasn't even a tunnel snake--at least, she didn't think it was. She wasn't going to walk up to it and ask or anything--that would just be stupid. The thought never even entered her mind to bespeak her father's dragon, and the beast had always been respectful enough of her distance not to impose, so he probably had no idea that Danny was fully convinced that she was going to die, right then and there, from a stupid snakebite.

But oh! The thing was starting to move away from her! Slowly--ever so slowly--she inched towards the door out of the dining hall. It took a solid two minutes to traverse the ten or so feet with the speed she was going, one hand--now free of the dirty dishcloth--still clenched over her mouth, the other clutching around said rag and pressing against her heart as if that would do anything to keep it from beating out of her chest or up through her mouth. She really, really hated snakes.

Slipping quietly through the door outside and pausing a moment before forcing herself to peek back around the corner to make sure the snake hadn't miraculously changed trajectories and decided to come after her when she managed her daring escape.

Peorray set her tray on the counter, briskly –but carefully- shifting the dirty dishes on it into the basin of soapy water at the sink. It wouldn’t do to be too hasty and break some through carelessness. Katila was doing well, but few things brought more ire from its oldest inhabitants than wasting resources. She could understand that and approve. She’d always been raised to respect and take care of what she had, too.

She blinked in mild surprise as the girl assigned to scrubbing duties moved to the sink, interrupting her thoughts with the motion. Well, it wouldn’t do stand around daydreaming when there was work yet to be done. The Weyr went through a lot of dinnerware and there was still too much of it out there on the tables. The sooner she helped clear it, the sooner the other girls could finish wiping down those tables and Peorray herself could steal a bit of time to visit with her son before bed.

She snatched up her tray again and headed back to the kitchen entrance, coming to an abrupt halt at the sight of someone backing toward her on the other side. Grateful for her height, she peered over the girl for with a confused frown. “What are we looking at?” She asked, breaking her silent observation. “Did the dirt in the corner finally come alive?”

Aeldan let out a very dignified squeak when someone spoke from what sounded like right behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she took a quick step to one side, doing her best to both get out of the other woman's way without actually going any further forward.

"Oh! I--I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get in the way," she started, tripping over her words a bit and silently thanking Faranth it wasn't her feet she was tripping over. Glancing around the room a little desperately, she couldn't see hide nor slimy scale of whatever that thing had been. "Um, there was...something under one of the tables. It--well, I thought it was chasing me, but I don't see where it went..." she trailed off, still looking around the room and running a hand through her hair--which, naturally, only served to make it even more of a mess than it already had been.

She turned back to the other woman, not quite making eye contact before her eyes skated off to the left. "There really was something there, I know there was," she murmured, hands wringing the towel anxiously in front of her. She vaguely recognized the woman, but couldn't quite put a name to the face. "I'm sorry, I...I don't know your name. Mine is Aeldan. I didn't mean to interrupt your work, really."

Peorray eyed her askance for a moment, taking in her skittish attitude, before favoring the girl with a reassuring smile. This one obviously needed more careful handling. "Peorray. And I believe you." Besides, she wasn't Aeldan's superior. If the girl was faking to get out of work or attract attention, it was no skin off her own nose.

"What sort of something was it?" She asked the girl curiously, casting her eyes around in search of anything unusual. In truth, the gesture was half for Aeldan's benefit, to avoid making her more nervous than she already was. "A big something? Where did you last see it?"

Peorray took a few steps in the direction Aeldan had come from. If there was a pest skittering around, she had no problem killing it for the girl. And if it was a particularly dangerous something, it would need killing before young children sat down to eat here.

To be honest, Aeldan hadn't even considered the fact that Peorray might not have even believed her. Convincing people that she'd seen what she had was the furthest thing from her mind, and it didn't take long for it to come to the surface before being shoved right back down again at Peorray's words. She gave a surprised smile in return before her eyes dropped back to her hands.

"Um...it looked kind of...well, it looked like a tunnelsnake. I think. I didn't really...get a good look at it. It...kind of scared me." Being embarassed of that fact, while a briefly entertained thought, was quickly thrown out in favor of potentially having her problem solved for her without her own potential death ( a little dramatic, perhaps, but nobody was going to tell her that if she never said it out loud, now were they?).

She looked back at the table she'd been cleaning upon seeing the creature. "No...not big, really. But--well, it wasn't tiny, but it wasn't dragon-sized either." There was a moment of wide-eyed thought as Aeldan thought about that one before her mind eventually wandered back to the original topic. "Over there, under that table," she said, indicating the table in question with her free hand while the other worried mercilessly at the rag she still held.

If Peorray had thought it was dragon-sized, she'd have been long gone. Brave was one thing, suicidal quite another. And, her mind insisted on noting, it wouldn't have fit under the tables at all. A bit of a shame- that would've at least made it easier to find.

"Hmmm.... everyone's afraid of something. Sometimes for no reason at all." Peorray commented absently as she crept toward the indicated table and tightened her grip on the tray she still held. It was meant to carry dishes, but would do just as well as a blunt instrument. She briefly considered asking Aeldan to run back to the kitchen for a sack to trap it in instead, but discarded the idea almost immediately. The last thing Katila needed was to set another pest free around here.

A flash of brown caught her eye and she started to bring the tray down, but instinct also had her bringing her feet up as something dashed through the space where they'd been. "Shit!" She hissed, a little embarrassed and angry that she'd jumped like that, and spun around to track the thing before it disappeared again under the next table.

"That thing's fast. Did it come out the other side? Can you see?" Was Aeldan even still in the room after the thing had made its move? Peorray, eyes trained on the table, wasn't willing to lose track of it to look up and see for herself.

She was going to have nightmares about this for weeks. It wasn't even a question. It was just going to happen. The sad thing was, this shouldn't have been such a big deal; calmly exit, find some strong, handsome man to kill the thing, and continue on her way. But here she was with Peorray (who was more than capable as far as Aeldan was concerned at the moment) and a motley array of kitchen utensils that really didn't seem like they'd be much good at all.

It took her a long moment to decide that Peorray's comment didn't necessarily warrant a response, and it was with a small sigh of relief that she remained silent. She watched worriedly as Peorray edged towards the table in question, leaning awkwardly to one side so she could see around the older woman. In case the thing decided that she looked like a much better target to attack. She squeaked loudly at Peorray's exclamation, more on instinct than actual fear because it obviously hadn't darted in her direction.

In fact, it had made a very direct course towards the wall, whereupon closer (slightly) inspection Aeldan spotted a small hole. "It--I think it went in that hole," she said. She moved closer, displaying a lot more bravery than she actually felt, and bent down ever so slightly to inspect the hole. "I see light. It must lead outside." She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not; chances were that if anyone else saw it, a dragon would shortly have a new inhabitant in its belly. Something, she found, that she wasn't too sad about. Unbidden, the thought occurred to her that the hole might be part of a network, of sorts; it could go down, and just come up somewhere else in the building, and then they'd have to go through the whole process all over again (Faranth forbid!). "What...do you want to do?"

ugh, I'm sorry I took so long! Truth be told I forgot about these poor girls, lol.

Peorray followed Aeldan over to the wall, mildly impressed that the girl was willing to approach it. For all they knew, the thing was still curled up near the hole's entrance and laying in wait to strike at the fools who came poking around. But if that hadn't occurred to the girl, Peorray wasn't going to upset the redfruit cart by mentioning it.

"Do?" She turned to look at Aeldan with a bit of confusion. They'd hit a wall -literally- and Peorray had assumed they'd be dusting their hands of the problem. Problem fled and out of their reach. It wasn't as though they could go in after it. But if Aeldan wanted to do something else about it, she'd do her best to be constructive here.

"Well, we've got a couple of options." She said slowly. "We could wait and hope it comes back so we can kill it." Except that might take too long, with work to get back to. "We could say good riddance and hope it never comes back. Or... I heard that ground hot pepper is repellent to pests- we could see if we could find some and put a streak of it outside the hole to keep it away."