Who cares?

Writers: Eimi, Paula
Date Posted: 8th April 2009

Characters: Oresthon
Description: Oresthon is caught not paying any attention to his class.
Location: Smith Hall (NPC)
Date: month 2, day 11 of Turn 5

It was all so boring. Oresthon leaned his head against his hand and
tapped the edge of the desk with the pencil in other hand. He was not
interested in different properties of the metals or alloys. He didn't
want to know at which temperature they started to melt. He yawned.
Shards, smithcrafting sucked! He slowly realized that his tapping was
not random. There was rythm in it. He was tapping one of the first
teaching ballads he ever learned, the letter-song. He started to humm
the melody.

"Apprentice Oresthon!" the journeyman barked. "You seem to be thinking
very deeply about the answer. So why don't you give the class your
opinion?"

"Erh," Oresthon hesitated. He hadn't even heard the question. His last
recollection was that they been talking about melting temperatures.
"Very hot?" he guipped.

While the others in the class twittered their amusement at the answer,
the journeyman's jaw tightened. "Very hot? That's your answer?"

"Uh-huh," Oresthon nodded.

His teacher's eyes narrowed. "Did you even _hear_ the question?"

"Emh," Oresthon grunted and squirmed.

"Perhaps you were dreaming of sitting in a Harper Hall class, the way
you were playing at being a musician." That boy would never learn a
thing. No matter how many times he tried to get him to pay attention,
he always seemed to be off in his own world. He wasn't doing this just
to hear his own voice!

Oresthon squirmed on his seat some more. That had been exactly what he
had been doing.

"Now that you are back with us, do you think you could tell the class
why we might want to plate metal? Or do you want to just sing us a
song?" his teacher asked with an overly sweet smile.

"To protect if from... something. Who cares? The metal certainly
doesn't," he answered and blurted out. His cheekiness was rewarded by
laughter from the other apprentice.

The journeyman was no smiling. "Who cares? Well, Apprentice, _you_
should care if you ever hope to earn even your Senior Apprentice knots
in this carft. Am I to take it then that you no longer want to be a
smith?"

"Who said I wanted to be a smith in a first place?" Oresthon said but
very quietly.

"So you don't want to be a smith? Does anyone else here _not_ want to
be a smith?" The journeyman fixed his gaze on the rest of the boys in
turn.

Oresthon stared the desk with his ears burning.

The room was silent as all eyes fixed on the young apprentice. "Well,
Oresthon, it looks like it's just you who is having doubts about being
here today. Perhaps you would rather spend this time in the Master of
Apprentice's office discussing your future in the Hall?"

"Yes, sir," Oresthon murmured. He just wished he could sink through
the floor. Or disappear /between/ like dragons and firelizards.

The journeyman was just ready for this little problem to disappear. He
had a room full of boys who actually wanted to learn, and this one was
wasting all their time. "Then go find that office, and don't come back
here and waste my time until you're sure this is the Hall for you."

Oresthon was happy to get up and leave the classroom. Who knew, couple
of incidents like this more and he would be thrown out of the hall.
Maybe then his father would realize that he was unsuited for
smithcraft.

Last updated on the April 27th 2009

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