Nice Rooms

Writers: Jane, Kastaka
Date Posted: 4th May 2009

Characters: S'ren, R'haran
Description: R'haren gets shown around the Records Room by S'ren.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 2, day 11 of Turn 5

The children were spending the afternoon with their new foster-parent, learning their way around the Weyr; R'haran was confining himself to learning his way around the records room.

In the absence of an actual previous Weyrharper, and with all the confusion about the Headwoman leaving for the Dolphin Hall, S'ren had been sent down to show R'haran the way round the Records. Well, to be perfectly honest, he'd carefully been in the right place at the right time and mentioned things to a few people so that he could get to do the showing. Some of it was that he just liked being in the airy rooms full of paper, some of it was pride at how much they'd managed to save from the floods, and some of it was that he just didn't quite trust anyone else to get it right.

"Nice rooms," R'haran commented to the bluerider who was his guide. The harper greenrider looked around and nodded. "My office is not nearly as nice so I can imagine where I'll be spending a lot of my time."

"Weyr's a bit short of cleaned-out rooms that you can get to on foot," apologised S'ren with a rueful grin. "I don't think we tend to put rooms people will be spending a lot of time in below the waterline any more, for obvious reasons. But that makes it a bit awkward to have enough pleasant offices."

"I've seen the flood marks," R'haran admitted. "And it does make me think twice about choosing one of those nice, ground level rooms to move my office to. Although, if I kept my hides and papers elsewhere I suppose that would work. Nothing to lose then, but a chair and desk."

"And your fine self, of course," S'ren reminded him. "Anyhow. This is the main Records Room. There's a couple of subsidiary ones for the healers and dragonhealers, who like to keep their records separately and you shouldn't have to worry about, and some other storage for particularly old archives that aren't likely to be relevant. Over here are the wing histories..."

"Which have become so much more readable since the return of Thread," the Weyrharper admitted ruefully.

"Apart from the water damage and the parts that floated away, that is," S'ren teased. "Although having adopted a Printer Hall has done wonders for some of the records that were deemed important enough to reprint or send to be typeset, like some of the threadfall charts and reports." He gestured to a set of shelves neatly stacked with printed paper.

"That's always good. Are there many problems with insect pests," he asked, not having lived in the tropics since his childhood but aware that paper suffered worse than hide in that area.

"Mostly the problems are with mildew," replied S'ren. "It's hard to keep the humidity down in here. Mostly the cleaning staff seem to cope with insects just fine - there aren't too many flying ones which are dangerous to paper, fortunately, so it's just a matter of keeping the crawling ones out. We've still got the original copies of most of our paper records on hide, in one of the auxillary storerooms - I'll show you there in a minute."

"Is it possible to get a refrigerated room?" R'haran asked cautiously, not wanting to offend a rider who's loyalties might make him resistant to an outsider's ideas.

"Only if you want to share with the kitchens," warned S'ren apologetically. "Or have better contacts with the Technician Hall than I. Dolphin Cove was kind of hasty in the building department, almost none of it's wired for electric, which I think you need if you're going to refrigerate something." S'ren's customary grin returned. "Of course, if you *do* have contacts among the Technicians, I'm sure many people would be glad of a little extra wiring if it meant they could get power for their pet projects, weyr lighting, and maybe even make things a little cooler round here in places..."

"Cooler." R'haran sighed. "Strange to have to reorient all my thinking. But in the weyrs and caverns it stays quite an even temperature, doesn't it? I only really notice the heat when I'm outside."

"Most of the time, the thick stone keeps the worst of the heat out," S'ren admitted. "Doesn't do much for the moisture though, and once you settle in I'm sure you'll start finding it uncomfortably warm instead of pleasantly cozy," he added with a heartily cheerful tone.

"That's something to look forward to," the older man said drily.

"Anyhow," said S'ren, getting back to business. "These shelves have the tithe records; here we have the lower caverns staff reports; over there is information on Hatchings and weyrling classes. There are some maps and mason's plans for various parts of the Weyr here, and next to them there's room allocation information, you could look through there for somewhere close enough to the kitchens to get power to but I think they're all dangerously low for storing records in..."

"No matter. I don't need a lot of papers or hides in the office with me. I remember most things."

"And this is, well, the library," S'ren continued, with a slightly apologetic note. "There's a lot of scrawling about Thread fighting tactics, basic dragon care although the complex stuff is in the Dragonhealers' records room, making and looking after riding straps and gear, firestone sorting, then slightly less obvious things like recipe books, there's a small beastcraft section down here, and these shelves are general interest and what we have on loan from the Harper Hall. Then this section is where the Weyr's miscellaneous crafters store their records and books, there's a small Harper section here with music and lesson plans and so forth..."

"Has that been redundant since the Hall arrived?" R'haran asked moving over to the shelves to shuffle through the papers there.

"Not really, people like having another copy they don't have to bother the Hall for," explained S'ren slightly awkwardly. He didn't know an awful lot about the Harper Hall's politics other than they seemed to have some and hadn't obviously integrated very well with the Weyr as a whole.

"Hmm. I shall have to visit the Hall-within-the-Weyr," the greenrider murmured, quite intrigued by the arrangement. "Do they perform in the dining cavern and at the like?"

"Yes, quite often actually," smiled S'ren, getting back into his stride. "It's one of the biggest advantages of having them all here, even if they are a bit stand-offish at times. I don't think they were too happy about how many of their apprentices decided to Stand at the last Hatching, though. But I'm afraid I haven't been paying much attention to the politics there."

"I shall have to follow suit on that - at least overtly." The older man grinned. "I'm always interested, but it's not always wise to let people know that."

S'ren grinned at R'haran's comment. "Is there anything else you wanted a look at right now? I think we've covered the basic layout..."

"No, that's fine. Thanks for your help, S'ren. I'll get back in touch if I need to know more but otherwise I'll just potter around here until I make sense of it all."

"You have fun with that, then," smiled S'ren. "Just bother Tareth if you have any problems, and I'll see what I can do."

Last updated on the May 5th 2009

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