Logs:Out with the Wash
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| RL Date: 9 April, 2013 |
| Who: D'kan, Mave |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: What usually happens in public baths: bathing in public, and talking while doing it. Experiences and concerns are shared and sorted. |
| Where: Bathing Pools, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 20, Month 6, Turn 31 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: N'ky/Mentions, K'zin/Mentions |
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D'kan enters from the corridor, weeighed down by a full change of clothes, including an extra pair of boots, all bundled carefully in a large towel. On top of that is another towel, not nearly as clean looking, holding its own treasures, so it's not too big a surprise when the weyrling comes fairly close to giving Mave a rude awakening. As it is, he manages to only bump that dangling boot before veering away. The dirtier bundle is dropped wholly into the laundry bin, then he tries again for a seat, taking a few inches at the very end of the bench before he starts unlacing his boots. The teen is given a curious look, but aside from clumsiness, he doesn't do too much more to wake her, though more sounds are inevitable. Tired is tired. Bumped, the boot falls right off, then the leg slips from its precious perch on stone, and Mave's knee hits the floor. A second, then a low, whiny groan elicits from the girl's buried face. It ends off in a few, exaggerated sobs. Her right hand scoots unsteadily in towards her face, and she manages to turn her face to rest her cheek there; a tiny improvement that barely gives her the ability to cast her eyes straight down to try and glean who's there on the bench with her, disturbing her steamy tomb. "It's a trap," she mumbles, not trying too hard to enunciate. "It's all a dirty trap." "True enough," D'kan murmurs in reply before tugging his second boot off his foot. Now that Mave is awake and talking, he doesn't bother trying to keep it quiet as it clumps to the ground, the echo cut off by the humidity. Does the weyrling actually know what Mave is talking about? Nope. Does this concern him? Not apparently. After getting his shirt unbuttoned, he stands so he can start undoing his belt, likely headed for one of the bathing pools. Only once he's standing does he give Mave another glance. "They working you to death or something?" "If you can believe it," sighs Mave, eyes tracking him as he comes alongside her, "I actually asked for this myself." Seeing him in action somehow inspires her, and she struggles her far shoulder up until she can rest on her arms then, with a few more twitchy muscles, sit up. A dirty glance down at her still laced boot suggests how interested she feels in leaning over to remove it. There's a fair chance she'd just end up on the floor, likened to how she started. "Lulled in by the first couple of days not being as bad as I thought..." "Hmm," D'kan says in a low voice, sounding as if agrees, "sounds like a trap, all right." He removes his belt and winds it in on itself before placing it with the clean clothes. Shirt is removed, tossed into laundry. Socks go the same way. Trousers. He's wearing shorts, at least, and pauses before removing those. They remain. It is an unfortunate truth that lately D'kan's morning exercises have included tossing around old bags of firestone, so on top of the usual sweat stink, there's also that underlying scent of sulfurous rock. "What is it they have you doing these days?" he asks while rolling up the trousers before they're also added to the laundry bin. Grunting and groaning as only a teenager can, Mave bats a hand for her boot, eventually getting fingers around the laces to undo them with stiff fingers. "I've been doing... fight training," she relates, hooking a toe behind the remaining heel and kicking the article off. Bare toes wiggle gratefully, even as she looks up and wrinkles her nose at a whiff of him. Ah, well, it's life. She smells like no daisy, herself. "I'd get aches and pains and stuff, but it's like my body's been storing it all up for just this moment." Struggling to remove her shirt when shoulders scream to be raised, she gives up once or twice with a whiny grumble and kick of feet before achieving her goal. The girl's chest and belly are marked with fading red spots, big patches like welts that used to be worse but look bright now just because of her fair skin. D'kan gives Mave enough of a glance to see the red spots, but he doesn't dwell there, instead leaning down to shove his soiled boots under the bench before he picks up the bundled towel with his clean clothes. He waits, then, arms just barely holding the bundle closed as he gives the baths a quick study. "You training to join up with guards or something?" he asks the teen before grabbing a second clean towel, tossed to the bench, presumably for Mave as he soon takes a third towel. "Thanks," she scoops up the towel, wincing now more resigned, "And, no. Just-- training." Mave's eyes roll cautiously, attempting to pluck a better response out of the misty air, but none comes, and she goes with the flow of her tongue. "I guess some people would say it's good for me to know, but it didn't start out for that." Yawning briefly, she shoves out of her slacks and, holding the towel to herself in not particularly modest fashion, heads in for the pools, slowing midway to kind of angle and check out where D'kan goes. "I think I can tell what you've been doing this morning," she mentions, tapping her nose with two fingers. D'kan does not pry for more information, accepting Mave's answer with a single, slow nod. Some mild hesitation precedes the removal of laundry-binning of his shorts, then he follows, his own towel strategically placed. He's not the cringing sort of hold bred, but he's not about to flaunt, either. He grabs a sack of sweetsand, then sinks into the hotter of the two bathing pools while setting his towel carefully aside. "Sorry about that," he's saying a moment later, wincing once at the heat, then sinking right into it. "Inevitable, I'm afraid." The aroma is quickly doused by the water and carried away by the steam. "Physical training's good for all sorts of things. Some small hurts now are better than worse hurts later on, right?" As to the scent, now vanishing, Mave shrugs off the need for apology, "Quite," she assures him, as well as trying to pass off that she may've told someone they smelled. "Suppose the same goes for firestone tossing," rather than testing with a toe, she drives a leg straight into the water, slipping into the pool with a hard hiss of pain and relief twisted around the rod of her sore back, "Y'don't do it for yourselves, so much as people later." Having not bothered with sweetsand, soaking must be key; she sinks into the water and lets out all the strength from her bones, becoming a shapeless, useless lump in the heat lapping into her. "Say." From starting to fall back, tips of her hair risking the pool's surface, her head lifts. She gets a hand up to begin wrapping her hair in a bun while eying D'kan, "Mind if I ask you something about your dragon bond, then?" Easing onto one of those underwater benches, D'kan also seems more immediately interested in relaxing than any heavy-duty cleaning right now. "Well... right now it's for me," he admits while leaning back, slouching enough that he can rest his head against the lip of the pool. "But I guess in the bigger picture..." He trails off and shrugs, shoulders just rising above the level of water before dipping back down. He's quick to nod his assent to her question before adding, smiling crookedly, "Aside from having one, I'm no expert, but you can go ahead and ask." "That's fine," assures Mave, finishing up the bun and then nestling her head back down, neck against the pool's upper edge, "I was just wondering if you... I mean, if anything's changed? Physically?" Blinking down at the water, eyebrows pop up in amusement; well, there's this, with the firestone. "Sorry, how can I be more clear..." fingers play over the water's surface as she practices moving her arms, wincing along, "Headaches? Or pains? Or anything that you didn't feel before, but you're feeling now, that isn't associated with the tossing?" D'kan remains rather still, except for this head, allowing everything else to relax into the water's heat, which leaves his arms just slightly buoyant. "Changed," he echoes quietly, eyes focused on the chamber's ceiling for a moment as he considers. "It was kind of weird at first... feeling what the dragon feels. Mostly hunger. But you get used to separating your sensations from the dragon's." He lifts his head to look across the water at Mave. "Only thing about me that's changed is my head. What's in it," he continues, shrugging and giving the girl a halfhearted smile. "Sorry... why do you ask?" Water sloshing lets her hear him looking up so she straightens her neck to return the favor, lips pursued then opening, "Just... wondering." Which sounds an awful lot like just training, till Mave runs her palms over the bath's surface and shrugs stiffly, "A friend of mine who Impressed with you said that he'd been having headaches since the Hatching, and I couldn't really think of anything helpful." Having drifted her chin down, she course corrects, smiling one-sidedly at him, "Hadn't heard about it much before. Got curious. Thanks." Shoulders start to ease back; she knocks into the pool edge, humming. "Did we-- sorry, have we briefly met before, or?" A hard squint tries to pick out identifiable features from D'kan's face, comes up indecisive. "I imagine if you fight it, or if you can't manage to separate yourself from the dragon," D'kan starts to reply, brow furrowing, "I could see why you might get headaches from it. Seems to me, your friend is doing something wrong. No offense meant, really, but... stuff like that, he should go to the weyrlingmasters. Can't imagine a rider'd be much good getting headaches all the sharding time." He turns away from Mave briefly to open the small sack of sweetsand, then hops onto the underwater bench so he can start soaping above the belly. At her squint and last question, the weyrling rolls the shoulder currently getting sudsy. "Seen you around. Mostly with N'ky and K'zin. Saw you at the dance a few months back now. Mave, right? I'm D'kan. Don't think we've formally met, though. Until now." "No..." Mave's not so offended, merely thoughtful as she bites the side of her lip. Even that's a wince, eliciting an experimental prod of her tongue inside her cheek till she shudders, shaking her head to dismiss the sting, "I told him healers and them, so. Hopefully it all evens out." A glimpse of worry before it all rolls away, like the washing water. Responsibility weighs not here. "Oh, D'kan. You know, it's funny, since I know all your names from running bets. It's like, until I get a face, you're more number than person." As she rises from her slump to try and get leverage to sit up, a pause takes her; eyebrows dip down along with her lower lip to show a studious reexamination of her sentence. "Is that-- rude? Anyway, yeah, Mave. And my greetings and respects to Kazavoth." "Makes sense to me," D'kan replies before reaching around to get some of the sweetsand onto the back of his neck, then down both arms. Then he sinks back down, letting the water carry the suds away from his skin. "Kinda how I always saw betting, to be honest." He'll just leave it at that while running hands over the just-scrubbed skin, making sure all the sweetsand has been rinsed away. A sweep of the arm aids the surface bubbles in their trek toward the drain spout, then he ducks down for a few seconds to get his face and hair good and wet. After resurfacing, he wipes the water from his eyes and turns back to Mave. "If it comes up again, make sure your friend talks to the weyrlingmaster?" he urges, voice low but insistent. "There's the obvious performance issues, but... eventually we're going to have to start going Between, and you heard what happened down at Fort, right? One of their weyrlings is just a smear on the ceiling now. Doesn't do to hide stuff right now." Like the ins and outs of the water what carried it away, the worry sloshes back in, spurred by D'kan's evaluation, if not by his change in tone. Mave, sitting committed to soaking muscles not scrubbing, curls her knees up towards her chest protectively, eyebrows permanently locked low. "Yeah, I heard a bit. Don't normally pay much mind to rumor, but, things that've been coming out of Fort have all been disconcerting. Though they just had a nice Hatching." A small perk; if nothing else, a sign that life goes on. And so she unwinds her arms from clutching legs, after dragging her fingers out from picking at her toes beneath the surface. Without hair to fall forward, she's taken to gnawing attentively to her cheek, suddenly immune to the sting and ache of an interior injury being worked over. "Look, it's... not my information to spread. But I kind of want to ask you to keep an eye out for him." She raises tentative eyes to him. "You're closer, all living together. You can see?" While the bathing companion picks at her toes, D'kan has gone about washing his face, dipping down long enough to rinse it. When the teen continues, D'kan pauses with a hand just above the surface, dripping water slightly while the tiny pile of sweetsand cupped in his palm starts to soak up water. He considers the girl for a moment, then slowly goes about working the sand into suds, which are then applied to his dark head of hair. "We... kind of all look out for each other," he assures Mave, though not sounding particularly confident. "Closer to some than others, though. Nature of things." He lets his hands fall under the water, frowns at her, then tips his head back to stare at the ceiling again while working the soap back out of his hair, and with it, any lingering scents of firestone. When he straightens again, slicking water back from his forehead, he grimaces slightly, then gives Mave a level look. "Who is it?" When faced with saying, Mave's lips part then lose all certainty, hovering open as her eyes drift warily. Her tongue flicks up, sealing her mouth closed again. "Suddenly, I feel like it's not my business to say," she expresses with deep apology for taking his time. Indecision keeps all her features furled, naturally transitioning from the worry of seconds ago that had her opening her mouth in the first place. "It's on him to do something, and you've got a life of your own to sort. But-- as a friend, I also want to help." Palms show then slap gently into the water to demonstrate her actual helplessness. With muscles beginning to show willingness to stretch, she does, working out kinks in the warm water, grimacing around flexes while she thinks. D'kan frowns at Mave, but it's a concerned look rather than offended. "Well, you wouldn't be tattling. But if you're not comfortable saying, that's fine. I could... maybe drop a line with one of the weyrlingmasters to maybe just ask all of us about that sort of thing. Makes it less of a..." The frown increases as he searches for the word. "A stigma." The frown fades while he leans against the side of the pool again, in no great hurry to finish his bathing just yet. "Could be he's not ready to tell anyone else about it, but with the dragons already gliding around the bowl and stuff, it's going to get important pretty sharding quickly." "Yes!" Against indecision, nearly anything D'kan might've said would sound clever, and Mave latches to his plan with a swift nodding. "Even if they just... came in and said that... that it's normal, and alright to talk about. I don't want any egos hurt, or to step where I don't belong if it makes someone feel like they can't handle themselves... but." Get important lingers on her face like he's etched it there, tracing the imperative in each wrinkle of a young forehead. "We're here for each other, right? Like you said." As much to convince herself as anything else. "No one lives alone." Gnawing, endless gnawing on her lip, her other lip, her cheek; if she could've scuffled all the skin off her face, she may've. Even as she steadily exhales, lowering her chin into the water to expel pent up feelings into the massaging heat like it does for muscles and aches. "Most of all, D'kan, I believe in him. And I don't want him to think otherwise." Once again content to take her words at face value, D'kan merely nods to Mave before he pulls himself up to the edge of the pool. Gotta finish washing up sometime, right, so he makes quick work of it. "Consider it done, then," he comments, just possibly using clever body positioning now and then, 'cause... fifteen is still fifteen. "If he brings it up, though, just prod him or something. I mean, shells, weyrlinghood isn't about getting everything right, about being the best at crap. It's about learning how to live with a sharding dragon in your head and your life, you know?" He slips back into the water for a final rinse. Relieved, exaggerated nodding express her utter relief at finding someone of like mind, until Mave pulls a corner her mouth back sheepishly, "I say, being an experienced dragonrider, myself." Her little mocking leads her expression to lighten, as she exaggeratedly lays on the casual tone, "Have you met Betterth?" With a little sputter of water against her face, she's eager to let it go, splashing again and blinking away sleepiness with moisture. "But, yes, I've rather thought of weyrlinghood as learning to get things right. If you get before you learn, it's like you've... put on new shoes to go dancing. Sure, you looked good at the time, but you're going to come home to a lot of angry blisters for having done." "That, or trip," D'kan adds more quietly. He ties up the bag of sweetsand but leaves it nearby in case Mave would like to use it, then he gets to his feet in preparation to leave. Her little joke does not go unnoticed, though there is no sputtering from the weyrling, just a wry smile. "Good luck with your own training. I'll leave a note on the weyrlingmaster's desk tonight. No names named, I promise." He climbs out of the bath and soon has his towel wrapped about him, preferring to return to the bench with his clothes before he bothers drying off, and even then, it's the bare minimum. Soon enough, he's headed into the Weyr, but clad in both clean clothes and clean smells. |
Comments
Comments on "Logs:Out with the Wash"Azaylia (Dragonshy (talk)) left a comment on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:59:22 GMT.
Aaaah. Mave having a normal conversation! Aaaaah! D'kan just D'kanning around! AH. This was all great. Mave looking out for a friend without squealing, and D'kan willing to take care of 'his own' without getting all nosy... And it's cool getting to see people play weyr-adjusted, even if D'kan is just holdbred enough. X3
Betterth is gonna become an urban legend.
K'zin (Wakizian (talk)) left a comment on Thu, 11 Apr 2013 02:55:06 GMT.
D'kan is such a good, logical guy. I feel like he's the stabilizing force on all this lunacy.
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