Logs:Going to Die
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| RL Date: 18 January, 2012 |
| Who: Riorde, Taikrin |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Taikrin teaches Riorde how to ski. |
| Where: Snowy Mountainside, High Reaches Area |
| When: Day 23, Month 10, Turn 27 (Interval 10) |
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| Snowy Mountainside, High Reaches Area Not far from High Reaches Weyr, the mountains become sharp, raw, and snowcovered no matter the time of turn. This set of slopes, around a high mountain meadow, is completely unaccessible save from dragonback. That just means the pristine snowfall is all the more enticing.
"You'll be fine," Taikrin manages to choke out, in between gasping for breath and laughing like /she's/ going to die. "It's /easy/, we been doin' it since we were kids. You just point down hill and go. I mean, if you fall, it's just /snow/, it's soft!" Just to prove her point, she side-slips a little ways down the hill, then pulls it in just below Riorde. "C'mon, you know Sforzath'll catch you if you like go flying off a cliff or somethin'." Because there is one of those, on the far side of the glade where the dragons are lounging in the snow. "Just give it a shot!" "Tell that to my dead body." Riorde at least drops the pole. "Least with climbing cliffs you can grip, you've got control - who the hell came up with this? Fardling /insane/ is what it is. If I go off a cliff, Sforzath'll rip you a new one. And then catch me." Protests registered, she gingerly pushes off, skis angling downward at a diagonal in a wide V as she was coached. "Hey, when you wanna get down from the mine in a hurry, it's the only way to go. Safer, too, than trudging down some stupid icy track behind some stupid runner in a stupid cart." Taikrin has definite opinions on this, yes. When Riorde pushes off, Taikrin follows, letting herself slip backwards down the slope to keep pace. Showing off? Maybe! "There, see? Ain't so bad! You got this! Knew you'd be fine. If a bunch of five turn olds can manage it, you can too!" "Runners /are/ stupid," agrees Riorde, who has never ridden one. "No way I want some dumb beast between my thighs." The V of her skis is completely exaggerated, preventing her from gathering any speed. Riorde has a look of fierce concentration nonetheless. "Crazy mountain people." Taikrin included. "How do I turn? Am I supposed to turn?" Does she just point her skis downward and go? "Like this!" Taikrin offers, oh-so-helpfully, as she flips herself around, shoots straight down ten feet, then cuts a quick, sharp turn before skidding to another stop. "Easy. Just point your feet down, see what happens!" Thankfully, they're high up enough that there really aren't many trees to crash into, nor are any obvious rocks poking out from the mountainside. "I'll catch you if you fall, promise." Now Riorde looks impressed. "I...don't think I can do that," she calls down to Taikrin, dubious and cautious. She still hasn't come out of her baby-skiier V. She does at least narrow the V, at first a little and then, gathering courage she she doesn't immediately fall over as she starts to pick up a little speed, a little bit more. Her turn isn't nearly as slick and sharp as Taikrin's, especially when she starts to flail around, apaprently forgetting that she has poles attached to her hands. That might make the catching part difficult. "Woah!" Maybe catching wasn't Taikrin's most brilliant plan, but she's sticking to it. Her skiis dig into the mountain as she holds steady, prepared to grab onto Riorde should she actually make impact. "You got this, you're fine!" In the flailing, Riorde recovers her center of balance enough to pull her nearer pole in to avoid smacking Taikrin in the head with it. Still, she hasn't stopped entirely, sending her colliding into Taikrin. There isn't enough speed for a fall, really, so it'll settle with a surprised grunt, and then, even more surprised, "Hey, I'm still standing up. Lemme do that again." Maybe the way Taikrin wraps her arms around Riorde isn't entirely necessary, but hey-- she's helping! "Good to go. C'mon, point yourself down and let's go." The flat glade isn't all /that/ far below them, after all. "Race you down there!" Maybe it's not fair, but when has she ever cared about that? With a maybe-inappropriate squeeze, Taikrin points herself downhill again and races -- /races/ -- to the bottom. "Point myself down and go?" Riorde repeats, not at all sure about the sound of that, but then Taikrin's gone and she's speaking to the air. "Hey! You /suck./ SUCK." Valiantly, she wiggles out of her V and tries to follow. Taikrin's teaching style, apparently, follows the learn-by-doing method with a ridiculous learning curve. Riorde starts to pick up speed, and then starts shrieking in a most un-Riordely fashion, and finally falls in a tumble of limbs and poles and skis in the air. Nobody ever said Taikrin was a good teacher. She's already at the bottom by the time Riorde takes her tumble, and seems genuinely surprised by it. "Crap-- Riorde!" She attempts to struggle up the hill in her skies, then gives a curse and kicks off the leather ties holding her skis to her boots. Maybe trying to climb the steep slope when she's sinking knee deep in the snow wasn't the best idea, but by Faranth she's going to try! "Hang on, you're okay, I'm comin'!" Down at the bottom of the valley, Sforzath hasn't picked himself up to come to Riorde's aid, so she's still alive at least, uninjured. "I'm okay," Riorde yells, on her belly facing downhill. After the shrieks subsided, muffled by the powder, the giggles started - something Taikrin may never have heard coming from her before. She's giggling wildly as she rolls onto her side, trying to turn herself around by picking her legs up and kicking them up above her head -- a sort of flip. There's snow all down Taikrin's jacket, probably down her boots, and clinging to her hair as she pauses, gasping to catch her breath, a good ten feet below Riorde. When the giggles start, she makes a helpless noise and redoubles her efforts. "You're okay! I'm comin'!" Maybe she's mistaken those unfamiliar giggles for sobs? "Hang on, y'didn't break anything, right?" The last few feet are covered in wild, flailing leaps as she tries to get to Riorde's side. Something about Taikrin's appearance and her leapfrogging through the snow sets Riorde off again. "I'm fine," she gets out, now mostly right way round but struggling to get back up on her skis and not making any progress in the deep powder. "Help me up, we'll go again." The fall, it seems, has inspired her enthusiasm. "Wait, are you...?" Aggrieved, Taikrin sits back on her heels and stares up at Riorde. "Flamin' shells, I thought you were really hurt! That ain't funny." She's all out of sorts as she tries to get to her feet, sinks thigh-deep, then falls back down on her ass. "Help you up, help /me/ up!" An icy wind blows, bringing with it Szadath's sparkling amusement with the whole situation. "I told you I was okay, didn't I?" Riorde's hair has come loose from under her hat in the tumble, knotting up with snow. She grins down at Taikrin, one more fall away from more relentless giggles. Carefully, she stabilizes herself and manages to lever herself up to standing. "I can barely get my/self/ up," she points out, edging down and standing helplessly just above Taikrin. She extends a pole, but that's about it. "You were making these terrible sounds, like you were dying!" It's not exactly an endearing statement, but Taikrin's looking pretty disgruntled at this point. "Couldn't even hear you right what with bein' way down there and all." Another attempt to stand, as she reaches for the pole, and another flop over, though at least she managed to catch herself with one arm before she faceplants. "Scorch it!" Riorde's grin hasn't withered, but she rolls her eyes. "I was /laughing/. If I'm dying I'll sound like this--" and she proceeds with a series of long, wavery groans. Not the sexy kind. She only quits once Taikrin falls over again. She slides down sideways closer still, tucks the pole beneath her arm, and this time reaches down a hand. "Here." "Yeah, whatever," she grumps, flailing in the snow to regain at least a little of her footing. Taikrin reaches up to take Riorde's hand; there's a moment of stillness as she looks up at the other brownrider, and then a wicked smirk curls one side of her mouth upwards. All of a sudden she exclaims, in falsetto, "Ohhh noooo!" and falls forward against Riorde with enough force to probably push the both of them back down against the mountainside. Riorde /knows/ that smile, knows that something's up. Suspicions raised, but she isn't quick enough to withdraw her hand-- so down they go again, Riorde exclaiming, "Hey!" in a falsely aggravated tone. "I just got back up!" But while they're down, Riorde might as well rub snow in Taikrin's face. Snow in the face is no comparison to the snow that Taikrin is shoving down Riorde's pants, laughing all the while. "HA! Now we're both down here, only fair!" And now Riorde is squealing, shrieking, alternately trying to shove Taikrin away or push fistfuls of snow under her collar and down her shirt. "Go away, get /off/, that's fucking cold! Taik-/rin/!" Stretching the name out into a complaint, then: "Sforzath! You're so useless, come flame her or something!" Taikrin roars with laughter, despite the snow trickling down her her jacket and soaking her shirt. "Serves you right!" Finally satisfied with her efforts, she flops off of Riorde to sprawl on her back in the snow. "There. Now you're ready to go down the rest of the mountain." Riorde reaches around to try to shovel snow out of the seat of her pants, but regardless of her efforts, her butt's now icy. She glares at Taikrin to communicate just how disgruntled she is about, you know, /cold./ "I hate you. Sforzath does too, for the record. And Szadath's ugly." Beat. "Let's go again." "That he is," Taikrin agrees, all amiability. "Lazy, too, on account of how he's gonna let me die up here rather than help me get down." Because that thirty or so feet she's got to go downhill are just TOO HARD. She flops over onto her belly and tries to crawl downhill, but sinks up to her shoulders in the powdery snow. "Die!" she exclaims dramatically, as she flails helplessly in the snow. "DIE!" Pink-cheeked, Riorde's laughing again thanks to Taikrin's dramatics. No more suggestions of help from her. "Well," she begins, getting the skis under her and hoisting herself back upright, poles used to brace herself against the gentle grade of the slope, "I guess we'll dig our your remains in the spring. Tragic. And here I was going to suggest how great my bath would be after freezing ourselves out here. I suppose I'll just have to have my bath alone." Riorde lets out a gusty sigh, then pushes off, angling away from Taikrin to criss-cross her way down the bowl where her dragon's waiting. Flippantly, she waves a pole behind her: goodbye! Taikrin pauses, mid-caterwaul, to look back at Riorde. "Bath? There's a bath?" All of a sudden she's the competent mountain-bred child, flipping over onto her butt and slip-sliding down the hillside. "Nobody said nothin' about a bath!" she calls down to Riorde as she half pulls herself down to the glade where she'd abandoned her skis. "Wait! I think I'm gonna live!!!" |
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