candidate | jr.weyrling | sr.weyrling | adult | stats | Aneris Weyr
*
 Jurf flew ahead of his master, being as stealthy as was possible for a flit, scouting for a wall or something to hide behind. Pasol waited in a bush for the bronze to find somewhere. Two images flashed in his mind almost simultanously: the big three, Jurf's way of refering to Pasol's three sworn enemies, heading his way, and a small, crumbling wall which he could hide behind and launch his latest attack on them from. Checking to make sure there was no way the approaching trio would not see him, Pasol darted behind the wall. Jurf winked between in the sky a few meters away, reeapearing a few inches above Pasol's shoulder.
Pasol paused to review the plan in his mind, crouching down in the cover of the wall. There was no way Gerlot could manage to evade this one. There was no way Pasol would let him. Peering around the corner, he could see Gerlot and his cronies, two of the larger boys of the hold who were built more like stone pillars than people already walking towards him. At tap on his shoulder nearly made Pasol jump about a meter into the air.
"My, aren't we jumpy today," Turse commented drawly as Pasol whirled to face him. "Planning a prank?"
Pasol grinned. "How'd you guess?" he remarked and went back to checking over the plan in his mind. Was this in the right place? Was he absolutely positive that would be big enough?
After what seemed to be candlemarks of waiting, Gerlot and his companions were exactly in position, just as Pasol had planned. He pulled a few ropes... and a young woman found herself drenched in stale klah with three very live looking tunnelsnakes dangling from her shoulders. Pasol and Turse bolted. Her steely gaze had already spotted the pair, however, and whatever chance they might have had at getting away was thwarted. Minutes later as they rested behind a particularily large bush, the headwoman caught up with them, looking as angry as anyone had ever seen her. Pasol smiled weakly. "Uh hi, headwoman, did we, uh, do something wrong?"
The headwoman looked ready to explode. What was even worse, she didn't even yell at them. She was trembling with fury, and when she did speak, it was in that dangerously quiet tone she generally reserved for only the most serious transgressions. Both boys looked up at her helplessly, like two rodents cowering before the feline they knew was about to pounce on them. "Oh yes, Pasol, Turse," she hissed, glaring at them in turn. "It seems you have done something terribly wrong. I would like to see both of you in my office." She turned around on her heel and strode off. The two boys exchanged suprised and worried looks before following her meekly. Heads and eyes on the ground, backs slouched, the perfect pictures of humility and apology.
"What did we do so wrong?" Pasol wondered aloud, just loud enough so that Turse could hear him. "I've pulled that trick thousands of times and the headwoman's not so much as batted an eye at it!" He was about to say more when the headwoman, suspecting that her prisoners were talking, shot a steely glare back at Pasol, who kept his head as low as possible.
Turse waited until the headwoman seemed to be absorbed in her thoughts once again to reply. "Don't ask me! I didnt't even plan the prank to begin with, I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Turse hissed back. "Who was that girl who you hit anyhow? I thought you would have been going for Gerlot and his group with that sort of prank."
"Now that I think about it," Pasol whispered back after a moment,"I have no idea. I did mean for it to hit Gerlot, but he must have gone through the doorway too fast and we got the person behind him. She's probably someone important though, with my luck, which is whay the headwoman's going through all this trouble to humiliate us. Wouldn't do to have the Lady Heir of a nearby hold or someone like that think that the teens here were all like us, and we were incurable." He shuddered at the thought of what the headwoman had been known to do to boys their age who managed to get themselves into trouble that deep. But then, she wouldn't want to give a bad impression of herself to whoever this mysterious visitor was, so she might go easy on Turse and himself. Pasol shared his theory with Turse, who merely shrugged, the resigned expression on his face. He looked, Pasol decided, like the man who had murdered someone in the hold last turn just before he was sent away.
Sure enough, when the two boys and the still fuming headwoman arrived in her office, there was the young woman who had been the accidental victim of Pasol's prank. He dared not to look at her, sure she was glaring him with the same steely gaze the headwoman was. After a while, when no one said anything, Pasol stole a nervous glance at the young woman. She seemed to be lost in thought, her eyes unfocused as if she were talking to someone in her mind. Pasol's heart missed a beat. Yes... sure as day, there were the shoulderknots of a dragonrider. He had dumped a bucket of stale klah and half-dead tunnel snakes on a dragonrider. Involuntarily, Pasol began to tremble. He had done it now. If he ever saw the light of day again, he'd be exceedingly lucky. Turse, a quick glance to his right informed him, had noticed this too, but was doing better at masking his trembling. After a time, the unfocused look left the dragonrider's eyes and she looked down at the two young men in front of her. To Pasol's suprise, she smiled. "So you enjoy playing pranks, do you, Pasol?" she asked him. Pasol shuddered. He knew full well that the headwoman must have told her his name, yet it was still creepy that she already knew it. Pasol managed the barest of nods.
"I have to admit," the greenrider conceeded, I never saw that one coming. Nor," she added more sternly, "did the youth I'm sure it was intended for." Pasol couldn't help but wonder at the dragonrider's manner. He had completely humiliated her, yet she was talking to him like the hold's harper sometimes scolded him, gently, when he could not seem to remember this that or the other concept. She had something to tell him, Pasol sensed, or she wouldn't have spent so much time on him. He also sensed that, because of the nature of what it was she was about to tell him, she was extremely dissapointed in his behavior. For some reason, he couldn't bear to be dissaproved of by the dragonrider. He hung his head, the regret and apology in the gesture not feigned. "I hope," she continued, "that you will restrain yourselves from playing this prank so freely in the future, and, if you must use it again, do be more precise about it. Turse," she said, turning to him, "you may leave now. Pasol," she continued, directing her words in Pasol's direction, "I'd like to stay and talk with you for a few minutes, if you don't have to be elsewhere."
Turse shot Pasol a "good luck" look, before leaving. He probably, Pasol thought bitterly, would be running at full speed now, and wouldn't stop until he reached his father's cothold. Pasol noted that the headwoman seemed to have made herself less noticeable. Pasol was at the mercy of the dragonrider now. He looked up at her hopefully. She returned his gaze with a stern look. "Much as I wish now she hadn't," the dragonrider began, "my green has Searched you. I am here on Search from Aneris Weyr. We are in need of Candidates for our most recent clutch, and the Searching, I'm sorry to say, has been slow. If I could, I'd try to find another suitable young man at your hold but I suppose," she looked down the end of her slender nose at him, "you'll have to do. You will go, of course?" she arched an eyebrow at him as she waited for his reply.
Pasol's heart skipped a few beats. Searched? Faranth, after all he'd done to this poor woman- and she was a Searchrider, no less, she was still Searching him! He was of half a mind to refuse, simply because he didn't feel he deserved such an honor. But, he reminded himself, she had said the Searching was slow, and it would only be more of a punishment to the Searchrider than himself not to go. Pasol smiled weakly. "You are very kind to allow me to be Searched. Of course I will go."
*
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