A Tradition for Dragonriders

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 5th March 2007

Characters: Ayona
Description: Master mason Ayona works on improving her room.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 2, day 19 of Turn 4

It was apparently a tradition for dragonriders to work on improving their living quarters – improvements involving a lot of work, like smoothing rock walls.

Ayona wasn't a dragon rider and so when she had been offered the choice of a handful or rooms suitable for a woman of her rank she had chosen the one in the best condition. She knew exactly how much work was involved in smoothing the walls of natural caverns in the rough volcanic rock and she had been certain she had many better things to do with her time. Even sitting down with her feet up, staring into space qualified as more interesting than chipping the high points off walls.

Her intentions had been good but the reality was different. She wasn't the sort of person to just sit, not for any reason, and soon enough she had found herself sketching a few ideas for improvements in her room.
She had even convinced herself to smooth some areas of the walls when aesthetically necessary.

And the floor had been tiled with slate; left over slate from projects around the Weyr so not the nice, even rectangles the stone appeared in when it was used elsewhere. Her floor looked more like a plate that had been broken and reformed. Still, it was even (as even as slate could be) and well laid, so she considered it quirky and an improvement over the rough rock that had been impossible to clean.

Another project had been reshaping the doorway between the room and corridor and facing it with a light coloured, smooth stone that contrasted nicely with the rough, dark, almost reddish volcanic rock of the walls.

But the current project was the one that was making Ayona regret embarking on the whole business of improving her living space. She was high on scaffolding borrowed from the masoncraft workshop, doing what she did every evening. Drilling into the rock of her ceiling, making a light shaft that would allow sunlight in the room, deep within the seaward arc of Dolphin Cove Weyr.

When she paused to relax her muscles for a moment she looked down over her room, still enamoured of it after the Turns she had spent there.
It was almost perfectly round, likely caused in the way Weyr caverns were usually assumed to be. An inclusion in the molten rock that burned away but not until the surrounding rock had hardened just enough to support its own weight. A ring around the centre of the rounded floor had been roughly hacked down to the lowest point of the bubble to make a flat living area, though little of that original work was still in evidence. Now the naturally formed wall surfaces stopped at an even height around the room, and below that the worked portions were dressed smooth into the appearance of deep skirting boards.

The floor boasted those carefully laid slate pieces in a barely noticeable wide spiral pattern. When the natural light could enter the room it should just add another feature to an already interesting space.

Though the master mason personally preferred the light of glows to the more mundane electricity she didn't have a choice in her room, far from the main caverns of the Weyr. In fact, few rooms were blessed with such amenities, and making provision for that and private bathing rooms was part of the reason she and the other masons were never short of work at Dolphin Cove. Because of her dependence of glowlight and because of her knowledge of just how long it would be before electricity reached her outpost she had given some thought to getting natural light into the room. She knew where the bubble room was in the cliff and knew there were few obstacles between her ceiling and daylight. Or starlight.

Where she should have stopped, though, was when the idea was just that.
Instead she had found scrap of paper and started sketching. Then done some measurements to check whether she was where she thought she was.

By that time her heart was committed and her head followed along; however, her hands and arms seemed to be the ones doing the actual work and right now they were protesting.

She would be through soon. Another couple of candlemarks work. Perhaps she could leave it until a restday so she would have the excitement of breakthrough into sunshine.

She smiled and started to disassemble the drill mechanism.

It was as good an excuse as any to finish for the night.

Last updated on the March 10th 2007

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A Tradition for Dragonriders