Logs:Fishbones
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| RL Date: 19 April, 2011 |
| Who: Khorde, Raum |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Raum tells Khorde stories. |
| Where: Settlement, Western Island |
| When: Day 13, Month 7, Turn 25 (Interval 10) |
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| Another summer morning dawns still chilly on the islands, the damp of the ocean pervasive. It's barely light but already many are getting up and moving about on their day's chores, and Raum is no exception. Time's finally getting him into the swing of things, and in preparation for heading to the shore to start hauling nets and so forth, he stands, stretching, outside the huts that make their homes. Barely light, indeed -- but mud doesn't sleep, or... something. Khorde is out and about, crouched not too far from where Raum rouses. He's mixing his careful mixture of what appears to be ochre-colored mud in a crude bucket, frowning intently into the mixture, adding a little more water from a cup. "C'mon, c'mon," he mutters, obviously agitated with something not going as expected. Oh, and he's filthy, too. But isn't that just expected? Pretty much. Even Raum's relatively new clothes (compared to the exiles' hand-me-downs, anyway) are showing the wear already of their rough lives. The muttering draws the Igenite's attention, though, and he slants a glance over at Khorde for a moment before he ambles closer, eyeing the mud mix that's got the boy all worked up. Dark eyes flash -- as different in their own way as Raum. Khorde is certainly not the average Blood - okay, he's not any Blood, and the distinction chafes like damn leather on naked skin. "Can I help you?" No, he's not hostile, really-- there's less overt anger and more sullen frustration, as if he's a sex-deprived teenaged boy with raging hormones staring into a noncompliant bucket of mud. Oh, wait... At least one of those doesn't fit Raum, considering the age gap and all. "Doubtful," he tells Khorde. "I was just looking. Awful early to be getting that worked up over a bucket of mud." "Yeah, well, /your/ whole day won't be ruined if this doesn't turn out right," Khorde complains, now sticking Raum with The Glower. You know, the one that is certain to cause the redheaded man some kind of mental harm. Okay, it looks more like a sulk. "It's trying to separate," he states with much self-importance, as if to explain. "I can't fix a roof if I don't have--" He gestures impatient to the bucket, as if that should explain everything. And Raum is impervious to sulking, apparently, because he moves to hover over Khorde's shoulder nosily. "That's... roof-fixer." Technical term, that. "Looks like mud. Start over, from the beginning, and don't sink more time into a fuck-up? Easier to do it over than to waste all day fiddling with something gone wrong from the start." How the crap can a person hover nois-- oh. NOSILY. "Cement," Khorde replies in a rather lofty and self-assured manner. "/You/ can gather silt from the bottom of the damn cliff if you think it's so damned easy," the boy starts, getting all kinds of riled up, puffing up and turning around to be all up in Raum's face. Hey. In the right light he could look like a curvy girl... He better watch his little ginger hairs. "Wouldn't know the first thing about what I was looking for," answers the stranger, glancing from mud to Khorde. "Although if you want to show me, we can go. But you're the expert--if it's salvageable..." He shrugs. "No need for all the--" A flick of one hand takes in the posturing Khorde's doing "--at any rate." Khorde glares down his nose up to the taller man -- it's a skill, really. Maybe a talent. Maybe his superpower. He mumbles something under his breath, put-out and grumbly, and turns around abruptly to stir the mud listlessly. True to his word, the mixture has separated, a fine layer at the top bonding to the curved bone he uses as a stirring implement, the rest sloshing without cohesion. "Well, I guess so," the boy abruptly states. "It's not like you're going to do anything more useful, anyhow." He subtly-- okay, not so subtly-- emphasizes /useful/, as if that's something especially important. "Still working on that part," Raum does have to concede, though he's getting better. That whole fish out of water thing--. Anyway, he gestures to the cliffs and moves a few steps in that way before stopping to wait for Khorde. "After you. Don't think we've met yet, exactly--I'm Raum." Because it's not like /everybody/ knows who the new guy is. "I know who you are," Khorde replies, tone dry, dry, dry. "Don't think anyone's that stupid." He rustles in the dwelling he's immediately outside of, returning with carefully-mended sachels of hardy fabric gone nearly threadbare from turns and turns of use, repaired with the finest of reeds. "Do /not/ lose this." His voice is a little-- pained, as if he knows the consequences of such action. "It's polite," says Raum dryly. "I expect you aren't familiar with the concept out here." Still, he reaches out to take the satchels, handling them with appropriate care as he looks them over briefly. "It's also an invitation for you to introduce yourself back, boy." There's a rather obvious look of surprise as Khorde lifts disbelieving dark eyes to Raum. In his entire life, he's never introduced himself to anyone -- that much should be evident from his reaction to the older man. "Khorde," he finally replies. Awkward. "That's what they call me." So awkward. He gambols off a step or two, gawking over one shoulder at the Other as if he just realized how /apart/ the other really is. "Uh, this way." Raum repeats, "Khorde," with a small nod, as though he's fixing that one into his memory. He sets off after the younger boy at an easy pace, "So you do repairs here," he makes small talk in the process. "Seems good work--better than all that fishing, at any rate. Necessary as it is." There is a shudder that ripples from dirty shoulders down dirty back -- as much as it's obvious, given the ratty shirt that Khorde wears over his scrawny self. "Yeah, I guess so. I hate fish." It's stated /so/ matter-of-fact, but the disgust that he feels for such statement goes bone-deep. He picks a path towards the beach, or wherever the crap he said this stuff was at. "I like to eat them," he's hasty to report, just in case Raum gets the wrong idea or anything, "But they're just nasty." States the mud expert. Go figure. "Thought all you people were crazy for them." Raum lifts his brows at that, observes the shudder without comment on it in particular at least. "Got that freak girl going on about the Sea; gather she's not the only one, too. We don't have fish, where I'm from, and I think I like it better that way, too." Involuntary jump of eyes from path to Raum goes here. "Rilka?" Khorde offers as a name, a question, before apparently cursing himself inwardly for mentioning any names. This immediately is overridden by the inescapable urge to scoff at Raum for being a little sun-addled. "No fish? What would you /eat/ if there wasn't fish?" Like, seriously. Raum nods. "That's the one." The scoffing, though, earns a smirk in turn from him, and he lifts his shoulders. "Herdbeasts, wherries, lots of goat. Bread. /Fruit/." The list makes his expression turn wistful, but he shakes it off a beat later. "Can't explain it to you. You'd just have to taste it for yourself. It's nothing like this place, though: my desert. No sea, or seaweed, or fucking fish." "You can't be lying like that." Mercurial moods flare bright, turning sulk to simmering anger. "You can't be sayin' such /fishbones/." Kind of like bullshit, right? Totally works. "No sea? No seaweed? No fish? You're touched!" His lank brings him forward one explosive step, an arm swinging to gesture towards the other man's head -- a grand gesture. "Sun-touched!" "Where you think I came from, then?" Raum is cool in the face of that anger, just watching Khorde though his feet find a better stance. Old guard training: never really goes away. "You think the whole world's like this place? There's people out there, other places. More than just one shit island in a chain of shit islands. Ought to listen to your elders some--they know. The ones that haven't lost it out here on the edges of the world." /Scoff/. "You mean the da... the Bloods?" /Scoff/. Shoulders sulk down and Khorde returns to trodding along his path, his grand gesture ruined by Raum's solidity of step and stance. "They're the ones that are addled, and you." More sulking occurs here, expression sullen in the face of questions that require answers which Khorde cannot begin to comprehend. Raum shrugs. "Won't argue they've made a right mess of things, getting you sent out here." A nod takes in their surroundings as they continue up toward the cliff base in the early morning light. "D'you know, nobody back home--my home--talks about you. Not just because we're a continent away, either. Nobody knows, nobody cares that you're out here suffering because some idiot a century ago screwed everything up and got him, his, and yours too sent out here to eat fish and die." Steps hesitate. For all his pomp and bravado, Khorde is as porous and susceptable as basalt, riddled with weakness and vulnerability -- to this, especially. There is still that selfsame belligerance to his query, but a certain pause to the words as if to describe a young man trying to bolster his worldview by fake self-assurance. "So how many people do you /say/ are out there?" He gestures vaguely to the sea - to beyond the sea, if Raum's fishtales are correct. "Don't know." It's an honest enough answer, Raum's is. "Few thousand, my Hold alone, and there's scores of Holds that size. Don't suppose it matters much anymore, though. Stuck out here, aren't we? Nobody cares you're out here, and somehow I doubt they're looking for me, either. The Bloods are like that. Yours excepted, of course: however you ended up here, you seem to be thriving these days, no?" "Thousand?" Khorde's face screws up as he tries to comprehend /all/ those people. "How do you keep /track/ of them all?" He jolts as if shocked by an invisible cattle prod, "I mean, in your stories." He gives a hand wave to encompass all of the island, unenthusiastically. "Just like we always have." To his knowledge. He's the youngest generation, and thus the dumbest, though of course he would never /say/ that. Another member of that generation comes running in from the river area, with two even younger litle rugrats chasing after her. All three of them laughing like idiots until they reach the settlement. "Alright, alright. You've defeated me! I just can't run any further." Emme declares pressing the back of her hand to her forehead dramatically before she shoos the younger children off to find their parents. "You go on now; tell everyone about your victory." A bit winded, and completely ignorant of the conversation, she smiles at both Raum and Khorde. "Gentlemen. Hope we didn't cause too much of a ruckus there." That question stumps Raum for a moment. "Don't suppose there's much need to, really," he answers at length. "People come and go all over Pern, all the time. The Lord dos a census, every once in a while, but I never handled much of that. I was just his guard captain. It was a good job, though--you might've liked it, yourself. Get to knock people around a fair bit, sometimes." He smirks again at that, glancing sideways at Khorde, but the kids running through steal his attention shortly. He steps back from them, frowning at both them and Emmeline. "No, it's--fine," is all he says to her, curt. Khorde offers a sly grin askance to Raum, the tenuous offer of that weird masculine bond manifesting-- nope. There're kids, and Emme, and he's turning all kinds of sullen-quiet, ducking his head in Emmeline's direction. He lifts his reed-satchel as if demonstrating. "I'm takin' the Outsider to fetch silt from the cliffs." For mud. Repair mud. Cement! There's the word. Now, he will shut up and look awkward. It's a skillset. Emmeline can't help but smile at Khorde's awkwardness, though she just looks at Raum blankly with his curt response. "Hope you find an abundance of it, then." she replies to both, though her brow furrows a bit at the direction the conversation had been taking just as she arrived. "There's something to be enjoyed about having to... knock people around a fair bit?" That's obviously not *her* thing, but her shoulders lift in a shrug. "I don't think you'll find much of that here." The look Raum sends Khorde is pretty much clear: women, they just don't understand. "Keeps boys' hands busy," he tells Emmeline, with a lift of his own shoulders in turn. "That age, it's either fighting or fucking, and it seems like one of those is pretty locked down around here." A ten year old girl that passes by overhears Raum and parrots (probably something her parents told her), "Gotta lock down fuckin' or our kids might grow up with three legs." Her slightly older friend that walks with her giggles, "Shara, boys /have/ three legs." Khorde turns a brilliant shade of crustacean red and shuts the fuck up. Carry on, guys. Carry on. Can you /say/ muy torpe? Emmeline looks Raum up and down with an expressiomn kin to disgust. "Or maybe it's just you." she quips, gaping as a child runs by and... and says what they say. "I hope the elders decide to toss you right back into the ocean." And for Khorde not saying anything, anything at all, she sniffs a bit indignantly before just spinning on her heel and stalking off. MEN. Ugh! Raum, to those giggling girls, "Only the best among us." But with Emmeline stalking off, he only watches after her a moment, shares another look with poor embarrassed Khorde, and then sets off again toward the cliffs. "C'mon, boy, let's get this mud done before the day's too far gone." "Works for me." That tenuous little break of sulk rebounds swiftly upon Emmeline's stalking off, and joined in the common bond of silt-hunting, Raum may find himself answering a load of questions regarding The Big World Out There from a certain self-proclaimed cynic -- but he will not, under any circumstance, be around Khorde's naked third leg, mmkay? Not. Happening. |
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