Logs:Are You Sure?
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| RL Date: 27 October, 2015 |
| Who: Ebeny, N'rov, Laurienth, Vhaeryth |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Ebeny informs N'rov of certain flight consequences. |
| Where: Lake Shore, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 3, Month 2, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: E'dre/Mentions, Casseny/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Discussion of termination of pregnancy. |
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| Vhaeryth is breaking the ice, literally: crunching through the snow-piled lake with a couple of older dragons, splashing through the clear sky and the bright sun. N'rov's just staying out of the wind beneath a tree, no doubt relishing his furs as he whistles a tuneful (if not always appropriate) soundtrack. Ebeny is without Laurienth near, as is so often the case, but the angular green watches the bowl from a high perch that lends itself to shadows, her rare moments of complete stillness allowing her to conceal herself rather effectively. It's not so for the rider, who is not so subtle at the best of times, for when Ben moves through the trees and out towards the shore, twigs snap under booted feet with nearly every step. She doesn't notice N'rov until she's at his shoulder, which is when she stops and sneaks a sidelong look at him. All that snapping; N'rov half-turns as it comes near, crooking a brow upon identifying her, though that whistling (pied piping?) continues until she stops. "Afternoon." It's part humored, part polite, while Vhaeryth and Bijedth and Casualth play on. He speaks and Ebeny looks away, to stare down at her feet while colour rises at her cheeks in a far less flattering way than the chill in the air grants. "I need..." she begins without preamble, only for her voice to fail her and require that she start all over again. "I need you to listen to me and answer me and not play around for... five minutes," she tells him. "If you have any kind of regard for me at all, can you do that?" He's a rider, not a man accustomed to checking timepieces; it's in the angle of the sun, the knowing, the best guess. But N'rov glances at Vhaeryth, checking something, before giving the woman a deliberative nod: studying, even speculative. His voice is low and even when he says, "I can't promise you won't think it so." A deep breath, then... silence. And more silence, Ebeny's requested time ticking away. She takes a half-step away from N'rov, if only to try and conceal the fact that she's shaking, something that attempting to knot her arms and force herself to be still beneath them does little for. "...The flight," that one, "...when we..." when they, "...I'm pregnant." She even flinches, like she could escape that fact. "I don't have to be." Not a weyrling. Not a wing. Not, "Are you sure?" the immediate jerk of a question, gray eyes dark as the water underlying that ice. Except it is. "It's not his." She needn't say who. "Four months. You can think what you like about my thinking that I was past it, but you'll never think anything as bad as I do." Ebeny's shrug is forced and accompanied by another half-step away. "The weyrlings'll be self-sufficient soon. I can Between as many times as it takes. He's trying to be noble. You don't need to be." He looks her over, of course, but whether he actually sees her... N'rov draws in a breath, muscle along his jaw flexing as he lifts his chin. The sky's still the same, still that pure clean blue before he looks down, before his low rough laugh. "Well," he says. "That's a surprise. I didn't know," gets cut off, the better to look at her again, this time point-blank. A beat later, "Is that even safe?" Ebeny flinches again, this time when N'rov laughs, twitching to angle herself so that it's not so easy to see the threat of tears that has surfaced before she even hears any words. "Does it matter?" doesn't sound like a question, uttered a little thickly, if without apprehension. "This isn't something you want," she states. "If no-one wants it, what sort of life is that?" "Four months." N'rov turns on her. "Ebeny. Shells. How could you think it won't matter? Come on." He's reaching for her arm, as though after all the trudging she'd had to do to come out here, she needs assistance back. Or as though she might otherwise run. Vhaeryth isn't playing any longer, but looking on. "If the healers say it's safe, really safe," he certainly doesn't know, "you can do what makes you," too late for that. "What you want. I'm not going to make you." "Because I don--!" Ebeny starts to answer, not with tears, her exclamation blurted out before she can think. "Because it," she amends, "doesn't." She lets him have her arm, the touch one that keeps her from straying another half-step or more, yet it has the effect of rooting her all too firmly to the spot. There's an absolute refusal to look at him when he speaks of safe, and several attempts to speak don't make it past single syllables of sound before she admits defeat. Only then does she finally, actually ask, "...What do you want?" N'rov's still got that pull to him, that angle towards the caverns; he doesn't move to break her roots, but should she ease up at all... "So it's not safe. Shake your head for not safe." So he knows he's got her right. The rest, mattering and otherwise, must wait. Ebeny stares stubbornly ahead, green-eyed gaze gone blank either with the determination of denial or the effort not to let any tears slip free. She remains so for so long that it might seem no answer is forthcoming, oblivious to the fact that her behaviour does not suit her decades. Only then she drops her chin the slightest bit and her shoulders slump. She shakes her head. Once. His exhale's audible. "So, no. No betweening as long as it takes for you," N'rov not just says but instructs, as though he gets to decide. His grip's tightened. He throws a glance over his shoulder, back across the lake; his eyes show white around the irises before he turns back. He speaks as though he'd never looked away at all. "That's not a risk to take, not for either of you. If you can bear to bear it, I'll take it from there." There's a test of that grip when N'rov looks away, like she would - could - break free and bolt, but ultimately nothing comes of that tug beyond the faintest test of his strength and hers. "You both talk to me like you know what's best," Ebeny comments more than bitterly, and of all the times to, now those tears fall. "And you're both going to regret my mistake." She tugs - again. "Go and do what you need to do," must be born of what assumptions she's made of his looking away. "Is that a surprise?" isn't really a question. Then he swears, low. Tears. This time N'rov goes along with the greenrider's tug, but only so he can immediately attempt to realign her route towards the caverns. "Do we have a deal?" Ebeny answers his curse and attempted realignment of her path with, "Let me go," those words delivered to him for the second time in so few months, if more miserably on this occasion, for all the quiet steel beyond that misery. She swallows hard and lapses back into silence, that distance back in her gaze when she finally agrees, "...I won't go Between," and just barely gets the whole sentence out. And she's back to looking anywhere but at N'rov. "I will," N'rov promises. Just not now. "Will you risk yourself in any other way?" he asks, one; and two, to make certain, "Our healers know?" "As in you think I'm playing at semantics?" The sudden flash of something angrier and sharper and more is soon tamped down, and Ebeny allows, "No more than having Impressed who I have." It's the second that promptly shuts her up again, this silence more one of dumb realisation than stubbornness. "...No," she sighs out. "...They can." "I don't know." It's sharper for her sharpness, and definite. "All right," N'rov says later, more moderately. He doesn't change his course. Which, as it happens, is intended (if not directly, as directly as the vagaries of snowfall and the Bowl's terrain allow) for the infirmary. She's had her five minutes and more, and yet, away from the safety of the trees and the vastness of the shore, Ebeny pleas, "Stop it, N'rov. Please." She keeps her head ducked to try and prevent the state of her from being so obvious; to stop anyone looking their way. He stops, this time: less a halt than a pause. "Why?" Not even a breath, "I want," N'rov says, "to get you to the infirmary, Ebeny. They can help." It's her turn to laugh, a single, incredulous note huffed out. "With what?" Ebeny questions. "I'm pregnant, not incapacitated. I've said I'll stay pregnant. There's not really anything anyone's going to help with right now. It's down to me." She shakes her head and lifts her free hand to swipe at stray tears. "I've said I'll go; just stop. I was seen at the Hall. If we go in there like this, they're going to think all sorts of both of us." "Can't they examine you, talk to," N'rov's already interrupting by the time she gets to how she's already been seen, and that shuts him up. It's a wonder that Vhaeryth's restrained himself this long; as the bronzerider rummages with his free hand for a handkerchief to offer Laurienth's, « What do you make of her? » his dragon asks at last, metal and glass reflecting shadow upon shadow. Whether she accepts or not, "Maybe they will. Maybe they'll just help. This can't be the first time, Ebeny; I'd take you, but if you don't want that, that's your call." He frees her, if only from his grip. He backs off, by standing there for her to go. Initially, Laurienth is as stubbornly silent as her rider, at least in terms of words. She lets the feedback from damaged electrics howl through the maze of her mind and at Vhaeryth, until she surrenders one, single thing. « Pain. » A pain, in pain; she doesn't specify. Only once N'rov has relinquished his grip does Ebeny think about accepting the offered handkerchief, though all it does at first is make those silent tears fall faster. "...I'm not going as your hostage," is an uncharitable choice of words, but if he won't go, she begins to trudge along under her own power. He has mirrors for that, glass over steel, but Vhaeryth can't wholly reflect if he wants to hear; some of that howling gets through and he has to take it, and does. He doesn't reply. "No. Go." She is, and N'rov stands where he is in the trodden snow. She heads inside the caverns, certainly. Whether she goes to the infirmary? Maybe her daughter will know for sure. |
Comments
Aleudre (10:50, 28 October 2015 (PDT)) said...
!!!!!
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