Logs:Just Gotta Run
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| RL Date: 22 March, 2015 |
| Who: Edyis, Laine |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Running and shouting are cathartic. |
| Where: Western Bowl, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 28, Month 4, Turn 37 (Interval 10) |
| Weather: A pleasant spring day. |
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>---< Western Bowl, High Reaches Weyr(#250RJs) >-----------------------------<
The bowl's vast dirt floor extends in a rough oval from west to east, only
sparse clumps of grass surviving between the crisscrossed pathways of
daily traffic. To the northwest stand massive gates to the world beyond,
allowing people, livestock, and tithes to pass beneath some of the seven
jagged spires that stand sentinel over that area of the bowl. In late
afternoons, their spindly, fingerlike shadows stretch over that end of the
bowl all the way to the living cavern's hulking brass doors in the far
north.
Eastward, the bowl sprawls on toward the lake, sloping slightly downward
to allow runoff from rain and snowmelt, but to the south it's caged by
more cliffs of dark, rough-cut granite. Rocks poke up from the ground
here, a few large boulders and many smaller outcroppings worn smooth in
spots by time and use. A few ground weyr entrances dot the wall, the most
frequented ledge set up like a patio while the largest ledge services the
Weyrleaders' complex, directly beside the huge entrance to the hatching
sands. A more human-sized entrance, left of that, leads to the galleries.
The weather today is very pleasant. A few clouds chase each other across
the mostly clear skies, and a soft breeze picks up in the afternoon to
make for a fine day.
-----------------------------< Active Players >-----------------------------
Laine F 17 5'4" trim, dark hair, grey eyes 0s
----------------------------------< Exits >---------------------------------
Living Cavern Inner Caverns Garden Patio Ledge Galleries Weyrleader
Complex East Bowl Weyr Entrance
>---------------------------------------< 28D 4M 37T I10, spring morning >---< It's a crisp spring morning. The pleasant weather affords more opportunity to be outside (despite the melting, muddy patches that spot the still-snowy bowl) and Laine, among others, is taking advantage of the mild morning sun. She's running. There's a track beaten into the wet snow, wandering the full circuit of the bowl, that might prove she's been at it for some time now. Although the apprentice tanner is red-faced and panting as she rounds past the garden patio ledge, she's showing no signs of stopping. Edyis has been a rare sight of late, though today it seems she is sitting on the Patio Ledge, waiting, or she was. As dark eyes rest on the second pass (that she witnesses at any rate) of Laine, The former scribe's brows furrow, and she stands up and starts stretching. By the time, Laine blows by again, Edyis is ready. Setting in to match the tanner's pace. "I'm all for laps, but you kind of have the look of someone punishing themselves." Matching Laine stride for stride now, glancing over from the corner of her eye. Laine's breathless response is barely audible, couched as it is in gulping gasps of air, but she manages, "Just gotta run." It's not really an answer to Edyis' remark, but Laine does slow her stride--maybe out of exhaustion. She doesn't look over at Edyis. In fact, she's very pointedly staring straight ahead. But, as if to prove she's not ignoring her new running companion, Laine puffs, "Haven't seen you." It's almost a question. Perhaps it is something the one-time scribe understands all too well. "Been staying with some traders, spent the last month on the trail between Nabol, Keogh and Ogren." The scribe answers, "Got to go back in a few days. " She keeps pace, controlling her breathing. She lets silence take over from their occasionally looking askance to her compatriot. Laine's not giving it up, whatever it is, no matter how many cover glances Edyis might shoot her way. She lets that silence hang while they lope alongside the bowl wall, curving around the back end of the lake. Her gait slows, again, though it's still quick trot. "How's it? Traders." Edyis too slows, though again she seems content to let Laine set the pace. There is a beat or four of silence as she considers the question before answering. "Different. Harder than anything I've done before. It kind of humbles you in a way, it is easy to forget how dependent on others you are in a weyr sometimes, but not so much when you are in a caravan." Laine grunts; it's acknowledgment, if nothing else. As they complete the perimeter of the lake, the sun breaks from behind a cloud and Laine jogs closer to the wall so they're back in the shadow. "Seeing lots. Meeting folk," she pants. It's a statement. Then, after a moment of contemplation: "Family?" Since Edyis did say Nabol. The mention of family elicits a self-depreciating half bark of a laugh. The words themselves tinged with some unreadable emotion. "Tevrane exiled my brother, and the hold is in the hands of her steward. No family left there to visit." Laine bites back a curt expletive when she stumbles, her foot skidding across a patch of slush; one hand goes out instinctively, groping for Edyis' arm. Only when Laine regains her footing does she growl, "'"Bitch." She's drawn up against the bowl wall, now, short of breath. "Not you." Not Edyis. The sudden stop threatens her balance with Laine's groping, but Edyis recovers easily enough, an unreadable expression painted over her features at the word. She nods, "I take it you've had a run-in with her before?" Tevrane, the scribe must mean. "No." Laine's face is clouded and dark, even as she searches Edyis' own expression with furrowed brows, then looks away, squaring her shoulders against the stony bowl wall. "Never met her." Still, Laine's mouth is twisted in a dark scowl as she catches her breath. "Sorry about your family." "It is what it is." She says of Tevrane, and of her family. The line of her mouth softens then; "It is liberating in a way. Once you lose your roots, the world opens up all kinds of possibilities." She tips her chin then taking in that scowl as she adjusts the bag slung across her back, reaching for the flask and unstopping it to take a swig before passing it to Laine. Cheeks flushed hot and pink, Laine glowers at a particularly offensive cloud. She thumps her head once, twice against the wall, gently; it might be a nod of agreement. Speaking of possibilities: "Gonna stand?" Grey eyes lower when that flask emerges, and though Laine eyes it longingly she flicks her hand, shakes her head. "Should have some water, first." Edyis recaps the thing, tucking it back where it belongs. "Haven't decided yet." She answers, concern tinting the edges of her voice. "I'd be giving up my freedom for a duty and responsibility that isn't mine. Especially if I wound up in Igen. Though there are are advantages to being able to be anywhere in Pern in the span of three heartbeats." She cants her head to the side. "What about you? Do you want to try setting out on a different path in life? See if life has more to offer than leather straps and awls?" "Trading one freedom for another," Laine murmurs, that somber grimace waning--even if the apprentice tanner's brows are still knit in some unspoken ill-humour. She takes one more heaving breath then sighs. Shrugs. "Something to be said for duty. Responsibility." It's not an answer to Edyis' question, but when Laine rolls her shoulders to stretch, the now-trader might notice that Laine's apprentice knot has been threaded with the white mark of a candidate. "I get tired of pretending to be a responsible adult sometimes ok?" Edyis laughs, but the expression seems softer, and warmer. "It seems you already made up your mind to tempt fate." That earns a breathy snort that's almost a laugh. "It's tough," Laine agrees, catching an ankle in one hand so her leg's fully bent at the knee, using her shoulder on the wall for balance. The apprentice considers Edyis, then says matter-of-factly: "Tanning's not so bad. Opportunity to stand? Comes rarely, for some." "That is true enough I imagine, even more so as we get deeper into interval." She moves to lean against the wall, putting her back to it looking up at the sky. "I have stood twice. You would think it gets easier each time, but it doesn't the heat burning through the soles of your sandals. The hatchlings are awkward, and you can get hurt easy if you don't move fast enough. I think the worst part though is the fear of what comes next if you do impress because I have watched as it changed people. Some people impress monsters, like Lythronath; this monster bronze who is all about the gore. Others wind up with sweethearts like Teisyth. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it, no way of knowing what will happen after that moment." The corners of her mouth twist downward at the thought. "So... I wish those who are brave enough to face that all the luck in the world. I don't know if I have it in me to do again." Laine listens, head tilted to one side, as she switches feet. Stretches with a half-lidded grimace, but fixes Edyis with her grey eyes as she speaks. When the older woman is done speaking, after a long moment of silence, Laine offers quietly: "Living changes people. Choosing to stand, not to stand; regardless of outcome, that's going to change you. Maybe I won't impress," and something in her tone suggests this might be expected, "But I'll've tried. And get that experience for it. People," and there's a funny hitch in her voice, now, "Make bad choices all the time. But you don't know it's good, or bad, 'til you've done it." That hitch in Laine's voice, as much as the words themselves draws something out, dark eyes truly studying the younger woman, before lifting skyward again as though trying to hold something back. "Living does change people." She agrees, "It isn't the choice, so much as making sure you can live with the consequences." Letting her foot fall again to the slushy snow, Laine follows Edyis' gaze up, clipping at the nail of her thumb with her teeth. "Just do what I do," Laine suggests, and there's an intensity in her voice that belies the levity in her words, "Fuck the consequences. And everyone else. Do whatever you want. Get drunk. Deal with life later. Life sucks." She nips again at her nail, spits. "Fuck the consequences." She echoes softly, with a huff. A beat, and then: "Consequences be fucked!" Both hands cupped around her mouth as she summons all the volume her tiny frame can muster, the word fucked echoing across the bowl. Laine grins, feral and swift, with an appreciative look over at Edyis. She brings up her own hands, obscuring that smile, and the apprentice whoops lustily, "Fuck you, consequences! Fuck you, life!" Her voice bounces after Edyis', answering itself in reverberation. Once the echoes have died, Laine breathes heavily through her nose, satisfied. "That felt... so right." Laine's grin is infectious, and the former scribe laughs heartily as the tanner sends her cry against the world. "It does doesn't it?" the words as breathy as Edyis's laughter. "Come on, I will race you to the Snowasis. We can get water, food, and alcohol." And like the cheat that she is, Edyis is already pushing off the wall to launch back across the bowl as fast as she can manage. The tanner shoves herself away from the wall, darting after Edyis with a bellowed, "Hey!" She's fast, but exhausted from a morning spent running; it's all Laine can do to keep on Edyis' heels as they weave across the bowl toward the Snowasis. She calls a husky, "Loser buys the first round!" as she manages a last burst of speed and draws even. |
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