Bath time. No boys allowed. (Salina)

[blueaid]

Today had not been a good day.

Had there been any good days since the whole world broke? It was hard to remember.

But Anayeli took solace. With Ptolemeth investigating whatever things it was that Ptolemeth investigated-- Wherry feathers and herdbeast hair doesn't taste all that different. Isn't that peculiar?![/color]-- Ana sunk down into the bathtub with a long, luxurious sigh. In the middle of the day, somewhere between running laps and doing chores and eyeing that stupid stupid chart, she found time to disappear and take a long-deserved bath.

Her hair-- oh, her hair! She was going to miss it!-- was twisted and clipped along the back of her head. The small, side tub was filled beyond capacity with lightly pinkened bubbles, the smell of distinctly girly things filling the air. A couple of old ladies were scrubbing each other's stretch marks in another pool, leaving the greenrider (about whom they were whispering) to her own devices. And she was relishing every minute of it. With her head tipped back, dunked down to her collarbones, she let hot water destroy the evil work of the long day and all the long days that had preceded it.

"No going back," she exhaled into the steamy air.

[Xinnai]

Salina walked into the steamed air, a robe belted at her middle. In the white silk, she looked positively angelic, no matter that the junior weyrwoman detested such a term. She wasn't fragile or delicate as the term described. She was a queenrider, for Faranth's sake!

The women across the way eyed the weyrwoman furtively and bent to whisper amongst each other, throwing glances at the gold's bonded as well as the green, as Salina made her way over to Anayeli. She approached with some hesitation. She and the girl had spoken but weren't friends.

This could be awkward.

"Excuse me, Anayeli, would you mind if I joined you?" The slight smile on her lips was regretful. "I'd rather not be with the mom patrol. Kind of...weird." And this wasn't? Oh well. She was trying at least, more than the greenrider had done since her tumultuous induction into the barracks. Still, Salina felt bad for the other girl. She was just thrown into something and she was not taking to it like a duck to water as their other female companion had.

[blueaid]

Since the beginning of her arrival in the barracks, Anayeli had made it a point not to be lumped in with the "girls." Genet, sucking up; Salina, the future of Pern; Anayeli, the little bitch. Those were their roles, and she filled hers to a tee. To have the goldrider coming up to her in the bath of all places was going to force her to do more than acknowledge the pale girl's presence. By comparison, all dark and steam-sunken, she looked like the devil-on-the-shoulder to Salina's angel, sultry to fair.

"You don't want them to loofa your stretch marks?" she asked with an unreadable tone. Was it meant to mock the goldrider? To commiserate with her? To tease? To deny? It was threaded lightly, as if the greenrider held some twinge of amusement at the prospect, but it didn't sound particularly inviting. It wasn't until she drew up her legs, the bubbles swirling around her, the steam stirring in the thick air, that there was any indication that she meant to let her fellow weyrling into the water with her.

With a half-wicked smile, she peered around beyond Salina toward the door, then landed her near-black eyes back on the goldrider with a new brightness. "You haven't brought that pair of boys with you, have you?" She'd have to know which pair in particular.

[Xinnai]

Salina couldn't help but acknowledge Ana's looks with an inward sigh of regret. Even beaded with the effects of the steam and water combined, and her hair tied back, the girl was still gorgeous. Dark and with knowledge of it, she managed to look appealing in a way that the slim and--however much she hated the word--delicate Salina could never manage.

"No," she answered, "I'd rather not." She wasn't going to rise to any bait the greenrider put in front of her. If it was bait. She couldn't tell; an odd thing for her usual innate sense about people. Which was off half as much as it was right anyhow.

Salina shucked off her rub and slid into the deliciously warm water, sliding to the other side of the small tub to give both of themselves room. Shard those women for taking the big tub. She would have loved to bask in it and stretch out her small frame to its extent.

"Hmm?" Eyes had slid closed in bliss. The bubbles, scents and the hot water was making the weyrwoman feel all fresh and clean from the tasks from the day. Ahh, shard H'gar. She hated running. With a passion. "Ez'ki and Z'dayi? No. They decided to go do something else." Faranth knew what. The men were as different from one another as she was from Ana. It was strange indeed that the three of them were friends, especially considering Salina and the bronzerider's...bond. If you could call something so much fun, yet so tenuous, a bond. "Why do you ask?" The question came across as almost sleepy. Even with this odd, bristly girl, Salina was finding it hard not to relax. Must be the bath.

[blueaid]

"Primarily because I don't wan't to be gawked at." Which was probably a lie. Girls like Anayeli don't exactly hide their looks, don't exactly give men reasons to look the other way. But, in the bath, she wasn't on-display, and sharing her bath with the goldrider was a far different thing than having the two boys in question on-hand. "But also because I'm a little surprised. You three seem..." She paused, a smile curving even more wickedly this time. "Attached at the hip." An intentionally suggestive choice of words, to be sure.

She watched the goldrider from across the short space of the bathtub, inhaled the soft scent of steam, and tried not to think of terrible things she could say to chase the girl out. She had a knack for it, for alienating other women, for either endearing them or destroying them, and she needed to mind herself if she didn't want to loose that particular demon. So, perhaps it wasn't an "easier" subject but it was at least one that they might have in common: "You remember, don't you? The... other... time? The way it was before?"

[Xinnai]

"Really now?" was Salina's bland rejoinder. She didn't seem to find the greenrider's choice of words at all concerning. "We're close but perhaps not as close as that." Not all three of them, at least. Not that the other girl would be privy to this information, not from Salina's lips.

Ahh, yes, Z'dayi. She wondered how many knew what was going on there. Very few. Very very few, from what she knew. Thank Faranth. She wasn't ashamed of the attachment, not at all, but she also didn't want the entire weyr knowing her love life. Again. She'd had enough of that.

The subject turned to a much more serious topic, and the goldrider responded by sitting up, looking at the other girl with clear, somber gray eyes. "Yes," she murmured simply. "I do. It's strange and awkward. But it's fading...It's almost like a memory of a memory, you know?" She was suddenly vulnerable, suddenly unable to put the feeling to words. It didn't make sense, but then, nothing rarely did.

[blueaid]

No more on the closeness of the three. Anayeli had her opinion on what was really going on between that bizarre triangle, but she kept them quiet, no more than the twitch of her lips to convey her amusement. The other topic...

"It... Is still with me. Some of the other ones seem to have worn the groove quickly, but I still feel lost." For a girl who could seldom be bothered to say hello to anyone not her sycophant, she was awfully forthright now. Black eyes met gray through a veil of steam, questioning. "Why do you think this happened?" To her.

[Xinnai]

If Salina noticed any of Ana's self-directed confusion, she didn't make any outward sign of it. She settled back within the water, sinking down to nearly her chin, eyes closing in the semblance of relaxation once more.

"It takes time, that's all I can say. I don't know why it happened, but...Something triggered it. Time doesn't just keel around like that. It happened. Something caused it to." A light shrug that rippled at the steaming water. Cheeks were rosy now with the accumulation of the heat inside the baths. "As for how it happened that two greens who were formerly bonded to boys are now with girls...I have no answers. It's not supposed to happen like that."

Eyes opened, a burning and direct steel that contrasted sharply with her languid position. That same sort of metal seemed to thread her voice. "I don't know how or why it happened. Was it fated? Faranth knows. You just have to get used to it. We're all trying to."

[blueaid]

"I wish I could." Frankness didn't always come easy for Anayeli; perhaps there was the steam and the quiet and the fact that no other ears could likely hear them over the splash of bathwater that she was so straightforward with the goldrider. Or maybe it was just the fact that, one day, they would move in entirely different circles, and the likelihood that this conversation could ever come back to either of them was so slim that she let herself speak her mind this way. Whatever the case...

"Get used to it, I mean. I wish I could. I love her, you know?" Obviously, Salina would know; she'd already had months and months to sort out the intricacies of Impression. The problem was-- Ana was trying to come to terms with a life-shattering event after the fact. And she wasn't coping with it very well. "But it feels like... like... were you ever in a crowd as a child? And you thought you were following along behind your mother, but then you looked up and all of the sudden realized it wasn't your mother after all?"

[Xinnai]

Salina felt a brief spurt of minor irritation. Ana said she wanted to get used to it, but was making no effort? It didn't make any sense to the goldrider, but to each their own, she supposed. She took a deep breath to quell that irritation.

"I'm sorry. I can't imagine how hard this is for you. All the rest of us, except Genet, didn't wake up one morning living their life and then the next, wake up in a completely foreign place with a dragon inside their head. I can't understand how difficult this is but...it's not so terrible, really, is it?"

She knew most dreamed of achieving the rank of dragonrider. It may not have held the same connotations now as it did during a Pass, but there was still a respect, a reverence, that came along with the title. The pathway had been opened up more fully to girls now. Now, there was a future for more than one on the sands. Now...now greens were a viable option.

"You do love her. There's no mistaking that. You'll only come to love her more. This offers oppurtunities, chances. Other than not wanting it...you've been dealt an incredible hand. If it were me, I would try to get used to it."

She wasn't scolding, she wasn't adopting a patronizing tone. Salina was merely doing what she did best: talking with a person as if any difference in the world couldn't stop them.

[blueaid]

There was trying to get used to it, then there was getting used to trying it. Anayeli suffered between both problems. She was very much her own person, and she had been the master of her own destiny long enough not to relish being at someone's beck and call. If it had just been Ptolemeth, she might have adjusted, but...

"It isn't so bad? Laps, chores, haircuts? What exactly is the point? To teach us to hate any rider that ranks us?" She splashed violently to prepare to scrub her face.

[Xinnai]

Another little shrug marked Salina's reply as she let her head tilt back, the very ends of golden hair touching at the water, turning it to a muted yellow. She eyed Ana with speculation, answering slowly.

"It's more to teach you discipline and hard work. Most weyrlings will be outranked, and they must learn to respect those who outrank them. It goes along with compliance. You have to listen to orders within the weyr and a wing. H'gar is getting us used to it now." Even she would have to listen to someone, someone who could quite possibly kick her out of the only place she had called as home. And wasn't that a happy topic? To think that the superiors she would have when she graduated were the ones who would decide what essentially happened to her.

Ana had it lucky from where she stood. As a green, everyone outranked her. But she could still be equals with people. Only a handful would outrank Salina. And they were the ones who decided her fate.

[blueaid]

"I've worked hard enough without needing it to be shoved in my face every five seconds. It's not teaching me discipline. It's teaching me defiance." Anayeli put more venom into her words than she really meant to, let them come out more angrily than they really ought to. She'd been having a hard time of it these past weeks, and she was growing steadily more disenchanted with the methodology employed in the barracks. Not that she could know, but she might have done well under I'dalyn; with H'gar, she was just short of a full-fledged tantrum.

With a sudden change, with the lilt of a little girl very used to getting her way, she added, "When you're a weyrwoman, you really should do something about him, Salina. Tell J'fel. I've heard the two of you had a 'thing,' might as well use it toward good ends and have that mean old brownrider put in his place." If revenge was a dish best served cold, Ana was talking about putting it on ice for H'gar.

Meanwhile, she scrubbed. Maybe she was born with it, but probably she worked like hell to maintain that complexion.

[Xinnai]

"It's just his way," Salina said, tone almost soothing, but not quite. She did not think the other girl would take it kindly. She seemed the prickly sort, really. Best to use caution. Instead, she came across as weary. Oh, but she was too.

However, the greenrider's next words jolted her from her distraction. "What?" she asked, voice higher than normal. She tried to regulate it and continued, leaning toward Anayeli, gray eyes intent. "I...haven't talked to J'fel in a while. A good plan, but it would involve talking to him. Which I haven't, you know, in a while." Her resolve had been shaken. She hadn't expected such a thing from coming so far out from left field. Tell J'fel to put H'gar in his place? Put her relationship toward something with good ends? She felt absolutely thunderstruck.

"I'm sorry." She pressed a hand to her forehead. She'd forgotten how rampant that rumor had been, not now that word about Z'dayi and herself was leaking out. Had Anayeli heard it too? "I wasn't entirely expecting that. Of course, the next time I see our weyrleader-" slight emphasis on our weyrleader; she wasn't involved with him...at this moment-"the next time I see him, of course."

[blueaid]

Catching on, her head cocked to the side, her fingers held soapily above the water, Anayeli asked, "Does it bother you? I didn't know it was a secret." Or she did know and just didn't care. Considering she was not above cattiness when it suited her ends, either is equally likely. "The girls were talking about it... oh, ages ago. Probably never happened now that I think about it, seeing as everything's all changed and mixed up."

She frowned around the fugue, then cupped water between her hands and washed away the last of the soap suds, tried to put the whole confusing matter out of mind in favor of a good bath and a little gossip. "It's okay, you don't have to be bothered. I wouldn't go near J'fel if you paid me. Or Ez'ki. Or Z'dayi." As if it only just occurred to her, she adds comically, "You have really bad taste, Salina."