Logs:Lines, Letters, Knots
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| RL Date: 17 September, 2011 |
| Who: Riorde |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: Riorde gets word from Devaki. |
| Where: High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 0, Month 10, Turn 26 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Devaki/Mentions |
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| Late one evening, when you're grabbing a late meal, Xoami finds you and wordlessly hands you a rolled hide. Although the note is not named it has Devaki's familiar scrawl to it: I'm sorry that I left without speaking to you. I know I'm probably deserving of a punch or two, maybe even a kick, but I'll wear that the next time we see each other. All I can say by way of explanation is that it was past time to go. There was no life for me in the Weyr, especially with you, and Io, and all the others that impressed. If I'm honest, I have to admit I've never seen you look as blown away as the moment you impressed, and that it was probably harder than I ever would've dreamed to watch. In the meantime, know that I'm securing the future of the rest of our people. I'm much more suited to life outside the Weyr, and I think the rest of our people will find life in a Hold a lot like life on the Island -- though with less fish! I've managed to see the sea again, and reminds me of home. Riorde's gotten faster at reading, better. She can skim now, skip through the lines that form letters without having to first decipher the tracings and reassemble them into words. She glances at the hides for clues that the scrawl doesn't immediately reveal -- how many types of handwriting has she seen in the past months? How deeply have the lines drawn in sand in their distant childhood impressed themselves on her mind? -- and then glances at Xoami and holds his gaze for as long as he allows. Was it a question, a confirmation, an accusation? She couldn't say, anymore than she can say when Sforzath's curiosity is pricked. He goes to work on her knotted confusions, pulling on a strand here (a fishing day, a sudden shove off a scattered hopscotch line of rocks, smug satisfaction when some blond boy off-balances and tumbles into the water) and teasing out other threads more carefully concealed (water bluer than water deserves to be, heat seeming not to emanate from the high sun or sands that reflect it, but cradled somewhere deep and secret inside her, warmth that persists though the scene shifts to another beach, day to night, hot air air to chill, woman to man) -- Riorde's mental shove is about as unsubtle as her fist slamming down a table. Or better, into someone's face. Sforzath's wounded reproach is her wound too, just like he already knows her answer and it is in turn his own. I don't want to think. Outside, their gnarled thoughts jumble together in the face of the first rising moon until resolving into a sweet, white blankness. Riorde lifts her hand and touches the silver thread that now winds through her shoulder knot. Shock and suspicion, embarrassment and covetous pride, and now it serves as the signifier for another signified: (if she admits it) guilty relief that she's too busy to think; she doesn't have any spare time. |
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