Gisoa stood nervously for a moment outside of her father's study before raising a hand to knock at the door. Her father hated being disturbed in his study, but this was truly urgent. "Father?" she called after a few minutes when there was no reply from within the study.

Silence followed her query and Gisoa began to think that her father was outright ignoring her. As she turned away, Gardolov's deep, husky voice invited her in.

Father was seated, as usual, in his deep leather armchair, leaning back and reading some report or another to the light of glows. "Did you need something?" he asked, looking up from his reading.

"Actually," Gisoa began, "I was wondering if I may have your permission to apprentice to a craft." Again, silence met her words. She knew very well how her father felt about female craftspeople, but she was determined to apprentice anyway. She gazed back at her father unflinchingly.

"I think we both know the answer to that question," Gardolov replied after a moment. "Do you really nead to hear it, Gisoa?" A smirk crept across his face, like some predator who had cornered his prey.

"I won't leave until I get the answer I want to hear," Gisoa replied defiantly, noting with delight the suprised look that fleeted across her father's face. He didn't expect any trouble from his docile, obedient daughter. He had a lot to learn.

"Then you'll be here quite a long time won't you?" Gardolov asked without looking up from his reading. It made Gisoa want to slap him. "It'd be just as much as waste of your life as being a crafter."

"Why are you letting Sarimin 'waste his life' as a harper then?" Gisoa retorted. She had made up her mind to get out of this miserable prison of a hold, and the most conveinent way she could see to do it was becoming a crafter.

"Men," Gardolov paused for emphasis, "become crafters. Women do not. At least not women I or any of my children spawn. Others may do as they wish, I find it just as wrong as a man on a queen dragon."

"And what if I just left? Would you give a sharding wherry's end if I just left this sorry excuse of a hold and died? Do you even care?" Gisoa screamed, turns of pent up emotions bursting free. All this time she'd played the obedient one, when her brothers got into trouble, she was never a part of it. Well she'd grown up, and she wasn't playing anymore.

"You wouldn't do that," her father replied, voice flat, as if reciting some well learned ballad recited once too many times. "You've never had the stomach to do anything but hang your head and follow orders. You've been a perfect daughter. You couldn't do something so radical."

"'Perfect daughter'?" Gisoa snarled. "I'm your idea of a perfect daughter? A cowed little child broken to her father's will? Willing to do any sharding thing he asks of her? If that's who you think I am, Father, you don't know your daughter very well."

"No Gisoa, I know my daughter all too well. She thinks she can make it out there as a crafter, she puts on a brave face and storms in here and demands of me what she knows she'll never get," Gardolov corrected her. "But you can't make it as a crafter. You were born to be a holder, and that is what you will be. A holder. Perhaps we will marry you to high ranked young man, if rank is what you hunger for, and you will be a Lady Holder. But never a crafter."

"I don't want rank," Gisoa managed, voice quivering with her rage, "I want to get out of this sharding place." Before her father could say anything, Gisoa whirled around and strode from the room, slamming the door with all the force she could muster.

   
How could he. Her own Father. Fathers, Gisoa thought angrily as she stormed down the hall towards her quarters, were supposed to nurture their children. Her's restricted them. That was just as wrong as a man on a queen dragon. She'd be apprenticed, one way or another.

Her father's promise, Gisoa knew, of marriage to a high ranking man was also impossible. Who wanted a Lady Holder taller than he? If she was taller than her mother and nearly as tall as her father, how tall would she be as an adult? She knew how Lord Heirs chose their Lady Heirs. She was not ugly, but she wasn't pretty either. And she was, by no measure, dainty. That was how she could describe virtually every Lady Holder she'd seen. Like a delicate doll, ready to crumble if handled roughly.

Closing her door in a slightly less heated manner than she'd closed her father's, Gisoa paused in front of her full length mirror. She was not ugly, the mirror confirmed, and she didn't have any extra flesh on her frame either. But she was still tall. She'd never marry into rank even if she were dainty, Gisoa decided, turning away from her mirror, she'd earn it for herself.

Flinging herself down on her bed, Gisoa stared up at the ceiling, eyes tracing the patterns in the stone as her mind mulled over unnumerable ways she might manage to get an apprentinceship. Each plan she came up with was dismissed just as fast. She was much too practical to think she could pull off an escape on runnerback. The nearest hall was too far anyway and she didn't fancy herself as a harper.

"Gisoa?" Gisoa recognized her brother's muffled voice through her door. She decided to pretend she was asleep. Better yet, dead. Gadrik opened the door anyway. "Gisoa, Mother says it's time for the midday meal," he told her, his tone saying that he didn't really expect her to come to the meal.

"Does she now?" Gisoa managed, not opening her eyes. "Tell her to throw my meal to the canines. I'm not hungry." She was, actually, very hungry, but she didn't intend to ruin her appetite by having to see her father's smirking face the whole meal.

"She won't be happy to hear that," Gadrik taunted, then artfully dodged the pillow Gisoa threw at him and ran from the room.

As soon as he was gone, a quizzical trill alerted Gisoa to the arrival of her flit. Cado was sitting on her desk, head cocked questioningly at Gisoa's strange behavior. "Hungry?" Gisoa asked, not in the mood to have any company, even that of her flit.

Cado told her through an image that he'd just eaten off scraps from the meal and that he was quite full. Stretching his neck out, Cado regarded Gisoa's stack of message hides for a moment and then looked back at Gisoa.

Gisoa stared back in suprise. Cado had never suggested she send a letter before. She hadn't thought of it, had she?
Cado chirped encouragingly and picked up a quill in one forepaw. "What?" Gisoa asked, getting up and walking over to her desk. "What are you asking me?"

The bronze raised his wings and chirped again, then showed Gisoa an image of a tall, dark haired young man whom she recognized as the healer who had come to the hold a few days ago. Suddenly, what Cado was trying to tell her dawned on her. She needn't escape on runnerback- she could escape on dragonback if she sent Cado to the hall and asked for an apprentinceship. Her father wouldn't dare challenge a dragonrider... would he?

Excited now by the idea of escape, Gisoa took the quill from Cado and pulled a hide to her, scribbling a quick request for an apprenticeship. She hesitated for a moment before writing that her father had given his permission but wrote it anyway. She would chance her father's rage to gain freedom.

Signing her name at the bottom of the letter, Gisoa rolled it up and slipped it into the carrying case she'd long since made for Cado, giving him the image of the dark haired healer as his refrence. Cado chirped and winked between, leaving Gisoa to wonder if her plan would work.

   
Later that day...