Logs:Nothing To Fear
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| RL Date: 8 December, 2013 |
| Who: G'laer, Teisyth, Telavi, Solith |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: After Ghena gets G'laer to lose his temper and Teisyth controls the situation, Telavi does damage control. |
| Where: Lake Shore, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 18, Month 6, Turn 33 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Ghena/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Backdated! |
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| Lake Shore, High Reaches Weyr The rest of the bowl may be barren, grass barely surviving at best, but here by the lake, it's brilliantly green in the warmer months: thickening and thriving in the silty, boulder-dotted soil just before it transitions to soft sand and thence to the cool, clear water itself. A large freshwater lake fed by a low waterfall, it not only provides warm-weather bathing space for humans and dragons, but has one end fenced off as a watering hole for the livestock in the feeding grounds. The water there is often muddier than the rest of the clear lake, whose shallows drop off abruptly several yards out into deep water, and whose edge undulates against the coarse-hewn bowl wall: here close enough to just be bramble-covered rocks, there far enough away that a narrow land bridge divides the main lake from a smallish pond. Between are several rocky outcroppings that form excellent makeshift diving points, though only one -- across the bridge -- has a set of narrow, slippery, quite possibly tempting stairs.
Solith had been dreaming and-- she does? They do? « Teisyth? » It's a fluttering gust of a response, if one that gradually collects more direction, still tinged by the heat of spilled ichor and the wherry-smell, too. « By the lake? » Not Olveraeth? Wasn't Tela the one duty tonight? Oops. It isn't uncommon for Teisyth to make this variety of mistake. Her sense of timing and days... it's just not something she really pays attention to. She's ever surprised when it's time for lectures, even though it happens at the same time every day. So distracted is she by the effort of keeping her rider pinned without hurting him or letting him hurt himself in the process of trying to free himself that she doesn't seem to notice the confusion. « Yes. Ghena and Knioth just left. » And there's a sense that the anger is a direct result of something bad that pertains to the blue pair. Heavy sigh. Or is that Telavi's? There's a passing sense of cloth over skin, movement that turns into Solith's own movement. Perhaps someone else has been told of Knioth and his rider, but she doesn't share that with the littler green, only, « We come. » If that moonlit shape weren't telltale enough, growing larger with her descent, landing just out of the reach of each other's wings at the lake edge. Tela hadn't taken the time to employ Solith's straps, either, possibly a bad example right there, nor are her light, brief clothes traditional weyrling-overseeing attire-- but thanks to Teisyth, she's awake. As she hurries towards the littler dragon, wincing here and there when a sandaled foot slips on a pebble, « Why so angry? » It's Solith's question as well as her rider's, but somehow as though some degree of anger were something close to normal. Teisyth hesitates. She hesitates so long that it becomes a pregnant pause. There's tittering in her mind. Were she a cleverer or more secretive dragon, it probably wouldn't be possible to hear one Teisyth debate with a second Teisyth, but... Teisyth 1: « But if I say that then Ghena an' Knioth might get into trouble, » Teisyth 2: « But what else can you say? It ain't like there's another good explanation for it. » Teisyth 1: .... Nothing, because Teisyth 2 is right. So then directed to Solith instead of just where Solith can probably hear it, « Ghena had Knioth get G'laer all wet, an' he was leavin', but then they started at each other - just with words, an' things got pretty-- » Well, there's a reason Teisyth is still needing to sit on her lifemate. The way Solith tilts her head may be a clue that she's listening in, but then her lack of interruption doesn't have anything to do with subterfuge either. « --Pretty not pretty? » she offers. « She, » Telavi, « doesn't like getting wet when she didn't pick it either. Her hair takes a long time to dry, » never mind what it does to her clothes. « He won't splash her, will he? » Regardless, Telavi's waving to Teisyth and then bending down-- out of reach of the younger green's wings, should Teisyth get boisterous-- with hands on knees, to look towards where her rider must be. "G'laer?" It isn't so much a question of identity as a status check. « That 'bout sums it up. » Solith is so smart. Teisyth's admiration shows. « Nah. He don't want nothin' to do with splashin'. It might be safe t'let him up now. » The green thinks about it, mulling over the sensations she can glean from his closely guarded thoughts. There's heat, intense heat, and the sour scent of too much sweat. Obviously, from that Teisyth is able to gather some information and she looks to Telavi a long moment before slowly shifting off of her lifemate. His face shows itself as pinkened or perhaps reddened under the light of the risen moon. He is wet, though it becomes more visible as he rolls onto a side and presses himself up onto his feet. His back took the brunt of the splash. In answer to the assistant weyrlingmaster's query, he grunts. That's informative, right? But at least he's not sprinting in whatever direction Ghena and Knioth departed, so there's that. Solith doesn't think to preen or anything, but she is perceptibly pleased. At least, until the sweat part, which she must promptly share with Telavi given how the latter wrinkles her nose. By the time he's shifting, though, that part of her expression's smoothed back to something like normal and she's straightened up, too. She waits. She keeps looking at him. After a little while, "She must've really got at you." She has praise for Teisyth, too, or so Solith relays: Teisyth did just the right thing. G'laer was good. He was forcing the cork back into place on the bottle that is all of his emotions. But then Tela says that one thing, and that's all it takes for G'laer to pop. "Who the shell decided it was a good idea to throw fifteen turn olds onto the sand and then let them act like children once they've got a dragon to care for?! She's sharding lucky she got one of the ones who's self-sufficient and cares for her. Doesn't she have any sharding clue that this job is serious and dangerous and not for children?!" Rant Rant. The last three words are enunciated sharply and separately. His expression is distinctly one of anger. At least he's not spitting now, but he is pacing and throwing his hands up at the sky at various intervals. It's uncharacteristic of the stoic greenrider to say the least. Maybe they swapped places somewhere along the line, if not necessarily with each other. Telavi stands there, steady, feet a little less than her shoulders' width apart. She doesn't make to interrupt, she doesn't fidget with her hair. When G'laer's gotten that much ranted out, she says, "You can tell me what went down, if you want." That much, if only that, seems simple enough. "She wants me to talk to her. Wants me to be brotherly." He makes it sound so unreasonable, "And when I try, she acts like a bloody child. And then gets upset that I'm not acting like more of a kid. I'm not a sharding child. I'm turning twenty-bloody-eight turns old in less than a seven. I'm her whole lifetime in turns away from a time when I played games and indulged in childish behavior. She's fifteen bloody turns old," There's a lot of blood, apparently, "And she's been babied for all of it. Should have hauled her out to see the burnt fields in Nabol, should take her there now so she can see what hunger looks like, what hopelessness looks like. Make her grow the fuck up a little. Throwing water on your brother isn't the fucking way to make friends." That last is a little non sequitur, but there are emotions here now. Mostly anger. So perhaps G'laer's lapse in logic can be forgiven. "When she's in a real wing, that's going to be a wake-up call," Telavi says, and loosens her long hair enough that she can begin to get it back into a braid with quick, deft motions instead of just a ponytail. "I really wish I could say that Nabol's going to be back to normal by the time she can fly there straight, but it's just not, is it? And here you can't get away from all these things she wants, being in the barracks and all. She's right there." "No." G'laer's answer about Nabol is hard, harsh, but no-nonsense. His jaw clenches after speaking the word, as if providing finality. He stands staring at nothing for a moment, Teisyth shifting nervously behind him, wings fluttering open just a touch and then resettling. Then he sighs, figuratively stepping away from the edge of the knife, and he turns to face the water before thumping down onto it, legs drawn up and arms resting atop his knees. "They're all right there. And it doesn't help that Quinlys wants me to bond with them. I don't even bond with people my own age, let alone children too busy playing games to see the world for the cruel and unforgiving place it is." Which might be the cliffnotes version of the book that is G'laer. "Do you want to tell Quinlys you can't do it?" Telavi doesn't weight that can't with judgement of her own, doesn't even set it off with quotes or a lilt in her voice... though she could. She says it as though it could be a real choice... and then she fastens off her braid. "There's absolutely no reason in the world that I would want to." Bond with them. "Especially not if my sister is an example of the quality of individual I'd be wasting my time on." G'laer's eyes turn to the green. "I Impressed. I'm meant to be here. But Impressing doesn't change who you are in a heartbeat or overnight. She's the social one. I can work with them without bonding with them. I can work them better by not bonding with them. Do you have any idea how fucked up things get when you care about people? It's why they don't put weyrmates in the same wing, why some guard units are only men or only women. There's an appropriate degree of camaraderie and civility and teamwork, but you don't have to get squishy with anyone to get there. Shouldn't." G'laer's don't do Squishy. Does Telavi have any idea? Telavi? Another Telavi might round her eyes, might inquire as to really, is that why wings are composed that way, she'd had no idea! This Telavi has to bite her lip and stare at the lake for a moment, as long as he isn't looking at her anyway. Or maybe it's the moonlight on the lake. "It's too bad there's... 'squishiness'... inherent in the situation," she murmurs when he's gotten that far. "But then, as you say, she's the social one. So you don't have to? Or do you think she'll change you, too?" "We'll change. We both will. It's impossible not to change in a situation like this, isn't it?" G'laer's anger has dissipated and now he sounds downright philosophical. "When you're mind is so close to another mind... It's more powerful than your heart being bound to another heart. Or maybe it's powerful because it's both heart and mind in a way that's inhuman." Inhuman, in this instance, has the implication of beautiful, given the reverence with which he speaks the word. "I'm not even squishy with my dragon," Except for those few fleeting moments where he almost might be, "But all of a sudden I'm a greenrider and people look at me like I should be able to-- I don't know, flap my hands at people and make sympathetic faces or googley eyes at every passing ass that's even marginally appealing. They expected an open book before, and that's not the case. Not ever going to be the case. But now it's worse because they expect me to be softer because of her. I'm not soft, Tela. I'm just not." It's the informal use of her name, and maybe it's not altogether appropriate, but the conversation doesn't feel all that formal just now. Not when there's not any other weyrlings to watch and report back that (gasp!) G'laer had a real conversation with someone. Powerful. Inhuman. Beautiful. Foreign. For all that Telavi's herself a greenrider. "No, you're right," she says, while managing not to flap her hands this time. If the nickname came as a surprise, more than likely it was for its rarity rather than informality. "You're not soft. You were a man, an adult male, a guard, trained," or so the story goes, "to be in control of your actions. This wasn't in your skill set, was it? You're not a girl." If he hasn't interrupted by now, she continues with a considering air. "Your wannabe-guards, you made sure they knew exactly what they were getting into, didn't you? And you could kick them out if they didn't measure up." G'laer's brow furrows, though not until she asks him of the wannabes. Up until then, his expression betrayed just the slightest bit of relief; finally, there's at least one person that seems to understand, at least to some degree. His lips twitch slightly at the indication that he was trained to be in control of his actions; clearly, that training failed him in the last hour. "No. It's in my skill set to be efficient and effective. Feelings aren't a part of that. My units were always all male." So there's that; and clearly his inexperience in dealing with particularly younger females hasn't done him any favors here so far. Then, he speaks quietly, in a way that has him composed and careful. "New recruits didn't always know what they were getting into when they got into it. I didn't. Not exactly. But they learn quickly what is expected of them, what they have to do to stay, and you're quickly indoctrinated into believing you want to stay, because to not stay is failure and failure is unacceptable." His arms shift on his knees so he can wrap one hand over the other between them, looking distant now. His fingers of one hand slide slowly across the backs of the other; it's more fidgeting than he's probably ever done in public. "Part of the trouble here is that we all feel too safe. The world isn't safe, and the world doesn't care if you have a dragon; not everywhere. But here we're made to feel protected, and special and even invincible if we don't fall victim to our own stupidity. There's no real threat that if we fail we'll be sent away, or be anything other than a dragonman. It lets them think they-" The other weyrlings, "-can afford to play games and be stupid." And clearly he thinks that's a mistake. Telavi takes all this in, and as he hadn't interrupted her, so too does she not interrupt him. She listens. And then she says, "I wonder if they would have done it, the recruits, if they did know." And then she asks, "What else do you think they could be, if not a rider? Where would they be sent, which Weyr would take another's leavings?" She asks it simply, as though he just might be able to come up with not merely answers but solutions. "By the time they know, most would rather die than live with the shame of failing out. There are exceptions, of course." G'laer's eyes darken briefly and he pulls them from the lake to look at Telavi. "That's the trouble. There isn't anything they could be. Maybe now in an Interval, they could be put to other tasks, but that's part of it too, the Interval. Thread isn't a real and present danger, so the kids stay kids instead of growing up by necessity. How do you equal the fear that's so effective in creating a fighting force when the threat is passed? Even seeing J'vain every day isn't enough to make them feel it's real. And who can really blame them? Short of a freak incident, we won't fight it in our lifetimes. We won't see it. And by the time it comes again, it'll be little more than a memory of something people once had to fear and may again. Like the boogieman under the bed." "The people who play games," says the girly greenrider, the one who talked her way into keeping her hair long and likes it that way, "survive just as much as everyone else." She says it as though she's tasting it, testing it, trying it on for size. Telavi tilts her head, glances back at their dragons and then back at G'laer. Quieter, "Does it feel as though you were... good for more, before? Back when you were a guard?" "They do now. Once upon a time, it wasn't always so." G'laer sighs, letting his palms run over his knees before pushing himself back up onto his feet, the movement smooth, but with the telltales of a certain weariness. "Yes." He answers candidly as he turns toward the shorter woman. "But when I was a trainee, I was about as useless as I am now. I have hopes that I won't always be limited in this way. Can't say that I like that Quinlys wouldn't give me extra to do so I'm better prepared to be on a level with my age peers, but nothing I can do about it." Nothing besides what he's already doing about it, in secret. "I don't imagine I'm so different from anyone else, preferring to do the job instead of training to do the job. But the training is necessary, so." It is what it is, and he is who he is, and that's all there is. "You must know that there are wingriders, already, who don't take it too seriously," says the girly greenrider, the one who wore-- who earned-- a silver thread of her own. "Wingriders that may be in your same wing, and might even be your age. But as you said, people don't change overnight. She won't change overnight. I don't know what you were like at fifteen, if you always did the smart thing, the levelheaded thing." The non-furious thing. G'laer's jaw clenches when she speaks of his fifteenth turn, but his expression finds neutrality. "Wingriders I can punch." It might be a joke. "I'd be flayed alive if I punch my sister. The other nine and my parents would all take a pound of flesh." He looks toward Teisyth, who looks right back at him. "I'm trying. With her." Not Teisyth. "But I don't know what she wants me to talk to her about. I don't do clothes, shoes, or boys." And isn't that all fifteen turn old girls talk about? "And I'm not inclined to talking about myself." With some apparent exceptions. "But what's the point of trying if she's just going to throw a childish fit when whatever it is I'm trying isn't good enough?" She's still composed, for all that a smile curls the corners of her mouth just a little at all the punching. The rest, though-- that smile can't survive, particularly there at the end. "I'd be surprised," Telavi says, "if you didn't have an opinion about clothes if they were uniforms, for example, for practicality and maybe even," she pauses to consider. But it's only an elliptical reference to that encounter in the Snowasis, "Passing." If it could be a loaded word, maybe it's not quite as much the way she says it. "Boots, weatherproofed boots, and warm socks to keep them from chafing. I could come up with something for boys, too, but the rest is the kicker, isn't it? Sometimes... sometimes we upset people. Sometimes we get upset." Her gaze slips away, towards the lake again; but then she looks more deliberately from him to Teisyth, and back. "If asked, I have opinions on a lot of things." G'laer answers of the fashion talk, "But she doesn't want to have to ask. I asked what she wanted me to talk about. Instead of answering, she thought having Knioth douse me would somehow get her what she wanted. He frowns, "I'm never just going to know what people want me to tell them. Other women do it too. They look at me in this way, or say leading things, but--" His brow furrows, "I don't just know. My mind doesn't work the way most seem to, so I don't assume, and I don't volunteer because I'm not... I just don't." He shrugs his shoulders and the reaches up a hand to push through his dirt-crusted hair (thanks, Teisyth!). Her expression grows pensive, and with it comes quiet sympathy. Finally, musingly, words come too. "It means more-- to some people-- when someone doesn't have to be asked; it can feel like they care about them enough to pay attention, to notice. It's like remembering a Turnday, or another special day, and knowing-- knowing them well enough to know-- what they'd be delighted by, without having to ask. Picking up on the things they've said, what they notice at a Gather or at dinner, remembering. Sometimes asking feels like... demanding, too much. On both sides. But," Tela's smile reappears briefly, more in her eyes than anything. "That's hard on someone whose head doesn't work that way. Especially when he's dealing with someone who maybe had dreams of her much-older brother coming back and being family, not-equals but closer to equals, someone with a," air quotes here, "connection. But I do have an idea." "She herself pointed out that we're practically strangers. I left the Weyr before she was born. I visited every turn, but how well do you know someone you see once or sometimes twice a turn. So how does it make any kind of sense to expect that I would know her well enough to know what she'd want me to say when we don't know each other at all?" At least G'laer doesn't ask how it's 'fair.' Such a question would probably make him sound far too much like he was, in fact, of an age with almost all the other weyrlings. "I don't even know what she wanted. She almost got me kicked out of candidacy so she could have the spotlight to herself on Hatching Day. I'm just about convinced that women are more ridiculous than dragons." And he has a woman dragon. Go figure. "No offense." Telavi's, "Right," is altogether too light for that last, but at least she also seems for that moment amused. "See, it doesn't make logical sense normally, but it does make sense if you've been raised at a Weyr and there's family and harper songs," which are fun but may have done the world an injustice if her complicated tone is anything to go by, "and talk of connections and 'blood is thicker than water' and all that. And you're fifteen, which is something she'll grow out of, and besides you're probably raised with more stories of your big brother than the other way around. But," she shrugs, "consider a little slip of hide, an I-O-U if you will, saying something like 'You can ask me a question,' and you can hand it back and forth to each other before someone loses it," beat, "so to speak." "I was raised in a Weyr," There's the half-hearted protest that overlaps family and harper songs. Then G'laer quiets to listen to the rest. He shakes his head, "I damned well might've suggested that, before she decided to soak me." Well, soak is a bit of an exaggeration. He shakes his head. "Maybe we're better off staying strangers until she can grow up a bit." Teisyth shifts to move alongside G'laer, dipping her head down to huff at him. "Yes, that's really what I think." He tells her firmly, staring her down. She must get bored because the staring contest only lasts until she-- « Star! Did you see it?! It flew! » A shooting star and she bounds to the edge of the lake, straining upward, trying to see it, even though it's path was short and brilliant, the light already burnt out. For whatever reason, this makes G'laer laugh, an act that has the rest of the tension releasing itself from his form. "Fuck it. I'm done trying to figure out girls." His being raised in a Weyr, it's something that Telavi waves off, all half-hearted as it is. "There is a middle ground," she remarks, but then there's Teisyth and a shooting star-- did Solith see it too? certainly from Teisyth, if the younger green were disposed to share-- and then the rest just has Tela laugh too. "Tonight, anyway," she says comfortably enough, and waves: go on, go on with you two. Go?! No, no, no, no, no! There is no going. Not after a shooting star! (Which, of course she was inclined to share. It would probably be a shock if half the barracks were not now awake with cartoon recreations in absurd colors flooding their minds.) No, Teisyth needs to stay here. She needs to stare at the sky just in case there's another to be seen. G'laer does go though, not far, just to stand at Teisyth's side, his eyes casting skyward his manner as reserved as hers is unrestrained. Eventually, she'll tire and he'll take her back to the barracks, but for now, the sounds of night at High Reaches Weyr are the only to be heard, serene in it's own way. Before so much of that, another laugh, lighter now; Telavi's easy, she'll be the one to go, and Solith with her. Only then Teisyth's still watching, and Solith wants to too... but from up high, up by the Star Stones, sharing that even vaster view. |
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