Different Lives

Writers: AmajoS, Yvonne
Date Posted: 12th September 2007

Characters: Tamaca, Benna
Description: Tamaca and Benna compare notes of how they spent their time while growing up.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 5, day 22 of Turn 4

"Hey, Tamaca!" Benna smiled as she sat down across from the older Candidate.

Glancing over the rim of her mug, Tam regarded the younger girl critical. "No one should be that cheerful at this time of the morning."

Benna grinned as she shook a bit of salt onto her eggs. "See, right there, I can tell you've never lived on a farm of any sort. This isn't even all that early!" Even though her family's farming cothold produced mostly grain, there were more than fields to worry about. Eggs to collect, bovine to milk, stables to muck out and so on. Even on restdays, her entire family saw the sun rise unless someone was ill.

"Not early?" Tamaca flipped her hair over her shoulder, still unsmiling. "Remind me to stay far away from farms. Obviously they're not designed for my lifestyle."

Benna chuckled, "Well, I've got to admit, I've enjoyed sleeping in a bit since I got here." The first restday she'd spent here she'd slept till nearly the ninth candlemark and had felt deliciously lazy.

The other girl yawned before replying. "So I assume that you take to your bed early as well?"

"Earlier than most, yeah. It's probably a trade-off," she allowed with a laugh.

"Well, there's the difference." Tamaca stretched, a self-satisfied smile on her face. "I can find too many things to do at night and would rather pay by being tired in the morning."

"Fair enough," Benna replied before taking a bite of food. She thought she might prefer going to bed early and getting up early - for one thing, it made getting into the bathing rooms much easier!

"At any rate," Tam noted, "it won't be much longer before the Hatching and then we won't have to worry about candidate classes."

"Well, at least they're more interesting than harper classes." Benna kind of wished she'd paid more attention to learning her letters as a child. Not so much because she had taken a sudden fancy to reading, of course. She knew that here, unlike back home, it was an important skill to have... and she was at a disadvantage.

"I always liked harper classes," admitted Tamaca, though she did not mention that she had once been apprenticed to that class. "At least those were mostly practical. The things we learn in candidate classes we _might_ need to know, but maybe not."

"Well, before I came here, most of the things the harper taught, I didn't have much use for," Benna replied. "I mean some of the teaching songs were fun to learn, but other than that," she shrugged.

"I enjoy singing and writing and reading," the older girl told Benna. "Or at least, I did then. I guess that made the classes go faster."

"I snuck out of more classes than I stayed for," Benna confessed with a laugh. "It was always so hard to sit there and practice letters when there were so many other things I could be outside doing, ya know?"

"I suppose so," said Tam, "though whenever I was outside, I seemed to have a book with me." She tried to think back and couldn't remember the last book she had read - it had been a long time.

Benna tried to imagine laying around outside reading when there were so many things to
-do- when one was outside. Reading seemed more the thing one did when it was either that or stare at a wall when you were sick. And even then, that was only when one didn't have a handfull of brothers sneaking into your room with treats and dirty jokes to entertain you.

"I'm not sure if I've ever read an entire book," Benna said after a moment of thought. "We didn't have many and they'd belonged to my Ma's Ma so us kids weren't really supposed to bother them."

"Really?" Tamaca looked at the other girl, intrigued that anyone could have had a life so deprived of what had been her mainstay. "We always had books around, though some of them were my mother's medical books and mostly too dull to read, though I did wade through some of them. My entire family would spend time reading and sharing what we'd read."

"My parents were farmers an their parents and so on. None of us had much time for it. We had a few books, that belonged to my Gran like I said, but they were old and my Ma worried we'd tear em up." Benna explained. "Maybe if there'd been more books, or my folks were more bookish, learning my letters wouldn't have seemed like such a waste of time though."

She wasn't sure, after all the idea of sneaking off to go fishing in a stream was a thousand times more appealing than sitting somewhere reading about someone fishing in a stream, for example. But she did know that having not learned was a limitation she wished she didn't have now.

Tam nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose that there are more differences in upbringing than simply North and South, Holder and Weyrfolk, aren't there? I know that many of my friends here weren't quite as into reading as I was, but there were always books available to us. And in our weyr, we seemed to be surrounded by them and typically gave them for presents."

"Well, it's not like we were deprived or anything." Suddenly feeling slightly defensive, Benna tore a piece of citrus fruit into slices with a frown. "I mean, we didn't have a lot of spare time to lounge around reading anyway. It's a lot of work running a farming cothold."

"I've read about farming and other trades," Tam told her, "and I've no doubt that it you're right. But a Weyr's a busy place as well. I think it's more a matter of what's a priority to each of us."

"You're probably right," Benna said, though privately she doubted it. What could Tamaca know about farming just from reading about it? And yes, there was a lot to do in the Weyr, but there were also a whole -lot- more people doing it. She'd had loads of more free time at the Weyr than she could ever have managed at home. But at the same time, she supposed, if she'd -really- wanted to get into reading at home, she could have. Her parents might've even encouraged it, thinking it more 'lady-like' or something. It wasn't worth arguing about at any rate.

"Right or wrong, we need to cut this short," was Tamaca's reply. "We've both got chores to do."

Benna laughed and downed the last of her juice, "Good point!"

Tam finished her final gulp of the now-cold klah as well. "So on we go," she proclaimed as she rose to her feet. "Maybe we'll talk again, maybe not."

Last updated on the September 13th 2007

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