DCW: Stomping Properly

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 25th May 2007

Characters: Ayona
Description: Ayona works in the pouring rain, getting sandbags in the correct place.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 3, day 19 of Turn 4
Notes: Sandbagging begins

It wasn't often that Ayona felt her entire seventy-four Turns, and certainly not when she was working in her craft. Technically, placing sandbags was something masoncrafters were supposed to be experts in, personally Ayona thought it was a matter of experience rather than expertise. She placed the first of the second course of bags on the base course which itself was in a shallow trench dug into the compacted soil around the corridor into the lower caverns.

"I can do that. You can just supervise."

There it was! The reminder of just how old she was. There had been a time when nobody would have offered to take on her share of the work.

She lifted her head once the bag was in place and stepped up onto it before looking at the young man. Looked down on him, which she appreciated. With rain streaming down her face she grinned, stomping down on the sandbag to form a seal with the ones below. "I'm fine. You get another of those shovels going."

He disappeared and she nodded as the next sandbag arrived. "Always this way," she told the bag bearer. "Face into the water."

"Does that make sense?"

Every flood there was somebody who wanted the whole story. "Come and see me tomorrow and I'll explain why. Fold the excess over like this."
If she got everybody doing the right thing she wouldn't have to watch them quite as closely. "Corner across to here, forming a triangle, then back over the top for the next sandbag to hold in place."

She watched him and then went off to get another bag. The rain was incredible, almost solid sheets of water, being blown about making the preparations all the more difficult.

"Not so full," she advised one of the shovel-and-bag pairs. "Not more than half full."

"We'd have to do less," the man said, "if we filled them right up."

"Only people would struggle to move them and they wouldn't fit together as well." Ayona was sure she had had this very conversation at every flood she had been involved with. She slapped him on the shoulder. "And you've got a thousand or more to do, anyway, so by the time you get done with them you'll not care whether it was one thousand one hundred or one thousand two hundred."

"That many?"

She nodded. "It's a small entrance but it could be a lot of water. We're building a pyramid wall which takes more bags but we can build it higher."

"How much water are we expecting?" asked a youngster crouched down holding a sandbag open.

"You been around a hurricane coming ashore before?" somebody else muttered.

Ayona chuckled. There was something to amuse the baggers, anyway; telling tall tales to the newcomer to the Weyr. She bent and lifted one of the sandbags and got in the line heading the few steps to their wall.

"Are you stomping properly? You're forming the seal that way, you know."

The young man looked up and she recognised him as the one who was determined to relegate her to supervision.

"I'm doing fine with the bag, hatchling," she growled before he had a chance to speak. "And it gives me a chance to check on everybody."

That should hold him.

"Stomping _and_ facing the bags the right way," another man assured her as he jumped down from the small wall.

"Good to hear." Once she was sure they all knew their business she probably would move on to another group.

And another.

Until all the sandbagging was done ... or until the water arrived.
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Last updated on the May 25th 2007

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DCW: Stomping Properly