Logs:Is She Going To Die Soon?
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| RL Date: 22 April, 2011 |
| Who: Rilka, Riorde |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Riorde whittles. Rilka stirs. They're not really friends. |
| Where: Settlement, Western Island |
| When: Day 22, Month 7, Turn 25 (Interval 10) |
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| The summer afternoon is fading, slowly but surely, into a summer evening - it's nearly dinner time. It's not a time Rilka would usually be hanging about the settlement, given her well-known disinclination for communal work, but she doesn't seem to have a choice, today, with her left ankle wrapped in absorbent sea grass, and propped up in front of her. She's been set to stirring the stew, and is, at this moment, being left to it - though the older woman who instructs her does so with a warning before she leaves, "Mind you don't stop stirring, Rilka. If it burns, we eat it anyway." Riorde has been mending her traps all afternoon and now holds the last up for inspection, examining the still-wet weave that holds it all together. Judging them satisfactory, she gathers one in each hand and goes to put them in the hut she shares with the rest of her family, hesitating at the door. Her grandmother's inside, asleep, and rather than risk waking her, Riorde sets her traps just outside and wanders over to Rilka, inhaling. "Don't burn it," she says, catching the woman's warning. "It doesn't smell half-bad." Rilka's stirring is half-hearted, but probably not so irregular as to let the stew burn. For now. Most of her attention, though, seems to be focused upon angling desperate glances towards the path down and away, her manner somehow faintly akin to that of a caged animal. Still, Riorde's echo of the warning draws her wide-eyed attention: she stares wordlessly at the younger woman for a few lengthy moments, then intones, "It would be a terrible thing to waste the bounty the sea has offered us. We would have to apologise." Riorde sits without ceremony, pulling a bit of driftwood out of her pocket along with the knife she was using earlier to cut short lengths of wood for her traps. "Terrible," Riorde agrees, but in her dry tones it sounds ironic. Not that she wants dinner burnt. She turns the piece of wood over between her fingers and starts whittling, shavings of wood curling off. "You sound like Shimana." "Shimana is teaching me," says Rilka, with much more enthusiasm than she's showing for this cooking business - though she keeps stirring. "To watch the weather, and honour the ocean's gifts. I will be as wise as she is, one day." She's earnest about it, that's for sure. "Were the crabs still flocking? Did you see them?" Eager, now, she's straining in her seat as though she might be able to see as far as the rock-pools from here, if only she moved in just the right way. Riorde doesn't respond to Rilka's remarks in word, though her eyebrows lift in a show of mild skepticism about the extent of Shimana's wisdom. "I wasn't crabbing today," she admits after a moment, concentrating on drawing a shape out of the wood held in her palm. "My grandmother," Arial, one of the older members left in the settlement, "wasn't well." Rilka ignores-- or perhaps, simply doesn't notice, the skepticism in Riorde's eyebrows. Anyway, she's easily distracted by mention of Arial, gives Riorde a searching look as she asks, "Is she going to die soon?" It's blunt - but that's characteristic for Rilka, who tends to range from utterly disconnected to forthright and careless of feelings. "She's old. We all go back to the sea, one day. It is our duty." Through Riorde is often blunt herself, the question in connection with her grandmother makes her send a sharp glance towards Rilka, hands stilling. "I wouldn't know." She looks down again, thumb pressing hard against the back of her knife blade as she cuts a notch in her piece of driftwood. "It was just a cough." And fatigue. Old lady problems. Rilka is oblivious to this, too. "Perhaps she'll last a little longer, then. Though summer won't last forever." She turns her gaze back towards the stew she's stirring, giving it, for the first time, the majority of her attention. Her free hand reaches down to scratch at the grasses wrapped around her ankle. "I think it will rain in the morning. We'll have to be careful not to slip." "She'll last," Riorde affirms, though a trace of doubt lingers. "Plenty of time left in her." Her bit of wood is starting to take shape into something resembling a spear head, something that can be used for fishing. At Rilka's latter remarks, she nods towards the other woman's propped-up foot. "Is that what happened to you?" "As you say," returns Rilka, placidly; presumably, that's about the grandmother. Turning her gaze back upon Riorde, albeit with a brief, reluctant glance at her own foot, she agrees, "I could not see the rocks in the fog. It happens. I will have to listen more closely to the crabs, next time." Her bare toes are given an experimental wiggle: at least everything seems to still be in working order. "And what do the crabs say to you?" Riorde's tone is even, the mocking undercurrent almost imperceptable - not that she thinks she has to hide it from Rilka. Her question is an experiment to see how far Rilka's particular brand of peculiar goes. Rilka leans in to give the stew an experimental sniff, glancing about as if in search of something to add to it. Luckily for the islanders, the women are too smart for that. Settling back into her earlier position, she answers Riorde with the breezy surety of one whose reality is just a little different to everyone else's, "They talk of the weather. And other things. But it's more like-- they give you messages. They /show/ things, if only you'll listen." Rilka listens. "They're very wise. But they don't mind being eaten. It's a cycle." "Well, they tell me you're full of it." Riorde, in one of her moods, isn't patient enough to be tactful or obliging. "They better not mind being eaten, cause I'm coming for them tomorrow." She gathers herself, rocking into a crouch and then up to standing. "I'd better check on my nan again. Make sure she hasn't slipped off in her sleep." Rilka only smiles, all big eyes and vagueness. "As you say," she says, again, unconcerned by the other woman. "Perhaps I will see you tomorrow. If the weather holds." "Perhaps," Riorde agrees, unpromising. She turns and heads for her hut with a backwards glance. "I'll see you." They can't escape each other; none of them can. |
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