Tasks for Unpaid Interns

Writers: Halyonix, Sia
Date Posted: 12th October 2025

Characters: I'thralos, O'dyn
Description: Ilthralos finds something for O'dyn to do for the printers
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 10, day 10 of Turn 12

Notes:

~*~

}: Are you sure that you don’t need help? :{ Genireth asked with mild concern as he watched his tiny rider struggle with his parcels.

“Nope! I got it!” O’dyn cried cheerfully. Even though he felt really offbalanced. And it was heavy. Why was paper so heavy? It was just thinly sliced trees! Oh, maybe that made sense. Put enough thinly sliced trees together and they could get heavy like the trees they came from. But still. The reams of paper weren’t _that_ big. But still heavy. “Journeyman Ilthralos?” O’dyn called uncertainly as he walked through (and not into!) the doorway to the Printer area of the Weyr.

"Come on in, O'dyn. How's Genireth?" Ilthralos called back from where he stood, working on the layout of the next edition of The Weyr Report.

“He’s great! He says hello,” the littlest bluerider replied happily. “We’ve got your latest paper shipm--oof!” There was a slight bonking sound as O’dyn ran into a table that he hadn’t spotted and then a quiet, “Ow.”

"Oh, good. Sent them down there, and be _careful_!" Ilthralos chided. "Do multiple trips instead of one big one. I'd rather you be a little winded than falling down the stairs because you're carrying too much."

Unseen to Ilthralos, O’dyn scrunched his face in disagreement. He didn’t _want_ to do extra trips just because he was little. He was a real dragonrider too! Just…smaller.

}: He means well, :{ Genireth said gently.

O’dyn exhaled. Fine. Genireth was right. Once the stack was down, O’dyn went back to this dragon to remove another (smaller) stack and carried it in. Okay, yes, it was easier but he had to walk back and forth and that was time-consuming. Well, it wasn’t as though he had anywhere else to really be today so that was okay. “What are you working on?” he asked on his last trip.

"The layout for the paper. Once that's done we can move onto typesetting. That'll probably be your next task, once all the paper is put away." He looked up briefly from the pages, frowning. "And lift with your legs. You're too young to pull a muscle in your back."

“I did, I did,” he answered, even though he really had no idea how to lift with certain parts of him versus other parts of him. He just lifted! Why did adults always talk about lifting with legs anyway when it was the arms that did the lifting or was that just something O’dyn didn’t get yet? Probably. “I can also get Gen-”

}: Genireth. :{

“To do some of the lifting if we really need it. He’s way stronger than I am.”

"Genireth can't put the paper on the shelves, both because he doesn't fit in here and because his arms aren't very long." Ilthralos said.

O’dyn looked at the tall shelves. His arms weren’t very long either.

“Okay, I understand. Be more careful. Think before I act. Do things efficiently, not quickly.” All of those max…mix…no, maxims that adults were always saying. Why did adults like to use those so much? “I’ll do better. Promise.”

"We're all learning." Ilthralos said.

He was right about that! O’dyn felt as though he was learning so many things every day still. If being a printer had opened up his world a little, becoming a dragonrider had opened it up a lot! Every day was an adventure! “What’s going in the paper for this time?” he asked, curiously stretching to look around Ilthralos’s shoulder.

"Lots of things." Ilthralos said, "Weather patterns and forecasts for the sevenday, predicted Threadfall patterns, highlights from the other Weyr Journals. Updates on bets on color distribution for Jossenth's clutch, which is big. It's hard to tell how many of what colour will be in a clutch that a brown sires. A harper might dig through the archives to find that information to see if there are any trends, but the typical assumption around here is that there's less variation than bronzes. Maybe that can be a job for you!"

“Huh? How?” O’dyn asked, thinking that he was going to have to read through a lot of books to find the trends and wow that was a lot of records because there were a lot of clutches but Ilthralos _did_ bring up a good question about how many of those clutches had a brown sire and now O’dyn really wanted to know the answer.

"Look through all the clutching reports in Dolphin Cove and see if you can find any other brown sires and see how their clutch size and distribution varies compared to bronze sires. If you want to be extra fancy, track the gold and her age too and see how the clutch sizes compare to other golds her age." Ilthralos said. Maybe that would keep the kid entertained for a little while.

“Ooooooooo a _trend_!” the littlest bluerider breathed, as though he had just been given the most important quest of his life. “I can do that! I can…well, I have to do my other duties first but I can do it in my spare time at night! Do you want me to bring you what I find?”

"Yeah, sure. If you find anything interesting I can write a piece for the paper. How does that sound?"

Challenge accepted! “I can do that!” O’dyn said. “I’ll start toni--no, wait, tomorrow, I have something tonight, but tomorrow! I can start tomorrow!”

"Fantastic. I look forward to it." Ilthralos said dryly. At least it would keep the kid entertained, and it wasn't such a pressing topic that the research needed to get done with any speed. It was hard to find something useful for the dragonriders to do with their limited schedule. "Maybe we'll find something interesting."

Last updated on the October 28th 2025

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