Logs:Eloquence
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| RL Date: 6 September, 2008 |
| Who: Madilla, Oysric |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Madilla labels bottles and talks to Oysric, who is surprisingly eloquent. |
| Where: Inner Caverns, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 4, Month 9, Turn 17 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Milani/Mentions |
| Inner Caverns, High Reaches Weyr Within the labyrinth of interconnected chambers that make up the inner caverns, this large, long cavern serves both as a crossroads and a comfortable place for weyrfolk to sit, talk, and keep a nosy eye out for who's going where. Colorful, seasonal tapestries add warmth to the smooth walls and reduce echoes, while large niches house clusters of chairs, and a waist-high stone shelf along one wall provides a perch for drinks or work for residents on the go. Worn brass hooks often hold jackets or other outerwear with workboots stationed beneath, the transitory nature of the cavern lending itself to being treated as a sort of communal foyer where snowy or muddy gear can be kept outside of living quarters. Smaller, higher niches at regular intervals hold glowbaskets kept fresh during the daytime and allowed to dim somewhat at night. The largest tunnels lead to the main living cavern, to the bowl and to the Weyr entrance, but it's still easy for the uninitiated to get lost within this maze. It's an autumn afternoon, and as time slowly moves toward evening, more and more people seem to frequent the inner caverns rather than walk through the colder outdoors area. The stomp of boots upon the floor and the jangle of gear signals Oysric's arrival past the threshold of the weyr's entrance into the caverns. He's with a younger mousy-haired lad who seems to be talking a dragonlength a minute. Finally, Oys stops. Making the other man stop. The stablehand lifts one hand and speaks: "You don't need to tell me this, Hiram. Just go find him and apologize." And quickly, Hiram takes a short turn to the right, giving Oysric space to breath better. He leans against a nearby wall, kicking off his boots one by one. With a basket of small bottles at her feet, and a pen and one of those bottles in her hand, Madilla is perched on a stool not too far from where Oysric leans - and certainly close enough to have allowed her some chance to listen to the conversation. As Hiram departs, the girl looks up and across towards the remaining stablehand, commenting blandly, "The great Oysric, giver of all advice?" "The great Madilla, giver of all pharmaceutical information," Oysric intones back to the healer, dry for her bland. "It's not my fault. Hiram seems to think I know everything." Is that amusement in his voice? Or is it cold snarkiness? He shucks one boot off with a dull thud as it hits the floor. "What're you doing around these parts?" he asks Madilla, smiling briefly at the apprentice. Thud goes the other boot. He stretches his feet some, cracking a few of the knuckles in his toes. "Why else would I memorise the great book of herblore?" says Madilla, "If not to give all that information to the world." Still bland. In exaggeratedly careful script, the letters only slightly wobbly, she writes a name on the bottle in her hand, and blows on it to dry the ink. "How'd you manage to give him that idea?" she wants to know, returning his smile as she looks up. "Labelling. Journeywoman Delifa thinks it's better for young people to not be hidden away all day, so she sends me out here to work, where I can be social, too." "Didn't," Oys remarks. "He started working in the stables several months before the last Fall. He needed someone to introduce him to the animals." There's a shrug there, a roll of his shoulders in response, offering indifferently: "No one else was around, so I showed him around." Then, two beats later: "/Someone/ has to deal with those evil goats. And shells if the man is /great/ with them." The idea of it makes the stablehand shudder, but his attention shifts back toward what Madilla is doing, considering those bottles curiously. "And that is the one reason I don't think I could ever be a crafter. I'd hate to have someone tell me what to do. At least in the stables you're responsible for yourself and the animals." Madilla tilts her head to the side, listening intently as the stablehand explains. "All you did was show him around, and he decided that you knew everything? That's dangerous." She cracks a smile as she adds, clearly amused, "As long as he's saving you from the goats, though, that's worth it, right?" Honestly surprised, by her expression, at Oysric's final words, she merely shakes her head, setting the little bottle back down into her basket, and selecting another. "I like it. I'm constantly learning from my superiors, because they know what to do, and I don't. I wouldn't know what to do, and when to do it, if they weren't assigning me tasks." Oysric cracks a smile as well, listening to Madilla. "Yeah, I would have thought he'd know better," Oys offers. "Or I would, because now he can't stop asking me questions and second guessing himself. So he looks to me to change his diaper and tell him things will be fine." Awfully wordy this afternoon, or perhaps that's just his way of showing just how angry he is over the situation with Hiram. "I'm not a nanny," Oysric indicates, showing his discarded boots and gear. "I'm a stablehand." But to what Madilla says next of her own situation with regard to her craft, he nods once. "Not everyone subscribes to such faith in that system. Otherwise everyone would either be a rider or a crafter and nothing in between." A few beats later and the self-proclaimed stablehand admits more quietly, "I'm happy to know you as a crafter. As someone who knows what she's doing." Madilla's gaze follows Oysric's towards his boots and gear, and she nods. "I don't really have any advice for that, but good luck with it? I'm sorry. Some people just can't manage to look after themselves." She seems earnest, utterly genuine, in her sympathy, her lips pursed into a wry smile, as she looks back down at the bottle in her hands, to scribe down the necessary label. This takes most of her attention for a moment, after which she adds, "At home, everyone had to do what my Uncle and his wife told us, even the other adults. It's what I know. You think I know what I'm doing?" She looks up, obviously pleased. "I think you know what you're doing and where you want to go, Madilla," Oysric remarks back to the teenager. "That takes a good head on your shoulder." He motions toward the direction Hiram left, offering, "Him? He could barely decide what boots to wear today much less decide whether or not he needed to apologize to a rider about something he didn't have to apologize about in the first place." The thought of Hiram's personality and issues just makes the twentysomething stablehand outwardly cringe. "Be a man. Or a woman," he tells her. "Be an individual. Work hard for what you want." Madilla hesitates, as Oysric speaks, finally nodding with a slow, deliberate motion, her lips parted into a thoughtful, but pleased, expression. "I suppose so," she allows, at length. "There is something to be said for being able to make a decision about what you want, and then getting it." She doesn't sound completely convinced of this, and does admit, after another moment, "Though perhaps I can't really talk, since I became a healer because I was told to." "What matters most in life is pursuing what it is you know and love doing," Oysric remarks. "I'm a workhorse. I know it. It's what I'm good at. There are days when I think what it must be like for Starcrafters, Madilla, but it's easy to shake off because I know I'm good at working in the stables here. At my home." He points to the ground, his voice uncharacteristically emphatic with emotion, his baritone voice more raspy than usual. "So I work hard so that I can get to sit down at the patio and watch the stars for as long as I can without falling asleep there." Another beat passes. "/That/," he indicates strongly. "is what I believe in. Work hard. Do what you love." Beats later and he's back to picking up a boot, looking at the frayed laces curiously before returning his attention to Madilla, telling her more quietly now, less emphatic: "I believe that even though you became a healer because you were told to become one, you still work toward it in your own way, enjoying it how you can." Madilla sets down her little glass jar, back in the basket with the others, and lets her hand hover there, not reaching for another, but not drawing away, either. Her lips set thoughtfully, and though she's staring off into space rather than at Oysric, it's obvious she's listening - and thinking - intently. "I think maybe I believe that, too," she finally says. "You're contributing the best way you can, through what you're good at, and by working hard, you get the chance to do the things you love. Right? And I do like healing, and I'm good with the herbs, so that means I'm contributing, too. But I still get to do the other things I enjoy. Also. Which makes me happy." She looks up, then, smiling. "You're pretty, um, eloquent. For a stablehand." "You're pretty smart for a teenager," Oysric replies back, dry. "I think I may have to get my laces replaced." He stares at his boots again before showing the laces off to the healer apprentice with a grimace. "One snapped the other day. The other one's just looking ratty." And then to her earlier remarks, the stablehand comments off-hand, "My father always had us pretty well educated." His hands flit to and fro in a gesture that might mean this or that direction. "Harpers here and there. That kind of thing." And then another gesture, this one combining both hands together to make wings out of his pinkys, saying: "It's the benefit of having a rider as a father. He gave us a lot." "Wasn't that long ago that you were a teenager, too," remarks Madilla, though her tone is mild. She rummages through her basket, hand coming up, eventually, empty: labelling finished. "Bet Milani, or one of the other Assistant Headwomen could help you with that. They seem really helpful. Laces like that can be dangerous. You could trip." She lifts the basket into her lap, to give it one more inspection, nodding as she listens, and finally adding, "Fathers should. Give you a lot, I mean. Give you the best opportunities you can have, if they can. I should head back in; these are all done." "Bet Milani would," he muses. "But the less time I spend with her the better. She chats incessantly." Something more behind the words, but he's unwilling to focus that resentment. "I'll take a look at what they have in the store rooms too. I'm sure there're laces just ready to be used there." He slips into his boots again, tying what laces he has now before nodding once more to the healer. "Hope you have a good day, then, Madilla," Oys tells her, smiling genuinely at her. "I think she seems really sweet," declares Madilla, though her lips quirk at mention of Milani's incessant chat, head bobbing just slightly. "Probably are, I guess. I don't usually explore the storerooms myself; too much stuff. I don't really need lots of things." She sweeps the basket into her arms, rising from her stool, and smiling back at the stablehand. "You, too, Oysric. Good luck!" Then she turns, wandering off down the corridors towards the infirmary. |
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