Logs:Leiventh's Gone
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| RL Date: 11 October, 2015 |
| Who: Leova, Anvori |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr, Crom Hold |
| Type: Log |
| What: A lazy day off, sans kids, is interrupted by tragedy. |
| Where: Leova's weyr, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 18, Month 13, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: R'hin/Mentions, Suireh/Mentions, Riahla/Mentions, Torani/Mentions |
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| Three children, one dragon, and a bar: it isn't always easy to get away, especially on a winter's day, but today the fire's burning merrily and it's just them, weyrmates. It might even be a Turnday present of sorts, instead of just the day before. Except. Leova constricts in Anvori's arms, the rasp in her throat a hard echo of Vrianth's ululating keen. His hand runs lazily up and down her back, the very tips of blunted nails initially feather light against her skin until the firm set of his palm curves over her buttocks. He's about to pull her in closer, if that's possible, his face mussing her hair by burrowing in and the body, complacently soft with age, turned towards her for perhaps another- and yet no. He stills, the keening from outside all too audible and the woman inside, noticably not with him anymore. He stops moving, his own heart audibly thumping with the known, but unknowns. He even seems to stop breathing as he waits. She's keened for other dragons. When they're together. When they're apart. Not like this. Her back arches, Leova's, Vrianth's. It's Vrianth that knocks chairs over, the table, to get to her: always demanding her rider, Leova, hers. Vrianth grieves, and Leova lifts higher, to her knees over him now, reaching for the narrow muzzle that bumps down to her. "It's them, Anvori," like he should know. He would know, if he'd left that fisherhold sooner. Them. Anvori nods in that long practiced comforting way of his; the way he is with drunks who sob their stories, of people who need to confide their secrets to him. That nod and that cultivated calming shhhhhhhhhhh, when he knows absolutely nothing. But there's no comfort in someone who is ignorant. His hands have slipped away, no longer embracing her as she reaches for her dragon, instead, his fingers have reached down to press lightly against her hip bone. Touching without being in her way. Drunks. Confiders. Babies. Leova may be none of them, but she does need. He's not in Vrianth's way, not in Leova's, the green rumbling uneasily downward into a note discordant with her earlier vocalizations' echoes. "Leiventh. He was killed. Anvori? He was killed." Her knees squeeze against him, her hand plants on his chest, somewhere south of his heart. Her shoulders lift upward like wings. This type of conversation, where Leova holds all the pieces and Anvori is merely a spectator, is not foreign to them. Over the turns, it's gotten easier for him to manage and figure out what to do, or how to fill in those gaping holes that she doesn't think to fill until later. It's clear he's halfway to filling the holes before she speaks, when she does speak and that abruptly stills his body in a way it wasn't quite so still before. He's stone against her hand, that knee of hers squeezing against a wall and while his voice is calm in the name he names, "R'hin?" the swallows preceding and proceeding it speak to something deeper. "R'hin," him too. Suireh's father, yes. Riahala's. Their not-quite-daughters'. Those amber eyes are dark, all pupils. "We. I don't know." It's not that her gaze goes absent, it's that those pupils hold the vastness of space, of everything. "They're saying Monaco did it. That it caught up to him at last. But Leiventh." Some part of Anvori relaxes. Some part of him is now allowed to breathe. Leiventh. Not R'hin. He swallows again and the finger at her hips warms slowly, and his body melts into that knee, his arms coming up to encompass her gently, still mindful not to get in Vrianth's way, and his lips crush into her forehead. "Leiventh and R'hin were killed." He is trying to muddle through the disjoint information to figure it all out. "Killed. Jays! Monaco had him murdered?" Turns and Turns and she's drawn down into him, her other refuge. She squirms once: Vrianth has a cold muzzle, but at least it's nudging her hip, not his. She can still touch her dragon with one hand. "They had to go apart, Anvori. He didn't get to go with him. It was Feyzeth's, with a knife. I... at the Gather. So glad we didn't go. So glad." "Feyzath's." Again with the knowing nod that is not knowing at all. It's something he can look up later and has no bearing now. Low words, "It was good to stay in," least of all because of murder and mayhem at Crom, but also- this. This where he's holding her, on what had been a lazy, uninterrupted winter morning and afternoon. Had. "Do you-?" He hesitates, feeling her squirm and draping one leg over hers to calm her against him, bring her close. "Do you need to go see to anything?" "I..." Leova softens further for her weyrmate, loosening, sliding to the side so it's not as close but they face each other still. "No. They're gone now. Oh, Vrianth. But I'll have to. The girls. Why did they have to die like this, Anvori? I thought Leiventh was slipping, but that it would be a mis-between. Or..." Her lips press together. Though thinking is so hard with a warm body within intimate proximity, or well, even more intimate proximity, Anvori somehow manages to think well enough to ask, "Slipping?" Though he doesn't sound to invested, his hand reaching to try and shift his hips closer and entwine their legs again. Entwining is easy, familiar, welcome. There's still distraction to her, and not the warm-body warm-weyrmate kind. But. "He never was warm. Leiventh. Except maybe in his way. They'd spark, she liked that. But." Leova turns her head to look up to Vrianth, more of a canopy now. "They were having problems. Him and Leiventh. R'hin wouldn't admit to it. I saw... I asked around, some, on the quiet." News to him, and he stops trying to distract her, giving up for now. "I didn't realize dragons and riders could ... have problems." The implication of his tone being with each other left unsaid. "If it is... I think it might be what happened, over at Telgar," his weyrmate says very quietly. She's cold. "It's rare. A dragon being not right in the head, anymore." As though it goes against Nature: inherently, world-shakingly wrong. "But we can't let it get around, Anvori. Not yet. Could be something else. And they're dead." In normal conversations he might be drawn to that coldness, rub the warmth in, bring a laugh and a smile to her face for his continued incorrigibleness. Now, he just holds her, listening both to understand and just to be a listener for her thoughts. "No, we can't," he echoes, "I would like to go see the girls. It'll be hard for them with just the murder aspect, add in the fact their father was already dying and taken too early..." "Give them the letter," Leova says bleakly. Had she mentioned the letter? "I don't know what else... but we should get there soon. At least Riahla has Zeth. Suireh. I don't even know if she's at Harper. But. They'd know." "At the same time? Or separately?" The letter. Anvori's face sets in an inscrutable way, his mouth suddenly pressed firm and his glazed eyes looking directly at Vrianth. "When did he give it to you?" "I..." She has no answer. Except sometimes he does, when she doesn't. "Whatever you think." Leova's hand tightens around his arm. "When? It was... sevens ago. But it's put away. I can find it." Vrianth's eyes are dark. Yellowed, still. Swift-whirling. Facets may reflect him, but as part of her rider. Any reassurance he draws is his own. "Separately," decides Anvori, eyes averting from Vrianth abruptly, but not to look at Leova. It pains him, this subject, and the wince at sevens ago visibly contorts his angular face. "I am not sure the fact he left them one letter to share will sit well at this hour." "No." Agreement, not disagreement. Then, "Vrianth says she is coping. That Zeth says. Riahla." Leova asks, near-silent, "What are you thinking?" "Leova," his arms are suddenly crushing so he can bury his face in her neck and hair. He's not crying. She's crying, now. Can't get blood from a stone, but: this isn't blood. In this, she's no stone. She never really is. "Our girls." "When you go," when, not if, Anvori, for once, is valiantly ignoring her crying, "Take me with you." But it's the despairing words of a man who knows it's not possible. No way. No how. He's just saying it to get it out finally. That crying's so rough in her throat. It tears her up, and then he. He. She holds him like she could make going never happen. No. She holds him like she can't not. He holds her in a crushing embrace and she cries, and they cling to each other, each with their own, slightly different, sorrow-filled reasons. They'll have to get up. To wash. To clothe. To speak to their children, to explain what they can and that they'll be back, but their cousins have lost their daddy and their cousins need them now. To go. There's Harper, and there's Suireh. There's Riahla, who in time will come. There's a letter to give, but not yet. Not yet. |
Comments
Alida (13:54, 13 October 2015 (PDT)) said...
- sniffles*
I enjoyed seeing Leova as purely her 'spark'...no dragonhealer, no dutiful 'rider. Just HER, at the core. And even getting to glimpse Anvori is nice.
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