---

K'so
K'so and A'lo seemed to be paired together on chores frequently. Not that the blue weyrling minded. A'lo was the closest thing to a friend that he had, besides Qancith, of course.

He'd thought that now that Qanc could hunt his own meals, his responsibilities with feedings were over. Sadly, that was not so. Now he, A'lo, and Pareilth's rider waited until all the hatchlings were done eating and then heaved the remains of their meals into barrows and wheeled them to the middens.

On the plus side, though, their group got free time while the others were working on their chores, instead. Or, as someone else pointed out, more time to complete the assignments that were put to them.

On the down side, that meant they were late for breakfast (and sometimes late for their morning exercises); lost time with their mentors (which K'so didn't mind at all); and were sometimes late for light's-out. Since this was their duty, though, they at least didn't get in trouble for those things.

At least the first time they had to clean up was before breakfast. That kept his stomach from heaving too much as he watched the youngsters clumsily take down their first kills: something that was quite messy. They were also told they'd have to wash the blood off of the fence and clean up the ground so that the next batch of feeding beasts wouldn't be too riled up by the smell.

"I think this is worse than butchering them ourselves," K'so muttered to the other two as they walked into the first now-empty pen to collect what was left of the first herdbeast. He wrinkled his nose. After they'd loaded the remains into the barrow, Pareilth's rider started washing down the fence and raking dirt over the blood- and gore-spattered ground while the other two wheeled into the next pen. The young man had volunteered to do that task if the others would take care of the rest; the green look on his face as they'd watched their dragons eat had convinced K'so that the boy would lose his own meals if he had to touch the carcasses. He seemed to recall that the greenrider had avoided butchering his dragon's own meat as much as possible. Meanwhile, A'lo and K'so each had a wheelbarrow; they'd managed to beg a second one from the Herder who maintained the barrows so they could get their work done more quickly.

Once their barrows were filled, they made a run to the midden. "Last one to the midden's a rotten egg!" K'so shouted and turned it into a race. Careening down the path, he didn't see a dip and the barrow bounced, splattering him with gore. He promptly let go of the barrow with a disgusted exclamation, which tipped over, spilling its contents across the path. "SHAFFIT!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "Aaaaah gross." After he loaded his mess back up and cleaned the path up as much as possible, he continued to the midden at a more sedate pace. He also never suggested racing again.

They had to make four more trips to and from the feeding pens and the middens before the morning's mess was cleaned up. Then they washed out the barrows before returning them to the herder. K'so immediately returned to his barracks weyr and took a bath, much to Qancith's amusement.

The afternoon feeding followed a similar pattern, although it was daylight and they could actually reasonably see what they were doing. K'so almost suggested another race, but entertained second thoughts. The nighttime feeding was easily the worst, as it was completely dark by the time they finished. The idea of racing didn't even enter his mind.

Unfortunately, because it was dark, K'so didn't clean his barrow as thoroughly as he should have - as he found out the next morning when he got an earful from the Herder about it. He took care after that to scrub carefully.

A'lo

A'lo was generally loathe to leave his twin alone, especially considering the fact that she was pregnant. That aside, he knew full well that his gift would alert him if something bad was going to happen. After all, he had been working on it with Silvara and he knew that so long as he was careful, things should be perfectly fine. As such, he went off with K'so to do chores, along with Pareilth's rider.

At K'so's comment, A'lo chuckled his amusement and nodded his agreement. At least when they had done the work for their dragons... the mess was controlled. Somehow, the hatchlings managed to get herdbeast EVERYWHERE! "No kidding," he commented in response before he set about helping move the remains from the area with K'so. He didn't mind the hard work of dealing with the wheelbarrow, at least it wasn't too terribly bad having a friend with him.

Naturally, K'so decided to make it more interesting and he laughed before hurrying after his friend with the other barrow. The only problem was that, while he had missed the bump in the path, he did end up falling over laughiing at his friend and somehow managed to tip the remains partially on himself, thus getting himself partially covered as well. Although, thankfully, not as bad as his friend. "Ugh!" he groaned out his protest as he put the meat back into the barrow before continuing on his way once more.

Once done, with their work, he had set about cleaning the barrow and got the vast majority of it cleaned out.

Artemis

As luck would have it, Artemis's task was actually to help a couple of the assistant weyrlingmaster's. L'ric and Ling had found her and had her come help with scoring the dyed rope. Naturally, Z'vier and Basidith's riders were with her, something that was made increasingly more amusing when the smell of scored rope caused her stomach to churn. Before she knew it, she had ended up puking all over some of the rope and giving the others a sheepish look as she apologised.

Naturally, she and the other two weyrlings had to clean the rope of vomit and Artemis was sent to get more tea from Silvara before heading back to continue working at scoring the rope. The riders were careful to keep her doing the easier work although they did keep a close eye on her for any signs of her about to vomit again.

---

K'so
K'so had absolutely zero desire to spend any time actually making oils. That was HARD work! However, he was more than happy to collect herbs and nuts. That was a reasonably easy task and frequently smelled quite nice. Besides, Qancith had quite a few opinions on which herbs and nuts smelled the best, and since he was helping with the overall process, he got pick of some of the smaller jars of oil, what were essentially the "leftovers" when there wasn't quite enough of the oil at the end of the batch to fill a regular-sized jar of hide oil. He'd obtained quite a collection of these "leftover" jars and Qancith was constantly suggesting new combinations to see how they smelled together, like nutmeg and cinnamon, or sage and thyme.

Today, he was picking herbs. He was given several baskets and told to start on one end of the herb houses and work his way toward the other end. The Farmer had shown him how to tell which leaves were ready: they felt plump and heavy, were a vibrant color (whatever color was appropriate to that herb), and were pungently scented.

The herbs were separated into houses by alphabetical order, and each side had different ones. Last week, the eastern side had been harvested by Chore Group B, this week he was doing the western side; that meant it was afternoon when he was working, when the herbs were at their most vibrant under the direct afternoon sunlight. Under the observant but unobtrusive observation of the Farmer, who corrected him if he started to pluck a particular plant too bare or collect some less than ideal specimens, he filled baskets of anise, bay, cardamom, chamomile, cinnamon leaf, hops, jasmine, marjoram, oregano, peppermint, rosemary, tarragon, and vanilla. As he filled each basket, he put it on a cart. Once he finished, he wheeled the entire cart full of baskets to the oil-making room where they'd be processed into oils over the next couple of days. Once they'd been processed, he'd get the leftover jars of all of the herbs; Qancith had a particular fondness for these scents.

In fact, to K'so's surprise, he rather enjoyed the scents himself. For all his disgust with his father's career in Farming, sorting through the herbs and breathing in their sometimes spicy, sometimes sweet scents was soothing and refreshing. He began thinking about what could be done with them as far as liqueurs were concerned and made a note to ask the Master Vintner who was teaching him and A'lo during their evening Craft lessons.

"HOUSEKEEPING?!" Fayble scowled as she scrubbed the nasty dragon incontinence off of a random rider's ledge she tried not to wretch. "THIS IS SLAVERY!" She howled (to hopefully no one), "So gross!" She scrubbed the floor harder and groaned seeing as it just wasn't coming clean! Damn the dragon for not being able to hold it, what on Pern had it EATEN? "Oh ew." She held up a stray half digested bone and knew exactly what. "Ew...ew...ew!" She squealed and plopped it in her trash. "So way ew."

--

D'rick had been given a simple task of helping to oil dragons. Except the brown he was trying to oil...Well apparently it didn't want to be oiled (least not by him), and made it known quite well. "Stand still please! I can't get this on you if you keep MOVING!" He sighed frustrated, bags were dark under his eyes and he groaned with a yawn almost falling asleep on his feet. He really needed to get more sleep.

A'lo

A'lo was okay with the idea of the making oils lesson. He knew it would be important since his dragon would be using these oils. With that in mind, he had no problems when he was sent to gather various herbs, barks, and the like that he could find while out wandering. Naturally, this also included his dragon following him around and pointing out different herbs for him to gather along the way that he might have missed.

Artemis

Artemis was not entirely certain what she thought of her assigned chore this particular week. Quite honestly, she made extra certain that she drank her teas as she knew there was a chance for her to deal with the bloody carcasses that were left behind by the dragons. However, luckily for her, there was also a job for sharpening the butchering implements. With that in mind, the girl wasted no time in starting that task, leaving Z'vier and Basidith's rider to do the clean up.

---

K'so
K'so made a deal with Pareilth's rider, S'nom, to do their laundry while S'nom scrubbed down their dragon couches. He had to beg Qancith to help him haul the two bags of laundry down to the laundry rooms (neither of them had done their laundry for over a week). He dumped his laundry into one hot bin of water and boralt, and S'nom's into another and then sat down to churn the water.

He sighed. He hated cleaning. That's what they had drudges for! But as weyrlings, they were expected to clean up after themselves. As if they didn't have enough to do with all their lessons!

After he churned his laundry for about ten minutes, he switched to S'nom's. Then he swirled his around for a few more minutes before shifting it into a tub of cold water and repeating on the greenrider's laundry. He used the paddle to swirl the laundry in the cold water before transferring it to a third cold-water tub and stirring it up. Then he pulled out each piece and pinned it to the drying cable.

Once he had it all hung, he kicked up the spit dogs to start turning the cable. They had an interesting contraption for drying laundry, since winter lasted longer up here and they couldn't always dry their laundry outside. The laundry was pegged to a cable and the dogs turned a gear pile and the cable would go through a chamber that was heated to dry the clothing more quickly than it would just hanging it. As it came out the other side, he stuffed it back in the laundry bag. He had to dash back and forth from one side of the dryer to the other to hang up fresh laundry to keep it going.

He and Qancith had just finished hauling the laundry back when the bell for lunch chimed across the bowl. He groaned and stretched before treading back down to the lower bowl to the kitchens to get food.

Blech it was a job that he didn't much enjoy. In fact how could one enjoy it when picking up what looked like the entrails of a beast? He scooped it up with a shovel and pitched it into the cart that he had following him. It smelt worse than it looked and it was clear that the local wildlife had been trying to help eat up what was left. He groaned and picked up more random pieces. What had possessed him to offer to do this nasty task? Clearly the boy had lost his mind. Once done he shuddered and headed down to the lower levels, having stopped to wash as much of the ick off of his body. He noticed K'rso and quickly matched step. "How's it going?" He greeted still feeling ill from the smells outside.

--

Fayble was covered in both ink and score marks. She groaned, at least this was easier, but how had this all happened? The girl clumsily twsted the rope in her fingers glad to be freed shortly there after.

She made a quick descent to go for lunch smiling at both K'rso and D'rick before taking a double take. D'rick looked ill. "Bad time outside?"

---

K'so
K'so had learned that one of the Assistant Weyrlingmasters, T'lon, was a Vintner, and today was his Rest Day, so K'so volunteered to help him. Today, the bronzerider was completing the first rack of cherry cordial. The man seemed overly pleased that K'so was volunteering, but K'so didn't want to look too closely at it; this beat the heck out of running errands for Alina.

Of course, he found out why the Weyrlingmaster was pleased...because he put K'so at the bottom of the siphon tube for siphoning the clear liquid off the top, leaving the cherries' pulp and pits in the bottom of the carboy from the primary fermentation process. Of course, since this was the primary fermentation, the alcohol was exceptionally strong and bitter.

K'so found this out when he started the suction and got a mouthful of the stuff. He spat it out all over the floor...and T'lon's boots. He managed to get the end of the siphon tube into the secondary fermentation container, though, minimizing loss.

"That is NASTY!" he coughed.

"Yeah, it's called 'green wine' for a reason. That's what the second fermentation process, or 'racking,' is for."

It took several minutes to drain the carboy and then they had to seal up the racking bottle and clean the carboy. T'lon set K'so to the cleanup while he carefully sealed the racking jug. It took a long time to scrub the cherry residue off the bottom of the carboy and run a scrub tool through the siphon tube, as well.

K'so wanted to stay and talk to T'lon more about making the cordial, but his hour was up and he had to go clean up for lunch instead. He was very distracted and didn't talk to anyone else during lunch, he was too busy thinking about making cordials and making a note to look up what "quikal" was - he remembered hearing something about it during one of the AIVAS classes he'd had to take.

Artemis

Artemis found herself dealing with housekeeping tasks. Lucky for her, she was not stuck dealing with dragon incontinence problems... instead she got stuck dusting and cleaning weyrs and barracks. With ease she took the required materials and set about her task.

Easily she started with the girl weyrling barracks and began by scrubbing clean all the various couches for the hatchlings. She grabbed the supplies and started with the barracks furthest from the door, scrubbing them until they were nice and clean before she began dusting the room and lastly she moved onto sweeping it. She followed this pattern through the rest of the girl's barracks before moving onto the boys. From there she went onto the first level of weyrs and carefully set about cleaning up.

All in all, by the time her hour or so of cleaning was done... the poor girl looked about ready to fall over she was so exhausted. Tiredly she returned the cleaning supplies before wandering over to her bed and taking a short nap. Her pregnancy was starting to take a bit more out of her as her stomach started to show a slight baby bump... something she was NOT happy about.

Jazz was happily curled on her couch, as nicely cleaned as it was, and the green watched as her rider began snoring a second later.

A'lo

A'lo found himself stuck doing errands this particular week which meant that he was not with the others in his group. Instead he was running around and actually found himself caught by Valing, his sister's mentor.

"A'lo! I need your help with something. I have a note here for the headwoman and one for your cousin. I was told to report what I could about my meetings with your sister. Would you be a dear and run those to them?" the woman requested.

A'lo nodded his head and accepted the notes before he took off to take them to their respective destinations a second before Aqayla caught him and had him help her with oiling her dragon as well as help with her beast craft. In another words... the weyrling would have to help her wash down and brush the runners in their stalls.

Luckily (or unluckily) for the lad, that wasted the rest of his hour worth of chores before he was able to take off and do something else... such as jumping in the nearest shower and washing the stench of runner beasts off his body. "Ugh! I NEVER want one of those things! They are nasty!" he complained to his bronze.