Logs:Gratitude, Deflection and a bit of a Smell
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| RL Date: 9 April, 2015 |
| Who: Laine, Ketsl, Keysi |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: With the infirmary cleaning equipment outdoors and other crafters working under the warm sun, Keysi has a word with Laine about her vandalism and her smell. Laine leaves slightly damp and Ketsl helps clean up what lingers. |
| Where: East Bowl, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 26, Month 6, Turn 37 (Interval 10) |
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>---< Eastern Bowl, High Reaches Weyr >--------------------------------------<
Ringed by rough granite walls to all sides but one, this end of the huge
bowl narrows from the even broader plain to the west, continuing the ever
so slight downward slope toward the blue and green of the Weyr's lake and
surrounding foliage. More open to sun and wind than the western bowl, but
less frequented when there aren't weyrlings in residence, the bowl's
grassy tufts keep the topsoil in place and thicken into a bloodstained
meadow within the feeding pens that adjoin the lake.
At the base of the surrounding cliffs lie entrances to several caverns,
including the dragon infirmary and the weyrling barracks: the former to
the northwest near where the spires begin, the latter opposite to the
southwest. Both archways are large and dark enough for any dragon to pass
through, but it's the infirmary's that is haunted by faint smells of
redwort and numbweed, as though over generations they have seeped into the
very stone. To the southeast, between the weyrling area and the lake,
there are a handful of structures built into the floor of the bowl,
standing out amidst otherwise an empty space.
Warm sunshine and cloudless skies make for a beautiful day and pleasantly
warm evening. A breeze tempers the heat with no humidity lingering in the
air.
-----------------------------< Active Players >-----------------------------
Ketsl M 28 5.7 lean, brown hair, grey eyes 3s
Keysi F 17 5'7" athletic, brown hair, grey eyes 0s
Laine F 17 5'4" trim, dark hair, grey eyes 13s Never before had Keysi been one to take breaks. But now, now they're enforced. They couldn't get her to stop working, so they had to do something. The healer steps outside from the large opening that leads into the dragon infirmary, her pale face directed upwards into the sunlight. The infirmary itself, finally slowed from the onslaught of injured, seems to be using the good weather to the healers' advantage. There's stretchers and tables and other equipment strewn out, drying in the sun after being thoroughly washed to remove the stench of blood and char. Keys herself seems.. well.. neutral, but somewhat serene, from a distance. It's not only the infirmary making the most of the weather--further down the bowl, the craft area and courtyard surrounding it is active, figures flitting in and out from the complex. While the wood- and smithcrafters still busily labouring at shoring up that collapsed tunnel, work as usual carries on for the tanners, the vinters, the weavers. The tanners (and that usual, pungent stench that accompanies their work) are making full use of the sun: drying racks, wooden tubs, and even a makeshift table or two have all been dragged out into the bowl. And Laine, too, dragged out into the sun, and although she's churning at something in a bucket, when the opportunity that is Keysi presents itself to break away from her work, the candidate takes it. She saunters the distance between them, raising one hand to hail the healer. Ketsl should be one of those busily labouring woodcrafters but there are only so many caps they caps and crosspieces they can turn out while waiting for the smiths to make their measurements. Instead, Ketsl has been relegated to the more delicate works; small pieces that require dexterous hands and good lighting -- lighting that the sunny bowl is perfect for. He had been heading for the waters, intent on watching any dragons while he worked but Keysi catches his eye and instead he diverts, long legs carrying him and his basketful of tools and wood towards her, grinning. Keysi stands still for a long time, absorbed into her thoughts or just the feeling of the summer's sun. Quite a distance would be crossed by her fellow candidate until her hail would be noticed, but eventually the steely grey eyes of the healer fall on her. A hand raises to return the greeting, "'ey, Laine." Spoken as soon as the other is close enough, "Working hard?" A pause as she glances beyond her towards the tanner's area, and then back again, "Or avoiding it?" It's said as if a reprimand, but despite the severe expression, there's a half shrug of her better shoulder supporting it to be more (or less) dry humor. There's someone else approaching in the general direction first seen when she'd first glanced towards the complex, and the familiar woodcrafter's face earns a small nod of welcoming, in theory, but not much else quite yet. "Hardly working," the tanner-turned-candidate replies with a self-deprecating shrug and wan, crooked smile. Laine brings with her that foul, nose-wrinkling stench, clinging to her clothes and skin, and her hands are stained ochre red--but at least it's better than the smell of ash and smoke. "One to talk." She jerks her chin at the healer in the sun, although her own rebuke is notably more lenient. She casts around for a dry (well, drier) cot and sprawls out on it, fingers dangling over the edges so she can pull at the new sprouts of grass. So reclined, she misses Ketsl's approach entirely, her grey eyes half-lidding and a lazy, happy sigh escaping her. "Sun." "It is rather prominent." Ketsl nods back to the healer, the grin on his face growing at the simple acknowledgement. The wide basket is switched from being cradled in front of him to braced against his hip. Already a laid-back fellow, the sun seems to have left his grins and his body as laconic as a cat. "Its good to see you again, Keysi, under much nicer conditions. And good, of course, to meet you." He directs at the tanner lazing on the cot. "I want to be working." Keysi counters, watching Laine take over a recently scrubbed cot and consequently getting her stink all sorts of all over it. The healer folds her arms, slowly, still scoldingly, "We'll never get the smell out of that now. You tanners." She trails off, letting an arm fall to fish in her jacket pocket and pull something round, something squishy, something familiar from it. "You should get back to work. The whole Weyr needs these." The consideration of saying 'think fast' is utterly left out as a dried-bladder stress ball is tossed at the other, now reclined, candidate. Not hard. Unfortunately (fortunately?) she can't yet throw hard. As Ketsl joins their immediate vicinity, "G'day Ketsl," her slightly more formal greeting given to the young, but of course older, man, "You've been well?" "People like this smell. New-leather smell." Who are these people? No one likes this smell. Laine's defense is hardly compelling as she tugs up a handful of grass and tosses it lightly, playfully, in Keysi's general direction. She's still prone when Ketsl's voice catches her idle attention, and that red-stained hand lifts and waves, an expansive, circular gesture. "Hi, voice. I'm Laine." Those grey eyes close all the way, her expression one of blissful indulgence, when-- "Oomph." --that bladder ball strikes, bounces, and rolls harmlessly onto the ground. She pushes herself up onto propped elbows, suddenly bright. "You liked them? Want more? Can make more." Keysi kneels down, again slower than average, to retrieve the ball as it rebounds off the tanner to tumble through the clumpy grass towards her boots. As if an answer to the question, she pulls a second one out of her other pocket to demonstrate that she collected two, before they both vanish back into the depths of her pockets; one on each side. "With what you did to my cot, I think you've done more than enough." As if it was her. Only her. The naturally stern voice of the girl states, though she continues to watch Laine out of the corner of her eye. There is a moment that she lets that statement linger long enough to sink in until she adds, "I did not get the opportunity to offer you gratitude. So," a hesitation as she looks off into the distance towards the lake, "thanks. For both." Leaning her weight back on her elbows, streeeetching her legs out, Laine watches Keysi fetch back that stress ball with a self-satisfied sort of smile tugging at her mouth. "What, this cot? Get stink all over it?" There's a bright, brief chuckle. She pats the stretcher with one hand, as though they were old friends. But for Keysi's next words, Laine gazes intently at her boots, rolling her ankles slowly, and dismisses Keysi's stern gratitude, her side-eyed look, with a short shake of her head. "Wasn't me. Was everyone. Just... seemed the right thing to do. Only," then that laughing look is back, and she tips her chin back to bask in the sun, "The best thing? That was my thing." Whatever the best thing was, Laine will take credit for it, thanks. Keysi looks back at Laine as she pats the stretcher, offering little more than a defeated shake of her head and shallow exhale. Although Keys is unable to linger on the whole thankfulness thing, she is perhaps entertained by the follow-up, "I am not sure that's how credit works." Slow steps take her out of sight, around behind Laine's back unless she adjusts to follow. Footsteps don't go all that far, though do change sound as they enter a muddier area where the equipment was being scrubbed. There's a slushing sound. A splosh as something wet hits the ground. "We can fix the cot problem." The neutrality of her voice only makes it all the more ominous. Should she turn around, Keysi is holding a scrub bucket. If not, 3.. 2.. Laine? Oblivious. She's good at oblivious. And she's busy basking in the sun, malingering, so even if there's a half-cocked ear following Keysi's footsteps, she doesn't take much note of it. She even lays back again, flinging one arm across her eyes. And there's another one of those contented sighs. Well--it would've been a contented sigh, except Laine suddenly finds herself doused, so it's a burbling, coughing, thrashing, "HEY!" instead. She jerks upright, hair plastered to her head, and just gapes, wide-eyed, at Keysi. Mock-steely, as she ruffles her hair back into all its gravity-defying glory: "I take back the best thing." Ketsl's attention had wandered away from the pair as a flash of the sun off bright dragon hide had caught his eye and then his imagination. He's been in the weyr a while, it's true, but most of that had been spent in the windowless crafting room, steadily shaving away at skybroom supports and fitting them to recovered metal bracers. So while Keysi and Laine talk he had been busy staring (only a little slack-jawed) at the sky, rooting through his basket blindly for a good piece of wood as if he could capture that motion of flight right that moment. The basket is fumbled to the ground and he's quickly roughing out a shape, thin slices of wood littering the ground. Its only when he has what looks to be a decent outline that he realizes how rude -- and how idiotic -- he must have looked and a slow flush inches up his neck. "Ah. That is. ...The best thing?" He repeats helplessly. Keysi not only dumps the bucket, but ensures it is empty by patting the bottom once, twice. All the droplets gone. Onto Laine. A swing of her arm, and the bucket is tossed back towards where it came, landing and rolling to a stop, the handle clattering loudly all the way. The healer folds her arms again, her expression revealing nothing except, perhaps, scrutiny. "You'll dry." Is said simply, her intense gaze shifting to Ketsl. It's a few moments before she decides to answer his question. Now that the gratitude is overwith, she summarizes, "Laine and mysterious 'others' vandalized my bunk while I was," pause as a better word is considered, "indisposed. Whatever the best part of the vandalism is, is her doing, apparently." Combing her fingers through her thick, short-cropped hair, Laine sits fully upright and swings her legs off the stretcher, heels drumming at the ground as she considers Keysi with a long and searching gaze. "The reward I get," she wags her head, slow, side to side. Wipes her eyes again with the back of her hand. And barely contains that twitching at the corners of her mouth. "It's always the quiet ones." Laine pushes herself upright, attempts (futilely) to wring out the front of her shirt, then sniffs and crosses her own arms. And when Keysi sums up the events? Laine scoffs. "If you weren't gone so long we wouldn't've had the chance. Anyway, you totally deserved it." Typical teenager eyeroll. "Ugh. But. Work. Work, work." She says it almost in a sing-song. "Nice to meet you, voice," she says as she goes, to Ketsl, and wriggles her fingers in a wave as she flounces back off (dripping) to the crafter's complex. Ketsl is polite enough not to start grinning as he connects the mysterious plushie monument with Keysi's 'vandalism' but its a very near thing as he skips back out of the line of spray quickly. "I'm sensing a distinct difference in what your ideas of 'best' are." The journeyman carefully nudges the basket he'd (not so carefully) abandoned away from the little streams Keysi and Laine's antics make, his foot shoving dropped and scatter tools back into it's relative safety. The grin he'd been suppressing fights its way through though at Laine's dramatic teenaged chain of emphasis and exit. "Now that she's rolled a nice tanner's scent all over your cleaned cots, would you like some help?" "Go smell bad again." Is the healer's farewell to her adjacent-bunk-mate as Laine returns to, maybe, being productive again in her corner of the complex. The woodcrafter is studied for a moment at his offer, but there is little she has to argue with given someone wanting to do work instead of avoid it. "Aye, might as well. They were expecting it to be finished drying soon, given it was one of the first put out here." At least most of the infirmary was vacant, "If you are willing to scrub, I will lift it on its side." There are multiple other buckets nearby with scrub brushes within them. After a beat or two, she adds, "What were you working on a few moments ago?" "A dragon." His grin slides momentarily back into the goofy set it had been when he'd first been distracted although thankfully this time he manages to stay focused. He settles the little carving on the top of the basket where she can easily see it -- the very blocky start of a dragon, half-turned in flight with tail extended up in one direction and head in the other -- as he makes his way amiably to grab another bucket and brush. "A necklace, I think, that will sit across the collarbone. I'd have it curl around the neck like a sunning fire lizard but I haven't the right wood for it and the flight was so pretty, anyway." Ketsl drops easily into a crouch, ready and willing to put his back into the work. "You don't always get stuck with this job do you?" Keysi's attention lingers on the blocky beginnings of a dragon long enough to appreciate the start of its detail before dropping her gaze to the cot beside them. "To sell at a Gather?" Is asked somewhat off-handedly. And then she seems more serious, if that's possible, as she adjusts herself alongside the cot. The amount of effort it takes to not strain her fracture site has been growingly annoying. The way she manages to get the cot up at an angle for appropriate scrubbing involves an awkward squat, a shoulder under the edge, and a guarded stand. There's a nod as his 'go ahead.' "Not exactly." Keys answers him, her voice quieter as if there's some discomfort disfiguring her so-controlled tone. "I do not mind doing this, but assistants often do for us. We're not above scrubbing. And, besides, as a candidate half my day is often filled with scrubbing something else as well. As long as I am busy, and numbing work is not all I do, it is fine." The cot is laid into vigorously, the brush set to short circular motions across the top length of the cot and then down. He makes an agreeable noise. "I've a mind to see if I can get my hands on some good seaweeds I might even be able to get a good green stain out of it. Unless you think a more bronze tone would sell better here...?" As he finishes working the brush along the bottom of the cot, Ketsl eyes Keysi's stiff-looking stance. "I'm that pleased to hear you're level-headed about your work and duties but perhaps you could see fit to just supervise?" He rubs his shoulder against his cheek and then tries a guileless looking smile. "I'm a deft hand at turning over heavy things." Keysi seems settled once they are stationary. And, fortunately, it's not that heavy of an object. "Well," She deliberates, "You have more green riders than bronze if you're looking for a rider to buy at some decent price, or if you want emptier pockets, there's a small herd of boys getting anxious for a bronze to crack a shell here soon." The healer seems to be about to say something more when a loud, calling whistling erupts from just inside the doorway of the dragonhealing complex. A journeyman stands there, looking notably displeased. Keys looks over her shoulder briefly, then squats again to replace the cot to its grounded state. There's a sigh. "I've no doubt you are. I probably should have let you, so I could have been on the other side." And thusly, unseen. "You certainly do not need to finish this. I'm sure you have your own work to do. I need to-" There's another sharp whistle, shorter and a bit quieter. Impatient. Keysi's shoulders hunch at it, eyes narrowed slightly, "Paperwork calls. When you finish the dragon, show me." It's not so much a request as a statement, as she finally turns to go back indoors. |
Comments
Edyis (06:09, 10 April 2015 (EDT)) said...
Somewhere Edyis is giggling. This is Karma for pushing people off Cliffs methinks...
I love these scenes where candidates just.. get to be candidates. All the goofy silliness.
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