Logs:Early Travels
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| RL Date: 7 May, 2015 |
| Who: Irianke, Lycinea, Nyarelle, Riyele, Daiyo, Irianke/ST |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Lycinea spends some time healing with Irianke's trader family. |
| Where: Igen Area and Ista Area |
| When: Day 1, Month 9, Turn 37 and later |
| OOC Notes: Very very backdated. With all my travel, we didn't get a chance to finish this, but we did get in some snippets of the travel experience for Lya. These are all early on in her travels. |
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| Winters in the Igen area are chilly, downright icy, at night and dry and hot during the day. It's been a couple of months since Lycinea's arrival and Irianke's sister, Nyarelle, has taken the young Reachian under her wing. The first few weeks were spent with the young woman trailing the veteran trader, after which Lya was set to the task of cutting luxury fabrics and rolling them into smaller, sellable bolts, a seemingly simple task, though with painstaking attention to detail; finding the perfect spot to slice without breaking up the pattern in some of the weaves. Nyarelle is a patient guide and instructor. Life in the major trading post near Igen Hold is rhythmic, scheduled with a sense of order in its day to day as goods stream in from around Pern and are divided before being sent off towards other parts of Pern. There is a definite structure in the hierarchy with the men being in charge while the women obey, though there are anomalies, such as Nyarelle, women who have their own, small, domain to oversee. Tonight, as the sun sets across the desert, cresting down beyond Igen Hold, a joint, impromptu celebration among all the trading families based here lights up the area with colorful paper lanterns, bold colors, flashing jewels, hearty simple foods, and merry music. Lycinea had let herself be reassured after Irianke made the introductions; Nyarelle is of Irianke and Irianke is the closest thing to family Lya knows. She has tried to be open, but the first night, after the goldrider's departure, she felt achingly alone and separate. Putting herself to the task of learning about the fabrics and largely narrowing the focus of her life to only that has helped Lycinea feel less -- not less foreign or different, but less feelings on the whole. It isn't she must know, what Irianke had hoped in extending this offer, but at least in suppressing her feelings, in making the only thing that mattered the pattern and weave of the fabric and how to cut it just right, Lycinea has woken less at night, with fewer nightmares to disturb her tentmates. There is no question that the mood among the traders is apparently light and that Lycinea, sitting at the edge of the firelight, there but apart, is still anything but. She sits with a woven blanket drawn over her lap, her eyes tracking the dancing flames more than the movement of bodies partaking in different parts of this very Igen 'to do'. Nyarelle being busy with other tasks doesn't mean she hasn't spared a thought for her charge, and shortly, a young girl, her daughter of seventeen draws up. Riyele slips in next to the interloper, taking an uninvitd seat on a patch of sand nearby and folds her arms over her bent knees. An audible breath hits the air, creating a visible cloud of cold there, but she is silent and not overtly studious of Lycinea, though there's a tangible thereness; that she is there for Lya in spite of the signs otherwise. "You don't have to sit with me," Lycinea offers generously to her new companion some moments after she's arrived. Tugging self-consciously on her sleeves until the material pulls down over her hands, she adds, "You should be enjoying this," though her tone ends up more hollow than encouraging. "Well, if you say so." It's absolutely dry. Completely sarcastic. But still somehow friendly, at least Riyele flashes a charming, dimpled smile. "As if," says the young woman, having only recently returned to Igen Hold after traveling with the western caravan. "I could use a break from all of," she waves to the throngs of people dancing, chatting, and well, making out. "That. It's nice to be home again. Nyarelle told me you're visiting us for a while." "Another month," Lycinea answers after a not inconsiderable silence in which she contemplates her peer. Her eyes give the other girl a thorough visual inspection before looking back to the fire and picking at the blanket across her lap. "I'm supposed to heal my wounds or something." Oddly candid after two months of speaking as little as possible. "Out here?" Riyele is politely incredulous, a flippant hand gesturing to, well, the entirety of the traders out there frolicking. "I... where are you from again? What are you healing from? Really?" Something about all this doesn't' seem to add up for the young woman and she leans forward, ending up with her body leaning between her knees to study Lycinea more closely. "Is here not good for that kind of thing?" Lycinea answers question for question with a rise of her brows. "From High Reaches Weyr." The blanket gets picked over for more moments before she offers in a sedate way, "I got trapped in a cave-in with some other people for a long time. Everyone else was brave. I'm-- not." She shrugs. "This is different, than where I come from." She gestures to the traders. "Before the cave-in, I probably would've been afraid of so much sky instead of rock overhead." Something about that make her laugh, but bitterly. Though she's not offered this view of her soul to anyone else, the unseen scars are now plain. Enlightenment dawns as Lycinea's response sinks in. Riyele exhales an ahhhhhhhhh and looks to that open sky as it's mentioned. "Come with us, when we leave. We're heading south and hope to catch a large ferry across to Ista Island for the winter. Drom," the patriarch of the trading family, "Wants to see if we can venture down there again. The last expedition," she confides wryly, "Was a fucking disaster. I think it's a waste of time, but hooo, child, anything's better than wallowing here in this stick up their ass organizational nightmare. Come on." Daiyo, the man in charge of steering the herdbeast, or in this case labor beasts, stands by one of the caravans. The long stick in his hand keeps the pace of travel as well as encourages an animal who lags to keep going. "Can't blame 'em," he drawls, his leisurely Igen accent elongating near on every vowel possible. A dimpled smile flashes up to the girl holding the reins. "I'm not so good on boats m'self, and that was some arse of a storm we went through to get here." And by here, the charming brown-haired man means Ista Island. It's day four on their circuit of the small island and it's been slow going with frequent stops as the humidity seems to deprive many of the native Igenites of their energy to live. Lycinea couldn't say why she had accepted Riyele's offer. It might be because she'd thought at the time that the girl had to be right: nothing could be worse. Now, however, in the face of the humidity that wilted the northerner like a desert flower dropped in the rain forest, and the first hour of the storm which she'd spend retching over the rail and getting soaked to her skin, Lya's beginning to feel differently. Settled on the back of one of the wagons, laid back on the rugs she couldn't imagine would sell well in a place as hot as F'lar's armpit and her legs dangling over the side, she might be wishing to go home (or possibly to just shuck this mortal coil; it is that kind of weather). Either way, the man's voice draws her attention enough to open an eye and then close it again. The wagon in front gathers a lingering look, Daiyo's conversation with Riyele fading as all small talk is wont to do. It's not soon enough, though they haven't traveled that far, that the caravan settles in for the evening a distance from the ocean. People: old, young, male, female, a mass bunch of them strip and race for the water. The young man stays behind, waiting and watchful of Lycinea until he can't be quiet any longer and interrupts whatever she might be doing, "Hey." Arguably, drawing nonsense patterns in the sand in front of her toes with a tiny stick might not really be doing anything, but it's the sort of thing Lya's given to doing (nothing of note) when left to her own devices. Her eyes lift to Daiyo, stick stopping mid-artless drag. "Hey," is returned but perhaps only because she seems expected to speak. She's not usually awkward because she's not usually anything noticeable enough to be awkward or anything else, but as she finally notices his watchful look, she's uncertain and awkward. "Here," the young man hands over the long stick he's used thus far to cattle prod. "To draw with," he adds. "Better than that small thing as long as you get it back to me before we head off tomorrow, you're welcome to use it to draw. And catch." From the loose pocket of his sleeveless jacket, Daiyo pulls out a warm mango and tosses it at Lycinea. "Catch!" he says again, grinning. "Want to go out there for a swim? Do you swim?" Lycinea's hands fumble the fruit, having to pluck it up from the sand just beyond her legs and brush it off on her trousers before she looks at the young man with something akin to confusion. It's not that she hasn't been met with kindness here that makes her ask, "Why are you being nice to me?" in that unnervingly direct way she can sometimes have. It's good for making friends. Her eyes flick to the water, "Not well. I had a friend the last time I went in the ocean, to keep me from getting pulled out too far." Had. "Cause you're new. Cause you're pretty. Cause you seem like you could use a friend if anything." Daiyo's grin is shameless as he ticks off his reasons for being nice to Lycinea. "I promise," his hand lifts, "No ulterior motives here. We were all told you're on a fucking pedestal, and not the fucking kind and Irianke'd have our heads and balls if we dared anything. But don't mean we can't be friends you know?" Another tropical fruit comes out of his other large pocket, along with a pocket knife that starts stripping the skin off and then slices small pieces. "I like my balls though, where they should, right there so, I'm warning, no funny flirty stuff, got it?" The wink for the Reachian interloper is unrepentant, as is much of his mannerisms. Lycinea stares at him, perhaps understandably. It's possible in that speech he grew a second head. No? Perhaps it was just what he said then. "I'm not on a pedestal," is the firm answer the girl gives before she's starting to strip down as others had before her, to head for the water. She might not be responding to his charm, per se, but she is rising to his bait far too seriously than can be good for a girl of only eighteen. Island life is far less structured than back at camp. They break when the wagon master decides to break, they move when he decides to. Where at the camp Nyarelle ruled her area with a steel spine and cool words, in the camps it is a man's affair. Daiyo is a favorite in general, among the young folk telling incredible tales, playing with the little ones, talking shop with the elders and, above all, having a savvy eye for the family business. While he doesn't interrupt Lycinea often, he does make sure to check in on her once every few days and as they approach Ista Hold, the young man is seen, once more, standing behind the wagon where Lya usually is. Today, Riyele is walking at his side, an easy arm slung about his waist and it's clear, in the last seven or so, they've become an item, or they always were one. "Little bird," calls Riyele to Lya in her characteristic singsong, "Little bird, little bird, when will your wings stretch wide?" Lycinea's mood had improved since the night she swam. She'd even swum since, cajoled rather than challenged. She'd bargained, yes, bargained (pleasantly) for scraps of material and the use of sewing notions and been working on a small project when there was light enough by the time they made camp. She was paying more attention to the traders, ineptly attempting to learn from them. Her attempts were often laughable but that didn't seem to bother her much. Things were going well. Then, wholly by coincidence, her mood turned sullen once more sometime in the last seven or so. Riyele gets little more than the small lift of shoulders in answer to her inquiry. "Hey," Daiyo extricates himself from Riyele when a wagon up ahead halts the entire caravan. "Mud," he says, disgustedly. "Mud. Sharding island. We might be here for a few days yet if we can't get Beltaine out of the mud." Beltaine being the name of the burden beast drawing the wagon upfront. "On the bright side," Riyele says when Daiyo hurries to help, "At least we'll have some meat again in our stews. Do you ever wonder how your goldrider grew up here and became what she did? Can you imagine Irianke here singing our songs, dancing our dances, eating our food, and living under the stars?" Invocation of Irianke's name draws Lycinea's eyes from their dejected stare at air. They only briefly pass over Daiyo before moving on to his abandoned companion. Lya's brows draw down and her lips purse. It's puzzlement colored by her sour mood. Her words lack touch of the latter though, "She's still the same person she was. Only now she's so much more, too. Do you really think she could walk away from all of this and not take it with her in her blood and bones?" "It never leaves you. Blood to blood, skin to skin. Heart to heart. I cannot imagine what she puts herself through daily so having a ceiling above her head daily doesn't make her suffocate." Riyele presses two fingers to her lips and salutes the sky. "Was only only a few turns old when she went and got Impressed. Ma and she and I were all in the same wagon train then and ma'd tell me stories. I never could figure out why she wanted to stay in one place. I wonder if she thought it'd be different somehow." With the wagons stopped, Riyele leans forward against the back of the wagon in front of her and looks up at Lycinea. "Maybe it is different somehow," Lycinea offers noncommittally. "The stone is a different kind of sky, the tunnels a different kind of path, but not worse or better. I didn't think so once..." But now? Well, she's lived this, breathed this. It may not be in her blood or skin, because there's only so much one can change, but it might be edging into her heart. "You and Daiyo," is an abrupt change of topic, and yet she manages to sound calm, possibly even disinterested in tone. "Have you always been--?" What they are now. "Daiyo?" Riyele's too savvy to let on that she knows in the way women like her know. She does innocent ignorance well and she looks down at the wagons where Daiyo is working, and then back to Lycinea with a rueful grin. "We've known each other since were kids. He's here in our version of fostering from the Levante trading family. Makes it sound all rich like the Holders, yea? On again off again, I guess, in the same way all girls are with him. Some try to get pregnant by him, thinking it'll make him stay, but please. We're not Blooded folk. But," a look of fondness drifts from Lycinea back down the wagon way, "He's good people. Smart, funny, charming, with an alarmingly acute sense of when things are about to get more serious." Lycinea listens with a discontented look. If she's jealous, it's likely more the idea of him than the man in the flesh. In the end, she only shrugs her shoulder and tips her head down, letting her elbows come to brace on her knees. "Gonna nap." Right here, right now. That much is a valuable lifeskill if perhaps not the safest outside of places where she's put on a pedestal with the penalty of balllessness for anyone ballsy enough to lay hands where they're not wanted. Riyele watches Lycinea and listens to her short response and sighs. She returns to her perch above the oxen, where she waits until the sun wanes and camp is called with an burden beast down and a Daiyo to bring stories from the front line of trying to force a beast to move when it's given up. She watches Lycinea throughout, keeping tabs, making sure someone takes her food, stew, and revelry starts as near to the girl as possible before eventually returning with a warm Daiyo to her wagon. |
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