Who: Iosani, Tiriana, Loads of Weyrbrats
When: Day 14, Month 2, Turn 20
Where: Bowl, High Reaches Weyr
What: Tiriana wages war on weyrbrats.

Eastern Bowl, High Reaches Weyr
     Ringed by rough granite walls to all sides but one, this end of the huge bowl narrows from the even broader plain to the west, continuing the ever so slight downward slope toward the blue and green of the Weyr's lake and surrounding foliage. More open to sun and wind than the western bowl, but less frequented when there aren't weyrlings in residence, the bowl's grassy tufts keep the topsoil in place and thicken into a bloodstained meadow within the feeding pens that adjoin the lake.
     At the base of the surrounding cliffs lie entrances to several caverns, including the dragon infirmary and the weyrling barracks: the former to the northwest near where the spires begin, the latter opposite to the southwest. Both archways are large and dark enough for any dragon to pass through, but it's the infirmary's that is haunted by faint smells of redwort and numbweed, as though over generations they have seeped into the very stone.
     Steady, today's snowfall sticks, creating dunes on the bowl floor.

Contents:
Iosani

Obvious exits:
[Sky] Guest Weyr Dragon Infirmary Weyrling Area [Dragon Baths] Feeding Grounds [Craft Area] Lake Shore West Bowl

A late winter snowfall is adding a fresh layer to the top of the grayish pack left over from the dead of winter. It makes the bowl pretty and white again, except for where Tiriana is presently slogging a trail across the middle of it, as she abandons the feeding grounds and the gold presently eating her dinner there.

And Iosani, who seems to have an inborn knack for mussing up anything pristine, leaving the lake while still wiping fresh snow from her jacket and skirts. It's been packed on, like it hit her with some force, but that doesn't matter. The whooping of the other weyrbrats at her back says whatever snow war has been going on isn't quite over, as do the snowball lobbed her direction that come in high but fall considerably short. "You all sharding SUCK!" she shouts over her shoulder.

The first snowball to splatter on the ground has Tiriana ducking her shoulders and turning quickly to find the source, though it doesn't get /too/ close to her, at least. She still glowers at the lakeshore, like they were personally aimed at her. But the yelling dissuades her of that particular notice, and the goldrider's head swings around to find and eye Iosani. "What the hell?" she shouts back.

The weyrwoman's shout makes Iosani jump, turning a huge, owlish expression that way. An impish smile steals her features, and she stops in her tracks to shout, once again towards the weyrbrats who are undoubtedly not listening, "You hit the WEYRWOMAN, you STUPID IDIOTS!" Then, to Tiriana, though only as loud as she needs it to be to carry to the goldrider, "Snowball fight. I retreated so I don't know why they're still fracking attacking me. I'd say what I could really use -" and her voice acquires a suggestive tone - "is a secret weapon. Like...a snowball dropping machine. Maybe something that could fly."

Tiriana's brows lift as she finds herself used in the cause, but a beat later, it makes her smirk, and she casts another look back at the source of the snowballs. "Like... a dragon?" she suggests, tromping a few steps closer to Iosani then. "Dive-bomb them into submission. Hell, could drop a whole snowbank on them, I bet." Beat. "She won't help," with a jerk of her head toward the feeding pens and Iovniath within, before Iosani gets any ideas about /that/.

Everyone knows that allies are as important in a war as weapons, and as Tiriana seemed to fall right into her suggestion, Iosani can't help but preen a little. All fourteen of the others back on the lakeshore didn't have a chance against her, the weyrwoman and the weyrwoman's go-- "Oh," she responds, her smile transitioning immediately to a frown. "Well maybe she can make one of the blues do it," the weyrbrat suggests lightly with a wave of her hand. "Or...firelizards," she adds weakly, obviously completely less impressed by that idea than her first.

"She's kind of... She's stuffy," Tiriana explains, with a grimace and another look for Iovniath. "I know exactly what she'd say: start on the spiel about the mature thing to do is just to walk away, or whatever. Bet she wouldn't even get anybody else to. The Weyrwoman can't be seen encouraging this type of behavior." Tiriana, for her part, rolls her eyes on that, and, brashly, still declares, "But we could still take 'em, I think."

Iosani looks particularly aggrieved at this news, and she casts a look that's almost betrayed towards Iovniath. What good is it having a giant dragon, one of the biggest in the weyr, if she wouldn't even help you cause mayhem? "But the mature thing ain't fun," Iosani observes. "I mean...Faranth, must be /boring/." But all that's forgotten, and is a cross Tiriana will have to carry alone, because she's immediately distracted by the suggestion the two of them could take on the armies of the Lower Caverns. She grins deviously. "It'll teach them to try and ambush me again."

"Boring. You don't know the half of it," says Tiriana, sounding more aggrieved with the dragon by the moment. She even gives Iovniath a Look herself, one fit to match Iosani's. But then she's narrowing her eyes at the crowd on the lakeshore, expression thoughtful. "They're not going to mess with me," she decides. "Could just walk into the middle of them and ambush them, I bet."

Behind her bright excitable eyes, it's clear there's gears turning now that Tiriana's not only indulged her but fed into her imagination. It's a wonder she'd stood still this long; now her resolve was quickly wearing off, and she started bouncing on the balls of her feet excitably. "What if...you pretended I was in trouble? We could walk right up and just when they all start looking canines that're being yelled at..." With or without approval, Iosani's grin grows wider and wider as she brainstorms, and presently she hitches up her skirts and drops into a crouch, packing a snowball and sticking it in her pocket. Then another. They'd certainly keep long enough to maintain a farce like that.

"That," says Tiriana, with smug satisfaction, "just might work." Her mouth's spreading into her own broad smirk, and she watches while Iosani prepares her weapons of choice. For her own part, the rider doesn't do any such thing, but instead reaches to grab the girl's arm and start frogmarching her back toward the lakeshore with her sternest, "C'mon."

The girl has never gone to punishment quietly, and now is no exception, even if it's fake punishment. "I di'n /do/ anything. I don't throw snowballs, weyrwoman," she practically whines, with just enough resistance to make it look like she's actually feeling a stab of guilt at anything. She's wearing the deepest of frowns, which she turns on her peers when they're close enough, and for a good long moment the battle (seven on eight) continues oblivious to them, until Iosani feels the need to break into thier whoops and shouts with, "/They/ started it!" And then they stop, thier attentions turned to the weyrwoman and her hostage, faces falling.

"Oh, shut up already. I /saw/ you," Tiriana continues berating Iosani as they slog back through the fresh snow to the scene of the earlier rout. "I saw all of you. You hit /me/ with snowballs," and somewhere in the dressing down of the younger crowd, she lets go of Iosani in favor of advancing on all of them. "Do you know who I am? I'm the damn Weyrwoman. You're gonna pay for that. --Now!" And there's the signal, just when all the weyrbrats are rapt with horror at their impending doom at Weyrwomanly hands.

Iosani's been, it seems, on her very best behavior in Tiriana's presence; the moment Tiriana gives the go, she's pulled both snowballs from seperate pockets and beaned her once-comrades with the fullest force she can, a stream of expletives leaving her mouth in the process. There's a moment of hanging, surprised silence wherein they all stare at the pair without any comprehension of what's happening, and then it erupts into shrieks and laughter, and the retaliation comes. And if the snowballs are mysteriously avoiding the weyrwoman, still, well..that's another matter entirely, because Iosani's certainly getting her share of attacks off by using her as a body shield. Of sorts.

Tiriana is not much of a shield, perhaps, because she's too busy diving into the fray herself. The front two weyrbrats are quick to find themselves pushed face-first into the snow, in the sort of move that would have parents complaining if she weren't the damn Weyrwoman herself. And more snow is flung at the rest of the laughing bunch, half-formed into balls. "Teach you to try to hit /me/."

Eventually - it doesn't take too terribly long with the children unsure of who to hit and whether or not it's okay to smack the weyrwoman in the head with a snowball even when she's got members of your team and is busy forcefeeding them snow - the children cease. There's first one surrender, then another and another, submissions which Iosani honors only after she's lobbed off one last snowball for good measure, earning only more laughters and nearly reigniting the whole thing despite exhaustion clear on all of them from surprise and a day spent playing. "And to ambush me," she crows delightedly, making a show of brushing the snow off her hands. After a moment, she sticks her tongue out at the lot of them, sing-songing, "We wiiiin."

Breathless herself by the time the other children give in and surrender, Tiriana plants her hands on her hips and smirks after them. "That'll show 'em," she says, as though she's not nearly ten turns older than them, on top of her fancy knot. Her hands are dusted off, too, as she surveys the battlefield, then declares, "Told you we could do it."

Conspiratorially, Iosani observes, "Iovniath'll be appalled, I bet. You should give her all the details, especially the part where you practically /buried/ Aildra and Rifer in the snow." Still, she's already retreating from the lake shore again, allowing the others to recover from their humiliating defeat. That's the last time anyone lets a knot into thier snowball fights. "Now, klah, before I freeze my fingers off," Iosani announces as she goes. "The oppressed can come too, if they don't whine about how badly they got their asses handed to them," she adds for her friends. "You can come too, weyrwoman," she adds. Not that an invitation needs to be extended. Who's going to tell a goldrider 'no'?