Demesne Patron EX SS 13 - An Armada Horotract's Morning (Patreon)

Oneshoda (Deck Technician, Senior Apprentice) woke up to the familiar swaying of her hammock on (Fifth Deck, Hallway Three, Cabin Seven, Station Twenty-Three) the Armada Fabrication Ship Orchard Forty, and took a moment to judge the sway, her eyes still closed. No pitch, no sounds beyond the usual rocking… the weather was clear, the Fleet still stopped.

That was as far as her thoughts managed to go before there was the single, sharp bell indication it was first daylight.

Pity. She had wanted to go back to sleep a few minutes longer.

Eyes still closed, Esho reached out to her steerboard side and with the ease of years of habit and practiced grasped the folded morningcloth she had left there the night before. All around her, she heard sounds of others in her squad doing the same, some with less grace than others as she used the wet cloth to wipe the Iridescence from around her eyes. While some of the water had evaporated in the night, the cloth was still wet enough to leave a pleasant coolness on her face as she did the first scrub of the morning to get the colors off. Face followed eyes as she wiped her hair, then her hands.

Only then was it safe to rub at her eyes and open them to the familiar view of the dark, ancient wood of the overhead of her sleep station. Grabbing the handhold, her fingers sliding into familiar groves worn smooth by years of other hands doing the same, she pulled herself off her hammock, setting her feet on floor gritty and rough with the night's Iridescence. Voices were beginning to rise in greeting across the cabin as she took her pillow and blanket off the hammock, putting those into their proper locker, which she latched shut.

"Mornin', Esho," Haqunoh (Navigator, Junior Apprentice), her squadmate in the station across from her, said as they put away their own things, their morningcloth on top of their head, hands too full to sign. "Sleep well?"

Esho unhooked the hammock from either end of her station and started rolling it up in preparation for putting it into its own locker. She pitched her voice to carry. "Once people stopped fraternizing when people were trying to sleep, yeah."

There was a laughing chorus of agreement and three protesting voices from the culprits as Esho put away her hammock. She grabbed her own facecloth and gave her neck a quick wipe. The back of her neck always felt hot in the morning. Metelili, one of their squad's Life Technicians, said it had something to do with her blood vessels there. "How about you? Were you reading again after lights out?" She signed with one hand, the central three fingers tucked in and the thumb and least finger sticking out and pointing up.

One hand finally free, Haqunoh signed the same. "There's never enough time to remember everything a navigator is supposed to," Esho said, signing at her that they'd heard what she'd been doing last night, so she had no call to judge what other people did after lights out before unhooking their own hammock, hands full again.

Esho took her morning kit from another locker, putting it in her ditty bucket. She was just putting her towel on top of it—it was getting worn. Good thing she was going to be issued a new one soon—when there was a familiar thump of a head hitting wood, followed by words Haqunoh wasn't supposed to know, but everyone in the Armada and probably even landsiders knew anyway. "Hurt yourself?" she called out, sticking out a hand to add a mocking wiggle wave to the words.

"I can't wait for you to be allowed to start making vistas for private use," Haqunoh grumbled, rubbing their head and sighing. Ever since their growth spurt, Haqunoh had been constantly bumping their head on practically everything, even in their familiar cabin, still not yet used to their new height. Just tall enough to be inconvenient and just short enough that the ship's Prime Doctor had ruled they didn't need Deadspeaking modification, Haqunoh was likely to keep hitting things for the foreseeable future until they adjusted to their new dimensions.

Personally, Esho didn't see what was so difficult about adjusting to suddenly growing seven yustri, four chiyustri taller in a storm month, but that was just her. Standing at a less than average one pace, two stri, nine yustri and seven chiyustri tall, Esho was below average in height for her age, not that she was cared or anything. Not at all. She was perfectly fine with being too short of a third of all the lockers on the ship while still not being allowed to use her Horotracting as she pleased to reach them.

"Oh? So sure I'm not just going to bring everything lower down so I can actually reach things?" Esho said with a mocking wiggle wave.

"I'm already reaching all the high lockers for you," Haqunoh said, signing with the three middle finger tucked in and the thumb and least finger sticking out and pointing down, followed by their own mocking wiggle wave.

Esho didn't say, anything, but she did sign her hand palm down and curled the fingers down briefly, a minor apology and acknowledgment in one. Then she made a vulgar gesture, signing it low enough it was a proposition rather than an insult.

Haqunoh returned the gesture, and the two of them both nodded as they both collected that day's duty wear and added it to their ditty buckets. Well, at least Esho had something to look forward to during morning washing.

Lintoh, the oldest in their squad and their non-com, let out a loud whistle, and everyone began securing the last of their hammocks and sleep gear before forming into a line by height so that they could all head to the wash station. Most of them were senior apprentices, and those who were still juniors were only so because it wasn't their guild's review period yet, so the whole squad all moved smoothly into place and began streaming out of their cabin just as the last of Cabin Six exited theirs.

While everyone spoke in low voices in the passageway, the number of people still made the sum of those voices very loud, and with all of them marching to wash most couldn't even sign save for Lintoh, who held up her hands so that people behind would see her. The decks were still a little wet from the previous cleaning shift's pass to clear it of Iridescence, while the bulkheads were already starting to gain a light glitter. People avoided these with easy experience, lest they get any of the fine, needle-sharp growths that occasionally formed imbedded in their skin.

As they walked, Esho went over today's duty schedule. They had Ahrahr, so she had the afternoon free. With the fleet adrift and the float decks and safety netting out on the water, most people would probably be spending it socializing, swimming from deck to deck and meeting friends from other departments and ships, propositioning, getting propositioned, having open grills and catching what food was willing to get close enough to binding of lightningwisps on the netting to be caught.

But before then though, there was mess, she had hold imbuement duty with the rest of her department, and lessons to get them ready for their certification review. Hers would be in the coming week, and if she passed it she'd finally be allowed to define vistas at her own discretion… within Fleet guidelines, of course.

She knew it would mean everyone in her now both trying to get in her good books and nagging her to define vistas for them, but that was expected. Once the Wizards in a squad were senior and certified, it was expected they start dungeoning their squad's cabin. Lintoh was why the temperature was so even in their room, the Whisperer putting a binding on the cabin vent to equalize the temperature, otherwise spots would get too hot or too cold. Esho already had favors lined up for taller stations or stations were time was faster so people could sleep in a little longer.

After the morning bath, and Haqunoh and her making good on their agreement in the small window of time the wash period allowed, the squad, now in duty wear and still carrying their ditty buckets, entered the ship's mess hall, taking their assigned table on the right bulkhead. It was a relatively new assignment, and many of her squadmates still had trouble negotiating the change in down as they went from walking on the deck to walking on the bulkhead. Only Vilon, the other Horotract in the squad, and the Agriculture Technicians (Senior Apprentices) Milanta and Isalif made the transition smoothly. Others had to rely on the old trick on backing up to the bulkhead and making contact with it, then turning over and pushing up as if they'd just been lying down.

Breakfast was a box of bread, a box of dillian sausages, and a tin of powdered tea that Lintoh was supposed to add water to for all of them. Boxed, because otherwise it would spill while making the transition to the bulkhead unless she or Vilon where handling it, and neither of them were certified for that kind of defining yet, nor were they the squad's mess officers.

Once breakfast began, it was a free for all, voices rising and hands flashing with signs. Esho had a conversation with her fellow Horotract at the other end of the table, asking her if they were still on to study that afternoon for their certification, which progressed in talking about their relative strengths and weaknesses. She still had trouble making the transition between a cylinder and a cone, and while everyone agreed it was a stupid thing to test because it had no practical use in real life except in exceptionally hypothetical circumstances specifically tailored to need the skill, it was part of the certification test.

Still, except for that transition, they both believed their practical skills were solid. It was the math portion of the test they both needed to study for. Expanding the volume of a hold was all well and good, but they needed to be able to calculate how much pressure per square stri that would put on the floor, which would be the limiting factor in what kind and how much cargo could be stored. Vilon had trouble keeping the density averages of the various types of wood used in ship construction straight, while Esho always forgot the difference between reinforced and unreinforced decking.

Ugh, why didn't they have a shanty song for this kind of thing, instead of what kind of fruit juices went into making a Iskandaliya Dazer? Their predecessors have had thousands of tours of the seas to make one up!

Lintoh let out a whistle, one of several that suddenly rang out in the mess hall, and people began finishing their food and getting ready to head back to duty stations for the day. For Esho, that would be sitting in the hold, keeping to the beat as she and other Hold Technician apprentices kept the vista that expanded the main hold of the ship imbued. It was a relatively light assignment, just sitting with their hands on the contact wire and imbuing according to the beat, signing to each other to pass the time.

Technically they weren't supposed to do the latter, but as long as there weren't any officers about and the vista was above the minimum threshold they were unofficially free to spend their time as they wished. Normally this would be in the afternoon, after a busy morning organizing the hold, redistributing the weight and occasionally being sent to supply some other department, but today was an Ahrahr. Most departments had a relaxed duty schedule as a result.

As everyone grabbed their ditty buckets to take with them to their duty stations in preparation for their midday wash, Esho began taking in deep, even breaths, filling herself with magic in preparation for her duties. As she did, vertices began to make themselves known, the points in space that a Horotract used to define a vista. With the vertices came the sure and certain knowledge of the relationships between them, the simplest of which was distance. Esho headed to her assigned vista, building up the magic for a burst of imbuement when she arrived so she could relax for the rest of the morning as she and her work crew whiled the day away, waiting for them to get off duty.