Duty roster training.

Writers: Suzee, Chelle
Date Posted: 9th May 2011

Characters: P'nal, K'ale
Description: K'ale gets a special lesson.
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 2, day 1 of Turn 6
Notes: Mentions; Kenza

K'ale

The brownrider waited in his office. It was the end of the day, when
he would prepare for the next sevenday. Before he got started, he
sipped some klah and waited for J'darin's weyrling to come. It was a
fairly straightforward business really.

K'ale reported to the wingsecond's office as he'd been told. Knocking
first, he cracked the door open. "Sir?" he asked. "Are you ready for me
now?"

"Come in, son." P'nal searched for his name. "K'ale, have a seat."
**Kenza's kid right**

K'ale stepped fully into the room. He'd made sure to clean up from his
usual working clothes and put on his good ones including the belt his
da had presented him at his impression. He hadn't really put two and
two together to realize P'nal was the one who'd crafted it.

He shuffled the hides and came up with the one he wanted. "So, what
do you know about wing duty?"

"Only what I've picked up from the training so far and what I've heard
or overheard my parents talking about." He wasn't quite sure if the
Wingsecond wanted him to do a brain dump of everything he knew or just
what he'd said.

"Allright well within the Wing, there are several duties to be made aware
of. Sweep duty is the most obvious. There is also watch duty, search duty,
and whatever else the Wingleader may require." P'nal watched him, looking
for any confusion at what he was saying.

K'ale nodded, he knew about those kinds of duties.

"Allright so to make sure everyone knows what they are doing and to avoid
repeats, we make what is known as a duty roster. It's a list of the riders and
what they should be doing when. Each Wing has one posted. Some do it for
longer or shorter, but our wing has a three sevenday rotation. So every three
sevendays, it will change." P'nal looked back at him. "Stop me if I go
too fast."

He nodded again. "Is that so people don't get burned out on one kind of duty?"

"Right and to give everyone an equal turn. That way, they can't say someone
is the favorite because they always have the easy duty." P'nal pulled out one
of his old duty rosters and showed it to K'ale. "Can you read that?"

"Yes sir," he said and looked at it closely. He noticed how there
seemed to be a pattern to the changes the farther he went down the
chart he could see where it started to repeat. His finger followed his
eyes as they progressed down the page.

"Allright so I'm going to give you a previous copy and a list of the
riders in the wing and ask you to make one for yourself. We like to
have at least 5 riders in a sweepgroup, always with a searchrider with
them. Watch duty can be done by one rider, but we don't want it to be
more than three candlemarks long, lest someone get tired. And of
course, when a hatching is coming, we have more searchriders going
out." He handed K'ale the materials he would need.

His mind spun with the complexity of the task. "How long do I have?"

"Three days' time should be enough aye? If you have questions, come see me.
While we're here, are there any questions you'd like to ask, about
this or anything else?" P'nal knew the weyrling staff was there, but
it was different.

His mind was still trying to wrap itself around how to do the chore
assigned given the instructions and the need to be fair to everyone on
the list. "Um.." he was so preoccupied that he couldn't think of
anything off the top of his head. "Not that I can think of but I'll
come back if there are any questions at all. Thank you sir."

"Go on then," he could think of a few more things that he hadn't told the boy,
but he wondered if they would occur to K'ale. If not, it gave them something to
talk about when he came back.

"Alright.. ok" He was talking to himself more than anything as his
mind worked on the problem. "Thank you sir," he smiled and nodded
before he scooted out the door.

Last updated on the May 12th 2011

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Duty roster training.