Logs:New Socks
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| RL Date: 30 October, 2007 |
| Who: N'thei, Persie |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| When: Day 9, Month 1, Turn 14 (Interval 10) |
| The outer weyr is dimly lit and completely vacant, no sign of Wyaeth. The inner weyr is almost as dimly lit and just as vacant, at first no sign of N'thei. Beyond the inner weyr, the thin curtain to the bathtub is drawn back, and the glows in there are more prolific and the sound of splashing can be heard. Fortunately, a glimpse of a fully clothed N'thei can also be seen sitting on the lip of the bathtub with his back to the curtain; so at least Persie's not about to walk in on bath time. When Persie shows up on the ledge, it's with a frown for the darkness. Of course, alone in the dark, it's not a frown seen by anyone. She peeks into the nearly-as-dark weyr and pauses there, peering toward that sliver of light. Oh, it's a sliver with a man beyond it! She calls softly, likely to quiet to be heard, but then again with a little more strength behind her voice. "Hello?" She's bundled up against the snow, a scarf wound multiple times about her neck, her jacket buttoned up tight and her boots wet. There's a lump of something under her arm. Called in response, "Unless you happen to be a beautiful woman with a stiff drink, there's no one here." Immediately thereafter, there's a splash of water and N'thei getting to his feet with his pants rolled up to his calves. Treacherous going over stone with wet, bare feet, and he slips his first step, teeters to reclaim his balance, and treads lightly toward the curtain to peer at who-goes-there. "Well hullo." His initially response just gets a stammer from the bundled greenrider, a couple of half muttered syllables that never form words. Persie's eyes open wide as she sees him slipping around but by the time he peers out into the dimness, the pale girl is smiling a little. A little awkwardly. "Hi." Her teeth catch her lip. N'thei stands there with dripping feet for a few seconds, time that eventually ends with a mild laugh; "At least I was half right. That's better than my track record of late." He avoids acknowledging the awkwardness when he turns away, ostensibly to step on a bundled towel and dry his feet by smooshing them around. "Come bearing gifts, have we?" Persie answers with a little laugh and though it may be quiet, her smile grows. "I do. I have something... I made something for you." She flicks a glance over him as he turns away, her eyes falling on his bare feet. "I think you might be able to use them, too." But then the awkwardness begins to fall away a little. "I mean, I made them, but I'm not really all that good at it so they're not, like, great or anything. I just thought it would be fun. And you were so nice to..." Scratch that about the awkwardness. She takes a breath and holds out the bundle. It's a purple and blue pile of something knitted - a pile that turns out to be a pair of socks. Perhaps the stripes were supposed to be uneven, perhaps not. Either way they're sort of.. huge. Thick, massive things meant for great big massive feet. Her teeth find her lip again, pulling her anxious smile to the side. N'thei winces one eye narrowed while he dries his toes, but he withstands it all in true manly fashion and comes up smiling to be the recipient of some very-- well-intentioned socks. "Timely. I've just about had it with these damned chillblains." With steps much too ginger for a person of his bulk, he barefoots to Persie to take the bundle and straighten out the socks, even manages to look wholly pleased with them in their unevenness. "You're a lifesaver, my dear. Or at least a toesaver." Weak chuckle. "Come in. Sit a spell. I'll try them on." Persie can't help but be happy that he seems pleased, but she's still quick to add, "You don't have to wear them. Or, well, you can wear there around here. I know they're not... I, well... They're warm!" She's relieved to be able to say that much. "I have a pair myself. I should..." she looks down at her boot, wet and dripping and clung to by chunks of snow. "Take these off. I leave puddles everywhere." Not that he hasn't been doing a bit of that himself. Toe to heel, she pries her feet from the loosely laced shoes; her own socks are garishly crimson. She pads in a bit but doesn't move to sit. She's too busy watching him and his new socks. "Leave as many puddles as you like." N'thei waves the socks toward the veneer of water left from his own wet feet. "It's not my weyr to have to clean up." He perches on the edge of the bed long enough to shove gangly feet into silly-looking socks, only to sigh with evident relief. "Undoubtedly the most comfortable socks I've ever owned. --Prop them by the fire. They'll dry quickly enough." Come to think of it, N'thei's got the fire going ridiculously high in here, burning the hell out of Fort's coal. Persie positively beams when he's got the socks on and praises them so warmly. "Right, good idea." And she collects her boots to set them beside the hearth. Just standing by it for a minute she's already tugging at her coat's buttons. "Cold much?" she asks with a tease alright lighting her voice. "I thought you Reaches riders were all tough about the cold." N'thei wiggles his toes in the new socks, cozy as all get-out with the articles, and shares a grin toward Persie. "I couldn't tell you except-- not this winter. Not this winter." He blows out a soundless breath through pursed lips, then pushes away from the edge of the bed to shuffle toward his coat, draped over the back of a chair. "Thank you for the socks, really. Drinking?" Persie lifts a pale brow, but if there's a question on her open lips, she doesn't voice it. Instead he gets a nod, a smile and an answer. "I'll drink. What do have?" She lingers near the fire, rolling her shoulders in her coat and then starting to remove her scarf. Only that's easier said than done. She pulls one section, which only tightens another around her neck. She tries to slip a loop up over her head, making a mess of her smooth hair, but that only serves to tangle it into knots. Her brow starts to crease and the battle ensues. N'thei gets out half of a syllable; "Whis--" He stops, his flask in one hand, and turns on his heel to where he can see Persie again, just in time to watch the beginning of her struggle with the scarf. It's impossible not to laugh, and he winds up laughing out loud while he watches the proceedings with no offer to help, free show. "--key." "Yeah, whis-" It just so happens that Persie pauses in the same place, caught for a moment with a length of scarf around her mouth. But then, finally, with her hair turned all frizzy and fluffy, she's holding the scarf in front of her. Triumphant! She lets out a curt, scolding sigh for the thing. "Whiskey is fine," she answers, turning to realize that he's laughing. She tries to look like she might scold him next but the expression is utterly ruined by her smile. "Hey, they're complicated," she offers as her excuse, beginning to laugh as well. N'thei licks his index finger and makes like he needs to smooth the front of his hair, his nod indicating Persie's fluff once the gesture is complete. "Cute, but you've looked better, baby." Plucking the scarf from her outstretched hand, holding it full of delicacy like the thing might attack him next, he offers to exchange it with the flask. "So you always have such a hard time getting out of your winter gear?" "Oh!" Now that is a scolding little huff, even if she's still smiling. And it's not really clear if it's for him or her hair, but her now-free hands to make quick work of smoothing things out again, gathering everything into a neat ponytail and letting it fall down her back. "Not always. The boots came off easily enough, right?" Persie answers with a cheeky grin. "Flask," she observes, once things are in order, taking it and a quick whiff before she tips it against her lip. She makes a little face for the first sip, but follows it quickly with a second that isn't quite so pained. Then she offers it back. "How are... things?" she asks, her eyes making a quick pass of the weyr. There's nothing fluffy about N'thei's whiskey; it's exactly the kind of burning stuff that belongs in a flask. He waits for a few moments, long enough to register Persie's reaction to the drink, long enough to let a smile spread across his face, then he tosses her scarf over the back of the same chair that holds his jacket. "Things are what they are," he answers, pleasant for all it's a useless answer. Plopping heavily down into a chair, he parks his feet toward the fireplace and gestures to the adjacent seat. "You, my dear? Feeling better?" She watches as he takes a seat, as he answers, but her smile goes a little quiet as she does the same. "Yeah, a bit. I think. I..." Oh, there's another of those unfinished thoughts again. Perise curls up in the chair with her feet tucked beside her and lets out a sigh as she turns her head to drop her cheek against the back of the chair. "I want to ask you something." N'thei nods slowly but surely, unsurprised and even expectant. While his expression is mild, is sober even, his gray eyes insist on merriment while they rest on Perise/sie. "Naturally." He exhales one more sigh, sinks lower into his chair, and relishes the warmth of new socks and a fire for toasting them. "Ask away, Persie." Persie's gaze drops from him, falling to the arm of his chair instead of his face. It takes her a moment, a few beats of listening to the fire crackle. "Why were you... are you..." she gets stuck on that, but only frowns a little and pushes forward. "Why be so nice to me? If there's this woman... Why?" A thin shoulder lifts and falls within the bunched space of the jacket she still wears. "Nice to you?" N'thei pulls his brows higher, the eyes beneath them still merry, the look on his face still mild. He tries very hard to keep from looking like he saw that one coming a mile away, but the success of that is questionable. "I like you, I like to be nice to people that I like. If you mean why was I coming on to you? That's more complicated." There's a sad, apologetic shrug at Persie. Persie doesn't seem to expect him to be surprised by the question. She just lifts her eyes, rounder now than before, to look at him with a rather waiting, innocent expression. "Were you?" she asks quietly. Her gaze drops again to ask, "Were you... coming on to me?", then finds his face once more. Bluntly, "I was." N'thei hits the past-tense only a little harder than necessary, only a little extra stress to make a point but not hit it too hard. More slowly now, choosing his words with quiet precision; "But there is This Woman, and that's kind of where the story ends. Friendly, I hope?" Persie sits for a moment, plainly mulling. She settles back against the chair a little more, the collar of her jacket shifting up around her jaw as she takes to staring at the fire. "Yeah." It's a quiet answer, not without both warmth and resignation. "I'm sorry..." but whatever she's sorry for, she gives up hope of articulating it. "There is nothing you need to be sorry for, Persie." N'thei dredges a smile, a soft laugh, a reach of one mitt to pat the poor girl on a skinny shoulder. "The socks really are great, by the way. I was going to bleed the world dry of geranium oil before the winter was out at the rate I was going." For all that she puts on a little smile, Persie doesn't really seem to appreciate the pat that much. "I'm sorry you're having so much trouble with the cold," though that couldn't be related to the previous unspecified sorry. "What's the problem?" She is undoubtedly subdued. With a sad little sigh, N'thei wags his toes toward the fire again; "Just bad feet, chilblains, hurts like hell." But the subdued, the dim smile, he registers it with a fractured smile of his own, feet slid to the floor again, the whole mass of him unfolded from the chair. "I have to make it back to the Reaches tonight." "Oh," Persie says, some small quirk coming to her smile as she glance at his feet again. His bad feet surrounded by serendipitous socks. But he stands and her eyes follow him. "Tonight? You don't... you don't stay?" She hesitates for a moment, troubled, but then moves, quick to unwind herself, get up from the chair and head for her warmed boots. "I don't." N'thei looks around the room, with all its cheer and pleasant furniture and little blond greenrider, and he summons a big-shouldered shrug. "Once in a while, when Wyaeth can't be prevailed upon to leave, but I usually like to sleep in my own bed. You sound surprised." His own boots, monstrous things, are not so far from Persie's, his tracks headed to the same general vicinity. Persie lifts one small shoulder. "I guess. Most of the sires I've known have taken up residence. I suppose there's no real reason to, though." She glances around the room as he does. "It's a nice enough weyr, though." Her shoulder falls and she bends, plucking up a shoe, mulling a bit as she pulls the laces out and and gets the tongue upright. "You said... You said it was complicated. It doesn't sound complicated. It sounds like... you made a choice." She pauses just staring at her boots as her brows start to pull together. "Did something happen?" She balances on one leg as she slips her foot into the shoe, swaying a little. "With her, I mean?" N'thei puts his foot in one boot and kneels to the opposite leg, his fingers tied up in laces when he lifts a look around the nice-enough-weyr, consenting to that summary with a brief nod. "It is. But it's like wearing someone else's shoes, just doesn't fit right." When the subject turns back from mundane matters, he distracts himself to offer a hand toward Persie for the sake of her balance, his expression a study of humor and resignation; "No. Chances are, nothing will ever happen with her. It's just not so easy to take advantage of someone when they stop being two dimensional." "So you decided to wait for something you don't think will happen." It's a flat observation. Persie doesn't follow it with 'instead of...' but it's there in the look she gives him, a brow just barely cocked. She does take his hand, though, the other tugging at her boot until her thickly-socked heel slips into place. "I didn't think you were taking advantage of me. I thought we were just..." Her foot drops back to the floor and she releases his hand. "Just getting to know each other." More a shelf than a hand at the moment, N'thei holds it out there until Persie is back on her own two feet, then his attention to his own untied laces. "And we're still getting to know each other." For things left unsaid, he counters instead-of with as-friends. "It's not quite the way you make it sound, hon. I'm not waiting for something that won't happen. I'm just not dragging anyone down with me. Humanitarian." He sets his bow and thumps on the second boot. Persie gives a little smile, though it's only in profile - one that illuminates the sharpness of her chin and nose against the firelight as she bends to tie her own laces. "I didn't notice any... dragging." But she's thinking, puzzled, as she stands up to ready her second boot. "What are you so worried about?" N'thei stands slowly, as though to minimize the effect of straightening up from a crouch to the full six-feet-and-four-inches of him, gray eyes darkened with sympathy. "You, Persie. I told you that I like you, and one of the things a person ought to do for his friends is be straight with them. Anything between you and me, anything but friends-- I would feel bad." His palms turn toward the ceiling with the shrug this time. It's generally pretty obvious when Persie is thinking hard, her brows pulled in and creasing, a faint crinkle about her nose. "I understand..." she says, "But I don't understand. I..." Her mouth closes so she can chew the inside of her lip. Then the expression is gone and she just chuckles out a breath. "I don't explain well. I mean, I do when I'm not thinking, but when I am thinking it's all just...it bunches up. With her boot in hand, she turns to him, looking up at all that six-feet-four of wall. "I am glad you're straight with me," she says with a thoughtful little smile. "But I liked... the way things were." "I wish I could explain it better. You'll just have to trust me, my intentions are better now than they were at that bar in Boll." N'thei smiles down at Persie, reaches an index finger to tap at the end of her crinkled nose in charmed amusement. "Have things changed, really? Or, I guess, in what way have they?" That touch brings a bit of shyness to her smile, the way her head drops to the side as her free hand comes up to scratch idly at her cheek. "Even you bad intentions are awful...gentlemanly," Persie tells him. "Thing don't have to change then?" Her pale brows creep up a little. "I don't, I don't need you to explain, really. I..." Her eyes gives a little roll as her smile widens, "I understand, ya know. We could go back there, ya know. To Boll. Thaw out a little sometime when you're feel frozen." There's a touch of ribbing in the way her nose wrinkles now, the scrawny blonde teasing a hulk of a man for being such a big girl. N'thei rests the end of a thick forefinger along the bridge of Persie's nose, pointing right to her eyebrows for a second, only slides it away at the second wrinkle with a tweak at the end. "Nothing changes. --And if that's an offer to buy me a drink, just name your date, my dear." He swings away from the greenrider, chin cast in the direction of coats and scarves over the back of the chair, snagging one in each hand with the smaller of the two tossed toward Persie. "Soon. When we don't have stuff. Well, I don't know how much stuff you have, but..." Persie's smiling though, bright and easy and uncomplicated again. As he turns away, she gets her boot and her laces all sorted out and then she's ready to take that scarf that gave her so much trouble. She winds it up about her neck, which will surely give her trouble when she gets home, forgetting for the moment to pull her hair out of the coil. "We're good?" she asks him. "Were we ever anything but?" N'thei asks with a chuckle, chasing the buttons of his coat, turning up the collar toward his ears. "You're still too damn cute." Fondly, with perfectly careful fingers, he reaches around toward the back of Persie's neck to drag the pale hair out of the bright scarf; "Now get. I have things to do back home tonight, things that don't involve toe-haired greenriders." Persie's lashes drop as she grows still enough to let him free her hair. It makes her smile go all bashful again. "I'm gettin'. Don't forget. Boll. My treat. The first round at least." She grins cheekily and pauses for a moment, looking up at him. Then she turns to head out into the wintry darkness. "Enjoy the socks!" she calls, not looking back but waving a hand up in parting. N'thei waits just long enough that there's no chance of overtaking Persie in the bowl, coincidentally just as long as it takes to mentally bully a stubborn and reticent bronze off the sands. |
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