Logs:Ex-Communication
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| RL Date: 4 June, 2013 |
| Who: Suireh, C'wlin |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Suireh comes to read C'wlin Harper Hall's official riot act |
| Where: Harper Classroom, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 20, Month 12, Turn 31 (Interval 10) |
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| The harper classrooms are empty this time of day as the scents of heartwarming herdbeast stew with fresh baked crusty bread wafts throughout the inner caverns. There are no teachers, no students, no children or anyone other than Suireh's lithe form bent over a lap harp. A light hand strums, allowing those notes to linger in the air with the slightest discordance only a trained ear might hear, and she moves to retune the instrument, testing every so often until it pleases her. Then, the dark haired girl strums in an idle melody; passably pleasant but no great prodigy. Outside, the snow falls and a runner with a message for C'wlin hopes to catch the once harper weyrling before he makes it to lunch. Caught, indeed, before he can be claimed by lunch, C'wlin's steps are neither hurried nor slow when he finally makes his way to the harper classrooms. Rather than a direct beeline towards the harper girl, the harper-weyrling takes a moment to bask in the atmosphere of the place. Soaking in the pleasant melody that hovers in the air, tickling the audible senses. Finally, he pulls his fingers away from touching the finished surface of a practice lute -- perhaps missing the one he sold for his weyrling gifts -- and turns to face Suireh. Features hold curiosity, though tone remains neutral as uncertainty surfaces. "Suireh." "Journeyman," is all she answers back back, pulling rank as mild reproof colors her otherwise neutral voice. Her playing doesn't stop until the piece ends. It's no familiar song with its melancholy notes and minor chords. At least not yet. "Something I've been working on for Master Berme," she explains, though he didn't ask. And when Suireh looks up, her slate eyes linger in a flat study of the bronzeriding weyrling and the lute he conspicuously does not touch. "It needs words though." "Journeyman Suireh," C'wlin corrects, lips pressing together at his own faux pas at forgetting her rank. Hands are tucked tucked away into his pockets while considering the harper for a moment. "It's good," he comments, tone careful as he treads upon thin ice. "The right word would add a nice finish to it." Silence fills as soon as words are said, his tone bordering on too-quiet, uncertain where he stands. Is he feeling the awkward silences? A touch, given how little shows. "You wanted to see me." It's statement more than question, though resignation hasn't (yet) creeped in. "Wanted?" A flash of the Suireh that once was flickers in a sardonic curl to the very corners of her lips and furrows her brow. But what must have been practice, practice, practice, smooths her expression with an alacrity that makes it almost seem that look hadn't existed just a split second earlier. "No. Put in the position where I was asked to come see you? Yes." Semantics. The lap harp is set aside, her hands reaching for the far more familiar gitar as she sets it across her knees and plays a far more adept and complicated song on it. "I can admit, last turn, I was jealous of you. Jealous of all of you." Those gray eyes drift from her gitar to him and then to the room they sit in, but presumably where the room is located -- at the Weyr. "This is my home. Not yours. Except now... I guess it's reversed." "Ahh." C'wlin is a sharp cookie, and the look he gives her is no less sharp, calculating, for the specifics to semantics. Rather than sprawl in a seat, he chooses to stand, taking up a casual stance nearer to the Journeyman -- a knot he so clearly wanted, still wants given the covetous look to his glance -- while she speaks. "I suppose so," he concedes regarding the topic of home, "Although it doesn't feel like home." He waits a beat, then: "It feels like a home, I suppose." Thoughtful words come with furrowed brows. "I always wanted, expected, to be a harper. Journeyman. Senior Journeyman. Master. When I was sent here, I never expected to Impress." Resting the back of his hips against the side of a sturdy chair or table -- he doesn't look to see which -- he adds, "And yet, here I am with that desire not quite as strong as it was before." Athimeroth's influence, no doubt. Suireh's brows twitch as C'wlin speaks of how he had planned out his life; what path he'd taken towards the eventuality of Master. "And now," a chaotic blend of chords turn the gitar into an angry little instrument. "You've turned both of my homes into places worth mocking, endangering Hold, Hall, and Weyr relationships and I'd be surprised if High Reaches' new Lord doesn't decide that your error in judgment requires some sort of repercussion for the innocent people at High Reaches Weyr." She says this as if offering someone the time, the weather, a generic how do you do. Her face is flat and unforgiving from the cool slant of her gray eyes to the knitted lines scoring her forehead, even if her voice is disassociatively melodic and pleasant. "Why should I forgive you? Why would you do something so idiotic? Aren't you harper trained? Fuckwit." And there, finally, rises the anger of a teenage girl taking this entire situation personally, culminating in an expletive insult that's hurled out without thought. C'wlin patiently waits until the girl's at the end, brows rising as the end degrades into what comes close to insult-slinging tirade. "I didn't ask you to forgive me," levelly stated -- just as well at delivery as Suireh, herself -- while maintaining a directness of attention on the Journeyman. "Why would I? Because it didn't make sense, and no one listens to weyrlings, Journeyman. Weyrlings are rankless in ways that even apprentices aren't. We're supposed to be focusing on our training, but we're embroiled in the politics of the weyr. That was the reason why I was sent here. To spy," so baldly stated, it shows the boy's own lapse in holding onto his temper, "on what's happening." He wrangles himself back to the mid-point between anger and elation: neutrality. "To spy," is mimicked and twisted into mocking. "How did that work out for you?" Having trouble corralling in her emotions, Suireh takes a few physical steps back and a few very audible breaths in and out. "No one asked you to. To spy on the Hold. You stopped being a harper the second you accepted the offer to Stand. Holding allegiances to two masters and in your case three, is an inevitable exercise in failure. The only allegiance you'll never break is the one to your dragon. And he's controlled by the queens in the end." She might say more, there's something on the cusp of her tongue ready to trip but is somehow stayed as another succession of shallow breaths finds some modicum of composure. "I'm to inform you the Hall disassociates itself from your actions entirely. That you are banned from any Harper sanctioned event, gather, or the Hall itself until the Masters decide otherwise." There's a beat, those pale stormy eyes lingering on C'wlin's face for just a moment longer than necessary. "And that the Master requires a full report of your findings before I place his seal on your excommunication." To say that being cut loose cuts deeply is as much of an understatement as saying the oceans are mere moonlit ponds. C'wlin visibly flinches, blanching beneath the weight of her words, but herein lies the problem. With Athimeroth's penchant for anarchy, and C'wlin's deep stubborn streak, he questions without thought: "And if I'm to be cut loose, why would I ever submit a report? If my first and most binding allegiance is to my dragon, then why, in the face of losing everything would I submit any kind of information? What further punishment exists, then?" Still young enough to be mulish, old enough to see the chasm opened by his actions, and stubborn enough to question. At least, it is not outright refusal. "You are foolish," is the road Suireh decides to take. It's filled with unmitigated pity and she finally hangs that gitar where it belongs, one last thumb caressing the strings and the polished wood of its body. "Some day," the girl's crystal voice, so sweet in its higher ascents when singing, is brittle now with ambitious certainty, "I will be the Master with birds about Pern. Don't burn this last bridge with our Master that will reflect on you when next they all meet." "Aye, I am foolish," C'wlin comments, darkly. Struggling to hold onto his own calm, he considers Suireh. "I would give my entire report without question, and I would accept this punishment without question, if there wasn't the barring from evens within my own weyr, based merely on it being a harper event." Does he haggle? Of course he does, he's a harper. Even if haggling isn't his best trait. His one 'gift' being that too-pure tenor he hates so much. "As much as you hate me and what I've done, do you, Journeyman, think this is the best deal to be made?" Suddenly, such a serious question is put to Suireh, asked to Suireh-the-girl not Suireh-the-Harper-Ambassador. Does she smile? It's hard to tell now with the waging struggle with personal attachment to the situation and what the harperly thing to do would be. "If I could without killing you, I'd cut your throat open and make sure you never sing again and let you be for the rest of your life." Suireh spares a diffident shrug - it is, however, not up to her. But his question? The dark haired daughter of once Weyrleaders sweeps her gaze down and then back up to meet C'wlin's gaze levelly. "I pity you." Which in some circles could be worse than hate. "But you're missing the importance of what we've asked of you. I'll let you think on it for a few days. In some ways, your actions have made it easier." Though in what way, she doesn't elaborate. "Master Vesik would have me visit with Lord and Lady Reaches to smooth over whatever misrepresentation of our craft you and your friend may have conveyed. I'll return to the Weyr before I depart with your thoughts on what this all means. My forgiveness matters only because I'm charged with which letter of three to leave in your possession. All of them are ex-communication." The last means to stamp out any hope they're that much different in content. "Do so. I would cherish you for life for ridding me of what I loathe," C'wlin hisses, icy blue eyes narrowing, though the pride straightens his back. Causes shoulders to square. "You can pity me all you want, Harper," distancing himself from his beloved craft already, the bronzerider continues, "And however far I've fallen in my weyr, you still speak to a bronzerider of High Reaches." Diplomacy and hauteur are the mantle in which the Fallen hides behind, as expression reveals very little. "I shall have something for you to report to the Masters by the time that you return, Journeyman." Formality and perfect enunciation without the hint of Crom sullying his words that would drip with polite respect if words could. "If that is all, Journeyman Suireh, I shall see myself out." He straddles the edge of compliance, but it is at least a cessation of questioning the injunction. "A weyrling of High Reaches Weyr." Of the Weyr, Suireh understands the hierarchies far too well and places undue emphasis on the rank or lack thereof C'wlin currently carries. "If my mother were still alive, you would never graduate." Of this, the harper is certain, and is apparently unable to resist voicing a potential future for the bronzerider. "It's not all, but the rest can wait until I return from the Hold. And after I seek audience with-," she skips a beat, her lips pressed thin, "Your Weyrwoman. See you in a week, weyrling." Brittle, cold, hard; all adjectives to describe the boy who's very /world/ -- okay, a touch emo here, it's his own fault! -- crumbles around him. "Very well," C'wlin's tone is soft, sharp, but holds to that edge of propriety that's protection against further marks against his behavior. "Good day to you, Journeyman Suireh." Without waiting further, he stalks out, cheeks pink with a blush of anger that could leave anyone he runs into cause to wonder just what he had been doing in the classroom. |
Comments
Comments on "Logs:Ex-Communication"Azaylia (Dragonshy (talk)) left a comment on Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:08:30 GMT.
Definitely her mother's daughter. e.e; I really like how they're 'doomed' to live the lives that each dreamed of having. Kind of poetic, really.
I like how C'wlin's age, pride, and Athimeroth's influence really came through when being confronted.
Aishani (Brieli (talk)) left a comment on Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:33:40 GMT.
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