Logs:Catharsis
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| RL Date: 31 October, 2015 |
| Who: Suireh, N'rov |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: N'rov takes Suireh on a cathartic journey. There is a lot of yelling involved. |
| Where: Classroom, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 25, Month 2, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: R'hin/Mentions |
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>---< Classroom, Fort Weyr(#2034RJs$) >--------------------------------------<
In the classroom, a solid wooden door keeps most of the noise from the
Commons at bay as well as any overflow noise from kids practicing their
Teaching Ballads. The whole back wall of the room is taken up by a massive
chalkboard, often covered with bits of grammar, math, and snippets of
music or poetry. Both side walls are lined with shelving that contains
kid-sized instruments, books, scrolls, stacks of practice slates and other
'school' supplies for the children to use for their lessons.
Rows of benches and desks fill up most of the room leading up to a massive
desk for the Weyr's teaching harper to use. Colorful drawings are pinned
up on the wall behind the desk and another chalkboard contains the week's
assignments. A precious globe of the planet Pern takes up the corner to
the right hand side of the desk beneath a moldering and somewhat
frightening stuffed feline's head.
-----------------------------< Active Players >-----------------------------
N'rov M 32 6'1" lean, dk. brown hair, gray eyes 0s
Suireh F 27 5'7 regal & slender, raven hair, gray eyes 0s
----------------------------------< Exits >---------------------------------
Out
>-----------------------------------------< 25D 2M 39T I10, winter night >---< It's later in the evening when the strains of fingers dancing over an aging keyboard in the harper teaching wing echoes down nominally empty tunnels. A miskey and an expletive is followed by a restart, this time slightly different than before, as if the player is improvising something and not satisfied with each iteration. It's a light, airy melody, meant for toe tapping and clapping. Miskeys deserve whiskeys, but whether the man treading down the hallway has some, that's between him and his leathern jacket. It does make him laugh, low, and ease the door open just as quietly as it will go, the better to knock... but ideally from the inside. Her back is to the door, shoulder hunched as she stops playing for a moment, just after he's entered but before he's knocked. Her right hand reaches to the higher keys and sounds a gentle trill between two notes, as if testing how something sounds before putting it in with the rest. Then, there's the knock, and it's most certainly not something she's put into her music and she turns, Suireh's pale eyes suddenly unblinking upon N'rov. "Do it again," is definitely an invitation, but it might also be a challenge. There are goggle marks still visible at N'rov's temples, and windburns to his cheeks, but he doesn't let tiredness enter that saunter over to her: to brush a touch along the back of her neck... and then lean against the upright's side. "It doesn't sound right," demurs Suireh, her body pivoting back, once her eyes have had their fill of N'rov, to study her fingers upon the white keys. Her right ring finger lifts, shifting its position up and to the right, onto a slender black key. She plays the air above the actual keyboard and rolls her shoulders back. "I didn't find tea outside my door this morning," she remarks, as if she finds tea other mornings. He considers her fingers, too; the pads of his lift and fall, but playing air makes his smile lift too. "Clearly your helper needs another bribe," N'rov says, as if he needs to get right on that. "Has she brought up her young nephew yet?" "Nephew?" Rather than looking pleased, Suireh now just looks confused and her fingers, above those keys, still, then press down in a cacophony of sounds. "N'rov, are you, by chance, making a joke at my expense?" Amused. He winces, his hands going dramatically to his ears, only to slide over his eyes so he can look out at her between his barely-spread fingers; "This isn't fair," the bronzerider notes. "You can provide accompaniment." Suireh's eyes express what she does not say, and what are you going to do about it? The sass inherent in such a thought, unspoken and suddenly bright in her grey eyes. Her right hand plays a short, six note ditty. "And you live far up somewhere that to visit you I would have to ask someone. Life's not fair." Highness, if only. N'rov reaches around, looking nowhere but at her, and dares to clunk knuckles onto grumbling bass keys. "My weyr, dear Suireh, hasn't one of these." "Do you play?" asks Suireh, the question genuine and her expression clear of the heaviness so apparent in the last few months. "What would your life's accompaniment be, N'rov?" "This, no. There was a nudge for Smith," but N'rov gives it a clunk-clunk in turn; seeing that clarity, he looks for something to give her. "The wind, I suppose. I like to think it would be something dramatic. You know, the high notes and the low notes and going up and down and up and down and eventually up until... this is sounding like flying, isn't it. But let's say, nobody's falling asleep in his seat." Suireh takes the measure of N'rov, all leaned against the piano, looks at her fingers and flexes them. They stretch and a few sound like they even crack, and then they're flying octave after octave from the low to the high in unison and she has, in the end, a cheeky smile for him. "So boring?" He has applause for her, if the tapping of fingertips against wood rather than his other hand; "Apparently," N'rov drawls. "Design me a better one," haughty as any Lord-commissioner. "It's a cliche fit for a dragonrider," replies Suireh. Her fingers pull the cover over the keys slowly, so it doesn't even thud when it closes and her hand rests on top of the worn wood. "Thank you," says the harper, inhaling deep and exhaling shallow. "You must be incredibly busy with all your duties and-, thank you." N'rov withdraws his hand just as gradually, just behind this different clunk. "Is that a farewell?" he checks. Suireh tenses, the easiness of the prior banter not quite disappearing. Her shoulders lift just visibly and she seems to force herself to move in this moment of stillness. Bright eyes, shining with tears that won't shed this time, look up at N'rov and ultimately, several minutes later, if he'll allow her that silence, she asks, "Will you walk with me?" He does, his expression torn when she looks up, when he sees what he sees; he stays for her, folding his arms atop that upright and so they don't reach. In the end, "Of course." Then N'rov can offer Suireh a hand, that hand that she may not need. Suireh rises and takes the hand, only for a moment, lifting it along his arm to his elbow and curls it into the crook there. "Tell me about your life here, N'rov. What do you do with your days?" asks the weyrbred harper of the holdbred wingsecond. N'rov knows that angle, at least, elbow long-ago trained; he walks her obligingly toward the door, with a nod to that used to be ferocious feline along the way: obligingly and unhurriedly, as though they'd sightsee around that mass of desks and benches like some old architectural sight. "Cliches fit for dragonriders. Flying, washing, oiling. Passing out instructions, compiling their fruit. Talking to people about taxes and stipends and the like, whatever else is on their minds. Not setting anyone on fire." "Does that happen often?" Suireh asks, with all the contrived innocence of an ingenue. "If it did, my father would probably be the rider that tops the list of how many they've set on fire." She just manages this side of throwaway comment and not about to burst into tears, but her grip tightens. "I wasn't Acting long; I may have missed my chance," N'rov... not mourns, not that. Not over that. When they reach the door, he doesn't open it, but rather turns to lean back against it and wrap his other arm about her. What Suireh doesn't do: tense up, stiffen, pull away. What Suireh does do: walk into his chest, at first accidentally; leans her forehead into him; sighs. "Are you trying to get me to cry again? It's taken me a seven of bags of tea on my eyes to reduce the swelling from before." N'rov gets to exhale now more slowly, silently; her hand's freed, but only so he can wrap her up that way, too. "If you want," he says to the crown of her head, steady .and strong beneath her lean. "We could try for a sevenday and two. Suireh." "Two," she echoes his exhale, her breath warm though it doesn't penetrate through his jacket. Given the okay, Suireh still has yet to shed a tear. "You're horrible," but she doesn't mean it, a hysteric note of some brand of amusement catching in her voice. "Horrible." And yet she doesn't pull away from horrible, and manages a steadying breath before tipping her head backwards. "The moment's passed." "Horrible," N'rov agrees. "Goodbye, moment." This moment appears to be for brushing her hair back from her forehead, for tracing her eyebrow with his thumb. "When was the last time you screamed," he asks her then, "on purpose?" Suireh's brow, the one his finger traces, rises. On purpose? This should be answer enough. "Shout," N'rov says, in case she likes that variation better, and outlines that brow just a notch up. The next isn't just a synonym either: "Yell, just as loudly as you can." Humor briefly lightens his expression, but instead, "I'll take you." "I heard you. I understood." Understanding, however, does not equate comprehension of-, well anything. Suireh is just not sure of this. "A child? It's not good for my voice," she protests. Not that crying is much better. "When do you have to be at Harper next?" N'rov asks, only he doesn't wait to say, "Not tomorrow. It can be just as loud as your voice likes. Let's grab you a coat," grinning down at her, like it makes perfect sense to whisk her off right now, "and go." The whirlwind of his thoughts isn't one Suireh can rightly frame her mind towards, especially when she's started this new conversation already confused. Her brain just does not work that way. She's still stuck on, "Not tomorrow," and how he knew that, to, "Coat?" But her body is good at doing what her brain can't figure out yet, and she's moving with him, or is she leading, to her room so she can grab that coat. Room, coat (though N'rov might have been satisfied with 'borrowing' someone else's along the way), caverns, cold, dragon. Vhaeryth's amused or maybe bemused, dropping his head to rumble at the harper, who gets hoisted unceremoniously up: in front of N'rov as usual, but also because (as he'll explain into her ear just as soon as she's buckled), "I bet you can yell really, really loud." Whether her voice likes it, or not. Borrow? And get other people's cooties? It's not hard to imagine Suireh does not/has not borrow(ed) clothing from storerooms or other people at any point in her life. "Oh, N'rov-," whatever protest she might have is lost when the final buckle is secured and she's leaning in towards the bronze's neck a gloved hand somehow gentle in its caress against his head. Hello, Vhaeryth. Borrow? And get other people's cooties? It's not hard to imagine Suireh does not/has not borrow(ed) clothing from storerooms or other people at any point in her life. "Oh, N'rov-," whatever protest she might have is lost when the final buckle is secured and she's leaning in towards the bronze's neck a gloved hand somehow gentle in its caress against his neck. Hello, Vhaeryth. He leans in, familiar, his rumble vibrating beneath leather and skin; N'rov finds a pressing need to cast his gaze heavensward. To... check out the stars, of course. But in the next moment there's the flex of muscle and press of gravity and rush of wind that's his leap, the leap and the not-fall that's his wings catching, claiming the air and chasing it up. Another rumble's met with the watchdragon's treble warble, and then just when there's a good look around there's cold. Cold. Cold. Not so cold. Stars, like tinted diamonds tossed across the sky. Refreshing. Suireh says as much, though her words get lost in the upward flight noise of air moving. Perhaps Vhaeryth heard her though. The harper, who has not cried up to this moment, tears, the salty water chilling in the high night's sky. Her back to N'rov shifts away, a pocket of air flowing between them, and then she's again pressing backward into the dragonrider's body, with eyes that gaze up. "Where are we going?" Maybe these words are easier to hear with height already gained. He doesn't drag her towards him in that distance, but N'rov does welcome Suireh's return, tucking an arm about her waist before resuming his grip of the neckridge in front of them. Vhaeryth ascends, steepening their angle, giving a better look at that night sky. "Higher," the bronzerider calls forward, as though that were a destination all its own. "Try a shout. Something." Something. Suireh sucks in the cold air and coughs down into a glove. Her body squirrels backwards some more, seeking the heat of the dragon beneath her and the man behind her. Warmth, and maybe a little courage as she starts taking a succession of breaths that are deeper in progession, more gut-reaching. Her eyes close and her shoulders lift, and then, her mouth throws open and she lets out a yell that's more akin to a scream, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" into the night's sky. That rings out, and the baritone, "Yeah!" Not loud, not with her right in front of him, but urging her on. She yells again in a similar vein, wordless and all vowels, and then, before she can think, as thinking is a dangerous task for Suireh particularly when it's self-drected, she yells out: "I hate you. I hate YOU. I HATE YOU! WHY?! WHHHHHHHHHHHY?" Ineffectual fists ball against her knees and she's crying again. Good job, N'rov, good job. That's what he's here for: making her cry. Also, hugging her one-armed again, Vhaeryth slanting into a turn; amid the encouraging words might be, 'Louder.' Her hands suddenly cover her face, the leather gloves not soaking in the cold tears streaming again and her head shakes, much like a patient who is furiously denying another dose of some ill-tasting medicine. Certainly, it can't be heard, Suireh's repeated no into her gloves, but surely the shuddering of her torso can be felt. Not louder, then. N'rov just holds her, then, possibly a little haplessly, as gradually they get to circling downward. Downward, where it's warmer, even if it's also still a downer. In the downward, her weeping gradually subsides, though her hands don't move from covering her face. When they reach complete downness, Suireh rubs at her face, one hand coming down to her leg and the other still at her face. "I'm such a failure at being entertaining," a hysterical little giggle laugh, snort thing emerges, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She might also be snotty about her nose, but that's hard to tell since her hand is there covering her splotchy face. "Right, because I take you places so you'll entertain me," N'rov says, the habitual wryness and the concern audible in his voice; there's some moving, some adjusting, and finally a handkerchief poked toward her hand. Maybe Vhaeryth doesn't want to be dripped on. "You don't?" Suireh chokes again, in that weird laugh-sob thing, reaching blindly for the cloth shoved in her hand and brings it up to her nose to ugly blow. Ugly blow; where a nose can sound more like a fog horn than something a twenty-something woman is capable of. Face wiped. Nose blown. Her hands, one with the handkerchief in hand, come to press into her cheeks. "Oh. Catharsis. Cathartic. Yelling into the night. Let's do this again some day." "Maybe next time it'll just be an up-and-coming journeyman with aspirations toward your cubby," N'rov deadpans. Speaking of, "Will your wine be safe without you?" Still astride Vhaeryth, but starting to move towards getting down, N'rov's comment puts a pause in all that movement and, instead, Suireh swats the bronzerider with the snotty handkerchief. "You," is a little accusatory, a little reproving, and a lot resigned to the incorrigibleness. A big sigh is followed by the telltale aftershock shudders that sometimes happen after big cries, and then a less forced, "N'rov. Thank you." She twists, pushing her dark hair out of the way, to look at the dragonrider and leans forward to dare a kiss to his cheek, but also sort of his lips by just catching the corner of it. But mostly his cheek, definitely. N'rov gives her a pained look. With that handkerchief? Now? Really? Maybe that's why he eyes her and her mostly-cheek kiss the way he does... or maybe it has more to do with the way the moonlight's catching the slow upturn of a grin, not to mention the moonlight on waves. Waves. "Welcome, Suireh," he says. "Watch your step." Waves. Waves Suireh doesn't even notice until she's continued in her downward trek and realizes, too late, that her feet aren't on Fort's hard bowl floor. "N'rov!" "Yes, ma'am?" If it's any consolation, Vhaeryth doesn't move a hair, and not just because he doesn't have any. When his rider leans down so he can grin at Suireh, that grin has gotten brighter. "Do you want to come back up?" He'd take her, her and her (his) snotty handkerchief too. At least the footing isn't overloose: gravel rather than sand, with narrow-leaved plants grown up here and there. One ineffectual foot stomps on the ground, made even more so by the shifting gravel beneath the boot's heel. The slim hand that reaches up immediately to be drawn up again hesitates, Suireh's look of indignation turning into a toss of her dark hair and a sour look cast away from N'rov. Might as well. She's down here and he's up there, and so she traipses away, away from the gravel-footing towards looser ground, allowing her boots to sink down into the rocky beach. As long as that hand's aloft, N'rov's fingers tickle at hers without truly reaching; then he's sliding down after. Whistling. It even bears some resemblance to her tune from earlier. Some measure of the adolescent girl, so hyper-aware of herself, so sure, reappears in a tart look that sneaks back to N'rov, though not sneaky enough not to be obvious. Then again, it's unlikely she's trying not to be obvious. He's supposed to see her look after all. He whistles in his approach. She... yells? She yells when he gets close, a loud, bright sound out towards the water, that hints at some sort of laugh that is otherwise held in close. It takes time; it's not a quick approach, but that look of hers doesn't go unrewarded. Neither does the yell; he laughs, freely given, even as Vhaeryth shakes out his wings with a heaved yawn and makes for higher ground. For that matter, N'rov yells after her, deeper, echoes ringing out for the pair of them. After a few moments, the bronzerider cocks his head. "I don't think we managed to summon anything, do you?" The waves move, their rolling audible and the white froth visible in the moonlight. Her cheeks are flushed due to a combination of the exertion of yelling and winter. "A monster? A sea monster?" Suireh says after a while. "Something that will come up and reward us for giving him our troubles. He feeds off of the troubles of landwalkers." She spins this with utmost sincerity in her pale eyes. N'rov stays to the side, so the moonlight can better catch those eyes, and he can see it; his voice is low. "Is that its own reward? 'Landwalkers.' I like that." Go on. You would. There's so much she could say and yet that is what can be gleaned from the high brow arc of one eye that spares N'rov a look. Suireh is silent for a little bit, her breathing uneven as a sharper bit of cool air comes their way from the water. N'rov rolls his shoulders, comfortably, meeting her gaze (and her lack of going on) with aplomb; if it's also cover for reaching inside his jacket pocket, and later for surreptitiously pinging whatever it is towards the water... plop. It would be the side of her face that isn't visible to N'rov, now that she's looking back at the water, that rises upward in a crooked smile. It can't be coincidence that shortly after the plop, she begins speaking again. "He's coming," is her hushed whisper. "What reward will you seek?" Suireh tucks her hands against her sides, pressed down by her upper arms and finally looks over to the man still to the side to catch and hold his gaze. It's N'rov's turn to be silent, his mouth turning up slowly, slowly, that darkened gaze on Suireh the invoker in a way that lasts; that might even speculate. After one quick breath, he waits. She waits too. Her pale eyes fixed to him. It's a long time, measured only by the sound of the waves rolling in and then out, retreating back to the deeper ocean. One. Two. Ten. Fifty. "He came," Suireh says, finally, the tense of her words implying he has now left. She stands for two more breaths and then turns to start walking back to Vhaeryth, that whistle of his with that song of hers pushed out of her pursed lips. It's a long time to be looking. N'rov might not have started counting immediately; any press of fingers into the outer folds of his jacket pockets is subtle, and even that, if it happens at all, gradually disappears into looking at her. And past; and to her, really to her. He doesn't move to Vhaeryth likewise, not immediately, despite the song; rather, he crouches to pick up, from the gravelly ground, what comes to him. Then he straightens; then he accompanies her on. It's when he too arrives that Vhaeryth lowers himself to be mounted. She's made it to Vhaeryth before him, by not much, but enough for the young woman to be holding her hand up to the bronze's side, her pale eyes gently intent on the dragon. This is a look and these are eyes not meant for people. It's an odd combination of yearning and regret, resignation and a deep abiding love, and it all disappears when N'rov's feet in that gravel are heard too close behind. "Took you long enough," she finally says. Vhaeryth's eye is reflective, that single one of his that she can see, that mirrors her in turn; he's dark in this near-lack of light but for those eyes, for the leading edges that only emphasize the shadows. It might not just be the lessened breeze that makes it warmer in his lee; it might be easy to imagine a seeing, a seeing her, and welcoming her all the same. Whether it persists when hers disappears... His rider doesn't speak, though there's a low chuckle. The waves roll and froth without them, will wash onto the shore and take it away when they're long dead. But they're living, now. N'rov reaches for her. Suireh gives him a look; a look of that's not how this works, her head tilted and turned to try and see him without getting an eyeful of chin. N'rov, catching that familiar tilt-and-turn, leans to make it easier; of course, he also brushes a kiss onto her eyebrow on the way down. He looks at her then, expectant. If you say so. Suireh radiates doubt, even though she steps away from N'rov's hand to reach up to the dragon. A hand to Vhaeryth's reddish-bronze side, she says something, soft into the dragon's hide and with the practice of a long ago weyrbrat who grew up among dragons and their riders, the young woman hoists herself up along the straps, only betraying her lack of more current practice in her landing at the top with an audible ooph. "I might," she says as she tries to situate herself more comfortably, "Be tempted to run off with your dragon." Vhaeryth mantles his wings, if slowly, once she's settled on high: Suireh, master of all she surveys. N'rov is shorter looking down there, looking up at her. "You'd abandon me here," the bronzerider says. "With the sea monster." Then, "You'd better buckle in." She's still shifting around, but eventually does buckle. It's awkward sitting up here alone and the sense that she feels awkward persists in her continued slight adjustments. "Are you coming?" she asks, suddenly, looking down at N'rov. As if she'd leave him here for a sea monster. Then, a little less plaintively; "My back is getting cold." It's awkwardness enough that Vhaeryth curves back around to nose towards her knee, if carefully lest he startle her in a bad way; N'rov's all too quick to remount, nigh as though released from a bow. "Can't have that," he assures, indulgent and yet somehow relieved in his own right. It's later, when they're aloft once more and he's not solely keeping her back warm, that he admits something further to her ear: that he'd asked Vhaeryth about taking her. Just for a short ride, the shortest of rides. That in the end, he wouldn't do it. For that confession, or maybe it's just her back is warm now, Suireh smiles, attempting and subsequently failing to secret it behind thin pressed lips. Her reach to her hip then shifts to a blind one that tucks in between her back and his abdomen the shifting weight of her body pressing it close. If he smiles, it's lost in her hair; N'rov leans in and over her, protective but also to feel that touch closer: to take that with them even through between. |
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