Nighthearth, High Reaches Weyr
With its entrance located between the kitchen and the living cavern, this tiny bubble cavern is cozy, always kept warm and is filled with comfortable chairs and a small round table. At the far end, there's a hearth, outlined in ruddy, aging bricks, where a pot of stew simmers in the evening hours. Generally quiet, the nighthearth is the haunt of insomniacs and those seeking quiet from the bustle of daily Weyr life.
It's cozy to sit by the nighthearth, even when it isn't night, and that means that Vienne has actually taken her jacket off; it's hanging over the back of her chair while she sits beside an old woman who appears to be teaching her to knit. The little bluerider has one leg tucked beneath the other, booted foot sticking out to the side, care taken not to touch it to the upholstery even though it looks like she's been here long enough that it's not wet anymore. The lesson appears to be finishing up, as the old woman packs her things back into her bag and gives some last pointers, but Vienne is mid-stitch and using all of her concentration to get the yarn and needles to move the right way, her tongue poked out to the side.
It's probably the weather outside that has Arekoth seeking to hunker down on the warm sands, where even now he tenders half a wherry to Iesaryth - his entrance fee. H'kon comes in looking to do much the same, in the company of other Avalanche wingriders, all their jackets glistening from fog that has clung until it has gathered force enough to turn to water on their jackets during their drills. A mug of klah is procured, and he takes his leave of his wingmates, aiming for the nighthearth, solo. It's recognition of that old woman that has him stopping near Vienne. It's her smile and trite, warm words, given as she takes her leave, warning him not to catch chill. And of course, once she's gone, that leaves him... standing there.
Vienne's eyes flick up, not for the sound of a damp wing moving through the caverns -- that's hardly anything unusual -- but for the moment later when her knitting instructor speaks to one of them over here by the hearth. Her glance recognizes H'kon and there's something about the old woman's warnings to him that makes the bluerider smile a little, to herself, tongue out of sight. She goes back to knitting, a belabored process, leaving him to stand there on his own for a moment, with his klah and his awkwardness, before she looks up again. "You can sit," she points out, not necessarily issuing an invitation though she does look to the empty chair beside her.
In that awkward time, H'kon is scanning the other chairs, going over his choices, not thinking to take himself away from maybe-too-near the little bluerider. "Hm?" brings his head back to Vienne, eyes going from unfocused to sharp in a split second. "Ah." He presses his lips together, shifts his klah into his other hand, and steps to that chair only recently vacated by the old woman. He doesn't sit until the klah has been set on a table, and his wet outer gear, stripped. "Vienne," is only once he is sitting, curt greeting. As if he hadn't been around her for at least a full minute by now.
"H'kon," Vienne returns, giving him a little smile, reserved but faintly amused around the edges. She wets her lips again and turns her attention back to the knitting, which is going so poorly that she furrows her brow as her latest stitch turns into more of a knot than anything else. And with that failure accomplished, her next glance is after that group of wet riders, whether they're still in the vicinity or not. "You didn't want to spend more time with your wingmates?" she wonders lightly, eyes dropping to her yarn again rather than checking on the man beside her.
As if his distancing himself from his wing hadn't even occurred to him, H'kon looks in the direction from which he'd come. "I sup with them when I can," is said a bit bemusedly, brow creasing. He leans forward, grasps that klah between both hands, and stares at the random patterning of steam coming off the top of it. "My time now is limited," offers itself, after a moment's thought, as a rational excuse for this division.
It's not quite the answer that Vienne expected, and so as the brownrider pitches forward, she turns to look at him, fingers halting as they must whenever she isn't paying attention. "Do you enjoy that?" she asks, a touch dubious as she considers his profile. But even before he answers, that skepticism ebs away and the faint quirk of a smile replaces it. She turns back to the knitting, though now it's to slip the needles free and start unraveling what little work she's accomplished.
H'kon lifts his head, the steam from his mug left to wind and twirl all on its own, unobserved. At least, unobserved by the brownrider. "Enjoy it," is repeated, brow staying knotted, though the slight pull at his the edges of his eyes lends itself more to the confused than the broody. "Enjoy what?"
Vienne's glance is only quick, just enough to give him an apologetic smile. "Nothing," she answers him, or rather doesn't answer. It's a reply meant to erase the whole topic, the notion of asking questions in the first place, and she gives a little shake of her head. She balances her needles on the arm of the chair to rewind the crinkled yarn. Her fingers slow for a moment, inexplicably, given that wrapping yarn around itself is not something that takes much thought.
Total erasure is a hard thing to come by; H'kon stays looking at Vienne, same lines in his forehead, a little frown on his mouth, for a few moments. In the end, he doesn't press. Just lifts his mug of klah to his lips, carefully sips, and lowers it down once more. By the time his mug is resting on his knee, he's fallen to watching her yarn-wrapping. Even the slow kind. Awkwardness is not reserved for standing alone.
That smile starts to creep back onto her face, private and amused as she realizes that he's watching her. She doesn't seem to mind. As the yarn-wrapping comes to a close, Vienne even turns in her seat just a touch, facing him a bit more so that he has a better view as she restarts her project, hands swift and then halting, undoing and redoing, as she tries to remember the ritual. In the midst of it, she checks on him again, her smile shy but at least meant to be shared with him.
H'kon hardly even seems aware of Vienne's shifting, half-mesmerised (maybe it's in part related to the cause of those dark semi-circles beneath his eyes) by the movements of her hands, stare unbroken even when he raises his mug to sip some more of that klah - although when the pattern breaks, backs up, re-starts, his eyebrows do tend to twitch. Any reception of that smile is in the periphery of vision and mind. It might be what prompts a hint of a sigh.
It falters, her smile, when he doesn't look, when he seems to sigh like that. Her mouth pinches small and she lets her chin drop, eyes settling on the yarn and needles without trying to press any futher interaction from him. He can watch, if that makes him happy. Vienne will focus on the process, the steps she was taught: through the loop, around the needle, back through, slide the loop off. It's those last two steps that give her trouble, so the movement of her hands is smooth, then confused, then smooth again.
And they might go on like this for some time - might have, even, if not that on one of those points where H'kon raises up his mug, the sip misfires, producing a loud, sucking, snorking sort of sound that makes the brownrider start. No klah is spilled, but all at once his feet have shifted to a wider stance, and he looks first about him, then to Vienne. "Sorry," comes with a twist at the edge of his mouth, and not the fake smile kind.
The sudden sound doesn't make her jump, but Vienne does look up at him, and when she sees that he's surprised himself, she can't help it, her smile comes back, slowly and trying not to laugh, though there's a merry light in her eyes. "Good klah?" she teases him lightly. But she does catch sight of his smile and it seems to please her.
"Umm." Green eyes are down to the mug, a little over half empty. It's given a swirl, and that accompanies his re-arranging of himself into the chair, trying to ease his shoulders back, trying to let his feat stretch out - though how far they can go before they lift from the ground is minimal, and he certainly doesn't try swing them. "A bit bitter," he decides, though it doesn't stop his bringing the mug again. The sip is, socially acceptably, quiet this time.
She's familiar with that problem, trying to sit back in a chair while reaching the ground at the same time. It's probably why Vienne isn't nestled comfortably in her seat but perched toward the edge, so that one boot can stay on the floor. "I like to sweeten mine," she notes of the bitter klah. And there is a mug on the table beside her, half-gone, long forgotten and definitely cold. When H'kon manages a more refined drink, she grins at him briefly before, with some effort, tucking the expression away again. By the time she looks back down, a few stitches have fallen off her needle and she sighs with a disgust suggesting this isn't the first time she's had this problem either. "How is something so simple and so complicated?"
H'kon does see that expression from her, at least. This time, the pull at his features is faintly uncomfortable. He adjusts a bit more in the chair, and finally leans forward, mug of klah between his hands again, this time suspended in the air, while his arms take their support from his knees. "I should think it's a matter of familiarity," is mused after a moment, even to a question that may well have been entirely rhetorical. "Rules become learned. Their purpose must be instinctive, if they are to be most effective."
"That's what it feels like," Vienne agrees in a mumble, leaving his uncomfortable expression to be all his own while she tries to fix the mess she's made of her project. "One of those things where, if you do it enough, it just clicks and happens without thinking. Instinctive," like he said. "It should just be 'slide this loop through that loop' but instead I'm worrying about how the needles are angled, how tightly everything is pulled. Too tight and I can't get the needle through, too loose and everything flops around and falls off." It's probably a good deal more than he cares to hear about knitting and so she frowns to herself rather than lifting another glance to him.
H'kon takes another (quiet) sip of that bitter klah, his head canting thereafter, Vienne's struggle now more carefully observed, instead of simply serving the purpose of inducing a sleep-deprived quasi-trance. "Perhaps," is offered, again a bit after the fact, "your focus should be more on making each movement like the last, and less on each movement individually." The balls of his feet press the floor, and he sits straight again. "That is much how I finally mastered the making of Arekoth's straps."
"Like a dance," Vienne remarks. Though still not looking up, that smile is coming back, the one that makes some mysterious connection and tickles her. She's mostly fixed her issue with the yarn, getting back to the point where she can try again, but it's still a jerky process, probably because her focus is a bit divided, distracted by the brownrider. It's a few beats after he finishes talking, beats where her hands still don't move smoothly, that she asks, "What is Arekoth like?"
H'kon lifts his eyebrows vaguely, some sort of affirmation of Vienne's analogy, albeit subtle. Any thoughts resulting in that are kept neatly to himself, his attention moving toward the hearth now, missing those next attempts of Vienne's at the knitting. Her question catches him quite off guard, and brings an immediately cautious look to him when he turns back to her. The mug is gripped maybe a bit more tightly. "Arekoth?" That guardedness does not dissipate, although, "Like Arekoth," is certainly not insincere. "What is Oswinth like?" seems more a means of proving a point than an actual question.
She probably should have known that question was coming, no matter what H'kon's real intention is, but it snags her, causing a quick inhale and making her miss a stitch completely. She drops her chin further, ducking her head to hide much of her expression, though it's clear her lips are pressed firmly together. "You remind me of him," she might sound a little reluctant to admit it. "Or what he must be like to those who don't know him. Anyway, I'm sorry. I just wondered." And with a shake of her head, she starts to slide the knitting down her needles, where it won't fall off when she folds them together and sticks through her wound ball.
And that was certainly not the response H'kon was expecting. She might not truly see his hackles coming down, but there is certainly a steady relaxing of the guard. "He is," is something of an insistance. "Like Arekoth. At all times. And without apology." A peace offering, perhaps, and one that is left on the table, so to speak, while he goes back almost studiously to the last dregs of klah in his mug.
No, she doesn't see the anxious hairs settling back into place, but when Vienne looks up for his explanation, she doesn't see that sharp suspicion any longer, doesn't feel the gaurded wariness rolling off him. She studies H'kon while he studies his klah, checking that this really is all the information he'll give her before she starts extrapolating the meaning behind it. She shifts her focus to the hearth, a safe place to look while the knitting remains folded in her hand. "Well," she says with a laugh. "He doesn't sound anything like me. But I guess he wouldn't be like anyone but him." Her mouth twists shyly to one side. Awkwardness is contagious.
"I know very little of you," H'kon says, no short pun intended, no humour glinting in his eye or tugging at his face, even slightly, "but no. I imagine he is not like you. He is," and he shrugs, and leans forward to place that empty mug on nearby table, "like Arekoth."
She doesn't assume there's any short pun, not considering the source. But there's little Vienne can say to his assessment, which is hardly more than repetiton of her own. Her shoulders grow tight, lifted toward her ears and then she twists to stow her knitting in the pocket of her jacket. A deep breath seems to settle some of her anxiety, hands the awkwardness back to him. She gives H'kon a helpless shrug, a smile with no particular meaning behind it other than that she smiles readily at other people. "Well, okay then."
Once that mug is on the table, H'kon cannot but look at it. Vienne's shifting, stowing, serves as excuse. "I ought to go," is offered to the bluerider with only the slightest glance her way. And like that, he's up, reaching for his jacket with one hand, his mug with the other. "Best of luck in your knitting. May it become instinctive."
Vienne is not surprised. She starts to sink sideways in her chair, a shoulder to its back, but the repose only lasts for a second before she's sitting up again to reach for her own cold mug. "Take this too?" she asks, holding it up for him. She doesn't bother thanking him for wishing her luck. Instead, she just reaches for her own jacket. The nighthearth doesn't seem quite so cozy anymore.
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