Show & Tell
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, Iluva
Date Posted: 20th September 2025
Characters: Q'helias, Tiyo
Description: Tiyo shares her thoughts on the book Qelhelias lent her
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 6, day 20 of Turn 12
Notes: Mentioned: Zaphare, Nosarre, Q'vettan
About a sevenday later Tiyo spotted Qelhelias’ shiny dark curls in the low light of the common area. It was not a particularly crowded evening and there were a generous number of open seats as well as belongings left strewn about ahead of inspection. She slowed in her stride, but hardly batted an eye to any of the chaos.
Instead she retreated to the girls’ side of the barracks and grabbed the book still sitting on her trunk. It certainly hadn’t wowed her, that’s for sure, and she specifically waited until the other candidate was sitting and minding his own business before she could return his carefully hand-picked reading material.
She strode easily through the errant clusters of chairs to where he sat, pivoting on the balls of her feet like a feline as she paused beside him, then, leaning down, laid the book squarely in Qelhelias’ lap.
“Hi,” Tiyo greeted coolly. Her dark hair fluttered loose as her amber eyes slid to his eye level, veiled accusations sparkling in them. “This was awful. So, thank you for that.”
Caught dozing while waiting for a friend, Qelhelias startled slightly at the interruption, the sudden weight-- but he knew her instantly by her voice, though the tone was somewhat of a surprise. He roused, dark eyes blinking open to meet amber, a hint of dry amusement tugging at the curve of his lips as he took in the girl hovering above him with all the feline poise of someone delivering judgement and challenge in the same breath.
“Awful?” he echoed mildly, as though tasting the word. “That’s a strong review. I’ll have to send word to the troupe. They’ll be devastated."
It doesn’t sound like _he_ was devastated. More intrigued. “Might I know what made it so very awful? Was it the utterly improbable plot? Were the jokes too bawdy to count as clever for you? Was it awful because you hated every word of it, or awful because you couldn’t stop reading even while hating every word of it?”
Tiyo rested a hand on the back of the chair beside him, making sure his eyes were open before she rolled hers. “First of all, I'm telling _you_ it was awful. You can devastate the troupe however you like.” She reminded him, tone unchanged. Her long fingers drummed idly along the smooth wood, smiling not because she found the questions particularly funny, but because he clearly did. She also hadn't realized he was asleep when she approached, and for him to respond with humor and lightness only worsened the lingering suspicion he'd recommended it just to irritate or mess with her.
“Does it matter? I wasn't looking to draft a Harper critique. I just wanted something worth enjoying. Instead,” her fingers tapped the book still resting on his lap, once, twice, “- there was that steaming pile of a plot. The prose was written like two apprentices trying to out-cliche each other the whole time. I won't get those nights back, Qelhelias.” She tilted her head, that not-quite-smile sharpening. “So… the last one. Awful because I couldn't stop. _Why_ did you recommend that?”
Qelhelias absently smoothed the book where she’d tapped it, as though to soothe the maligned thing. “I recommended it,” he said after a beat, “because when I read it, I laughed. Not at every line, true, but enough to carry me through a rough evening. I thought it might do the same for you. Plus, doesn’t catching all the cliches give you a lovely warm feeling of intellectual superiority?”
“I suppose.” It was her turn to flash him some dry amusement. “But I guess not everyone needs that many reminders. And anyway, after so many it just starts to feel like the author’s overcompensating for something, don’t you find?”
He mimed a hand to his heart as though stung by her judgement, but his dark eyes danced. “Overcompensating? Perhaps, but did you stop to consider that it was maybe meant as satire? An irreverent send-up of the classics through the ages?”
“Ah, see. Now, I bet that was it.” The fingers on Tiyo's free hand snapped casually at her side, as if that fact had just been made glaringly obvious.
“It _was_ irreverent. But that’s not really the problem - it’s the lack of passion. Why include that many clichés when they don’t even serve the narrative - just to prove you can?” She wrinkled her nose. “It just felt like someone showing off on those pages, not trying to say anything. I kept expecting a pay-off and both of you set me up.” Arching a brow expectantly, pointedly silent for a moment, she then tapped the book lightly. “Awful.”
Qelhelias chuckled. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I never meant to set you up-- except with an enjoyable diversion for the evening. I’ll have to choose better next time, if there is one.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Do you have a book you would recommend _me_? I’m curious what you actually enjoy when you’re not reading threadfall casualty reports.”
“I'm not sure,” Tiyo confessed slowly, folding her arms and shifting her weight idly between her two bare feet, not impatient but thinking. “I like everything, though this would be a good time for some revenge...” She looked him over in quiet appraisal, wickedness filtering into her smile. “And I definitely wouldn't want to recommend anything you'd find unpleasant, would I? What do you like to read? Or is it always _this_ sort of thing?”
“No, it’s not always _this_ sort of thing,” he echoed, mimicking her emphasis, the trace of his laughter still on his lips. “I like a good variety really. Histories and biographies are my go to, but I enjoy high fiction as well, or something light when the mood calls for it. Really though-- I’d be interested in reading anything you _love_. Consider it my penance for ‘setting you up.’”
Spoken like a true Weyrharper’s son. “Why?” Tiyo arched a dark brow in subtle suspicion, her tone still light, “So you can tear it apart later?” Even so she sighed, carefully considering her favorites and ignoring any distinctly odd feelings that he might open to a page and immediately see the reasons why they were so beloved by her waiting there in plain sight.
“Wait here.” She said finally, already padding without sound back to her cot.
She returned with a thin, creased, once-black but worn-very-grey volume that boasted around two hundred pages between its covers, hovering in the air for Qelhelias to accept.
‘Mapping East of Azov’-- as it was conspicuously titled with little rivers and tributaries illustrating its front -- was printed on thin, slightly pallid pages, its embossed cover rubbed raw and grey. The book was as much travelogue as it was personal diary as it was a semi-precious possession" a semi-autobiographical tale written by a cartographer, Marzulan, and his experiences mapping the Southern Continent’s waterways while raising a firelizard he invariably did _not_ want at the close of the Ninth Pass.
“Take your time with this and let me know what you think. It's very good, and pretty funny in a few places, but not really a comedy. I'd be _shocked_ if there wasn't something in there for you.”
“I’m sure there is,” said Qelhelias, accepting the tome with almost reverent care. He turned it slowly over in his hands, examining the worn cover, the corners and the bindings. “A well loved book, I see. Very intriguing. Thank you, I’ll read it with care-- and I won’t just ‘tear it apart’ for sport.” The amusement was back in his eyes. “You’re awfully suspicious.”
“Suspicious?” she echoed back in her own mock-shocked tone. “Yeah, I guess so. Sometimes.” Her lips held in a delicately neutral line and after a long, weighty pause, she clarified, “You ask a lot of questions.” -- a statement that carried only a whiff of judgment.
“Plus when I read _that_, I honestly had to wonder if you were trying to fluster me on purpose. Thank you, though. For trying.” His slippery, humorous approach to everything was both irritating and infectious. An obviously essential part -- like Zaphare’s bark, or Nosarre’s bite.
The next pause was identical. Yet her cadence, her gaze shifted ever-so-slightly. She leaned almost in one long diagonal line against the chairback beside him, an elbow planting itself so that their gazes were level again. “Do you mind if I ask a more personal question?”
He didn't flinch as she leaned in, didn't move except for the little quirk of his lips. A small smile. “I suppose the harper blue builds an inquiring sort of mind… And since you so graciously put up with my questions, it's only right I hear yours. What's on your mind?”
“Two questions, really…” Tiyo turned her words over in her mind like stones, concerned with their choosing and whether to ask them here.
“Weyrborn to Weyrborn.” One corner of her lips twitched, though her voice was steady and serious. “My father died in Fall when I was nine. Too young to talk to him about things that matter to me now. Or what he might have wanted for me, even. If he would’ve wanted me to Stand at all.” She paused, a beat longer than before. “Yours though-- he leads Falls. Leads Weyrs. He shapes whole wings and riders. What’s that like-- are you close?”
“Oh yes, he likes shaping things, my father,” said Qelhelias with a tinge of irony, but he seemed more serious now. “As for our relationship-- it’s complicated. You’re River Bluff, so you wouldn’t know, but he’s not exactly my father. Well, he is. He’s my sire, but it was a bit of a scandal. He was in a committed relationship with a different woman back when I was born. His weyrmate was understandably upset, so he was never around much when I was a child. He only started coming around and taking an interest when I was in my teens.”
They were straying into sensitive grounds, but his eyes didn’t waver from hers. She asked a question, he’d answer it. “Q’vettan is the one that pushed me into a craft when I didn’t Impress at twelve, and he won’t say it, but I’m certain he’s the reason I was reassigned to the weyr now. Like I said, he likes shaping things. He said I should Stand again so I don’t have any regrets or what-if’s, but I suspect there’s more to it than that. I think…” Qelhelias paused, he hadn’t actually voiced this aloud before. Admitting it to her meant admitting it to himself. “I think, for all his fondness of my parents and the harpers he works with, I think that he believes deep down that a dragonrider’s life is a superior one. Why else would he push me down a path that’s killed all his other children?”
The soft half smile was back on ‘Helias’ face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Not knowing what my father wants of me isn’t exactly my misfortune.”
Tiyo listened, quietly attentive, and at some point the heaviness of the topic had her slipping down into the other chair. She let her fingertips trail across the chairback, her other arm folding along its edge, layering her hands.
Her question was yet one more attempt of sensing a man, and a place that felt like it had all but disintegrated not long afterward. A part of her was starved for it. She couldn’t even summon embarrassment for asking because of her ignorance of any closeness, any shade of that connection that didn’t remind her that hers was broken. And Qelhelias had offered it freely -- an unflinching glimpse into a bond she was admittedly a bit unprepared for. A story that cast a good light on very few. The opposite of greywashed silence. Watching his fire sift out into smoke was as revealing as the history he recited, and that bothered her more than she wanted it to.
“I don’t know,” Tiyo murmured eventually, in answer, the point of her chin balanced atop her hands. Qelhelias’ changed expression there, hollowing her stomach a little, all his fluid ease replaced with an uneasy inertia. She let her hand drop from the chair and, on impulse, reached out to rest the heel of her palm against his wrist for a moment.
“But the way I see it, if a dragonrider’s life is what you choose because you want it -- because it’s yours -- then that counts for something, as well. That's still separate from him. If not…”
The thought thinned as footsteps and distant laughter drifted down the corridor, the unguarded voices of other candidates returning. Tiyo settled for something close: “I suppose all potential riders owe it to ourselves to decide whether we’re really prepared to die up there. Especially those of us with some time to kill. But either way I am sorry -- about all of it. About your siblings.”
“Thank you,” said Qelhelias, his voice lower as the footsteps approached. He covered her hand briefly with his, offering a touch of support. “I’m sorry about your… situation as well. Ultimately I think -- I hope -- your father would want you to be happy. Whatever that looks like to you. I tell myself that’s what Q’vettan wants as well, in his heavy handed way.” His lips quirked, the smile creeping back.
The common room began to fill and Qelhelias’ hands went back to the books in his lap. He patted them gently. “Well, you’ve given me a book _and_ a deal to think about. So I suppose I must doubly thank you. …Do you like nutcake?”
“I'd like to think so, too. Thank you.” Her smile was small, fond -- not for the absence, but for the man himself. “And I can't imagine Q’vettan wanting less than your happiness, either. Still…” Her glance caught on the others drifting in, gathering up their belongings in the whirl before inspection, though it flicked easily back to him. “…I’d be more concerned with what _you_ want.”
With the moment ebbing, she rose, slinking up, out, away from her chair with a sigh. The motion settled something back in her frame, and with his question still lingering she looked down at him, her eyes amused. “Well,” she said, “I guess you’ll find out.”
Qelhelias chuckled. “Well, when I finish reading, I’ll bring my grandmother’s nutcake for you to review while I review your book.”
Last updated on the October 3rd 2025