Inexplicable

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 15th January 2008

Characters: Tarehg, O'rian, Grehga
Description: Odarian and Grehga meet Tarehg while out walking and Odarian gets a surprise.
Location: Dolphin Hall
Date: month 8, day 7 of Turn 4

"He's very smart," Grehga explained as she skipped alongside the senior apprentice healer as he walked down the wharves at the Dolphin Hall. "I probably inherited my cleverness from him."

"Not from your parents?" Odarian asked absently, not really concentrating on the conversation that Grehga was all but having with herself. His attention was focused more on how she would hold up on his intended day-long walk – the one she was insisting she would accompany him on.

"No, no. My father's sort of clever, but in a very quiet, slow way."

Well, nothing of _that_ had been inherited by Grehga, the senior apprentice thought with a grin. Bouncy, quick-thinking Grehga would hardly be considered slow ... and never quiet.

"And I don't know much about my mother, but she worked in the Hall. A drudge, really, but very sweet, apparently." She jogged along another few steps and then practised striding out trying to match Odarian's longer pace on the sea-smoothed stone. "She died when I was a baby and Greah and my grandmother looked after me."

"Uh-huh." The young man made an effort to shorten his stride, surprised as always to notice that the smart-mouthed junior apprentice was still a very small person. A child, in fact. Just twelve Turns and not showing any signs of growing. It seemed incredible that so much chatter, that such a wide range of opinions, should be produced by such a waif-like creature.

"And my grandfather, of course. That I was telling you about." Grehga had the feeling her companion wasn't paying her the attention he ought to be. "Dolphineer master, Tarehg."

"Uh-huh."

The junior apprentice leapt forward and turned on Odarian, her hands settling on her hips in an unmistakable stance of annoyance.

"Are you listening?"

"No, Grehga, _I_ am going for a walk along the coast. _You_ have invited yourself along and are talking incessantly about people I know nothing about – and don't need to know even that much about them." He punctuated his statements with a nod, certain that he had put the youngster in her place.

"All right," she drawled, allowing him to walk past her. "You only had to _say_ I wasn't welcome to come on your walk with you."

"I didn't mind about the walk," Odarian called back over his shoulder, feeling a little guilty that he had lumped the two issues together since he didn't really mind company when he was walking. "It's the unnecessary chatter that's driving me mad."

"Just thought you ought to have some idea of what you were walking into," she muttered, eyeing the dark-haired senior apprentice with some amusement as she let him walk on ahead. She would catch up with him when he had realised his mistake.

It wasn't Grehga's voice that said: "You'll find looking where you're going will save you a lot of problems."

Odarian's head spun around to the front and he teetered to a stop with a walking stick pointed directly at his stomach.

"What are you looking so indignant about?" the man asked. "I'm the one you would have knocked down if you hadn't stopped." The stick lowered to the ground. "And while you're answering questions you can tell me why you've just abandoned my granddaughter half way down the wharf."

"You granddaughter?" Odarian glanced behind him. Grehga. Hadn't she been saying something about – "Wiry little thing with a smart mouth. She was walking with you. And you can explain that, too, if you like."

"I can?" For a moment Odarian's mind was blank then a whole lot of thoughts starting rushing in. Grehga had been saying something about her grandfather – grumpy and short tempered? Chronic pain from a hip injury? His slid a little sideways and down. Sure enough that dangerous looking walking stick was doing real work supporting the man in front of him.

Again the apprentice healer glanced back down the wharf, realising with annoyance that Grehga had been telling him about the man for a reason.
The long, uninterrupted view meant that she would have been able to see her grandfather and recognising him wouldn't have been hard since he likely had a distinctive gait to go with the walking stick.

"Where are you off to with my granddaughter?"

"Er –" The dark-haired young man resisted the impulse to look back at Grehga again as he realised the point of the question. The man – the master dolphineer, he corrected himself, though that didn't make him feel any better – thought that ... that he and Grehga ...

Some twelve Turn old girls looked older than their age; Grehga didn't.
And yet, though he never thought of Grehga in any way even remotely ...
romantic, or _anything_, she didn't often seem like a twelve Turn old.
She was too self-assured, too blissfully unaware of her rightful place as one of the most junior of healer apprentices at the Weyr.

"She's old enough now that wandering around with a male senior apprentice on her restday is inappropriate," Tarehg continued since the boy didn't seem able to string a sentence together. "You should know better, at your age."

"I'm just – we're just - She just comes along, whether she's invited or not," Odarian finally managed to say. "And she _wasn't_."

"Just tell her to go back, then," the master dolphineer said shortly.

"_Tell_ her?" Odarian's incredulity at the suggestion overcame his confusion. "Have you tried to _tell_ Grehga anything?"

To his surprise the older man looked amused. "Hopeless; the lot of them. She's the only one who's smart and willing to work, and she becomes a _healer_ apprentice."

Tarehg caught sight of Grehga's stealthy approach, apparently trying to use the young man's body to hide herself from view. "I can see you, young woman and you had better start behaving more appropriately on your restdays or you can spend them here with your family. Running around with young men isn't –"

"Don't worry," Grehga said, her impish face alight with mischief as she slipped her arm through Odarian's. "I've decided to marry Odarian just as soon as I'm old enough."

"She's joking," Odarian promised weakly as he was being bodily dragged past the master dolphineer. "I wouldn't –" He didn't like the speculative gleam in the older man's eye but standing his ground and putting things right seemed more difficult than letting Grehga drag him on. First he would sort out her silly idea, and then he would go back and explain.

The problem with that plan was how to explain the totally inexplicable Grehga.

Last updated on the January 24th 2008

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Inexplicable