Chores can be fun! (Tivax/Candidates)

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

“Nice shot,” Tivax complimented, watching the icicle shatter into oblivion. He meant it too, it had been an impressive shot. “Watch this one,” he added, throwing another rock. He hadn’t really aimed, but the left-most icicle of a group of three was obliterated when the rock hit. He whooped, pumping the air with his fist, then watched as Dav’s rock flew, taking out yet another icicle.

The game continued in like fashion, the contestants matched icicle for icicle, with only occasional misses, until all the icicles had been destroyed, whereupon it ended due to the absense of targets.

Tivax had lost track of the score several throws previously, caught up in the fun of the game, so he had to hope that Davquil had been keeping better track than he.

“Candidates one, icicles zero.” he stated, grinning broadly as he looked around at the icicle-free openings.

[Cait]

Laughing as she watched him celebrate his next hit. This was certainly far more fun when two people were at it than being all by her lonesome. Though she did imagine that she might not have had as much fun with some of the other Candidates. Much like her brothers, a lot of the people from the North were quite stoic and not prone to spontaneous bouts of fun.

Scooping up a couple more rocks, she took turns with Tivax, throwing her rocks and much to her dismay, missing more than she hit. Tivax didn't have the same troubles she was having and before she knew it, they were out of icicles to destroy and the boy had won. Well, it looks like it was time for her to eat her words.

"While the icicles were the ultimate losers, I didn't do much better. You beat me...by quite a bit." She scrunched up her face and stuck out her tongue then chuckled, sketching a dramatic bow. "Consider me at your service, Lord Tivax."

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

Tivax allowed himself a silent crow of victory when Davquil told him he’d won, but her next statement provided too much of an opportunity to be passed up.

“Actually, it’s my uncle that’s the Lord,” he replied, in a voice full of irony. this required serious thought. What could he order Davquil to do? He mused on that for a couple seconds, then grinned.

“Your first task,” he intoned, “is to help me build a snowman in between each opening.” Having said that, he immediately proceeded to gathering snow where it had fallen, mostly in the middle of the open space, which was open to the sky. Having heaped some of the snow together, he set about making a ball of it to roll across and set up between the entrances.

[Cait]

Dav's eyebrows very nearly shot clear off her face at Tiv's admission and for a moment she was skeptical. But then she recalled his unique coloring. The Lord Holder and his family, did indeed possess such a coloring if she recalled correctly; and seeing that she hadn't been away from the Hold so long as to forget such things, she felt very confident her accuracy. For a moment, Dav wasn't quite sure how to respond; was she supposed to be all deferential and respectful or should she carry on as she had been?

The later option seemed to win out as she finally grinned and nudged the boy with her elbow, waiting for him to decide what he would order her to do. Being the nephew of the Lord Holder of Icy Caverns, she wondered how he'd managed to make it into the Weyr as a Candidate, given the tension between the Weyr and the Hold. It had been difficult enough for Dav--whose brother was a dragonrider--to get to the Weyr, she could only imagine how difficult the process would have been for Tivax. But that didn't matter now--she might ask him about it later--as he seemed to have come up with his first command; and a mighty good one it was too.

"Now that is something I will readily comply with." She declared, perhaps a bit too loudly, but not uncommonly so for the girl. As Tivax set about gathering snow from the opening, Dav joined him and began to help pack in the snow until it formed a ball that was compact enough to roll. "Let's make the biggest snowman the Weyr has ever seen!"

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

Tivax was relieved that Davquil didn’t mention anything more about the Lord Holder. His uncle was not a good subject for much, unless one felt like ruining a fine day in the Weyr. He smiled broadly at Davquil’s declaration of agreement. “Largest in the whole world!” he shot back. The smile remained as they got the first snowball large enough and started rolling it, first through more snow to make it larger, then over to the space between the entrances. Once it was in place Tivax stepped back to look it over. It was decent-sized, he supposed, but really, where was the fun in it merely being decent-sized?

“We must get this thing larger!” Tivax exclaimed, darting back to the snow and beginning to roll another ball, since that would be the easiest way to transfer it to the snowman’s base. He fully intended to have the snowman’s base be at least four feet high, so that the fully made snowman would top seven feet easily.

“Once we’re done with this one, we should build a snow-dragon,” Tivax proposed. “Not a large one or anything, but the snow here is wet enough that it ought to hold the shape well enough.”

[Cait]

Laughing at Tiv's far better proclamation, Dav nodded emphatically and began to help shove and roll the ball of snow around until it was a fairly decent size and in the proper positioning for their snowman. But as she took a step back and shoved her hair out of her face, tilting her head she felt it could be much larger, and Tiv seemed to be of the same opinion because before she could say anything, he'd exclaimed that it was far too small and darted off to collect more snow.

Following suit, Dav scurried to make her own smaller ball of snow, her hands pink with cold though she hardly payed much attention to it. Rolling her ball of snow back to the base of the larger snow orb, she plopped down on it, crushing it with her knee then scooping up double handfuls of the snow and packing it on top of the base. She was doing this, her cheeks flushed and chapped from cold and giddiness, her hair a riotous mess when Tivax dropped a proposal that made her squeal. "A snow dragon! That will be fun! Oh, come, hurry up so we can make a dragon!"

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

Tivax rushed through completing the snowman, so it wasn't going to be quite symmetrical. He had to pile snow on either side of the growing snowman so that he could place the third, smallest ball of snow, the head, on it. It wasn’t the greatest snowman around, but it was definitely the tallest that Tivax had ever seen. It was probably a good half foot over seven feet, putting it a foot and a half taller than him. In fact, he thought that it looked rather like an out-of-shape version of his uncle Brencis, though Brencis would have been a foot shorter.

“Objective snowman, accomplished. Objective snow dragon, to be begun.” Tivax smiled, looked across at Davquil, and raced forward, slamming into the remaining snow. He lay there for a little while, letting the snow cool his jacket, then got up and started pushing snow around again.

“I think we ought to put the dragon so that it is curled up next to the snowman. Or maybe so that it looks like it’s about to attack the snowman.” They were both good options, he was at an impasse. “Suggestions, Dav?” He couldn’t pinpoint when it had happened, but at some point he and Davquil had started using shorthand for each other’s names. They were now Tiv and Dav.

[Cait]

Once Tiv had placed the final, slightly misshapen ball of snow in place of the head, Dav tilted her head slightly and squinted her eyes, making a face. If you looked at it juuuuust right, it looked like a person...right? Shrugging she broke into a trademark grin and bounced on her toes, eager to begin phase two. Snow dragon! Of course when Tiv came tearing across the bowl at her and threw himself into the snowdrift beside her, her eyes went wide at first and then she laughed and spinning on the toes of her boots she launched herself into the snow beside him, landing on her back with an 'oof' glad for a brief cooling off session.

Still laying there even as Tivax pushed himself out of the snow and began to gather it, she closed her eyes against the sun for several seconds until Tiv began to speak. Finally opening her eyes again, she pushed herself up into a seated position and looked back towards the snowman, which she had decided to name Norman for some reason. "Well I think that entirely depends, Tiv, on whether Norman is a dragonrider or a villainous fiend."

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

Tivax paused in his snow-gathering as Davquil spoke. She raised an valid point. The position of the snow dragon would dictate whether Norman was dragonrider or villain. He stared at Norman for a while, lips pursed in thought. Realizing that he was trying to get over Norman’s amazing, for a snowman, resemblance to Brencis Kalarn, Tivax burst into laughter. He managed to choke it back and started to say that the dragon would have to be attacking Norman, but then he revised how he was going to say it and started laughing again, this time at his own mental phrasing. He couldn’t speak, he was laughing too hard to get the words out. Finally, gasping, he managed to stop laughing long enough to say what he was thinking.

“It’ll have to be attacking him,” he gasped out, laughter threatening once more to steal his ability to speak. “’Cuz he’d be… No’man, as a rider… but if he was no man, than he wouldn’t exist, so…” Tivax’s words trailed off into laughter again. Clear in the mind was the furious expression that would be on his uncle’s face if the man could see what they were doing. Ok, maybe Norman didn’t look that much like Brencis Kalarn (and there was the little fact that Tivax would probably run if he ever saw that expression on his uncle’s face in actuality), but still, it would almost be worth it if his uncle turned up and saw this.

Shaking his head, Tivax finally returned to making snowballs for transit, so that they could start building the dragon.

[Cait]

Davquil studied Tiv’s face as he pondered then let out a rather unlady-like snort when he began to laugh, though in short order she was laughing right along with her new friend until the pair of them reached a point where they might be considered obnoxious by anyone’s standards. When Tiv managed to catch his breath long enough to clue Dav in on his thoughts, it resulted in another raucous bought of laughter that brought the poor girl to tears. How very unfortunate it would be for a man named Norman to Impress to a dragon.

”Then attack it shall!” Dav declared once they’d finally simmered down enough to breath and speak properly. Wiping her face with the back of her chilly hand, she set to work, helping Tiv gather and pile the snow so until it was in the general shape that they wanted it. This was going to be tricky of course, given that Norman was so tall. Eventually Dav came up with an idea to make a set of packed stairs beside the growing dragon sculpture out of snow and while Tiv was working on the body of the dragon, Dav worked on the stairs.

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

T’vax was still grinning the whole time as he worked on making the dragon’s body, rolling vast amounts of snow around, packing it close, and repeating the process. Indeed, the only reason why the young man was not laughing as he worked was quite simply that he was too out of breath from pushing snow around to do much laughing. Getting the dragon’s body to be appropriately sized was not going to be easy, for Norman was on the tall side, and hence to look appropriately threatening, the dragon would have to be a larger, rather than a smaller, model. T’vax had privately decided that he wanted the dragon to be about 35 feet or so, making it a king. Silently, in his head, he was dubbing the sculpture “Verith eats Brencis”, with Verith being the one-time watchdragon at Icy Caverns, whom he’d seen once, though not close enough to speak to. Of course, if anyone asked him, he was likely to just call the two snow figures “Norman is attacked by Dragon” but that was beside the point.

Hearing a noise, he looked up from where he was packing snow into the form of one of a dragon’s rear foot, only to see Dav building a set of… stairs? He opened his mouth to ask her what she was doing, then closed it with a grin. He knew what she was doing; she was building up a way for them to work on the dragon once it got too tall for them to build from the ground.

“Hey Dav!” he called up, while applying more snow where the dragon’s toes would eventually be. “Do you have any ideas for the dragon’s name?” He couldn’t think of anything besides Verith, and that was a little too close to his secret name for the snow sculptures.

[Cait]

Working diligently on her bit of the project, once Dav had finished with the stairs she began to haul snow up and pile it on, packing it in foot by foot so that the dragon’s height continued to grow. For a while the two worked in silence until finally it was Tiv that spoke up. Blinking, Dav peered down at him from where she was packing in some snow where the wings would be folded against the dragon’s back.

“Yeah?” She replied, leaning into the sturdy pillar of packed snow. Hmmm, a name for the dragon? It was hard to think of one since as a rule dragons named themselves…or were they simply born with names? Was there really a difference? Nibbling lightly on the inside of her cheek, she pondered and then her eyes lit up, lips curling in a devious grin. “We should name him Gigantith!”

It was a suitable name; the dragon would be rather large after all; assuming they were able to finish it. Then there was the fact that Dav’s artistic talent was reserved for a belt loom. She couldn’t drawn or sculpt anything and have it look like what she was intending to make. Maybe Tiv was a little better at it.

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

Tiv laughed aloud at Dav’s choice for the dragon’s name, tossing his head back as he did so. It was indeed apt, for they were by no means building a midget.

“Gigantith he shall be, then,” Tiv replied, grinning. Why shouldn’t he grin? This was some of the most fun he’d had in his entire life. He set to work molding the upper curve of the back leg, scooping snow out from the dragon’s body and smoothing the curve of the leg out. He wasn’t amazing at snow-sculpture, but the one thing all that moving around his family had done had taught him to be at least decent at snow-molding and snow-building. Privately, he thought he was better than his twin at it, but he’d always known better than to say anything.

He was still grinning as he moved on to building up and packing down the snow that he would scrape into the form of Gigantith’s forelimb. The dragon was starting to come together, though working on the wings and back was going to be a challenge. He’d already built up most of the snow where the head was going to be, and was going to shape it into a burst of flame leaving Gigantith’s open maw.

He finished roughing in the forelimb and started to work on the flames, knocking snow out of the “maw” so that the top and bottom would stick out, forming the actual maw while the inner snow was the fire.

Finishing with the side he was on, he stepped back to take a look. Gigantith was coming along nicely, he thought they were probably coming up on being half-way done.

“We’re about half-way!” he called up to Dav, grinning broadly.

[Cait]

Yes, this most definitely was not suited to her skillset. Making globular snow Norman wasn’t so bad; he was just a bunch of balls all squished together. A dragon on the other hand was a little more difficult. While Tiv worked on the feet and the legs and the back, Dav tried to build a foreleg then took a step back and stared at it, her nose wrinkling.

It was short and misshapen and well…hideous. Before Tiv could see it, she grabbed hold of the limp and ripped it off before repacking the snow. Though she did her best to help, in the end it was Tiv doing most of the artistic work while Dav worked on smoothing things out. When he called out the half-way mark she let out a whoop and jumped down from the stairs and stumbled only to almost knock into a short, stout woman bundled up in an ankle-length coat. It was hard to tell if the coat was just too big for the woman or if it was intentionally that long, but whatever the case, the look on the woman’s face—or what could be seen of it between knit cap and scarf—was certainly not please.

”And what do you think you two are doing?! You have chores to do, do you not?” The woman’s voice was soft but carried weight to it that was more than a little frightening.

Dav swallowed audibly and shuffled back a few steps, inadvertently bumping into Tiv. Without turning, she fumbled for his arm to try and turn him around. Looks like they were in trouble now. Hissing from the corner of her mouth, she tugged on Tiv’s jacket. “Tiv…turn around.”

[Ghost of Fire (Fëanáro)]

Tiv paused in his work when someone bumped into him from behind. He’d had to reach out and catch himself against Gigantith’s shoulder, for he’d been leaning forward and shaping the base of the front leg at the time.

Hands tugged at his jacket, then, and Dav was hissing for him to turn around. Slowly, he turned, gazing over Dav’s head. His gaze landed on a woman, short and stout seeming — though the stoutness could have been in part due to her coat — who was bundled up in an ankle length coat. He didn’t know if he knew her or not, it was impossible to get a good look at her face, being as it was hidden between a knit cap and a scarf.

“Ma’am, is something wrong?” T’vax asked. If he’d been holding anything in his hands he probably would have twisted it around as a way of relieving nerves, but he was holding nothing. Besides which, it had been a long time since he’d done something like that. His fa- Tiberax Noixay had disapproved of showing nervousness.

“Dav,” he whispered, barely moving his lips. “Do you know this person?”