Logs:No Wine for the Bored

From NorCon MUSH
No Wine for the Bored
"We could always start a new tradition, you know?"
RL Date: 16 June, 2013
Who: E'sren, Telavi
Involves: High Reaches Weyr
Type: Log
What: A couple days before Turnover, a couple of senior weyrlings are left to cool their heels at the vintners'. Of course they don't stay where they're put.
Where: Vintner Hall
When: Day 26, Month 13, Turn 31 (Interval 10)
Mentions: F'manis/Mentions, K'del/Mentions, Sabella/Mentions, Seamus/Mentions, Z'ian/Mentions
OOC Notes: Backscened a couple IC days.


Icon telavi dubious1.png Icon e'sren 23.jpg


So partway through sweeps was supposed to be lunchtime, but the Equinox rider they were shadowing had this great need to drop by the Winecraft, and of course the weyrlings should come too. And of course, being six hours ahead, not only is it dark by now because of course what High Reaches weyrlings need is less sunshine, but dinner smells are wafting through the halls. Telavi unhappily eyes her wrapped-up packet of lunch, sitting in its napkin on her knee. To E'sren, "What do you think, how much longer?" Are they there yet?

E'sren, for his part, is a tolerant person. He can endure this crap pretty well, especially if he's in a place he's never been to before, or hasn't had a chance like this to really look around at his own leisure. So he's been kind of wandering around with an apple, crunching and chewing in turns. Telavi's prompt turns him in place and he looks first at her, then down the hall their wingleader for a day left with, leaving them to sit and wait. He furrows his brow. "Not too much," he replies, because that's vague enough. "Are you bored?" he wants to know next, coming back to sit down on the bench next to her.

"I am so bored," says Tela, and apparently Equinox isn't working them hard enough because she has energy enough to say that instead of just taking the opportunity to catnap. She grins over at him, though. "I bet we could invite ourselves for dinner. But you know, if we did, he'd be back the next minute. I don't suppose it would be suspicious at all, a pair of weyrlings poking around their workrooms, or storage rooms, when all of them were off eating?"

Crunch. E'sren chews while Telavi talks, which is pretty typical. Even when it's the three of them together, he's usually eating. "Oh yeah I bet they'd love that. 'Yeah hi we're here to eat your food'. I bet they have it better here than we do back home though, man." A third of a tithe? Jeez. A smile quirks up one corner of his mouth when she talks about going off on their own and he stands again, as if this is a challenge accepted. "You wanna go poke around? Let's go poke around." They are, perhaps, not the most responsible combination of weyrlings.

"Eat your food, and we're not even your Weyr, but it's all right! We come in peace!" E'sren's idea has Tela standing right up, and as she catches up she says along that same line, "We used to be responsible, didn't we? What happened? I think I like it." Right this second, on their lunch break.

Nonchalantly eating his apple while they walk, E'sren's other hand tucked into a pocket, responsible what? "Hey I'm still responsible. We're two responsible adults making a responsible decision to enrich our minds with the culture of other places. Instead of just sitting around waiting for our wingleader. I see nothing wrong with this." His voice sounds a little distracted on that last note because he's looking extra long at a particular tapestry showing off rolling vineyards. "This place makes me thirsty," he comments idly, eyes squinting at the art on the wall. But then, onward.

Her laugh should be soft enough, and yet it echoes in the emptied hallways, off what stone isn't softened and warmed and cluttered by those tapestries. "'Enrich our minds.' 'With culture.' I like that. And," practically, "it's not as though he has no way of telling us when he is ready to go." Tela has to pause to touch that tapestry, the little frayed bits that are the hazy clouds, quickly as though she's getting away with something. There's a 'T.' "Left or right? 'Left' says you tell me if you two have had any more close calls," her voice dropped significantly for that. 'Right' and it's, hm, whether you're going to Ista with some of them for Turnover."

"Exactly." See? They're practical and responsible. No harm done. When they move on from that tapestry he takes the last bite his apple has to offer and disposes of the core in a waste bin set along the hall for that very reason, probably. It's a long hall. Once they've come upon that 'T' he's done chewing again and, with both hands in his pockets now, surveys from one direction to the other, as if he could suss out which is best until she gives her options. He lifts his eyebrows, ah a scheme, and makes a face. "Oo, well that's an easy choice." Right it is! He leads them that way, so no he won't be giving up any information about any other close Between calls, thanks, and his walk is an easy one. "I think I'll go to Ista if Sabella's going. What about you?"

"I could guess yes," Tela points out as she tags along, "because if you hadn't you wouldn't mind saying... but I'll say you just want to go over Turnover." She pauses by a door long enough to admire the stoneworked lettering above it, shakes her head and moves on. "I'd like to run the Weyrs like we used to do," a different 'we,' that Benden accent stronger in her voice for a little bit there, even as there gets to be something subtle within the curve of her mouth and about the lowered slant to her eyes that's at once guilty and sly. More normally, "Sabs sounds game, but we'll see how it goes. Nothing wrong with being at Ista when other people are, of course," though that last is said more brightly than convincingly.

Nevermind E'sren's low whistled tune, his very unsubtle way of ignoring further talk on that topic. He's all too happy to indulge her in others, though, and in her pause there at that door. She'll have to indulge him his pauses too, anyway, when they see another tapestry or another pretty frame there and there. "Like we used to?" he asks, copying her phrasing but only so he can inquire after it. "Who's 'we'. And yeah, nothing wrong with being at Ista when other people are." He doesn't need convincing of that, but he might also have kept a little something to himself there.

Tela gives him a look right at the end there, and it's her turn to whistle a bit of what he'd whistled right before. Though she also answers, "Friends back home, back at Benden, I mean." For the most part she sounds nostalgic, but there's still that odd note. "We'd go every Turn, have a drink at midnight or around midnight, anyway, at the different Weyrs, heading westward. It was fun. I don't know if Solith's up to that, though." If she even is.

"Ah, I see, sounds like a good time." E'sren is peering at a little painting there on the wall, but he moves on from that and sighs. "Me and my family, we'd stay up, we'd try to stay up all the way but I know Seamus never could, he'd be out like a light snoring while we all drank hot cider and ate pie. And Ma would kiss us all on the forehead and tuck us in and say 'here's for another one, kids'." He shrugs next, smiles squintily over at her. "We could always start a new tradition, you know?"

Of course Tela has to not only look at that painting, but tilt it so she can look at its back, before setting iit back. "Which was Seamus again?" because he introduced them but, or so says Telavi's shamefaced look, there are so many of them. More slowly, "We could. What would you like? Tradition-wise? I do like the sound of that one, even if we aren't properly kids anymore... your family, it's like another world," and maybe she's voiced similar sentiments before, but not quite with that inexplicable quality to her voice.

E'sren doesn't take offense, he just answers, "The funny looking one." Also, "My brother." The only one Telavi would have met, anyway. He gets that smile on his face for all those times she's said something like that, he knows how strange his family is to some. "We could all pile into one of our weyrs, stay up late, giggle and tell stories. I think nowadays I'm more likely to be the one passing out, snoring. Maybe not if we go to Ista." Maybe. "We could make Ista our yearly thing, even," he suggests.

There's a chuckle, because, funny looking. "Maybe he says the same about you. We could." She twirls, too, light-footed as though she were wearing a full skirt instead of leathers. "Or maybe the tradition is that it's different each time. I don't know about Ista." Tela's too busy examining the ceiling, where she's found what might be an air vent, or perhaps a grille through which vintners pour boiling wine down onto their invaders. Not quite a completely different topic, just with a step or two skipped, "Are you still thinking about Boreal? Or Taiga?"

"Oh no doubt, but he's wrong," E'sren replies on the subject of his brother. He grins when she twirls, he just doesn't join in, his own lazy pace remains. "You don't know what about Ista? You don't like it?" He doesn't seem to have any preferences either way about it, but waits to hear hers regardless. And he doesn't notice the grille until she looks up at it, as always his eyes following hers because she sees things others don't always see. "What? Oh. Either one of those two for sure, I don't want any of the others. F'manis was my mentor so hopefully he'll just pick me, but I'd go with Z'ian too. Both of those guys are good men. Not like a lot of the others."

She laughs, then hops up towards the grille with a wave, just in case there's some vintner up there lurking. But when she moves on, she moves on without looking back. "Ista..." a lifted finger says, let her think about it. But first, "It really is the wingleader, the way you put it, isn't it? Setting the tone," though that's just the beginning. "I still like what Z'ian had to say, about Boreal. And you and F'manis is one thing, but what do you make of K'del these days? It seems like you and Ahruth would fit in pretty much anywhere, if only you wanted to." Telavi, determinedly not anything other than positive.

Hopefully there isn't a vat of wine spilling over into the spot they just stood in. As for K'del? He shrugs. "Not sure. I never really talk to him, he's nice. I dunno, Tel, he's all involved in all that stuff that happened. I just... I dunno." E'sren shakes his head, looks down at the ground they walk on as they meander. "I'm trying to keep my head down a lot, so I think it seems like we'd fit in anywhere. But I know myself, and I wouldn't be able to follow orders from someone whose intentions I didn't trust. A lot of the people back at the Weyr... I just don't know about them anymore." Which is kind of an awkward note on which to hear from their wingleader, who is using their link-through-dragon to reign them in. "Did you hear? Yeah. I guess we should..." Go back, and they do, quietly this time.



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