...when there's a free for all (1/2)
Dragonsfall Weyr
Amber Hills Hold
Vintner Hall
Healer Hall
Hidden Meadows
Dolphin Cove Weyr
Dolphin Hall
Emerald Falls Hold
Harper Hall
Printer Hall
Green Valley Hold
Leeward Lagoon Hold
Barrier Lake Weyr
Sunstone Seahold
Citrus Bay Hold
Writers: Corrin, Duskdog, Iluva, Sia
Date Posted: 15th April 2025
Characters: M'kadja, N'dhavi, K'valas, A'garyn
Description: A few of the holdless reflect on the weyr’s largess-- and Akadja’s past actions come back to bite him
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 5, day 7 of Turn 12
The sheer size of the Weyr’s dining hall made Akadja feel like he’d stumbled into some lord’s Turns End fantasy. The vaulted ceiling stretched impossibly high, a grand canopy over a sea of tables-- enough to seat and feed an unimaginable amount of people. And the food. The scent alone was overwhelming-- roasting meat, fresh bread, rich spices that set his stomach clawing at his ribs.
It was his third evening at the weyr and it still shocked him how thrice a day (at least) a veritable feast was laid in the hall. Free for the taking. Food sprawled across the long tables in heaps, more than he’d ever seen in one place before. Platters of roasted wherry, steaming pots of stew, golden loaves stacked in baskets, and fruit-- actual fruit, glistening and ripe as if it weren’t the start of winter. People served themselves freely, piling their plates high without a care. No fights, no desperate snatching, no knives drawn over the last bite. The weyr even had drudges--servants, with clean clothes and full bellies--running to and fro, filling cups and platters as they emptied. There wasn’t a guard in sight. The sheer ease of it all made his skin itch.
Akadja squeezed onto a table that seemed to be designated for holdless like himself and took as much as he dared, half-expecting a hand to grab his wrist, to tell him he’d had enough, to demand payment, _something_. But no one did. Even when he took a whole heel of bread, a thick wedge of cheese, and a handful of fresh fruit. It was his. Just like that.
It was unnerving.
Naldhavi alleviated the creeping sense of discomfort, of existing in a space where he clearly didn’t belong, by watching the natives -- how they moved, how they spoke, how easily they filled their plates without care. And then he sat a little taller in his seat and mimicked them, taking as much as he thought he _should_ eat, if he were a weyrborn who ate like this every day, and not as much as he felt the nagging urge to take because of the fear that he wouldn’t get another chance. A couple of slices of roast wherry, some tubers, a roll. A nice, full but normal plate.
He could always get seconds. It was hard to convince himself of that, but he pretended that he believed it was true, because that’s what a weyrborn would think.
“There’s plenty to go around,” he told Akadja cheerfully, as if he actually believed it. “Don’t stuff your face too early or you won’t have room for more!”
Akadja snorted, carving into his roast with his belt knife. “I’m not sure that applies at _this_ table.” He nodded around there, where the others -- holdless like them -- ate in tense silence, some hunched protectively over their plates. A few had taken to the weyr’s bounty with the same eerie ease Naldhavi, but others still had that sharp-eyed hunger about them, the kind that didn’t just fade after a few good meals.
“If you’re too slow at this table, you’re gonna miss out,” he warned his brother with a low laugh. “Besides, who knows how long the weyr’s charity will last? I’m pocketing what I can, and I don’t give a wher’s ass who sees.”
“Suit yourself, but I’ll bet they let us stay longer if we’re not all shoving cheese wedges down our pants,” Naldhavi replied good-naturedly. That didn’t stop him, however, from giving Akadja a deliberate side-eye and stealthily picking up a hunk of cheese from the near side of his own plate as he seemingly reached for a roll on the far side, and slipping it up into his sleeve with a subtle flick of the wrist.
Kavalas' plate was no different from many of the other holdless at that table, though he'd already eaten himself sick once. He'd been keeping his head down when the conversation started, wanting to keep to himself as much as to try and forget about how massive the cavern was and how the throngs of people felt like a fist closing in around his gut. His clothes were really, completely clean for the first time since he'd stolen them off someone's clothesline forever ago, and his skin itched where he'd scoured it with soap. It was as if the turns had washed away.
Someone sat down with their plate next to him, and the appearance of a gold firelizard with her own ill-gotten snack had him turning and, uncharacteristically, snorting a laugh, "Shards, Aeg. Is that what you look like under that dirt?"
Scalp tingling, beard tidied into a strangely sleek topiary perfection, Aegaryn felt as different as he looked. Transformed in the bathing pools in scent and sight. “Some of me.” He replied coolly and elbowed in beside him.
Zolta was perched primly on his shoulder in all her freshly oiled and pampered glory, half a ‘dragontail’ or whatever they were calling them between her claws, and relishing the attention and curiosity of a queen's presence here amongst the cleansed riffraff. Intensely alert while they ate, her glittering also made Aegaryn's appearance stand out all the more. Mostly though-- it was his hair. His knife had sliced out whatever three combs had struggled and broken their teeth in, and although it was still long and probably not even, the matted bleached waves were all gone" and the result was thick dark curls that no one had seen in Turns. Until now.
Stabbing a piece of meat and shoving it in his mouth, a smirk blossomed as Aegaryn looked the other man over. “You look the same. Did you even bathe?”
"I did, but it felt so unnatural that I slapped some mud back on before I came in." Kavalas deadpanned. His fork speared a couple cuts of herdbeast that he transferred to Aegaryn's plate without a word.
Aegaryn snorted, his smirk crooking at the corners into a smile. “Mm. Thought so.” A third of his plate was more than most of the meals they’d had in turns, and his stomach couldn’t decide whether it was clawing for or recoiling from the sight of what Kavalas was adding. He shoveled a chunk in, anyway, swallowing it and the fleeting temptation to make it a choice down, too. As his stomach released, his knee pressed against Kavalas’, the only familiar thing about this. “You try this yet?” Aegaryn jabbed his fork at something mashed.
"Tubers with some sort of spice." Kavalas offered. "Dunno what, but ain't from Amber Hills. Suppose they can get it from anywhere, huh. It's good with the gravy, at any rate." He didn't shift away from the pressure against his knee. His foot pivoted slightly at the heel, inching it close enough that they touched nearly from knee to ankle. They were at the Weyr. The only ones that would take offense were sitting along the same table.
Sniffing it, though having long forgotten what they could possibly be, ultimately Aegaryn pushed the mash aside. “The Weyr could afford to have it shipped from the North, if it wanted.” He added, “I mean, it’d ruffle a lot of trading partners’ feathers into an embargo, but they could.”
He didn’t look up as Zolta tossed out her wings, taking flight. Instead he leaned back and signalled a disgruntled drudge with greater ease and less gusto than some of the others at the table -- “Two ales,” -- and no aggravating bursts of heat down his arm made him almost want to believe the healers here were right.
Two foaming red glasses arrived just as Zolta reappeared, the queen swooping a little too close to the startled drudge's head and onto the crowded table. Her pleased chirping was muffled as she stepped about, trodding through a dish without concern, caring only about depositing a fresh dragontail onto Kavalas’ plate and neatly nosing his hand in on top of it.
Aegaryn barely fought the surprise of his grin. “Good girl.”
Suddenly--
(cont.)
Last updated on the April 25th 2025