Logs:Admirers
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| RL Date: 7 May, 2012 |
| Who: K'del, Val |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Yes-or-no questions and unhappy realisations. |
| Where: K'del's Weyr, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 17, Month 9, Turn 28 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Azaylia/Mentions, Iolene/Mentions, Milani/Mentions, Tiriana/Mentions, Toren/Mentions |
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| The weather the way it is today, it's no surprise that Cadejoth is not on his ledge - not when this amount of rain is likely to drown even the hardiest of dragons. He's not in his couch, either, though-- although K'del /is/ in his. A few things have changed inside the weyr, since the Milani days, a lot of which is related to the amount of child-friendly equipment. But K'del is still K'del, still perched on his couch with a fire warming holey-socked toes, and a glass of amber liquor held loosely in one hand. And in scurries a drowned rat, or rather /Val/, water streaming off her long windbreaker and her eyes half-shut against the same rain that's drenched her long braid. But those eyes are sharp as well as bright and black, and she squeezes out her braid on the rock closer to that emptied couch than his plush carpet, and her voice is bright too: "K'del. Guess what?" "Val!" says K'del, sounding pleased to be dragged away from-- oh yes, there are those reports he's supposed, no doubt, to be reading through. Blue eyes regard her levelly for several more seconds before his feet slide down towards the ground and he adds, "What? But - wait. Let me find you a towel, first. Can it wait that long?" Actually, her voice might have been a little sharp too, but then it lightens to go with her positively gleeful smile that pretends not-too-hard to be demure. "It can wait," the brownrider claims, her head bent, her shoulders rocked inward as though to play the penitent: forgive her, for she has dripped. If only on the floor. K'del must be feeling better, given the way he moves: no more of that creaky-old-person carefulness, and though his arm is, of course, still secured in a sling, it doesn't seem to be slowing him down all that much. "OUght to have you on hand-and-knee scrubbing," he teases, over his shoulder as he clambers up the little set of stairs and disappears. He's not gone for long, though, and when he returns, he's got a stack of towels to proffer towards the brownrider. Her head's tipped, but her eyes are hardly downcast, watching his every move with a careful scrutiny as though to catalog his hurts and check them off her own internal list. Healed. Unhealed. Unknown. "I don't think you'd like what I scrubbed in," she teases back, and upon his return, makes quick work of making herself a turban. Then she can shed her windbreaker, and stalk delicately out of its puddled folds, heading for the most comfortable of the chairs. Not that Val sits, not when she has a notification to make, turning: "You have an ad-mir-er-er." Not the same as his usual? Having handed out towels, K'del's next objective is to the booze, which he pours (one handed, and with relative grace given it's not his usual hand) without confirming Val's desires. Her statement, however, leaves him to turn and look bewildered, brows knitting together in a question that he takes longer to ask in actual words. "An... admirer?" "An admirer," Val confirms, removing her boots so she can sit cross-legged in the chair, then tickling the air as though to summon that glass. "Indeed. Ask me yes or no questions, if you dare." One does miss having a second arm - balance, certainly, is made easier with it - and so K'del is a little slower than he might normally be in bringing that glass over to the brownrider, for all he presents it with a flourish. It's not until he's settled himself back down on the couch and reclaimed his own glass that he says: "Female?" "She looks female," Val says on a sigh, but she's swirling the liquor in a way that speaks more of enthusiasm than appreciation alone. "I haven't checked, but I don't have reason to doubt it, and I should have bet M'llel that that would be your first question. Happier?" While she's at it, "You don't look quite so... bruised." K'del says, into his glass rather than to Val, "Cuts the possibilities down by half; it's a good first question." It's after he's sipped, swallowed, and then sipped and swallowed again that he answers her question, lifting gaze from his glass to do so. "Mmm. Happier. Sure. Could think of things that'd make me happier still, but-- dragonrider?" "I never said it wasn't a logical one," Val points out, unabashed... and unrepentant, if the laughter in her eyes is anything to go by. "Happier, such as? No, she isn't a dragonrider. Which makes it harder, yeah?" She sips, then sets her glass with unthinking care between her knees, so that she can pat her makeshift turban with both hands and help it dry that way. The way K'del lifts his glass? He's acknowledging that she is, of course, quite right on that score. He has to set the glass down a moment later, however, in order to scratch at an itch just along the line of his cast. As he does so, his attention focused downwards, his answer is an easy, and mostly-joking, "Tiriana's head on a spike'd probably do it. /Non/-rider. You're right: that does make it more difficult. Unless--" His gaze slides up again. "Blonde?" The brownrider purses her lips, considering him... but she holds off, holds out, on commenting beyond a wry half-laugh. For his latter answer: "No. Not red, either: that's a freebie," and doesn't it sometimes feel as though half of the population has that flaming shade? If he had a hand free, K'del would probably be reaching to run his fingers through his own hair, now - but he doesn't. Instead, he's lifting his glass towards his mouth again, though the pursing of his lips in thought keeps him from taking a sip. "So she's a brunette," he concludes, thoughtfully. "Well, /that/ narrows it down enormously," only in saying that, he's employing heavy sarcasm, head shaking. Except-- "Oh! Azaylia? We're talking about Azaylia, aren't we?" "It could be a white-haired old..." but Val has to interrupt her own interjection to pull a face. "You already know? Well shard me sideways." She frowns into her drink, catches her reflection, and smooths it out again, if not the touch of petulance that still weights her lower lip. "Poor girl." K'del, glancing sidelong at Val, says, "Not sure I would've thought of it as an admirer kind of thing, but she's the closest I can think of. She's a sweet girl." But, and maybe this is more important, said as he stretches out his legs and leans backwards on the couch's cozy arm, "Why 'poor girl'?" "'She's a sweet girl,'" Val gives back to him. "And besides, she's an apprentice. Don't they sew them up or something? Or is that the healers? I forget." She shifts in her seat, switching so her other foot's on top. And maybe this is more important, "She's all fluttery. Flutterable." K'del evidently hasn't really considered Azaylia in the light of anything other than being a 'sweet girl', and Val's remark sets him to frowning as a result. It's not something he has an easy answer for, so he responds, instead, to a question that is on more solid ground: "She is that. Amazing, though, what a couple of turns'll do to a person's confident. She barely spoke to me, when we first met. Terrified of Cadejoth." "And when she spoke to us," Val says delicately, toying with each syllable and letting it think it will get away before trapping it all over again, "She lost her... repetitiveness, her s-stutter, and defended you. It was charming, really." Dark brown eyes are steady on him, barely obscured by her lashes. "I gave her a turnday present," says K'del, as though this explains away everything, though he seems to register something a moment later because he adds, hurriedly, "Not that I'm buying her affection, or anything. She gave me one first. She's just-- we're friends. Glad she likes me enough to defend my honour, anywa-- did she need to? Were you saying bad things about me, Val?" She pounces, for all that she stays cross-legged in her seat, one hand flown to her mouth: "What did you give her? What did she give you? Oh, K'del." Those brown eyes can get so forlorn, so reproachful, and no better time like the present. "Be careful. And no, of course I wasn't." How could he believe it of her? "It was the harper, poor lad. He called it greedy, chasing your weyrwomen like that." Which is not, perhaps, necessarily the apprentice's own opinion. "Luckily, he says he's just no good at writing songs." That forlorn reproach actually makes K'del's gaze drop unhappily, as though he's suddenly uncomfortable with the position he's put himself in, having never really thought about it before. "I'll be careful," he promises, lowly. "She made me a sweater. I gave her a scarf-pin. Did he-- really call it greedy? Suppose he thinks I deserved having my arm broken, too." It obviously annoys K'del, sends him off on a tangent that has his fingers tightening around his glass. "A harper, too." As if he should know better. "Do you have any idea how long it takes to make a sweater?" Val says with an odd softness. Perhaps he knows, though she doesn't, except to say: a lot. "And the attention you have to pay, to make sure it fits right?" Unless it really is just a sack. As for the harper, softer yet, though not exactly for that harper's sake: "He's just a boy. I was fighting Fall by then... but times are different now. Yes, he said greedy. But then he also thought that Ysavaeth was a green," and she makes that last a little lighter, encouraging him to laugh. K'del must know, or can, at least, imagine, because his expression shifts all over again and he looks, suddenly, quite tired. Not so tired, in the end, that Val can't coax a laugh out of him, though he seems genuinely bewildered: "A Harper who doesn't even know our queens? Faranth. That must be Toren, who didn't know I was the Weyrleader, either." But some of the light has gone out of his expression, and though conversation no doubt continues, that suddenly-old-and-tired expression never quite fades away. There's just one question from Val, somewhere along the line, or at least just one that means the most for her friend: "Was she worth it?" That, at least, is not something K'del has to think about too long: "Yes," he says. "Yes." |
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Azaylia (Dragonshy) left a comment on Wed, 09 May 2012 05:23:35 GMT.
Wait, what? Wait- what!? *Squeak!*
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