Logs:Dignity or Adoration?
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| RL Date: 31 January, 2008 |
| Who: Satiet, N'thei |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| When: Day 21, Month 2, Turn 15 (Interval 10) |
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| The rest of the Weyr might take their meals in the boisterous cavern but the weyrwoman's set up shop in the council chambers. A tray of food sits untouched at one end, though a fork stabbed through the middle of her steak's released its juices to the plate. The opposite side of the oval table has a large map unfurled on it, pieces of hide pinned into various locations with names, ages, and dates written in teeny tiny letters. While she might not eat, Satiet at least drinks, a half-finished glass of wine's curved bottom resting atop curled fingers loosely as she overviews her handiwork. N'thei; relaxed. Without his boots, with his collar loose, in his shirt but not his tunic and even that is untucked, he strolls in with every indication that he expects to find the place unoccupied. He has a stack of loose leaves of hide all bound up by a piece of twine, and he's just taken a flask-drink of his own when he has to face the fact that he is not alone here. As they will despite his best intentions, those gray eyes stay on Satiet like they're attached; his casual tone, his easy smile. "Starved but never parched, so reliable." "Predictable." Unfazed by his sudden appearance, Satiet returns with a quick quip, her pale eyes unwavering from the pins until her parched throat again compels her to sip, and then flick N'thei a distant glance. "You mean predictable. And likewise." Pale eyes drop to the Weyrleader's flask, scornful and then resume observing her map. In the near two months since Turn's End and the hubbub surrounding it, Satiet's own life has resumed normalcy, her habits easy to track from what she drinks and when and the meticulousness with which she runs the Weyr. But beyond that, her down time, like clockwork, begins at dinner time and as such is reflected in her loosened hair and casual attire. While he lacks boots, she lacks shoes or socks, her bare feet rounding the table, closer to N'thei. "Do you need more space?" N'thei's half-mocking smile, brief raise of eyebrows answer for him; he meant predictable, and simultaneously he acknowledges the return of her barb as having hit the mark. Toying narration; "She asks while drawing nearer." There are few surprises in N'thei's daily life. He stays up later than he should, seems to rise somewhen before mid-morning, occupies his daylight hours with a brutal regime of drills and practice to counter-balance the fact that he was nowhere near ready to lead a /fighting/ Weyr. Poker whiles away most evening hours until he lands heavily in his own bed. He has few visitors, makes no effort to impugn himself on Satiet's privacy. "Do I interrupt?" She might detect a hopeful tone. She stops, his words making their own mark, a brief flush coloring her cheeks. Her slender shoulders stiffen. "Cheeky." Cheekiness deserves another glass to tide her over, Satiet's steps swerving away from N'thei to where her tray of food waits with its carafe of red wine. "If I say yes, you'll stay to irritate me. If I say no, you'll stay to irritate me. I lose either way, sir," she returns, the title bestowed as mockingly as the lopsided lip curl she flashes over her shoulder. Her hip finds the table to rest against, half sliding up onto the table in her turn to look to N'thei as she speaks. "Stay. Please, unless you've other places to go to...," a beat, "Work?" As though she had offered it to him and not questioned his intent; "No thank you, I'm trying to cut back." N'thei waits where he stopped until Satiet comes to rest against the table, wary or desirous is hard to tell. "Pleasure?" While he passes the table, while he moves to put away the bundle of hides, he drags his finger along the perimeter of her map indicatively. Finally looking away, he passes a quick study over her map and then a questioning glance to the shoeless woman. Satiet scoots back further onto the table, watchful when N'thei begins to move. The arm closest to the map drops to brace her shifting weight as she follows his path, glossy hair falling over her shoulder as she leans to see where his finger drops. She smirks. "Work is pleasure. Isn't that why you decided to abscond with the Weyr, sir?" Swinging her legs easily over the table so she can slide off the other side, the slight woman draws close to the top half of the map, pausing there to lift her glass in a mocking toast. "Search statistics. We've had at least twenty candidates from the Crom area in the last three cycles, six of whom Impressed. I doubt Lord Crom will enjoy any more pilfering from his holds this time around." A warning look and nothing more, a subject that N'thei does not wish to revisit. He lets go the subject and puts the hides onto a shelf, heedless of the order that preceded him, back to the table to take a place just out of arm's reach at Satiet's side. Sometime after she gave it so pointed a look, his flask disappeared into his pocket, left his hands free; now he crosses his arms, takes his attention away from the queenrider again with some difficulty and gives it to the map. "You were going to add that his enjoyment hardly matters, that we will do as we always have. Of course." The warning of his look finds the thin veneer of contempt lifting her sharp chin and glittering in her return gaze. But the look is enough for her to not pursue the subject further, nor move closer to her newest Weyrleader. Her turn away from the map again causes her to lean casually against the table's edge to study the mesmerizing swish of clinging red liquid in her glass. "Wouldn't that be- predictable, m'lord?" Satiet's thin shoulders rise, bringing up the loose sleeves of her light grey tunic, and then fall in either a stretch or an elongated shrug. "They'll refuse." "Have we so longed for formality, miss?" At odds with the return to a grating address, N'thei looks Satiet up and down with all the savor of a familiar lover, not the conquest of one brutal night. By the time his eyes have grazed beyond her lengthy shrug, have raised to meet her cold gaze again, there's business in them once more. "Let them refuse. Will it be the first time we've taken what they won't give willingly?" Defiance would be childish, out of place; he is matter-of-fact, the only question he still holds is Satiet's complicity. Flat, commanding. "We don't steal those who refuse." Though she feigns ignorance of N'thei's raking gaze by focusing on her glass's contents, the overt familiarity brings with it spots of betrayal to her cheeks in a lovely rose, visible even in profile view. Discomforted, she reacts by easing off the table to draw attention away from her flush, and then turns slowly to face the bronzerider. Bright blue eyes and a proudly lifted chin aid her finding composure in her brand of mocking formality he ridicules. "Is that understood, sir?" N'thei explains with a patience he seldom draws upon, "I'm not talking about kidnapping; I'm talking about inviting the willing regardless of what their lord thinks. Thank you for your vote of confidence though, speaks volumes." Funny how something as innocuous as a three-letter word can crack his calm, can turn him toward Satiet with her raised chin and bright cheeks to take her by the shoulders with firm but delicate hands. He handles her like a bird, some little thing he neither wants to crush nor allow to escape. "Stop it, Satiet. I will let you belittle me for many things, but you will stop mocking me for taking this rank." Enlightenment, rather than angry surprise at his presumptive hold of her, reflects in her eyes immediately at his words, pausing her formality in the delicate lines of her face. "Oh," is first capitulation in one syllable, and then an explanation with dry humor directed inward: "When I said they'll refuse, I meant the holders. Not Lord Crom. Frankly, I don't give a shit what Crom thinks is his place or not." She pauses, allowing the rest of what N'thei says sink in taking with it any trace of apology for the misunderstanding from her ever pale face. Satiet's lips thin. "Do you think I wanted to replace my Weyrleader?" In light of things, the misunderstanding is hardly the biggest concern. N'thei registers understanding, nods, puts it away to be dealt with later. "I don't know what you want. Fact is, I don't care." The brief tightening of his fingers would beg to differ, so the betraying hands are loosened and now mostly hover over Satiet's shoulders rather than hold them. "I can't care. Not for you, not and have a shred of dignity. --You let him be replaced; I replaced him. Find something else to needle me with." It's a request, one put with a softened expression, with fingertips just settled on her arms. So much talking is bad for N'thei! The slight and physically fragile-seeming woman looks to N'thei straight on, her open eyes fixed to his. Likely, mental notations are being made of those tightened fingers that release and hover, the way his fingertips brush the folds of her silver-beaded tunic, the softened expression exposing High Reaches' Weyrleader to her attempts to read him more intently behind the guise of guilelessness. Likely. "You replaced him," she finally states, "And I could respect that. Can. Will," she amends quickly, determined. "But dignity is an elusive thing." While his fingers rest on her arms, her free hand lifts to curl lightly, affectionately about his chin. "If you're still here when the drudge comes, they can take my tray away." Likely enough that N'thei's nose flares, that his lips tense in a moment of unconcealed frustration with Satiet's perpetual calculation, what he perceives of it. "So is adoration." With a sweep, with the same gesture that raked the edge of her map moments ago, his fingers fall away down the outline of Satiet's arms, just graze her person before they land at his side. Whatever he was stupid enough to reveal to her is gone, the chin in her hand holding the distant smile that suits their encounters best. "I'm sure they'll be thrilled to do your bidding." Contrarily, in response to his distant smile, the curve of Satiet's lips warm, allowed to do so by preconceived notions. "If it means anything, sir," the title holds no special hitch or emphasis, but the name that follows does, "N'thei. I adore you and everything you've done for this Weyr, the strawberries, and the coal, but perhaps too late." And then she retreats, taking with her the wine glass and the carafe off her tray. "Good night, Weyrleader." If it means anything, he's not telling. A pleasant-sounding mmmhmmn sounds precisely the same length that good-night would have taken in return, then N'thei turns to the table and stands in front of the map and bends his thoughts on Crom. Let the myth stand that any profanities he mutters are directed at Crom, shall we, not at Satiet. |
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