Afraid of Drippy Sticks

Writers: Rochelle
Date Posted: 2nd June 2008

Characters: Ariau
Description: Ariau has a nightmare about her HNO3 tanks...
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 10, day 1 of Turn 4

Hastily she detached the wand from the tank, feeling the cool air on her face and cursing the timing as she felt the wind shift. She fumbled with the latch on the tank, panic closing her throat tightly when her grip slipped for a moment, and then with a triumphant cry whipped the wand around to flame the tangled, scarlet dyed rope into ash.

She sighed, releasing the button to stop the flow of flame, and scanned the sky above her for more training ropes. Seeing none near her, she glanced down to check the levels in her remaining tanks, and saw the flame still going. She pressed, then released the button again.

The flame was still there.

She pressed the button again. The flame still there. She checked her airspace quickly, holding the wand out to avoid singing Alabieth, but when she looked back down again the flame was not only still there, it was moving rapidly down the hose toward the tanks. Panic choking her, she quickly tried to undo the wand from the tank before the flames reached the fresh chemicals, unable to breathe and the drill completely forgotten as the fire reached the latch...

Ariau woke screaming, flailing at her blankets as images of fire exploding and eating her and Alabieth alive consumed her mind. Still thrashing, she managed to fall out of bed and crawl free of the constricting blankets, the hard impact with the ground jarring her to wakefulness.

Staggering to her feet, she stumbled blindly over to the light switch, and as the light flooded her room she stumbled back to sink down on the edge of the bed. She pulled her knees to her chest, taking deep breaths and trying to ignore the tears streaming down her cheeks as she fought to get herself back under control.

It was just a dream. She knew it was just a dream. She knew it wasn't real. Faranth, she knew it wasn't even possible! The way the wand attached to the tanks in her dreams were completely different from reality, and the tanks didn't actually spray fire, just HNO3. The chances of her going to her death in a fireball and forcing Alabieth /between/ were nonexistent. It wasn't possible.

She groaned. It wasn't working. It just wasn't working. She could tell herself it was impossible all night long, but it still didn't change the fact she was still strapping large tanks of irritating chemicals to her beloved gold.

Or the fact that of all her clutchmates, no of the entire _Weyr_, she was one of only a few dragonriders expected to meet Thread face to face without a flaming dragon between her and the menace.

Quickly, she reached out with her mind to the gold in her weyr, and breathed a sigh of relief. She was still asleep, and apparently undisturbed by her rider's dreams.

**Thank Faranth...**

**I can't do this,** she thought, resting her wet eyes on her knees. **I just...** She heaved a sigh that was more of a sob, and flopped backwards on the covers.

**They never think about this, do they?** She thought bitterly. **It's always about Alabieth. They never think about the riders. They complain about goldrider attitudes, and expect us to command and catch them in Fall, but they never think about the fact that they're expecting them to face Thread with noting but a drippy stick.**

She trusted Alabieth with all her heart and would never giver her up, not in a million Passes and Long Intervals. But it was hard not to wish that the gold could somehow miraculously develop the ability to flame.

She knew intellectually she could do it. She'd spent endless candlemarks working on her aim until she was certain she could his her target in any wind condition. She'd gone over the schematics for the HNO3 tanks so many times she'd caught herself doodling the interior of the hose when her mind wandered for a moment in class.

But when she faced the tanks themselves, all her confidence vanished. She just didn't do well with machinery. She had plenty of practical knowledge from her turns on the road, but mostly with simple hand tools for repairing wagons of fixing thrown runner shoes. Even the Hall had not asked her to do anything with more complicated machinery than that needed to repair a guitar.

She didn't dare tell Tsaera she was afraid of her own tanks.

One of the early lessons had been to break down and reassemble a tank with Tsaera. It had been mortifying. She'd thought she'd been doing well, until she realized she had assembled th flow mechanism minus several small but essential parts. And when she'd broken it down to reassemble again, at least two springs had shot off into opposite corners of the room, narrowly missing Ariau and the Weyrwoman.

Despite begging a smith to help her and swearing him to secrecy about her difficulty, she had yet to manage that task.

She picked herself off the too large bed of her too large room and bgan to pace. Her rooms were the size of a small cot and seemed to rattle with just her and the furniture. They felt more like an inn, clean and impersonal. Like they were waiting for a real goldrider to come along and move in, and she was only a guest. She tried to ignore it, to personalize the space a little by leaving her things strewn around, but it still bothered her.

**Maybe I should try sleeping with Alabieth...?**

She started toward the door to her sitting area, which in turn was attached to the gold's weyr. Alabieth was the ultimate confidence boost. Even thinking about the queen brought a smile to her face and made her want to break into a run through her rooms. She started through the sitting room, ignoring the light still spilling through the open door to her bedroom, then froze.

There it was, sitting in the middle of the floor of her sitting room. The HNO3 tank, still partially dismembered and with the schematics flung disgustedly over the top where she'd left it before going to bed.

She tried to continue walking, t move past it and put it off until tommorrow, but it mocked her. Sitting there, waiting. Just waiting for her to fail again. Waiting to prove to her that she wasn't worthy of the magnificent creature who had chosen her.

Her eyes narrowed as her stubbornness kicked in, and she changed her path to move in front of the sofa. Kneeling gingerly by the tank as if it might explode if she jostled it too much, she pulled the schematics off the top and reached for a small screwdriver.

For Alabieth, she would do anything. And the gold could not protect herself in Fall. For that, she would need her rider as the gold herself caught falling dragons and issued commands.

Ariau was not about to let an oversized jar with a drippy stick attached get the best of her or her dragon.

Last updated on the June 7th 2008

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Afraid of Drippy Sticks