Logs:Blonde and Brunette
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| RL Date: 2 September, 2013 |
| Who: K'del, Val |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: After Cadejoth's conversation with Reisoth, K'del needs to let it all out to someone. |
| Where: Visigoth's Weyr, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 10, Month 9, Turn 32 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Ali/Mentions, H'vier/Mentions, Tayte/Mentions, Tiriana/Mentions |
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| A little while back, Cadejoth made inquiries of Visigoth: was his rider home? Was she available? Receipt of an affirmative resulted in a promise of fine booze... and an incoming visitor. Now, as the sky darkens towards early evening, the autumn air holding a distinct chill, the bronze lands to deposit his rider and said rider? He waves the fine bottle of whiskey sloshily as he dismounts and heads for the indoors. "Val?" The weather's such that the heavy mat's been dragged back out between ledge and weyr, and has seen some use; there's also something of a smoky smell that Val's fanning away with a literal fan as she meets him beneath the chandelier: a great plumed creation larger than her head. "You have awful timing, you know that? I held out without a fire this long, but no." "Ugh," is K'del's immediate response, complete with a perfectly childish nose wrinkle, which rather completes the whole reply. "Blame it on me, go on. You knew I was going to come, and thus you went for the fire, and-- I don't know. Whiskey?" The bottle gets another sloshing shake. He's obviously a little manic, this afternoon, but not hysterically so. Maybe he's just got a little too much energy. "That was this morning," and Val waves the fan at him as she turns sharply, the hem of her black lounging robe flaring as she leads the way into her quarters. There is the promised fire, but there's also a draft thanks to the door open to the bathing chamber and its open window. She waves in its direction too. "Tell me if you start freezing your chin off, I'll shut it. Is there ever a 'no' to whiskey? No, there is not." A magic trick with the low cabinet beneath the gaming table produces, "Glasses. We're going ritzy today. What's the occasion?" Whatever K'del's mood prior to this visit, he can't seem to help but smile, now: Val is just so perfectly Val. "Glasses. Guess this stuff kind of deserves it. It... this, I should tell you, is a gift from someone who is very not happy with me right now, given right before she ran away. Been looking for her since I came back from vacation, and today?" Deep breath. "Well, let's just say things are more complicated, and given how much like throwing it at the wall I was feeling, drinking it seemed like right. It's good stuff." As he explains, Val's brows get to be fine, vaulted arches above those dark, ever-brighter eyes. "This is the blonde one? If she ran off, she doesn't get to miss it." She reaches out with one hand, her rings stacked gold and copper today, imperious: open it or hand it over, now. "So why do you care again, given you just... got off... playing house with your forbidden-love babymama?" K'del goes for option b: hand it over. Having both hands free means he can wring them, and rub the silver of his graduation ring. "She took Yvalia with her," he says, promptly. "And I adopted her. So I've been trying to find them, because I'm worried and I feel like an ass. And now I find out that Tayte is pregnant." These are all good reasons to care, right? He seems to think so. Val stares at K'del for a long moment. "You've gone girly on me," the woman says, right before she sets aside the fan in favor of prying off the seal and levering open the top. As she portions out the whiskey, "You better not have driven her off for good, she actually had some style when she pours, not like some of them. So, what, are you scared that it is yours or that it isn't?" For 'girly', K'del scoffs, visibly, but he also doesn't argue the point. "She said she'd come back eventually, in the note she left. Said she wanted to introduce Yvalia to her family or something, but I've been to Bitra, and she's definitely not there." All of that is easy to answer - to blurt out, one syllable after another. His silence afterwards says a lot about the rest. Val just looks at him, expectantly. She hasn't relinquished so much as his glass. There's power in Val's look - either that, or K'del is weak-willed at the moment, easily cowed into action. "Both," he says. "Because if it is mine, she's so upset with me that she's told H'vier that it's his. And if it isn't... she went to him because of me." His feelings on the topic of H'vier? They're audible in his tone, and obvious in his expression, and they're far from positive. They're reflected in her expression too, only with Val, it's not personal. "Unless he's pulling your leg, getting your goat, yanking your chain." Cadejoth's or otherwise. Her smile gleams sharp. The brownrider does relent enough to clink his glass with her own, nudging it along the top of the table towards him, repeating the gesture again and again until he gets it. "Maybe it's not about you, maybe it's about her and him, maybe she's a masochist and rolling in clover right now." Glass in hand, K'del exhales, lengthily. "Reisoth doesn't seem like the type to lie," he explains, "and it kind of fits, doesn't it? Her running away. Maybe it isn't about me, but if it isn't, I wish she'd told me where she was, so I could visit my daughter. Besides, Reisoth knows where they are, allegedly." He sips, though there's a good chance he's not really tasting the whiskey. "Maybe I should just give up searching for her. Clearly, she doesn't want anything to do with me. She can have H'vier. Vali, too." Dragons lying: Val grimaces, for that moment neither pretty nor dramatic. Then, "Just because he thinks something, doesn't mean it's so. And the Bitrans, they could have lied, or she lied, or it's not her only family." The brownrider takes up her fan again, a flick of fingers and wrist opening it up into slow, feathery waves of air as she sips. "Let me consult the whiskey." She sets her glass on the table, but only so she can go to one knee into it, staring into what's left of the amber liquid as significantly as any fortuneteller as a Gather. K'del's gaze lingers unhappily upon Val's exertions, first with the fan and then her kneel. "Reckon it probably tells you to encourage me to stop thinking mopey thoughts and get on with life. If she doesn't want to be found, she doesn't want to be found. And H'vier..." Exhale. "She's got to make that mistake for herself. Right?" He consults his own whiskey, just in case it thinks something different altogether. "It depends," says Val, not looking up from the font of all knowledge, the fan continuing to slowly, slowly wave. "On if she's the sort of girl who wants to make you work for it." She purses her lips and blows upon the surface of the whiskey, as though that would tickle it into revelations. "Or if she's the sort of girl who doesn't want to be disappointed if you don't show up, yeah?" K'del groans. "Why do I like women again, Val? Maybe I should swear 'em all off and become a-- what do you call someone who doesn't sleep with anyone?" Beat. "Dead, probably. Do you really think she's hoping I'll show up? And-- if she is, is she hoping I'll show up having thrown Ali aside, ready to be her one and only? Or even just her regular lover?" He gives his whiskey a dark look, clearly not pleased with the mysteries being unveiled there. "Cranky," Val supplies along with 'dead.' But she's already drinking her medium of prognostication, even if she does top it off afterward, and now she rises in a swirl of black and feathers. "Probably, probably," says the cynic, "and probably the brunette," for so she distinguishes them, "wants you to throw her off instead. Why, I could almost think that tying yourself to each of them saves you from both, K'del." Halfway to reaching for the bottle, K'del hesitates - and it's perfectly timed with Val's mention of the brunette. "Ah," he says, withdrawing his hand again. "Ali doesn't know about Tayte. That is, uh, she knows I adopted a friend's daughter, but she doesn't know that... the rest. Seemed like it wasn't necessary, when I was definitely stepping back from Tayte." Val regards K'del over the edge of the fan that masks her mouth, the plumes soft and indistinct over the sharp carved spars. Then, slowly, she closes it. "You know," she says quietly. "If you continue this... she is going to find out. But maybe it's too late anyway." The pause creates finality, but then she adds, "For it to matter." K'del's cheeks darken, pink bright against the tawny hue of his hair. "I'm worried about Tayte because she's my friend," he says, firmly. "And because she's taken my daughter. It's not about-- it's not a sex thing. Not now. Think we're pretty clear on that." There's guilt in his expression, though, guilt that he explains when he adds, "Not sure Ali would necessarily understand, though. Whatever my intentions are. She'd pretend to, maybe." Oh, K'del. Val reads that expression as she had the whiskey, though like the whiskey, it's possible that she sees what she chooses. "That must be fun, having a girlfriend who... pretends." She does not specify a location. In return, K'del's expression falls short of being a challenge-- and then falls dramatically shorter still, turning to something more self-indulgently self-pitying. "Maybe she wouldn't, now. I don't know. Seems like she... doesn't say what she thinks, a lot. Though maybe she says more to me than to others, especially now. Anyway. Best to keep them all separate. I'm with Ali, not Tayte. It was the right decision. Don't regret it." He doesn't. "Doesn't mean I don't feel bad for Tayte, or wish she were safely at home." "You'd hope so," Val says for Ali's talking to K'del, her smile as bright as it is pointed, disappearing and reappearing behind the edge of the fan. She drinks. Never mind his 'anyway,' because she's back to, "That's a problem Tiriana never had. Does she cope? Write extensive entries in her diary with purple ink? Or does she bottle it up, will she explode someday soon?" It starts out thoughtful, even if it does veer towards interest in a ringside seat. K'del is, abruptly, bemused. "You're going to compare Ali to Tiriana?" It's enough that he has to refill his glass, and drink most of it in a gulp before, very firmly, "She won't explode. She's not like that. She's nothing like that. She's... she's Ali. She manages quite well, I think." "They are both goldriders," Val points out, dark lashes fluttered wide, her smile unconscionably blithe. And then she goes and matches him, gulp for gulp, burn for burn. Her cheeks still flushed with it, "Well, good. So she can manage herself, when she's not being stolen away by crazies," only the brownrider stops there, as though she's heard her own voice, heard it be all too serious. Still not quite lightly enough, "The blonde, do you really think she thinks of here as home?" Crazies; stolen away by, well, that earns a wince. (So did the whiskey, but he covered that better). He aims for light, too, and fails miserably, when he says: "I hope she does. It felt like she was making here her home. But maybe she doesn't intend to come back at all... maybe she's changed her mind." Woe, etc. "Have some more whiskey," Val says, as though that were the solution to everything. And maybe it is. |
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