Logs:Cast-Offs
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| RL Date: 21 March, 2013 |
| Who: L'hai, Liv |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: The tanners have taken over the craft complex for a night, unfortunately the one Liv chooses to get some work done. |
| Where: Craft Complex, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 16, Month 4, Turn 31 (Interval 10) |
| Weather: Fog begins to coalesce in the very early morning hours and lingers throughout the day, soft and still and clammy. |
| OOC Notes: L'hai apologizes to anyone who actually knows anything about old-fashioned tanning beyond several Google searches. |
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| Craft Complex, High Reaches Weyr A passageway hewn into the rock and heavily patched with cement leads a short distance in to the bowl wall, with a door on either side. Lit by regularly spaced glows, the white-washed walls have been covered over by colorful tapestries, wall hangings and pieces of art made from metal and wood. To the left of the entranceway, just a single step inside, a spiral staircase opens out of the wall, leading upwards through the stone. Further down, a doorway opens to either side of the corridor, while at the far end, there is a hewn-stone staircase leading up to the residential quarters, wreathed by two final doors to private quarters and the bathing room. The door leading to the east opens into an expansive room that seems to provide both general working space - with long, bare benches and chairs - and a cozy lounge complete with over-stuffed sofas and a few fuzzy armchairs. Three tall windows are carved into the stone, and offer air and light when the heavy wooden shutters are left open, though the lounge area has to make do mostly with glows. A hearth at the back of the room provides both heat and basic cooking facilities. The white-washed walls are bedecked with decoration - from quilts, to tapestries, to wooden carvings and metal sculptures. The western door leads into another passage, off of which the main workrooms have been built. The loading dock is at the northern end, leading back out into the bowl, with the rest of the rooms leading deeper and deeper into the wall. Communal as the craft complex typically is, this night a grand portion's been summarily reserved, and the evidence's thick in the air: a heady mixture of grasses and alcohol, along with a scent more rancid that escapes a name. The tanners have spread from their specific workshop into the passage leading into the loading dock, taking full advantage of its airier length. To spare any lingerers, the three tall windows of the complex have been thrown wide open, but the fog of the day leaves little but clamminess sweeping through. Strong hands have hauled a few long oval tubs out, and the solution splashing in these must be the origin of the smell, though it's since clung to everything, including L'hai and his well-dirtied leather gloves, amongst the rest of his dye and dirt spattered face. Long ago, he forgot his glasses on the top of his head and he squints in the growing dark, spotting glows to move, striding backwards towards the entrance to get as complete a view of the operation as possible. For anyone who might want to use it, the complex is not its typical open self. For someone like Liv, who spends most of the free time she gets in the day working, this is not good news. She bears coils of leather straps and clinking metal buckles looped several times around her arm, slung up on her shoulder, and a leather sack hangs from her hand with two straps that hang from it that would probably go around her waist if she were wearing it at all. Whatever those people are doing over there, it's interesting, so she draws closer to the smell and to whoever is a part of it. This might make her crazy; she doesn't seem to mind. She stands there, a safe distance away so as to be out of the way, and watches L'hai, he's kind of close, with her head slightly tilted. Deeply involved in weighing the picture in his mind, L'hai dismisses else, except when, stepping backwards once, then twice, to encompass each of the long tubs completely within his vision-- demonstrated by the 'L' shaped fingers he raises up to frame them-- Liv enters into his periphery. Brown eyes cast reluctantly to the side and he takes in the complex's intended worker with a scrupulous up and down, sparing nothing in politeness, and scoping out her leathery goods far more than her face or figure. His long swallow paints the impression he's not spoken in quite some time, the process must be dredged from some terrible pit. "You can," his right hand twists, wagging impatiently at a pile of other scrap leather in the corner, haphazardly disordered so that L'hai's distracted on noticing, glancing this way and that for something before sighting back on Liv even more offhandedly, "Put them with the other cast-offs." She fits into that 'L' shape nicely. Confused at first, Liv stares unabashedly at L'hai for a long moment. There is no furrow of her brow, no narrowing of the eyes. Just that long, uncomplicated stare. She speaks evenly. "These aren't cast-offs." But she takes another look around, noting the tubs, the gloves, the pile of leathery bits, the smell... Maybe he knows what he's talking about. "They aren't brand new. I suppose I could trade them out. I was going to work on them some, but instead I interrupted a..." She pauses, takes a beat, and decides, "session," is a good word choice. "What are you doing? Some of it looks familiar but..." What? Oh. Having summarily forgotten Liv, L'hai's forced to reevaluate. A step into heading towards the disorderly pile, he pivots, hard, eying her as if for the first time. Only when his gaze drops to the leathers in her hands does recognition sing in his eyes. Calculatingly, his hands begin to lower, and the right turns in to use his thumb, gloved and dirty, to scratch at his growing length of scraggly beard. "Not for the scraps..." Right. A look cast over his shoulder measures the exact no free room behind him, though that speaks none of the unseen tanner's workroom itself. All other doors have been tightly shut, and nostrils tell why. "It's..." and then, mid-explanation, he recovers walking over to the cast-offs-- flying straps, most, with the rest hard to distinguish in the clump-- utterly ditching Liv. That's okay because as soon as he turns around she makes a face behind him. Not too dramatic, it consists of lifted eyebrows and widened eyes, but disappears so quickly after he won't see it. "Not for the scraps?" she asks, totally intrigued. The weight of the leather is lifted up from her shoulder and she gently lowers it to the ground, wherever she finds a spot that isn't already occupied by something else, and sets also her tool belt down with it. Thus freed up, she can now trail after him a little bit, not with a lot of commitment in case he whirls around again. "It's what?" This person is much more interesting than straps. On the way, L'hai lifts his head, recognizing that she's there with a firmly closed mouth. Arriving at the mess, he promptly scoops up the first wayward belt, thumb riding along its length familiarly, notching into one of the sizing holes. "Drenching. It's, uh," an arm reaches out, indicating across from them where other apron and gloved men sort long, surreally colorless stretches of hide, flat and limp representations of the beasts who once wore them. "To open the skin." Having said, he juts a finger in a practiced swipe up the side of his nose. If his glasses had been there, he would've straightened them. Without, he leaves a streak of tanning solution across his pale skin. Picking up another belt of similar length from the pile without looking, he lays them both across the nearest bench together. One booted foot has already begun to separate a few of the fallen lumps of faded jackets and larger pieces to a different corner. "With new weyrlings we, uh. Uh, we evaluate stock." A nod; he looks over at the tubs. "Prepare new, if needed." She follows him obediently, without command, perhaps following her own curiosity moreso than the actual source of its spark. Her eyes follow every movement, note every thing, sharp and intense but half-lidded like she's only happening to do it. "Drenching." To try the word out with its new meaning. Liv notices too, of course, that he now wears that streak of color but she chooses not to comment. Not yet. Instead she stares at his face and this time her eyes do narrow a small fraction. "Who are you," she wants to know, must know, before anything else. Because he is very interesting. "Drenching." He repeats it, seemingly merely because she did. Leather whooshes beneath them; again, without a second glance, he's snatched what he meant, filtering the thicker belt over with the others, then its partner he tests along the length till a scabby portion cracks under his fingers' inspection. This, he stuffs into his pocket, eying Liv. Brown eyes impart a judgment questioning her skewed priorities; looking like she's asked him to explain a fantastically boring piece of work. "L'hai," finally rolls out, forced from him. Fingers finish stuff and slip from his pocket, and when he looks at her next, a glean of intelligence in his eye marks her; kin to hers, sharp, evaluating. Then he blinks, sniffs, and looks away. "L'hai." Her tongue articulates his name very carefully. Deliberately. Whatever he's doing with that piece of leather in his pocket, it doesn't seem important. Or it is, but it's taking backseat. She looks down at the leather, then drags her eyes up from his boots to knees, hips, torso, shoulders, until she reconnects with him, meets his gaze just in time for that spark and before he looks away. She tells him very calmly, "I'm Liv." And, so introduced, decides now is okay to tell him about that streak of stuff on his face. "You have a little something on your nose." "Liv," he murmurs, looking away. Finding her, "Liv." Again. A second sniff wrinkles his blemished nose. "Just my nose?" L'hai's quip, if that's what it is, lays too flat. Out of practice, or disinterested. "Liv," low, aside, as he looks down, scuffing his boot under another one on the floor. Dipping to retrieve the article, it's turned in his hands affectionately as he straightens. "It's a very," boot in one hand, its pair lifts to scratch at his neck; there's a dap of solution there too, now, to match his nose. "Open-ended question, Liv." Scratch, scratch, scratch, in a rhythm. Then both hands fondle the boot, rotating it in circles in an excruciatingly thorough examination of its every pore and scratch. Each inch. "Which I answered very shortly, as I, ah, haven't a lot of time," his head tosses absently, but gaze remains pinned down to his work, "Now, you, too." "Well no, now, more." His neck too, and probably more if he doesn't stop touching things with his dirty gloves. Liv watches him interact with that boot from the floor with the same mildly expressed but very acure interest, which shifts into confusion again when he speaks. This time a small something happens between her eyebrows, not a wrinkle or a crease but perhaps a small knot of lost-ness. That he's short on time comes as something of a surprise but then again, what hasn't so far? "Well I'm sorry for interrupting. I'll leave." And even though there's a period at the end of that sentence, there is also a small question mark, as if this is a suggestion as open-ended as that question. "Ahh..." Some polite conversational pleasantry dies before making it to L'hai's lips, forgotten and shucked off as unimportant. His own mouth creases easily, along with a near constant worry line across his forehead. Narrow, all, now in her direction as he stares uncomprehendingly at her leathery burden. "You came here to..." It's not even to her; an observation made purely exercising his discomfort. Soon as it's said, he's, frowning, returned to the boot. And the belts. What was once a clumsy pile's beginning to take form as a collection of organized settings. Confusion aside, over her perceived change in intentions, he slips back to seemingly not knowing she exists with twitchy ease. "I came here to mend my straps. I'll do it in my weyr." Dismissive in her own way, Liv turns away to where she left her things, stoops to pick them up again and hitches the leather coils up onto her shoulder. She turns to him, poised ready to leave or maybe to come back to talk to him more and paused in that state while she considers. "You're very strange, L'hai," she tells him, the announcement delivered in a neutral tone. "And I find that very hard to resist. But for now, I'm going to." 'See you around' would be inappropriate for so many reasons, so she just leaves it at that and turns to leave. Simple. He lifts his head, blinking, at the sound of his name, yet despite the wide blank stare he carries her announcement to himself with not a lick of surprise. When his eyebrows soothe down it's to a contented tune. Yes, of course. Troubling, more, her intention after. When she turns to leave, L'hai's still softly frowning as he slaps the gathered leather items against his thigh, rounding up a few to toss in the corner as he steps off. Then again, he's frowning when he rejoins the others, head lightly bowed whenever he talks. Frowns to walk amongst the barrels. It's when he's positioned in front of one, leather filling his hands and drenching fluid everywhere, that it all settles out to nothing. |
Comments
Comments on "Logs:Cast-Offs"Azaylia (Dragonshy (talk)) left a comment on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:32:01 GMT.
Ahaha. Oh L'hai, you're so broke'd. I can't help but think of this. Except, you know. He might not care? ...or is aware? Who knows, it's L'hai!
...Poor Liv. xD
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