It All Starts Here

Writers: Estelle, Leigh M-F.
Date Posted: 27th September 2018

Characters: Firelloa, A'ten
Description: Firelloa supervises Arten while he's being punished for skipping class
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 6, day 11 of Turn 9
Notes: Mentioned: A'kua (indirectly), L'keri (indirectly), Bellarria (NPC)

**I got called out of class for this?** Firelloa looked from one
Journeyman Harper to the other and back again, before turning her eyes
on the other person in the room. Then she put her attention on the
Harpers again, hands coming to rest on her slim hips. "And why, exactly,
should I be expected to babysit?" she asked bluntly. "I'm a singer
apprentice, not a creche worker."

She was sounding a lot like her brother now, but she was quite miffed at
this point. Sure, she had chores to help out around the Weyr when she
wasn't in her singing classes, but something like this wasn't anywhere
in her job description.

"Exactly. You're an apprentice, and you're expected to do as you're
told." The younger journeyman sounded exasperated, perhaps as a result
of having to deal with a delinquent pupil for the last sevenday.

"All right, Trevonen," the other harper said, a soothing note in her
voice. "I'm sorry to pull you from your studies, Firelloa, but we're
short-handed. One of our teachers is off sick, I have to cover their
classes as well as mine, and Journeyman Trevonen is taking his students
out on a field trip - which Arten here doesn't get to go on, since he
didn't think it necessary to turn up for his classes yesterday. At times
like this, we all need to work together to make sure our craft duties
are carried out."

The boy, Arten, slouched in his chair and glared at them all. "Don't
bother. I didn't want to go on the stupid trip anyway, and I don't need
a babysitter."

Firelloa motioned to the lad. "He's making it sound like he'd be
especially difficult," she said matter-of-factly. "I could probably
discipline him; my brother's taught me a few things about that. but it
wouldn't go over well and I wouldn't like doing it. Have you considered
bribery at all?"

The journeywoman considered that. "All right. Firelloa, if you keep an
eye on Arten today and make sure he does his catch-up work and doesn't
get into mischief, then you won't have to do any evening chores for the
rest of the sevenday. And Arten, if you behave yourself, then you can
rejoin your class tomorrow and we can forget all about this little
incident. If you don't, then I'll report you to the Headwoman and I can
promise you, you won't like the consequences. How does that sound?"

The singer apprentice was taken aback. She'd meant if they had tried
bribing Arten, which would earn her a demerit for ineffective
communication when her usual teachers heard about the incident. Yet on
the other hand, a sevenday without chores was pretty tempting. Still,
her conscience pricked her. "Four nights, and extra tutoring for what I
miss while I'm doing this," she counter-bargained.

The journeywoman shook her head. "I can't offer you tuition on behalf of
my fellow teachers. But if you ask them for some work to do in the extra
free time you'll have, I'm sure they'll oblige." She held out a hand.
"Do we have a deal?"

"Deal," Firelloa said amiably, completing the handshake. "So what do we
need to start with?"

"He's got to complete the work from the class he missed, and write an
essay on why attending classes is important for his future." The
journeywoman glanced at Arten, who was crossing his eyes and sticking
out his tongue in disgust. "If he gets that done, you can give him some
lines to copy out - there are books on Journeyman Trevonen's desk - or
get him to help you with your duties, if you prefer. Thank you,
Firelloa. You're being a great help."

"Good luck," the other journeyman said darkly as he followed his
colleague out of the classroom. "You'll need it."

Well that sounded ominous. Firelloa furrowed her brow in thought, then
smirked to herself as she hit on a possible solution, and turned fully
to face the little boy. If her idea was right, she could appeal to
Arten's pride -from what she understood, little boys could be very
prideful- and make everything easier. "Are you going to let Journeyman
Trevonen talk about you like that, or are you going to prove him wrong?"
she asked matter-of-factly, and motioned to the homework.

"I don't care what he says." The boy pushed the papers away from him, a
sulky expression on his face. If the harpers could have chosen a more
humiliating punishment than spending the day being looked after by a
girl, he couldn't think of it. If he could just establish a reputation
as the bad boy of the class, then maybe they'd leave him alone...and he
wasn't going to do that by meekly doing his work.

"Well, maybe you should. If they think you're incapable of doing the
work, you'll either get hours of extra tutoring from a specialist every
day until you show them you can, or they might bump you back down to the
_baby_ classes to start over fresh," the teenager stated, picking up the
papers and flicking through them. "And these look easy. You'll be done
in no time if you just do it." She stacked the papers neatly and placed
them back in front of Arten, then held out her arm. Her eyes glazed over
for a moment, maybe three, before a blue fire-lizard materialized,
holding a small composition book in his front paws. He landed on her
forearm with a triumphant twitter. "Thanks, Tinate," Firelloa said
happily, moving her arm so she could properly kiss her pet on the head
and take the book.

Arten had been about to protest that he could do the work, he just
didn't _want_ to, when the arrival of the fire-lizard put all such
thoughts out of his head and for a moment, he forgot how much he hated
everything about where he was. "Wow! Is he yours? Did he bring that for
you?"

"Aye on both counts." Firelloa let Tinate perch on one of the chairs as
she rummaged in the teacher's desk for a charcoal pencil. Finding one,
she sat sideways in another chair right in front of Arten's desk and
opened the book. "Right then, let's both get to work, shall we?"

Tinate, unconcerned with mundane human matters such as homework, began
grooming his claws.

Arten reluctantly pulled his work towards him and picked up his own
pencil. For a few minutes, he pretended to concentrate on reading the
text, but most of his attention was on the blue fire-lizard. The move to
a new Weyr had not diminished his fascination with dragons and their
small relatives. If he'd only been near a location with warm beaches,
he'd most likely have spent all of the time he was supposed to be in
class on hunting for fire-lizard clutches.

Slowly, so he wouldn't be noticed, he reached into his pocket and
brought out a slightly squashed piece of fruit loaf that he'd saved from
breakfast. He broke off a piece and placed it on the corner of his desk
where the fire-lizard could see it.

Oh, what was that? It smelled interesting and sweet. Tinate started
stretching his nose toward the proffered snack.

"Tinate, what are you doing?" Firelloa asked, having felt the shift in
his emotions, and looked where her pet was staring. "Why the shards are
you trying to feed _my_ fire-lizard something that would make him
horribly sick?" she asked sharply, leveling a glare at Arten. "Tinate,
go play. Now."

The little blue creeled in disappointment, but did as he was told,
vanishing between to elsewhere.

"I was only going to give him a little bit," Arten protested, a guilty
blush rising to his cheeks. He knew fire-lizards mainly ate meat, but
he'd seen so many stealing snacks of all sorts that he'd thought it
would be all right.

"You didn't ask permission to do it, and I didn't give it. What you want
doesn't matter when it comes to someone else's pet." The apprentice
flicked her braid over her shoulder and rearranged her position so she
was straddling the chair and resting her arms along the top of the back.
(Good thing she had chosen to wear pants today.) "Now work," she added,
staring steadily at the boy.

"I'm sorry." She was right; he should have known better. Arten stared
down at the papers, fiddling with his pencil. Then, he had an idea, and
raised his head, a hopeful light in his eyes. "If I do this work...then
will you call him back? I won't try and feed him again, I promise."

Though pleased by the apology, Firelloa shook her head. "The only way
I'm going to call him is if I'm here so long, I need to send a message
to my brother to bring me dinner. Maybe if you had just done the work in
the first place, I'd change my mind." She tapped the papers. "And if I
have to tell you do to it one more time, your teachers will be hearing
from me."

Arten sighed heavily and turned his attention back to his work. Maybe,
he thought, her pet would come back of his own accord, and she wouldn't
send him away again if he was working hard. That thought cheered him up
a bit, and he began to scribble away. His honour was maintained by the
thought that he wasn't doing it because the harpers said so, but to have
the chance of seeing the fire-lizard again. Besides, he certainly didn't
want to still be here at dinner time.

Despite his resolve, he was not a natural student and it took a long,
weary time and much sighing and muttering before the extra work was
finally complete. He even wrote the essay, although it was more of a
statement of regret at being caught and punished than thoughts on the
value of education.

"Finished!" he announced cheerfully, setting down his pencil with relief.

Sadly for Arten, Tinate never returned. Firelloa wasn't happy about
having to keep her resolve about calling him back; she could have really
used the company in her boredom. **Could he have taken _any_ longer?**
the girl thought sourly as she picked up the homework and gave it a
once-over. What she saw gave her pause. "Look, you're obviously not
stupid," she said bluntly, "you're not incapable of doing this, and I
don't see any flipped letters or numbers. The biggest problem seems to
be you skipped out when you must have known you'd get caught and dealt
with." He _seemed_ to be old enough to know actions had consequences,
anyway. "So what's really going on here?"

Arten scowled. "I just...don't like going to class, that's all. It's
worth being punished to get a few hours to myself. Besides, I want to be
a dragonrider when I'm old enough. I don't see how any of this," - he
pointed to the work he'd just completed - "is going to help me fight
Thread."

Oh, dear. How naive. Firelloa wracked her brain for something, anything
her brother might have told her that could help. "Can you accurately
read the names of Holds on a map and the miles from them to other
locations, so you can visualize a destination that won't get you lost
between?" she asked without condescension or harshness. "If there's a
herdbeast shortage, can you do the math well enough to tell your dragon
how many beasts to take versus how much he or she will need to hunt
out-Weyr? Can you measure how much leather you'll need for a harness?
Can you read and interpret a Threadfall chart? Do you know how to treat
a Threadscore, or judge where you need to jump between in order to save
a wingmate? Can you _do what you're told_ on the ground or in Threadfall?"

Firelloa shook her head and put her hand on the homework. "It all starts
here, Arten. This is absolutely needed if you want to be a dragonrider.
If you need a few hours alone, it has to wait until all your lessons and
chores are done for the day, same as anyone. I'm sorry, but that's how
it works," she finished in a grave but not unsympathetic tone.

Arten frowned. He had a few questions about that - not least how, if
being a dragonrider was such hard work, a hapless drunk like his father
managed it - but he didn't really want to get onto that topic. "I
suppose... I could pretend going to class is just practice for taking
orders. But do I really have to know all of that? I want to be a
dragonrider, not the Weyrleader."

The girl nodded. "My brother's a wingrider; he would tell you the same.
He's the one who told me all that, actually. So aye, go to class, take
the orders, do the work, be prepared." She stood, tucking her book in
the nifty hip pouch on a belt she had purchased at the last Gather she
had attended with her mother and others. "For now, let's show Trevonen
and your other teachers how you did."

"All right." He sighed at the thought that since he'd done the work,
Journeyman Trevonen appeared to have won this round. As he picked up the
papers, he realised something about what he'd said and his cheeks
coloured. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult your craft by saying I
don't like class, or work like this."

"I'm a singer, not a teacher, so technically this isn't my craft,"
Firelloa returned with a shrug. "No offense taken. Just don't let your
teachers hear that," she added with a wink.

The boy managed a tentative smile - his first since he'd been marched
into the classroom for his punishment. "I won't. I don't want to end up
doing a whole lot of homework like this again."

"I can't think of many kids your age who would."

Last updated on the September 28th 2018

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