Logs:History
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| RL Date: 10 September, 2012 |
| Who: K'del, Nahia |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Nahia needs help with a book. K'del is helpful. |
| Where: Records Room, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 3, Month 10, Turn 29 (Interval 10) |
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| Records Room, High Reaches Weyr Books. Scrolls. Bound hides. Maps. If it's a record pertaining to the Weyr, it's likely to be in this roughly oval room with its floor-to-ceiling cherrywood shelves, its multitude of slots for scrolls, and its wide drawers for materials that shouldn't be rolled up or folded. A scribe is usually on duty at the tall desk up front with its good view of the room, and is able to help visitors find what they're looking for via the big bound index on its rotating stand. Past the desk, several tables stand in neat rows for note-taking, each stocked with glowbaskets, scrap hide, paper and pencils. Additional lighting is provided by a many-armed wrought-iron light fixture, its glows gleaming through luxurious glass containers in fluted shapes instead of baskets. To one side of the room, a gap between two sets of shelves outlines where another set once stood, now replaced by a tapestry-covered aperture. Peeking behind the tapestry reveals another cavern, this one likewise full of shelves, but occupied by only a few boxes of older records and a somewhat musty air of disuse. As well, two narrow but solid doors are locked when the room is unattended and a discreet staircase provides direct access from the Weyrleaders' weyrs. Weather ebbs and flows, changing with it the occupancy of the Records Room, and as today's weather is fair and bright where there are only a numbers of those left, it's relatively quiet in the hide-bound room, where even the scribe on duty has left his post for a little fresh air. Or a snack. Or a make-out session behind the council room tapestry. Whichever it is, it all boils down to Nahia on her relative own inside the glow of the fancy wrought-iron fixtures. Her right foot is balanced on the edge of a step-ladder scraped over from its storage place, the left on tip-toe. She's extended her arm past its reach to a shelf above, and now her fingers' questionable grip on the tome she'd been trying to slide out is what's glueing her to the spot, hovering delicately between the fates of falling, and falling with a giant book as a hat. Her own twisted black hair slides productively into her face so that she huffs and puffs to blow it off her forehead. Into the void of room, she coughs: "... Hello?" The continued march of autumn means these fair days won't last for much longer; perhaps, then, it's no wonder that K'del's cheeks are pink from the outdoors as he strides through the doorway from the council chambers and the Weyrleaders' weyrs beyond. He's still in his coat, too, though his scarf is being unwound from his neck as he walks - one hand resting upon the staircase's railing, the other busying itself. Too lost in his own thoughts to pay much heed to the occupants (or lack thereof) of the room, it's Nahia's cough that first lifts his head. A moment later, he's taking the remainder of those stairs in an inelegant leap, all the better to draw up alongside the apprentice and extend his hands to grab the book in question: "Don't fall." A soft gasp as the hand appears, Nahia shoots a look down her shoulder, causing a wobble that could directly disobey the order. But without needing to support the artifact, she more deftly grabs onto a nearby shelf in order to shuffle her falling foot back onto the ladder. Balance secured, the young apprentice squares out her shoulders, then puts her hands for the rescued book. "Heyyy, thank you," she murmurs, and if she's flushed in the cheeks, too, then she doesn't have the weather to blame. "I've heard of learning my putting your head to the books before, but that would've been ridiculous." A second later, she jams her tongue against her teeth to stop the words and just clears her throat a couple more times. As Nahia wobbles, K'del's free hand - the one not dedicated to rescuing that book - hovers behind her, just in case. When she rights herself, he's right there to offer out the prize, expression torn between amusement (there, in the twitching at the corners of his mouth) and concern. "Little bit," he agrees. "Little bit. Rather you don't knock the knowledge into yourself. Or knock yourself out in the process. There anything else you need from up there, or are you all good now?" The question is genuine - he may have relinquished the prize, but he's made no move to depart now that disaster has been averted. "I think..." in the middle of Nahia twisting the spine of the book towards her to make sure, "This is... it? Wait," fingers trace out over the letters and she looks five seconds from stomping her foot. "Volume five?" Jerking her head up, she notes the slot where the book they just retrieved came from. Next to it, a slim thing clearly not from the same collection, with no corresponding opening for any six of any kind. "Well, isn't that just... the last shard of a dud egg-- excuse me, sir," her hand darts up to offer a pacifying palm to the Weyrleader, though her young, dark face doesn't quite register any blame. Huffing and sighing, she eases herself down the ladder. K'del's study of Nahia lingers as she examines her volume, stamps her foot, and finally, eases herself back down the ladder. "Sounds frustrating," he remarks, neutrally, ignoring her apology in favour of being casually conversational: really, it's fine. "What're you researching, anyway?" No doubt he must know the shelves of the records room well enough to have a rough idea of what is in the volumes on this shelf, but he asks his question with genuine curiosity all the same. "Can I help?" Positively shrunken now that she's on the floor level, Nahia stands in K'del's literal shadow, picking at coils of hair near her temple as she eyes the book that's disappointed her. Raising her head, she slides her teeth off the lip she's bitten. "I guess I didn't think that it was still kinda new at Harper Hall so you might not have it here yet," she muses in the absent tone of someone who hasn't yet completely developed the filter between thinking and speaking. "Umm." Despite that she's looked at it twice now, Nahia needs o flip the book to reread the spine a third one, finding K'del's question has made her second-guess herself. "Records of whenever Harper intervention was needed?" Paraphrasing, she adds the light uplift in her voice of a question despite that the title's clear for him to see. "These ones have always got old drum and recent message codes in the index in the back, too." "I can see that," points out K'del, more amused that put out. "Guess I was just curious as to the why. You're awful young to have been posted back here--? And it can't possibly be personal interest." Now, he goes back to unwinding his scarf, though once removed from his neck it gets wound around his arm instead, rather as though he needs something to keep his hands occupied with. It's as he gets to the end of that that he seems to remember himself, and add, "I'm sorry; I'm bothering you now, aren't I? Just curious. Please - go on with your work, or whatever. Guess we do get things a little later than the Hall. Hadn't much noticed, to be honest." More of that color goes to her cheeks, which she bulges slightly by squinting thoughtfully about her age. "A little of both," Nahia murmurs, blazing slightly past the question. Gathering in a big breath that seems to raise her whole small frame, she gathers a free hand to gesture in the air between them. "It's a little earlier to start on specialization projects too, but-- here I am! I can't help it. I just get an idea and I feel like I have to research, research, research... oh. Jeez. You don't care." The hand just as easily waves herself off, in the air, then at her own chest: ignore her, please. "My dad," she puffs with a couple of mixed, unreadable emotions, "just says it's better to be learned. He says there's a decline right now." All of this, K'del regards with a certain amount of thoughtfulness, enough that it's difficult to discern exactly what he thinks of Nahia and her enthusiasm. It's those last comments that draw his interest the most, however, and send his brows to knitting as he wonders, "Your dad? Seems to me I know plenty of learned people out there, but perhaps people see different things than I. Can't fault you for your dedication, in any case. Can only hope my children are as determined and dedicated when they're your age." Now, the scarf is slowly, steadily, unwound from his arm - and once released, dropped towards the surface of a nearby table so that he can begin to pull off his coat. "Umm. J'rell? He's a bronzerider. But you probably know that," Nahia casually flings out the name of the rider making its waves through the caverns already. Stepping over to the same table, she yanks a chair out, drops down the book, and sidles herself into a seat with the lanky, irresponsible slinging of limbs still capable in her youth. "It's not like this every day," she starts to assure K'del wryly, with a roll of her eyes for herself, only to begin to reconsider instead. A purse of her lips, then forgotten. "Actually, it was that comment that kind of had me off on this whole thing." Though K'del is careful in the way he attempts to school his expression, there's a quiet souring around the edges as Nahia names her father-- and a definite blossoming of understanding. Unlike the Harper, he doesn't sit: instead, he drapes his arms over the back of a chair, leaning heavily forward in order to be able to do so, given his height. "Ah," he says. "Of course. You're the daughter returned so soon; of course, of course. Nahia, isn't it? But - which comment? Tell me. I'm interested." "Mmm, that's me," Nahia's head pops up when she's named, though the definition he prefaces it with gives her her own look lightly sullied by a dour thought. "Jeez-a-wheezing-dragon," she murmurs a bit into the sleeve drawn across her mouth, presumably to wipe it, but succeeding mostly in obscuring half her face for a second. "Should I be worried, sir? I was there at least long enough to know how many actual duties you have." Not, you know. Letting overly young apprentices gush at him. Which, by the light jumping into her eye, he may soon have. Wriggling up onto the legs she'd crossed over the seat of the chair, she spreads a hand on the book's cover and looks over -- and up -- at him. "So, what I mean is about the learned thing. About how..." she struggles, briefly, with sentiments she clearly hasn't had to articulate yet; swirling about her head, as her hand gestures several times to free them, "Well. How-- people get information at different times. And, like... who decides which information is worth passing on, but not that other thing..." K'del's expression turns sympathetic, if understatedly so; a moment later he says, "Sorry. Wouldn't have known J'rell had a daughter at all, if it hadn't been going around of late. Your father's been..." His pause is careful. "Outspoken. Notable. That's all." And if he does have much more important things he ought to be doing? He makes no reference to them, even when she mentions them. Instead, his fingers curving around the wooden back of the chair, "Interesting topic. Do you think it's... well. They often say history is written by the victors, don't they?" "History, gossip," Nahia lists, nodding her head, which makes a comic's sight of her helmet of coils. Pulling up higher in the chair, she leans across the tome of Harper interventions at him. "And Harpers don't get called in every time, right? And when they do, they-- we're!-- meant to be impartial, but don't you think it might matter who's the one calling the Harper in the first place?" Concepts that clearly excite, yet give her pause. Pause, like the little eye-squint she gets while carefully, warily measuring his facial reactions to what she says. Far less than the passingly neutral oblivion over the subject of her much less impartial father. Leaning an elbow into the book, she scratches a couple fingers absently into the back of her hair. "I feel like... there's a project here... but I'm not sure if it's dumb or not." 'Gossip' earns a rueful expression from K'del, who has, after all, been the subject - directly and indirectly - of plenty of it, of late. But most of his reaction is for the rest of what Nahia has to say - and, especially, "Tiriana used to have a harper on hand who always seemed to be able to find reasons why she was legally correct." It's a musing remark, one not tinged with bitterness, or even embarrassment. "Rather think you're right. There is a project in that kind of thing. I--" His expression shifts, abruptly, and he sighs. "And I'm reminded of the projects-- or, rather, the work -- I ought to be doing. Good luck with your research, Nahia." A bolstered expression sparks, tempered somewhat by the quick drop of her mouth open, giving her several seconds of definitely wanting to speak before the words catch up. "Oh-- oh yeah." Pulling up to her height in the chair, she slips her feet to the floor and gives the Weyrleader a proper send-off bow from the seated position. "Good afternoon, sir. Mmmm--- " hesitance slows her down but, with a glance and bite of the lip, she propels out, against some pre-teen self-conscious judgment, "Mmmaybe I'll let you know how it goes." "Do that," says K'del, firmly, before he draws himself off and away. |
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