Logs:Experience and Advice
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| RL Date: 8 May, 2015 |
| Who: C'stian, Dee |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: After deciding to Stand, Dee has doubts. C'stian has relevant life experience. It's still complicated. |
| Where: Bowl Falls, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 1, Month 10, Turn 37 (Interval 10) |
| Weather: Clouds make the skies leaden and gray, but no rain falls. A cool breeze often blows. |
| Mentions: Calia/Mentions, E'lai/Mentions, Ebeny/Mentions, N'muir/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Played 05/08 and finished 05/09. |
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>---< Bowl Falls, Fort Weyr(#1842RJs$) >-------------------------------------<
Rising up from the Bowl floor, roughly in the middle of the open space
between the broken arms of its wall, are three promontories of stone. The
shortest of these is only a few feet off the ground and slouches to the
far left of the other two, both about the height of a full-sized adult.
The central pillar is uneven and boasts the oddity of a half-set of
shelves carved at roughly the right height for reaching up from the
ground. The rightmost pillar is narrower, though it thickens toward the
top and is notched and grooved along its length from thousands of turns of
pressure from the earthslide that used to lie on top of it.
A stone-lined channel guides water from the lake between the pillars where
it cascades off the end of the Bowl and down the mountainside away from
the Weyr in a series of stepped falls and pools. Beyond the rightmost
pillar, a set of stairs rises up from a rough arm of stone that used to be
a part of the Bowl wall and continues on into the wall itself through a
carved opening. The sun has not yet set over the bowl when Dee can be found sitting cross-legged at the edge of the Bowl Falls. Her pose is simple, but carries a restless tension in it. She shifts often, adjusting her frame, her skirt, and her sweater in little ways, as if this might help her become more comfortable there. Truly, there's little chance of that with her expression so troubled. What troubles her is obvious enough as she's holding the white knot of a candidate between her fingers, touching the cord, tugging it this way and that as if between the picturesque place and the knot itself, she might find some answers to what worries her. The tall young candidate is hardly the only one to seek the Falls when she has thinking to do; Hematite's wingsecond can often be found there as well. This evening, however, C'stian is clearly only out to enjoy the view. His pace along the pathway is downright leisurely, without any hint of the tension that sets into his shoulders when he's agitated, or the speed his long strides can give him. So he comes to a stop a short distance away from Dee, watching her in silence for the space of several breaths before speaking. "Even if you can untie it, no answers fall out of the center. Trust me, I tried." So wrapped up the brunette was in her own thoughts that she actually, visibly startles at C'stian's voice, but she recovers swiftly enough to give him a rueful sort of smile and query of, "Yeah? I was going to try that next." There's a slight sigh as she lets the thing fall into her lap, hazel gaze sliding to the water and then back to the rider. Dee probably should have more manners than to ask, without even asking if she can ask, "Did you have a good reason to Stand, do you think? When you did?" For whatever reason, Dee's question earns a slightly rueful look from the bronzerider. "A good reason?" he repeats, and then shakes his head. "Probably not, no. Not really. But I suppose I wasn't entirely sure why I was standing. To prove something to myself, maybe. Or to prove something to everyone else." He moves up beside the young Candidate, glancing down at her. "What's your reason for Standing?" Dee's eyes are attentive as the bronzerider speaks; she's really listening. It's not just the surface way that too many teenagers have a habit of slipping into, to take what knowledge they think they need and discard the rest; Dee is filing it all away. His question prompts an uncertain look and then her gaze retreats to the water. "Duty," she says a moment later, in the way of one who has told themselves the reason over and over again and yet don't still wholly believe. It's more quietly that she offers, "I don't want to be responsible if I should have been there and wasn't. For what would happen to the dragonet. Is that stupid?" She looks up to the wingsecond as if he might have the answer. "It's a better reason than some," C'stian replies, after considering Dee's question for a moment. "I was an Apprentice Healer, just about to become a Journeyman. My father was a rider, one I'd never known, and I stood... well, I suppose I stood almost to prove to myself that I wasn't him. That I was a Healer through and through, and the weyr had no claim on me. At least, that's what I told myself." He turns his gaze up towards the brilliantly-painted sunset above, to the empty skies far overhead. "But maybe there always was more of my father to me than I wanted to admit. Maybe there was always a part of me that wanted the freedom of the skies. Wanted to fly." This time, the girl's eyes stay on the water, but there's an attentive calm to her pose that is physical indication of her attention to C'stian's story. When he finishes, Dee looks up at him again, "Did you love it? Being a healer?" This isn't dismissal of his story, but rather a request for more information before a response is made. "Did you ever think you would love flying the way you loved healing?" is added as an anticipatory follow-on. "I did love it," C'stian replies, without hesitation. "I still do, actually; I've been cross-training as a dragonhealer even here. But yes... I think I do love flying as much, for different reasons." He looks down at Dee again, arms folded in front of him now as he considers his next words. "I love Healing for others -- the difference I can make to them, the way I can help. I love flying for me, for the way it feels when Liesanth and I are up there in the sky together." She watches the bronzerider's face as he answers, something jarring her about that lack of hesitation and how it comes together with the rest. The first Dee thinks to say is, "That's why I chose farmcrafting," it's quiet and delivered a little awkwardly, and so she adds, "the way it lets me help." Her fingers move to slide across the loop of white again, drawing her eyes to it. "I'm not sure farmcrafting translates the way healing does," she admits with trepidation. "Are there dragon farmers?" She asks it, with humor looking up to the older man again. "Is it different to fly with your own lifemate than as a non-rider on the back of another?" She wonders aloud. "Yes, it is." Again, C'stian's answer is without hesitation. "When you're a passenger you're just being carried, but when it's your lifemate? You feel their joy in flight, their strength as they push higher... it's like you are flying, too." The question about dragon farmers is left unanswered, as the bronzerider seems to assume it was a bit of a joke. (Then again, with the food shortages that Fort has undergone, maybe they should start making dragon farmers a thing.) Dee shifts uneasily on the ground, her arms moving to wrap around her torso in a loose hug of herself. She's still listening though it seems much like she's soaking in everything C'stian is willing to tell her. "Did you have any regret? After you Impressed, I mean. Unhappiness or ... anything like that?" "This should be where I tell you that the moment I Impressed, all doubts were gone and I never looked back, right?" C'stian looks out over the waters, then pinches the bridge of his nose. Slowly, he exhales. "I'd be lying, though. I'd come to Fort expecting that I wouldn't Impress; I told myself I'd show up, prove the Weyr had no hold on me, and go back. Afterwards, I couldn't think of myself as a rider. I kept thinking of myself as a Healer who had a dragon in his head. I never resented Liesanth, but sometimes -- at the beginning -- I told myself I regretted coming. But you know, looking back now... I think that was a lie too. Like I said, maybe there was always more of my father to me than I would've liked to admit." Dee doesn't interrupt between the first and the rest, but when she does speak, she starts with, "For what it's worth, I'd rather you tell me the truth. Always. Hard truths are still better than easy lies." Once that much is articulated, she has to take a moment of her own to process. "I'm not sure it's a bad thing to follow in the footsteps of one's rider parent, or parents. I just don't like feeling like that's all I could do, like I never had a choice in the matter. Like it was only a matter of time before I Stood and Impressed some green or blue and then lived out my days in the pattern of duty and drills and sweeps." She sighs, shifting now out of her pose to stand, though it doesn't look like she's going anywhere, just not comfortable in pretended repose anymore. "What changed for you? When were you able to think of yourself as a rider?" "Well, I had never known my rider parent; I had only known my Healer mother. So being a Healer... was that really any different?" The question's clearly rhetorical; C'stian doesn't wait for an answer, turning instead to look at Dee as he considers the answer to her actual question. "I don't really know when I started thinking of myself as a rider, honestly; sometime before I graduated from weyrlinghood, at least." Dee's brows lift expressively to give C'stian the point that it's fair to wonder at that rhetorical question. "Perhaps we are all pre-destined to have something of our parents in us, no matter how much we might want to escape the possibility." The girl's tone is rueful, something oddly dark about the humor of it, but there. She still has to look up at C'stian to meet his eyes, even with her tall-for-her-age height, so she does, looking more fully into his face now that she's at a relatively closer vantage. "Do you think there's only one dragon for any person? Do you think Liesanth would've chosen someone else if you hadn't been there?" isn't exactly related to anything she's asked so far, but there's a hint in the way she asks that suggests someone has recently made her question the idea. "That's not a question I'd ask," C'stian warns, shaking his head. "I understand why you would; I used to wonder if I'd 'stolen' Liesanth from someone else who he'd been 'meant' for, especially given the way we Impressed. But the truth is, I can't know. And wondering about it would only drive me crazy, or... I don't know, make Liesanth feel less wanted." That response, of all the things C'stian has said thus far, seems to intrigue Dee the most (which is saying a lot because she hasn't lacked for continued interest so far). Her look is one of piqued curiosity as she cants her head to one side to ask. "If you'd stolen him? How would one... I mean, what happened? If I can ask." Then quickly, almost overriding and uncertain suddenly, "Can I ask? Is that okay?" Then, as suddenly, "I'm sorry, I'm so-- I've been rude. I'm Dee. Dahlia." A shake of her head immediately has her saying, "Dee," again. This whole day seems to have turned her around and sent her blindly stumbling to pin the tail on the figurative dragon. "C'stian, Hematite wingsecond," comes the answer. After a moment, he adds, "And I suppose you might as well; it's hardly a secret. Liesanth and one of his clutchsisters -- Ziluyth -- got tangled up as they hatched; she tore his back up, and he gouged her eye out." C'stian's gaze is somewhat distant as he remembers this, his expression perhaps a little pained. "He made it almost over to the line of candidates before he collapsed. And maybe there was just too much of the Healer to me, because I think I started to take a step forward. And he looked up at me... and then I felt all his pain." It's likely that Dee can't help the way her hands fly up to cover the shocked jaw-drop, her hazel eyes enormous in the moment the bronzerider has explained. For a moment, the girl clearly doesn't know what to say. In that shock there is sympathy, too. The sympathy begins to win out as the shock recedes. "I've seen-- I mean, things have happened at the hatchings at Southern, from time to time, but I've never known anyone who... I'm sorry," the last is earnest, looking up at C'stian with her wide guileless eyes. The bronzerider's gaze snaps back to the here-and-now, and he shakes his head. "Why? It was Turns ago; Liesanth's healed, save for the scarring, and our bond makes me a rider -- a bronzerider, a wingsecond of the Weyrleader's own wing -- and gives me the freedom to go anywhere in Pern that I choose," he points out. "I don't have any regrets now." There's something there-- something about that that makes Dee's brows furrow in confusion, but whatever it is she doesn't speak of it in this moment. The look passes as she nods, letting her eyes find the ground between them. "Do you think your life is better now than it would have been if you'd not Impressed and continued on as a healer?" The question comes quietly, gently. "Shards, how am I supposed to answer that?" C'stian's bemusement at the questions seems to be starting to edge towards mild exasperation. "I like to think I was a good Healer, but where I would've been posted would hardly have been my choice. I might have been posted to some tiny Hold in the middle of nowhere, hardly anything to do or see. Or I might've been somewhere and distinguished myself, become a Masterhealer. Or maybe I would've just remained at the Hall, taught others." He shakes his head. "But no, I think probably in the end, things turned out better for me as a rider than they would've as a Healer. Though I probably should never tell my old friends at the Hall that." Dee's lip gets a bite, though not a chew this time, in answer to the subtle shifting of feeling. She moves her hands carefully to resecure the knot in its proper place on her shoulder as he speaks. When he's finished she has a simple, "Of course, you're right. How could you know," that part; the part that has made her cheeks color and her wear the expression of one who feels foolish. "Thank you for indulging my questions, Wingsecond," she offers formally, in a way that suggest she's about to take her leave. Apparently, however, C'stian's going to take some degree of pity on her before she goes. "Curiosity isn't a bad thing, Candidate," he offers, not unkindly. "If you never ask questions, you never learn, and if you never learn then... well, I'm sure you've met a few people like that. I know I sharding well have." This is said with, perhaps, a small amount of bite to the tone. "But no one can easily answer what might have been. So continually asking that one -- of yourself, or anyone else -- is a short path to apoplexy or madness. At best, you'll be living in the past, always thinking on what you could've done differently instead of what you should do next." The candidate's look is uneasy as she takes that all in; if nothing else, it can be said that Dee is a good listener. "I'll..." She starts, seeming unsure of how she's supposed to respond, "...take that under advisement," she tries, clearing her throat and looking to the ground. "Do they-- things are often casual, with candidates at home," or the ones she's known, "Should I asked to be dismissed?" Is that protocol? She doesn't seem to know, but seems to want to know at any rate. A chuckle. "Depends on who you're with. Might be polite with Ebeny, at least, or a few others." C'stian waves, a clear dismissal. "Go ahead, go. Enjoy the rest of the evening, Dee. I hope my answers helped a little bit, at least." "I'm not sure they-" is out of Dee's mouth before she thinks about what she's saying. "Maybe once I have time to think about them more," she amends apologetically. "It's just all..." Her hands come up to grasp at air as if the word she wants can be plucked out of the space there, "complicated," she settles on, but doesn't seem happy about it. "I appreciate the answers all the same, sir." She adds, even if they might have made things more complicated, not less. She takes a step back. It's an awkward step, followed by another, and then she's whirling to make a proper retreat. "'Sir,'" C'stian repeats under his breath, shaking his head. The bronzerider looks as though he's really not quite certain what to make of that, whether to be flattered or slightly horrified. After all, it doesn't seem that long ago to him that he was the one calling people 'sir' as a candidate, a weyrling, or a young rider. He watches Dee go, and then turns back towards the waters. After a moment, he bends down to pick up a water-worn stone from the edge, turning it this way and that, before tossing it back. Then he, too, makes his way back towards the Weyr proper. |
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