Logs:Drinking Alone Together
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| RL Date: 14 August, 2012 |
| Who: Leova, Riorde |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: They drink. They don't say a lot. What they do say is telling. |
| Where: Southern Rim, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 1, Month 7, Turn 29 (Interval 10) |
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| Southern Rim of the Bowl, High Reaches Weyr Directly opposite the sharp spikes of the Reaches' characteristic spires lies the bowl's south rim, from above seeming pinched like a baker's pie crust to form this distinctive lip: a soft curve, several dragonlengths long but only four lengths wide before narrowing into impassable crags. It would have to be an apprentice effort, however, given how even the flatter area is riddled with cracks and hollows, dusted with glittery silicate quartz that is far more gritty than sweet. Though the view down into the bowl is commanding, the views beyond it can be absolutely breathtaking on clear days: eternally snow-capped mountains descending to high-altitude meadows and the dark brush of evergreens, and greener valleys beyond even those, with only glimpses here and there of human habitation. But the views come with a risk: the wind can blow hard and strong, and whether looking inward or outward, there is no protection from the precipitous chasms that fall away from these heights.
Under Taikrin's tutelage, Riorde's picked up a certain set of skills. Earlier was for rowdiness in the Snowasis. Now is for ill-advised risks, dragoning-while-drunk. After a veering course around the spires with their winds and sudden shifts, Sforzath cuts across the bowl, gliding and falling and then attaining an updraft that brings him to a scrabbling stop right at the edge of the rim, wings flared for balance. His concentration, especially without Riorde's reinforcement, means his flare of recognition for Vrianth comes late, once he's caught himself and settled. Vrianth's comes early, at least by comparison. Her warning? Not at all. Now her narrow head rakes out to sniff at him with flared nostrils, ichor-greener against the heathered olive of her face, against her intensely colored eyes. They aren't exactly green themselves, this night, but something darker and depthless. She scents the brown, scents what's on him. Who's on him. Her rider's only just gotten herself up to one elbow and already Vrianth's drawing on energy, drawing in questions, sending only a fillip of the former his way like a single lightless spark. The scents are varied and many. The musk of his hide. Singed grass, sweet hay. The boozy bite of a cheap alcohol where taste is of no concern. Smoke, fragrant from burning woods, thick and heavy. Bitterness. The emotion's harnessed in other sensations: the acrid notes that unbalance the incense; the way the smoke stings. There's no distinction between these things; Sforzath compounds them all together and leaves it to Vrianth to untangle. Riorde has another untangling task: the straps she's buckled herself into. It takes awhile for her to work herself free. Leova watches, for a little while, but it takes too long. She sinks back to star-watch. To let the stars watch her. To shut her eyes. There's no incline here, no ridge to protect them on any side. Vrianth, meanwhile, doesn't so much untangle as knot, braid them all up in the slow flow of smoke and the quicker drink's bite, prowl closer to Sforzath and see: will he back up, will he move to the edge? At least, once his rider's free. Sforzath does not give ground. He sinks, allowing for an easier dismount but also a lower center of gravity, and stares straight at the green, letting that rider of his fend for herself. She sticks close to her dragon, stays in the center, and does not approach the edge. She does approach Leova, standing a little ways away with a buffer for personal space. For not intruding on one another's solitude. Vrianth? Her head turns, her neck twists and then twists further, looping around towards the brown's neckridges and up to his wings and the delicate membranes there. Only her breath threatens to touch. Will he hold still, even for that? If she and her rider were added up, nose to tail, they would be longer than he. Her rider, though, lolls back on her side, on her elbow. "There's more," she says lazily, in that smoky voice of hers made richer, not clearer, by night. "I haven't drunk it all." Only for a minute. Sforzath refuses to be rousted, but not from the preference for keeping himself apart that his rider evinces. Instead, he tries to beat Vrianth at her own game, twisting to combat her sinuousness. "Why not?" Riorde looks down at the greenrider, eyes pulling into a squint for focus. So he twists, but what does he seek? To dodge, or to press and scent in return? Vrianth lets him do what he will do, for an instant or three. To see. Long enough for Vrianth's rider to wave a hand, that with the flex of shoulder-elbows-wrist-fingers seems more curved than it by rights should be. "I kicked Rhonda out," she says, her tongue lingering past the plosive of the 't.' "Out? Not off?" Riorde looks towards the edge of the ledge for good measure but doesn't venture to the edge to see if the greenrider mentioned has become a splat far below. "Or are you sharing a weyr? Does Anvori know? Or is it a little place high up that you sneak off to sometimes?" The possibilities have a bite to them that Leova's liquor will either soften or sharpen. Her dragon sees no reason to choose one thing or the other; he ducks back first only to come in at an angled attack, taking in what he can in the short space Vrianth allows. When Riorde looks, Leova looks, though she's looking at the brownrider instead over that edge. "If you ask her," the greenrider says, "She'll say she meant to, anyway." Or perhaps that's meant to. Anyway. Either way, it implies a certain ability to speak, after which Leova inquires, "Why don't you drink?" The words are spaced just enough to put emphasis on any of them, or none. Since Riorde, clearly, has. Vrianth has new oil and old firestone and not meat. It's been some time since she's fed. She sacrifices one dark, delicate-looking spar in her stretch to lap at one of his craggy neckridges... or its neighbor. Perhaps, just perhaps, she's not picky. "Why don't I," Riorde repeats, phrasing it as a kind of defiant declaration. She drops down beside Leova and finds herself a bottle that still has alcohol in it, then helps herself without further ado. She's silent as she drinks, staring off with a hard, set look on her face. Meanwhile Sforzath satisfies himself with one long inhale, appreciation shading his response. It's not as harsh as whisky, it goes down sweet and smooth with a kick like fireworks. Its label is handwritten, surely easier to make out in glowlight than by their stars. It's something that Leova watches Riorde drink, the movements of her jaw and her throat and what it does or doesn't do with her eyes. Then she looks away, back to Vrianth, who'll sample his other neckridge if he stays still and then lean in just a touch, a very physical spark rather than anything that's hide to hide. Right before she turns away. Undoubtedly better than anything Riorde was drinking previously. The first pull is the quick gulp of someone used to knocking her liquor back rather than savoring it. She slows down thereafter, closing her eyes once towards the beginning to concentrate the effects of the alcohol. She doesn't look at Leova, not once, no matter how friendly her dragon's willing to get, settling into an overt regard where it doesn't matter if Vrianth returns it or not. He watches, and waits, on the lookout for further sparks. Any sparks are in her eyes, when the light catches their facets, when she continues to prowl on over to their riders and settle where she could reach either if she chose. Her wings are tucked in, her back sinuous serpentine curves upon curves, only the sharp lines of their ridges angled. She doesn't so much wait as witness, doesn't do either so much as simply is where she is. When Leova says in a low voice, "Would you like to black out," she can look at his rider as well as him. As well as, or better. Sforzath stays where he landed, low against the rock with his shoulders back in a crouch that signals readiness for sudden action, although there's no other movement on the rim once Vrianth has reached the riders. Riorde pays no more attention to the green than she does Leova, not even sacrificing a cursory glance from her far-off stare. "I don't know," she says, giving Leova that. "Is it something you decide?" Nor does Vrianth warrant such, surely, given how she's settled. Why, her talons are closer to her rider's knee than anyone else. It's a curiously sanguine humor that leans on him: does this happen often? Does he... like it? "It can be," says her rider finally, taking up one bottle and sloshing it, slowly, by its neck. "I haven't in a long time." Her hair is loose about her shoulders, her tunic loose and shapeless, her trousers wide-legged linen and rucked up to her calves and no more. In response, a throbbing rhythm fills the silence of the night, a drumbeat or closer still, a heart. Not for Vrianth alone; Riorde isn't aware of how her head starts to bob in time, just a little, between one drink and the next. "No, you wouldn't," she tells the other rider, bitter. She cocks her head. They do. "What do you mean?" The words float within the beats. Riorde finally looks over, resting the bottle on the stone beside her although her hand's still on the neck of it. "You drink by yourself to remember or you drink to forget. With blacking out, you're set on the second. What could you possibly have that you want to forget?" That's direct. That would be telling. It's telling already, the catch of her breath like a hook to her gut. "Wrongs I've done." A fish hook. The younger woman stares at the companion the night's given her unasked, forcing her gaze to fix when it starts to wander. She doesn't ask. She won't ask. Instead, she lifts the bottle until it's neither here nor there, not resting or at her lips, and waits for Leova to join her in one or the other. Remembering or forgetting. "I don't think that's you, though." Leova says it softly, lets it rise up like so much smoke from the dark rock they lie on. And, now as passionless as that rock, "I could be wrong." "The wrongs?" Riorde wonders. "The willingness?" There is nothing nice about her smile. "Or this?" The bottle, now at her lips. "Try the next one," Leova says, instead. Her toes flex, stretch, and there's the cool rattle-slosh of glass across stone. It could break. It could be drunk. It could be ignored for its neighbor. It could fall and crash and splinter. Riorde is about as obedient as she was as a weyrling. Which isn't to say that she doesn't follow Leova's advice, just that she considers the greenrider for a time before making up her own mind on the merits of the suggestion. She sets down her bottle, leaving it uncorked while she reaches to halt the progress of the one rolling (unbroken). "Okay," she agrees. The suck of a cork coming out pops as suddenly as a bubble bursting. "Thank you for sharing." Those were the days, when the greenrider would wait with practiced, impervious patience. Now she twists onto her belly, hooking one foot's toes onto the other foot's heel, flexing to deepen the stretch. There's another beat, two, three, where she rubs her temples. And the drink does bubble and fizz, dark and earthy as a tonic that may not be entirely healthy but the taste, the taste is remarkable. Her low laugh's like that too, until she catches herself and turns aside. |
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