Logs:A Long Few Turns
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| RL Date: 26 August, 2011 |
| Who: Madilla, Tiriana |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Madilla celebrates her turnday, though her pleasant conversation with Tiriana turns less pleasant over time. |
| Where: Garden Patio Ledge, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 5, Month 8, Turn 26 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Devaki/Mentions, Raum/Mentions |
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| Garden Patio Ledge, High Reaches Weyr Partly sheltered by the curving stone overhang, partly exposed to the weather, the wide stone patio serves as a balcony for socializing or just plain drinking on a sizable scale. The repurposed ledge might once have let two large dragons land, but now there's too much furniture for that: two rustic tables with attendant chairs, plus a couple more in particularly good weather, and a wrought iron bench situated to make the most of the view of the western bowl and the lake beyond. Other changes include rough little niches carved out of the stone walls to hold glows in colored bottles at night, the climbing plant that's being trained to grow up along the overhang, and the blue ceramic pots of flowers that dot the edge of the ledge as a colorful reminder not to fall off. An archway leads to the Snowasis itself, housed in the ledge's former weyr, while a few wide steps descend along the wall to the bowl. Warm sunshine and cloudless skies make for a beautiful day and pleasantly warm evening. A breeze tempers the heat with no humidity lingering in the air. It's a lovely day for a turnday, all told; even now, as the sun disappears beyond the weyr walls, the air is a pleasantly warm temperature. Making the most of it, Madilla lingers outside on the patio ledge, half drowsing in her chair, with her legs curled up beneath her, mostly hidden by her pretty blue skirt. She's alone, with a half-empty glass of what might be cold tea with rapidly melting ice sitting on the table beside her. The Snowasis isn't an odd place for Tiriana to be, and with the nice weather the Weyr is currently enjoying it, there's nothing odd in her bringing her drink out to the ledge after she gets it. Rather than waiting on a table, though, she moves to claim an empty chair at someone else's: namely, Madilla's. "I hope there's something strong in there," she tells the healer, with a look down at the melting contents of her drink. Madilla's eyes flutter open as she's addressed, her posture straightening almost instantly as she registers exactly /who/ it is joining her at the table. Her smile, at least, is a friendly one, even if the glance aimed at her drink is rather more rueful. "Sadly, no. I was going to, but-- maybe I've just had too much sun. I was feeling a little queasy. It's such a lovely day." "Too much?" Surely, fair as she is, Tiriana understands this concept, but the way she squints up at the sun is purely skeptical of the idea. "If you say so. Can't say /I've/ ever felt queasy from all that, though. Were you hitting the bottle earlier or something?" Madilla's smile is amused, though there's a pretty firm shake of her head to accompany her, "Not recently. No matter. I'm feeling better now, at any rate. How are you, Tiriana?" She reaches forward, now, to reclaim that glass, pressing the cool surface to her face for a moment before she sips at the now watered-down liquid. Tiriana, not convinced, regards Madilla and the late-summer sunshine both with skepticism before she shrugs it off and takes a sip of her drink. "I'm fine," she answers the question a beat later. "The boys are doing good, both of them and R'uen too. How are you?" Madilla, at least, seems genuine in her excuse for the queasiness, and merely smiles at the Weyrwoman. "I'm glad to hear it. Your littlest must be getting big, now. I'm well, too. So's Lily. We had a lovely picnic lunch, out by the lake. For my turnday." It's an explanation, but a genuinely casual one: she's mentioning it only in passing. "Five months," is Tiriana's preening note. "He can roll over already, he's so smart. Rianev took a lot longer on that; then again, I didn't set him down much those first months, either. They don't seem quite so... breakable, after the first one, I guess." She lifts her shoulders faintly, leaning back in her chair. "Was that today? Happy turnday, I guess. Mine's next month. How old are you now, anyway?" Madilla's expression turns distinctly amused at Tiriana's preening, but she's not laughing: it's a mother thing. "You're probably right," she agrees. "The first one, you're scared of accidentally hurting. By the second-- or, at least, I assume as much." Reaching for her glass again, she nods, pleased: "Thank you. I remember; yours is a few sevens after mine. I'm--" Beat. She actually has to think about it for a moment. "Twenty-four." "Don't know what was scarier, letting somebody else hold him or me doing it all," the Weyrwoman admits with an almost sheepish sort of smile sidelong at her fellow mother. "D'you know, I think that makes me feel older than thinking about I'm going to be twenty-nine. I'm nearly /thirty/." "I've never been scared of babies, but somehow, with Lily being /mine/, it just terrified me," admits Madilla, smiling in memory - well, it's been long enough now, clearly, that it bothers her less. "If I did something wrong, no one was going to swoop in and save her." There's a pink blush on her cheeks for the latter statement of the weyrwoman's, though she laughs: "It seems, sometimes, that everyone wants to think of me as a teenager, forever. Thirty isn't so old, though." "Well. You were just a kid, back when I met you. At Telgar," Tiriana points out, shaking her head. Nevermind she wasn't even twenty yet then herself. As for thirty, "/Feels/ old. Damned old." And there's something of it in her expression, a hint of tiredness in the tightness of her jaw. "It's been a long few turns." "I remember," agrees Madilla, unconcerned and quiet: she really was a kid. She's busy watching Tiriana, sucking in a long, low breath before she allows, "It has been. I can't imagine being... in your position, throughout all of it. But High Reaches is doing well, really, isn't it? You've kept things going. It's something to be proud of." "Which part?" retorts Tiriana, with just a bit of edge to her voice for the turn of the conversation. "The dead exile, the weyrling exiles, or the missing exiles? Faranth, I wish we'd left them all to die out there, and saved everyone the trouble. You try to do one good deed, you know?" Pink-cheeked, Madilla holds her silence awkwardly for several seconds before she can come up with some way to respond. "I'm sure it will work out, in the end," she says, tentatively, though her gaze has flicked away towards the darkened rim, far above, as though she's thinking of something else. "It's... unfortunate." Which bit? All of it? Tiriana snorts. "Like those convicts worked out? It was Taikrin that found them, you know. Well, her and that damned Monaco boy," nevermind he's nearly as old as she is. "At least the convicts never killed anybody, not here at least." Quietly, and with a certain amount of nervousness that suggests she doesn't necessarily want to know the answer, Madilla asks, "Do you think the exiles were the ones who-- who murdered her? One of their own people?" "There's a couple of them missing," Tiriana will lay it out. She leans forward with her arms on the table, watching Madilla with a certain intensity. "One of them's apparently been talking about their rights, and the other one--Fuck. /Now/ they tell us we might have rescued an honest-to-Faranth /exile/. So I don't know. Don't see why they would have but then again I don't see why anybody else would have, either. Damn it all." She sighs. "What do you think? You probably know as much as me and K'del can figure." There is genuine fear in Madilla's expression as Tiriana relates Raum's status: her eyes widen, unbidden, her cheeks turning pale. "I didn't know that," she says, softly. "I--" She has to swallow, pushing back her shoulders before she's able to say anything more. "I can't speak to the other - the one you say might have been an actual exile. I can't believe the other would have murdered anyone, though." Her mouth is a thin line as she closes it, though it doesn't stay closed for long. "I can't think of anyone who would kill Seani, though. She was well liked." "Right?" Tiriana continues, blithely unaware of whatever consternation she may have caused in Madilla. "That's what everybody keeps telling me. 'Oh, she was so sweet.' 'Oh, she was so happy, after the baby and this asshole ex-husband of hers.' 'Oh, she would never be in some scheme.'" A shake of her head, and she scowls, good humor extinguished for the moment. "So I don't even know what to think, except if this Weyr's taught me one thing it's that nothing good is going to come of this." Madilla holds her silence, sucking in a deep breath, and then another, before she has words to respond with. "No, I suppose not," she allows. "It doesn't seem as this weyr is ever allowed an extended period of peace. I hope... perhaps the two missing exiles will be found, and they'll have an explanation for it all. Or perhaps it really will just... die down. We'll just... have to see, I suppose?" "The best thing for them to do," and Tiriana's mouth curves into a wolfish smile, "is exactly what they're doing now: hiding like coward in their little holes." She finishes off her drink before pushing her chair back and standing. "I should get home again. Hope your birthday--what's left of it--is good." Because she's been such a bundle of good cheer. Madilla's gaze ducks away from that wolfish smile, though she seems to be trying to push a smile back onto her face. "Thank you," she says, finally, after another deep breath. "Have a pleasant evening, Tiriana." |
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