Worn in the Sole (Emeni)

[Slim]

Seeing why K'mar had rejected the most recent pair of prospective boots, Emeni picked them up and set them apart from the other rejects. These ones would need to be re-seamed. "Yeah, I'm gonna stay here," she said cheerfully. She shot K'mar a smile much more practiced at being friendly than his own had been. "It's good work, ya know? I get to bargain with traders and stuff, sometimes travel. Can't get any better." She grinned, but her sentiment seemed sincere. She really liked where she worked.

"Yeah, I'dalyn would be pretty different, huh? I mean, he's his father's son and all, but I'den always seemed to me so much more ... I dunno. Tough." She firmed up her lower jaw in an exaggeration of toughness, to set an example. Rather than an imitation of I'den, though, the expression really does more to highlight the facial features she shares with her father. "I mean, nothing against him. He was pretty good at being tough, from what I heard when my Pop talked about him." She smiled brightly.

[Invisible]

“I worked in records,” K’mar offered with a dismissive sort of air to him. It had just been what he was doing until he impressed. “It was not very interesting, but I was good at it.” As for travel he didn’t have to worry about that soon enough. “Well, maybe once Volsteath and I are free of weyrlinghood I’ll come speak to you about good places to visit.” He still thrilled at being able to say that. He knew it had to happen, but he had never imagined it would be as wonderful as it was. That Volsteath would be so wonderful.

He found a pair of boots that he thought might fit and pulled the first one on. It seemed ok so he pulled it off and began to give it a minute examination. “Some people are tough I guess,” he answered wondering how carefully he should be treading. This was S’lyn’s daughter and while rumor said they were not bestest friends that did not mean he should not be careful. “I think I’dalyn will make an excellent weyrlingmaster. He does not seem to be following in his father’s footsteps in method, but every man must make his own path.”

[Slim]

"He's too young to be a hardass," Emeni opined with a quick chuckle. "I guess he might get that way later, once he gets fed up with weyrlings." The chuckle blossomed into a quick bark of laughter. "'Cause really, who starts out a hard ass? Except my Pop." K'mar might have to tread carefully, but Emeni claimed a daughter's prerogative to say things nobody else dared to.

Her legs had cramped from the way she was sitting, so she shifted her weight off them and stretched across the aisle. "I could never work in records," she declared, making a soft 'tck' sound. "I can't keep that quiet for that long, I mean, you can sorta tell." She grinned at K'mar, who was stuck talking to her. "But hey, yeah, I can be useful. There's lot of places I've been you oughta visit, like Crom? Nobody ever thinks it, 'cause of all the mines, but there's lots of nice places in Crom. Once Volsteath's old enough to fly and, 'course, not eat people's shoes." She really had no shame in laughing at her own jokes, did she? Because there she went, doing it again.

[Invisible]

It made K’mar wonder, Emeni’s words, if this weyrling class would be enough to turn I’dalyn into a hard ass. He certainly had some challenging people to deal with. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this class made him crazy. Some of the others-“ He shut himself off and began to unlace his boot so he might try on the second of the pair he thought might work. Speaking ill of his fellow weyrlings was not a good idea. He had to not do that no matter how tempting.

At the mention of Volsteath the weyrling grinned. “I hope he doesn’t turn into a shoe eater. Surely he will grow out of it.” He really hoped that the brown would grow out of it. Having to hunt for boots constantly would be a nightmare. K’mar did not share that thought because he didn’t want Emeni thinking he was annoyed with her. She did talk a lot, but it saved him having to talk so he really didn’t mind. “Crom, huh? Yea, I probably wouldn’t have thought of that.”

[Slim]

"You have to think places like Greenfields," Emeni explained, closing her eyes and casting her own memory back over the places she'd been to in Crom. "It's just pure beautiful out there: they named it exactly right. And y'know," her eyes opened again, her smile brightened up, "the mines aren't so bad either. Not the things themselves, but the mountains, hoo. They're pretty."

Seeing he'd fixed on a pair of boots to try out, Emeni pulled her legs back in and made sure none of the other shoes were sitting out in the aisle. She waved at the space she'd cleared, indicating silently that he should try the boots out by walking in them. Meanwhile, she pulled her knees up to her chin and rested her head there. "You get along with your weyrling class okay?" she asked. She didn't let a trace of it enter her purely pleasant, purely small talk manner, but she'd noticed him biting his tongue about 'some of the others,' and she had to pry if she could.

[Invisible]

With the second boot laced up K’mar stood and tested his toes inside of them. Room to wiggle so he rocked back on a heel. The heel seemed sturdy so he walked to the clear space in the aisle. “It’ll be a turn anyway until we can really go anywhere. Until then it’ll be drills and more drills right here. We’ll have to give it some thought before then to decide where to go.” Up and down he went until they felt right on his feet.

Back to where he’d been sitting to unlace both boots to take them off. “Just going to look them over one more time,” he mumbled towards the floor as he began to do just that. Maybe if he didn’t answer she would let it drop? But from what he recalled Emeni wasn’t the sort to do that. With his head down he said, “They’re all quite a bit younger than me. They’ve got more in common with each other than with me.” It wasn’t his fault, you see? Neither was it theirs. It was just the way it was for ‘old K’mar.’

[Slim]

Indeed, Emeni wasn't the sort to drop a question, and she'd just been turning over the ways she could bring the subject up again when K'mar yielded and gave her an answer. Hearing what that answer was, she managed to turn her victorious smile into a more sympathetic one. "Yeah, I remember seeing a lot of 'em were young. That's gotta suck. Like being in harper class again, huh?" Her method of cheering him up about the situation: make jokes about it. She grinned to help the effort along as she waited to see if it'd have any effect.

[Invisible]

The boots passed their final inspection and K’mar tied the laces together neatly before he put on his original pair. They were good enough certainly for making it back to the barracks. He’d need to polish these new ones before wearing them. “It’s usually the young ones that impress,” K’mar said with a shrug of his shoulders.

Most people give up way before him. K’mar’s one of the few to keep trying and finally succeed. If he’d known the troubles an older impression would have given him he’d still have kept trying. He just might have been better prepared for them. “Like a harper class when you’ve been held back in your lessons.” Only K’mar never had been. He’d seen the kids who were. The ones who finally gave up and just stopped coming in. With his new boots set aside he began to put the ones that did not fit away.

[Slim]

"Oh, sorry, let me do that." Emeni gently interposed her hand between the boots he was trying to put back and the box he was trying to put them in. "There's a little art to it, otherwise when the box gets moved around the laces might get tied together." It was hard to detect the differences between the way she put the boots back and simply stacking them on, but evidently there were some. At least she was very quick about it, re-covering and replacing the crate in under a minute. "Ta-dah!" Already on her feet by that point, Emeni bowed.

Placing her hands behind her neck, she pulled forward until she heard the satisfying click of a minor spine adjustment. "F'ranth that's good. You should really go to the healers, if you're stressed about this weyrling thing, get 'em to do a massage or something on you. You've been dealing with the kiddies," her new nickname for his fellow weyrlings, "for what, two months or something? That's a lot of headache."


Without so much as a by-your-leave, Emeni put her hand on K'mar's back and pushed her fingers down on either side of his spine. "Oh yeah," she said. "You need it." In truth, she couldn't tell a damn thing about him from that brief touch on his spine, but K'mar seemed to her like the kind of guy who might respond better to a diagnosis than mere friendly advice.

[Invisible]

Quite ready to pick up his own mess, the way his mother had raised him, K’mar was at a loss what to do when Emeni did not allow him. Finally he just stepped gracefully aside and let her do her job. “It is not stressful,” K’mar objected with a frown. “It is merely an adjustment. I am quite well adjusted to it too, thank you.” Really he was. Wasn’t it obvious he was the most well adjusted person in the Weyr?”

“We should get those-“ Boxes. Moved. But Emeni stopped him with her invasion of his personal space and the whole touching. K’mar preferred not to be touched. “Umm. No. I am fine,” he assured the steward’s assistant with a bob of his head. “I’ve no need to see a healer for anything.” He’d seen enough healers to last him a life time already. “We should get those boxes moved.” There. He got it out that time. “Before I need to be back at the barracks.”

[Slim]

Oh, well - sometimes you guess wrong. Emeni watched K'mar for an extra moment after her check-up attempt failed, then - heedless of his apparent dislike for contact - gave him a friendly pat on the back. "No problem, just a suggestion. Keep it in mind, though, 'cause it does feel really good. And once you start flying, it can be necessary, or your muscles are going to be so fed up with hurt they'll just up and jump out of you." Snorting at the image, Emeni set off through the aisles again, back to the one where K'mar had found her. She only just remembered to grab her glow before she left the boot box behind.

"If you need to get back to the barracks, you don't have to worry about moving the boxes with me. I'll just leave it until one of the other guys shows up and I can draft him." She shot a quick grin over her shoulder. "And you can just owe me some other favor." Then they arrived at the correct aisle, and Emeni set her glow down to consider the box she'd been working on. Looking at it reminded her of her injured thumbnail, which she pressed gently to her lips as she pondered the task before her.

[Invisible]

Better prepared for the second touch K’mar did not flinch away from it. She was a toucher and he made a note to be aware of that in the future. The weyrling definitely was not comfortable around touchers. He would not be deterred from helping though. For her suggestion he offered a nod and a polite smile. “I will keep that in mind thank you.” She headed for the non-boot boxes and K’mar followed.

As much as he wanted to go back to the barracks, well, he didn’t really. It’s not like he had friends waiting for him. “No, I said I would help,” K’mar said in a firm voice. For all his faults he did not go back on offering help if he could help it. Which was why K’mar rarely offered to help anyone with anything. When Emeni looked at her thumb K’mar asked, “Are you sure you are ok to move these? If you are too hurt I can probably get them on my own.”

[Slim]

"What, you want to give yourself a thumb-beast, too?" She stuck her thumb out at him as a warning: it was still an angry red, but she didn't appear to mind much. Emeni waggled her thumb, mock menacing him with it, but she quiet after only a few wags. "I'm fine, though. It's just a thumb, not like it's involved in heavy lifting. Just so long as I don't squish it again."

To prove it, she stepped forward and grabbed the box again, though she only took one end this time. "This is the one," she said, leaning her cheek on it so she could peek around the thing and still see K'mar. "I don't need to move it anywhere, just get it down where I can see what's inside."

[Invisible]

“I’ve been cut and scrapped enough that I doubt a smashed thumb would be any worse than the rest,” K’mar said with an attempted smile. Weyrlinghood had certainly left him with his share of bumps and bruises. “I will try not to drop anything on your thumb,” he promised solemnly.

He looked at the box and then at the shelf it had been on. “So how many need to come down? And then go back up I imagine? I can help with some of it, but if Volsteath wakes up I’ll need to go before he tries to squeeze down here to get to me.” K’mar imagined that happening and nearly winced at the picture. The little brown would barrel through to reach his rider if said rider did not get to him before. Well, he just wouldn’t let that happen.

[Slim]

The thought of a brown dragonet squeezing his way through the weyr tunnels put a grin on Emeni's face, but that was mostly because she didn't yet believe it would happen. No doubt, if Volsteath actually did it, she'd be pretty upset about the havoc done to her stores.

But fortunately, there was slim chance of that, since Emeni's demands were not great. "Just two, if I'm any good at my job." She dropped him a flashy wink to indicate that she was, at least in her own not-humble opinion, indeed good at her job. "This one's blocking the one behind, where the stuff I'm looking for oughta be so long as no one's messed with the boxes. And seeing how heavy they are, I'm going to guess nobody wants to mess with them." She stuck her tongue out and crossed her eyes, cartoonishly miming death the way it's depicted by five-year-olds drawing stick figures.