Girly-girly

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 26th November 2006

Characters: Arateyka, Tey
Description: Tey discovers Arateyka doesn't own a dress.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 13, day 22 of Turn 3

"Swish!"

Arateyka looked up from the large plan she had spread over her bed.
"That would be the sound of my door being pushed open faster than a falling fire lizard's wings?"

"No," Tey said firmly, crossing the room to ease up a corner of the plan and sit down. Despite the six Turn difference in age at eighteen and twenty-four the two of them were alike enough that nobody ever doubted they were sisters. "That was the sound of the rain coming down outside."

The journeywoman sat up and rolled the plan carefully. Tey had no respect for papers, something which had caused friction between them during Arateyka's apprenticeship. "That's not 'swish'. It's –" she made a sound that remarkably mimicked rain cascading down the cliffs.

"How do you _do_ that? I thought only boys could make sounds like that."

"Try apprenticing with them. It's learn to make sound effects or get ridiculed for being 'girly'."

"But you _are_ girly."

"Not _girly_ girly," Arateyka protested.

"Of course you are. Just like me and Teykara. All the same."

The journeywoman disagreed. "We _look_ the same but Teykara's different. She's like all the other riders. And I'm like smiths.
You're –"

"Yes?" Tey laughed. "What am I like?"

"You? You _are_ girly-girly." Arateyka reached out at tugged at Tey's light skirt. "Pretty clothes."

Tey tapped her sister's hand with her own. "Clean hands, too."

"It doesn't wash off."

"Scrub. Scrub harder. And there's nothing to stop you or Teykara wearing skirts. She does, sometimes, when she's out with that weyrmate of hers."

For all Arateyka's protests about them not being so alike they wore identical expressions after the mention of their sister's weyrmate.
"Mmm. I could find a skirt, too, if he was mine." The brownrider was uniformly liked by Teykara's surviving family – liked and very much admired by all the females. There was something about him ... something about the relationship between the pair of them that seemed exceptionally romantic.

After a moment Tey looked across the bed at her sister. "What do you mean, _find_ a skirt?" She looked across at the clothes press set into the rough stone of the wall. "Just open the doors and ..."

"No."

"No? Not even a Gather dress?"

Arateyka wouldn't meet her sister's surprised look. "Well, yes, but it doesn't fit. I have muscles." She knew she should have something to wear on special occasions and knew that she was entitled to it but it had been over a Turn since she had had anybody to go anywhere with.
There were two pairs of trousers in the press that she could use for events at the Weyr and a shirt she kept for evenings. But nothing ...
girly.

"Oh, no. That's not right. Does Delhara know?" Tey asked as she climbed off the bed and went to the press to poke around inside.
"There's nothing but trousers. Where is this dress that doesn't fit?"

"Ahh. Now you mention it I gave it back. What? It didn't fit."

"Delhara would be ashamed of you. _Will_ be, when I tell her."

"Tell her? Come on Tey, that's not nice." Arateyka had no doubt that their mother would not rest until her daughter was properly prepared for any social event, at Weyr or Hold. It was unlikely that there would ever be events at a Hall that she would be welcomed to attend, so that was one eventuality she didn't have to plan for.

"Not nice at all," Tey agreed, slamming the press doors and turning to grin at her sister. "But what would you expect from a girly-girly girl?"

Last updated on the December 1st 2006

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