Logs:Pins and Needles
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| RL Date: 1 August, 2009 |
| Who: Amerie, N'thei |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| When: Day 11, Month 5, Turn 20 (Interval 10) |
| Weavercraft Hall, Boll Area(#893RJs$) Nestled in a verdant tropical forest, the dazzling white slate of the Weavercraft Hall is protected by two solid wooden gates that are usually left open to admit the warm, balmy air. Draperies frame windows in a soft and lightweight violet brocade, fluttering lackadaisically in the gentle breezes. Pern's history is detailed on several brightly-shaded tapestries bedecking the walls, spaced between sconces of glow baskets that provide light when needed. Ornate tables gradually increase in complexity, from the more simple apprentice's tables to the intricate and thickly padded rich purple of the Masters' seating. Within, the decorous hall is rife with activity, and sounds issue forth seemingly from every direction - the soft buzz of spinning wheels, the tick-tick of shuttles and looms in use, and the steady hum of stitching. Outside, a well-traveled stone path leads toward Southern Boll Hold, a mere few minutes' walk away. Other paths lead toward the breathtaking fields, or to the docks, the gardens, and the nearby beach. It's spring in Boll, which means it's a lovely day - warm enough, even first thing in the morning, the sun bright and high. The hall has been up and moving for hours now, the usual bustle of people in the courtyards and around the hall; working in the fields, running errands, welcoming clients. Amerie is doing none of these things, however - she has her schedule, which while SOME people may mock it, does make the journeyman very easy to find. It's her workroom time, so she's in one of the smaller rooms with several large tables for cutting patterns, laying out pieces over a length of patterned fabric. The only others in the room are a few apprentices in one corner, working on a project. Their voices are hushed in deference to their superior - likely because she keeps glaring over threateningly when the chatter becomes audible. Most people would say thank-you to the nice young lady that deigned to show him all the way from the front landing to this workroom. N'thei keeps his gratitude contained in a dismissive nod to the girl, who seems a little disoriented by the lack of courtesy and, after hesitating with a peer into the room, slips away-- to confirm that not only is Amerie frosty, but her visitors are, too! Jacket folded over his forearm, shoulder leaned against the doorway, the bronzerider stands there a time, no interruption, though his eyes chase the gabbing apprentices once or twice before resettling on Amerie. Whether he's waiting to be noticed or simply enjoying the view, he offers no greeting just yet. With all this hostility, the apprentices are really beginning to rethink their current location. They huddle for a quiet strategy discussion. Throughout all this, Amerie's been rather absorbed in shifting the thin paper of her pattern around with an eye on the interwoven print on the fabric - apparently something that requires some little concentration. It's not until the apprentices begin to pack up that she glances over to them, curious and rather smug all at once. That is, until she glances to the door and N'thei leaning in it. There's the briefest flash of a reminiscent half-smile before she's looking back down, pinning paper to cloth. "And I was hoping that it was my fault," she says dryly, with a tilt of her head towards the kids - who haven't quite worked out how to leave yet. "I didn't even say anything," though the looming probably helped, "so maybe it is your fault." The fact that N'thei is quite literally blocking their escape takes some time to sink in; or else he just enjoys the idea of them between the rock, Amerie, and the hard place, him. After an unnecessary extra half-minute of this, he slides around out of the frame and into the room, one finger hooked around the door-handle like he's being so gracious as to hold the door for them, and not just trying to insinuate that they should go now. The apprentices aren't stupid, just jumpy; they take the opportunity and get the hell out of Dodge. Amerie watches this over pinning a long piece of the pattern, faintly amused at the emergency evacuation. "I didn't say anything either. But I think they're less afraid of me. I'm a known quantity." If an impatient and easily annoyed one. After the room clears out, she arches a brow at N'thei as she straightens, "They should thank you, they have something to talk about now." There's no irritation about that - in fact, she seems quite entertained. A known quantity. "Are you." N'thei seems amused, as threadbare as humor is these days, both at her assertion and at the fact that he goes on to leave that door open and pointedly so, some scrap of comedy brightening his expression. His approach from door to work table is ambling, distracted in going to stand and stare down at where the apprentices were working like he might divine some understanding of all things Weaver from their abandoned work; he doesn't. "Important, that, making sure the little people are happy. Keeps me up nights." There, at the edge of her table, sets down two letters, one recognizable as Amerie's note, one with no markings at all on the visible fold of it. "In the sense that they know what is likely to come out of irritating journeymen in general. Perhaps me in particular." Just maybe. Amerie watches N'thei idly as he meanders his way around the workroom; the only thing the apprentices have left behind are fabric scraps, and those are harder to read than tea leaves. As he sets down the letters, her gaze narrows a touch, as if she might be able to read the less familiar one with her mind rather than touching it. "Does it." It's not a question - she gives him a flat look before glancing back to the letters. She doesn't want to ask. But still, neutrally, "Do they multiply?" Truth; "No." Hers-- well, they both know what that says, and, though his finger taps the corner of it briefly, N'thei does not go to the trouble of opening it. His-- presumably his, he opens and smooths out a piece of paper that is almost, /almost/ completely blank. Except there's a few blobs up in one corner, the tap-tap-tap of an aimless pen, then some little scribbling that, viewed right, looks like a jagged smiley face, Xes for eyes and a squiggly /\/\/\ for a mouth. "What is there to say, ultimately?" is his justification, along with a shrug, along with a look cast about for some place he can stow his jacket, please? Indicatively shifted so he holds it in one hand, bunched by the collar. It takes Amerie a few long moments to respond to the scribblings, head tilted as she eyes them with something between amusement and incredulousness. Glancing from the paper to the man, she can't help herself. Dryly, "That's more than expected." To the unspoken question of the jacket, she waves a slender hand towards the other tables and a coat rack beyond, should N'thei want to keep his stuff out of the way - as unlikely as that may be. Hands on her hips, she steps back to look over her work so far. Or she's delaying. Either or. "Depends what we're talking about, I'd think." Unless that coat rack sprouts legs and comes over to him... N'thei casts his coat across the nearest table, all sound of heavy old leather and clatter of buttons when it lands. To answer for the unexpected, he remarks, "Second draft, if that makes it any better." How could it possibly! There's a pause then, while he returns to guarding the letters-- the letter, anyway, and the botched smiley-face-- and takes up looking at her work as well, though there's no cognizance for its significance. Patterns and pins and cut-outs, Greek to him. "There's a lot I'd rather not be said," to take up from Amerie's letter, like it's the middle of an ongoing conversation. "Except that, I don't expect as there's any going back. But I'd like the liberty to..." A hand-wave, a generality. "Mm. I'm surprised it went that far. The effort is appreciated." Amerie is still eyeing the pattern critically, professional demeanor maintained. As she goes to move what might be a sleeve - you never know - she slants a look up at him, dark eyes curious, expression guarded. Carefully removing pins with quick fingers, pursing her lips, "It's not a requirement. It was something I needed to do - it doesn't have to be something you need to do. It doesn't have to be anything." "Man gets a letter from a girl, he feels obliged to answer it, generally speaking." One would hope most men do better than N'thei's attempts, which he folds up and puts back in the envelope and leaves on the edge of the table, just for her. She goes on removing pins and he watches for a time, finally reaching halfway across that table like maybe he can still Amerie's fingers if he can just catch them in the act. "Can you--" This is normally where profanity would go, but he's trying to be tolerable, so he bites the word there. "--stop doing that for a minute." "So I've been told." And so Amerie knows as well, to the contrary. "I know what it is that you even bothered to try." She's sincere about that, tone softening a little. In terms of the pins, she does seem to be removing an awful lot of them at the moment - when she reaches out across the table, there's a chance to catch her fingers, a few pins still in hand. Thankfully, she doesn't seem inclined to stab or anything - she simply looks from her hand to N'thei, meeting grey eyes with her dark, faintly resigned. "All right." Carefully, one hand slipped under to cradle her two wrists, N'thei starts removing the pins from Amerie's fingers one at a time. It's a bit telling of his life experiences to date that, inclined though she may not be, he'd still rather take the time to remove the sharp-pointy-things. Hearkening back to the last time he was here, he prompts, "There's time to go into it now. I know I did my part, pushed you to leave and come here, but my ego has never been so big as to think you left solely on my advice. So why? Why before you wanted to?" Among the plink of pins dropping to a haphazard pile. Amerie lets him disarm her, just watching quietly, uncertainly. The question isn't one she's expecting, the surprise just enough to betray a pained expression, there and gone. As the last pin drops, she glances down at the pile, pursing her lips, considering her words. Finally, quietly, "There's good reasons for it, like what I've done since. What I've become. But..." As she trails off, her frustration with her usual inability to articulate it properly is evident, and she's just out with it; "I wanted to leave before you left me." A pause. "That's not all of it. But is part of it." Whether it's by pulling on her hands, now that he's using both of his to close around both of hers, or by stepping closer or by some combination of the two, N'thei closes much of the gap that a work-table covered in pins and fabric and all that other foreign stuff puts between them. "Likely wise, considering," he grants, lightly unapologetic. "Easier to leave than be left." So says the voice of experience! "I don't think I know you as well as you think I do. But I'd like to, as much as people as hard as we are can know anything about each other." "Yes." Amerie's in agreement with that point, very focused on the space there is between them. "And there was this. The work. It was easy, once they'd accepted me." She lets N'thei hold her slender hands in his, able to glance up through a veil of lashes for a moment, admitting with some little dark humour, "You know me about as well as anyone ever has or does. And I don't like it very much, but I try not to hold it against you either." There's a time where she's quiet, serious again before lightly, "I hope you'll forgive me for being a bit wary considering the timing. I never liked feeling like -" She stops, visibly reconsiders. And leaves it at that. Were it not for the fact that the whole tableau has the fragility of spun glass, it might be a pretty picture, N'thei drawing those hands to the middle of his chest and folding his around them, the two of them standing there like that. A glance through that open doorway-- whose bright idea was that anyway? A glance would probably leave a very touching image. And, though there is an edge of tenderness in the way he looks down at Amerie, there's also his own wariness, like worrying a loose tooth; it has to be fussed with, but still stings a little. There's no leaves-it-at-that. "Like what? May as well out with it, I'm done not saying things as need to be said." /Need/ to be said, maybe just gloss over the ones that can be swept under mental rugs. "Like I was standing in for someone else." Still guarded, Amerie doesn't pull away, however - and it's good that the open door is not on a busy corridor today, given the precariousness of the moment. She's easily drawn in for all that she maybe should be reluctant, warm fingers starting to curl around his. Her expression, which is trying desperately to be something close to neutral, does soften as he looks down at her - though there's enough wariness in her gaze to match his, particularly at his last. Near suspicious, "What needs to be said? I thought there wasn't much to say?" Earnest; "Never that." Standing in, and N'thei couples the heavy response with a grave shake of his head, serious serious. Yes, gray eyes will ask for forgiveness beneath knitted brows, though the man himself probably couldn't muster the words if his life depended on them. "That's what needs to be said. You're not standing in. I'm not wishing you were someone else. She's gone, and I've had my grief, and I will never know love like that again, but I think I've earned the right to find some little happiness. If neither of us know what we have to give, well. I'm willing to see what's there for the taking, then." "But never before?" Amerie's not sure that she'd buy that, and not even entirely sure of now - she's heard that sort of thing before. N'thei's apology, though unspoken, does something to stay any further argument on that point; she leaves it alone. And though she tries not to take all of that badly, a flinch betrays a nerve struck or something; it seems as if there's a thousand smart-ass bitchy remarks going through her head. In the end, she can't help herself, though at least the rejoinder is soft rather than sharp - just dry; "Again, I am astounded by your flattery." She smirks briefly before sobering again, looking up at him seriously, gaze flicking over his features. And it might seem like an eternity before she does or says anything - but eventually, after some visible internal conflict, she simply nods. "/Never/ that." If N'thei's lying, and it's possible, he's doing a good job of it. Then again, fourteen dedicated years of poker could account for believable pretense on his part. He watches Amerie flinch, still unapologetic on his part, and he waits for what he expects will be something cutting. "Do you want me to flatter you? Really?" While she searches his face and commits to that nod, he shares a dry amusement. "Here's flattery." He drops his head some, lowers it till lips find knuckles, eyes still tilted to hold hers. "When we kissed, I wanted you then. I've had no one and no desire for anyone for more than a year, but I want you." And if /that's/ a lie, then the guy deserves accolades from on high for the conviction behind his words, right down to the fact that his breath even comes a little faster over her fingers. "But I'm going, because I'd rather you believed me. Next time we'll talk of fabric, neh?" Amerie nods again at 'never that', slowly - and though she's not entirely convinced, she's at least listening; her eyes haven't yet hardened completely, no flat black looks for the bronzerider. There is, however, a blink or two for N'thei's confession, the hints of a flush beneath the dark skin of her cheeks. Her gaze is caught by his, following him as his lips brush her hand - and as much as she doesn't want to react any more than she already has, those words and his breath on her skin betrays a shiver. Fingers tightening around his, she murmurs, "I believe you. But yes, maybe you should go." Not that she's moving away or anything yet, despite the fact the uncertainty lingering in her expression. "But I believe you. I'm not made of stone." However brief, N'thei's a little gratified that he at least evoked some sort of reaction. It'd be an awful disappointment to come all the way to Boll otherwise. But he puts her hands down carefully, sets them near the edge of the table, relinquishes them back to Amerie's possession with a very small smile maintained. Very small, the sort she could pick out, but most people would only think some trick of the light. Collecting his coat, pulling it on already despite the fact that he still has to cross the courtyard and the hall's weather hardly calls for it, he leaves it at that. She believes him, she's not made of stone, that's good enough for now. In the hallway, he can give people not-your-business looks to answer their questioning glances and let Amerie answer to gossip all on her lonesome. |
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