Logs:Question for a Question
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| RL Date: 28 August, 2013 |
| Who: Israfi, Milendra, Telavi |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Harper and greenrider banter and barter over apricots one evening. |
| Where: Kitchen, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 23, Month 8, Turn 32 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Z'ian/Mentions |
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| Bribery works, sometimes, that and and light talk and an effervescent, effortless smile; the greenrider seated atop a high stool has a dilettante's short, floaty skirt and a way with a knife, even if it's only to section a series of sandwiches. It's getting late, she's missed dinner, and what's a girl to do? Oh, and there's an open sack atop the counter near her, the literal fruits of her labors, golden apricots and a few plums that are the bribe itself. As she works, some distance away from the couple of people still about who actually belong here, she hums a popular song rather tunefully-- but can't quite seem to get the next line of the verse, trying it a couple of different ways with some persistence if not exactly patience. It really hasn't taken the Weyr's newest harper all that long to learn the important things -- like the names of the kitchen staff on duty late at night -- and thus when a dusty-looking Israfi appears in the room with a rucksack over his shoulder, his cheery: "Milendra! Where are you, you wonderful woman?" Milendra, probably twice is age and nearly that in his weight, is quick to tut at him about how late he's arrived, and that he shouldn't expect anything... and yet she's tottering off after promising to find him something. "I brought you a present," Israfi's adding in her wake, his idle, cheerful whistling abruptly (deliberately?) twining with Telavi's humming, though he's not looking in her direction yet. "More presents? You'll spoil her," remarks Telavi in an easy, Benden-inflected voice-- though not until after they've at last bridged into the refrain, and not at all in complaint. Swinging the sack off his shoulder, Israfi seems to take the comment as an invitation to join her, walking across and setting his burden at the base of the stool next to Telavi's. "And she'll deserve it," the harper responds, with just the right pitch to carry towards the woman who is -- hopefully -- bringing him dinner. There's a lightness in his gaze and a grin on his lips as he settles onto the stool alongside hers, eyeing the fruits of her labor. "What did you bribe her with?" he wonders. "Not jewelry; she'd have cooked you something hot for that." "Brilliant," is considerably lower-pitched and a touch admiring, Telavi looking after the subject of the speaker's flattery rather than the man himself; now she looks, though, confirming that it's that harper, as he should be. As for her own bribe, "As you see," with a tilt of her chin towards the sack, continuing to survey: knot, fashionable attire and grooming appear to meet with approval, or at least with her continuing to look, the pendant of his necklace with a quirked-up smile. "Gold, if not the sort that one commonly wears, and a bit fuzzy besides." "I'm impressed," Israfi allows, and her looking earns a comfortable, well-practiced sort of smile: the one of a man used to being looked at, and enjoying, if not overly encouraging it. Of course, while she's looking, his hand is sneaking forward to try and steal one of those apricots, though it's plenty obvious enough that he'll get caught. Unless she lets him, that is. "I'd have guessed earrings that you'd originally picked for your mother but then decided she wouldn't like." It's a smile that kicks hers up a notch, but there's something about the way Tela sits, not quite forward enough, no touch to her fancifully braided hair, that suggests she won't be troubling him. Or perhaps it's the amusement in bluer-than-not eyes; they're such pretty people, after all, and can banter, no less. At least, until mother gets that flicker in those eyes. "Thief," she says lightly enough even so. "I'll have to turn you in to Milendra, you know, tell her I defended her prizes to the end," and with that she sets her knife above the small but plentiful sandwiches, a shining guard that's blurred only at the sharp cutting edge. "There is the occasional leaf in there, though I don't know that they'd stay in her ear." He's chuckling even at that look, more so at the accusation, correct a label as it is. "You can only prove it while the evidence is still here." Israfi proceeds to toss the apricot in the upwards, then quickly snatches it out of the air. A moment later he's showing his obviously empty hands with a quirk of brow as if to ask, what now? Shifting his weight, he rubs at his beard -- a little longer than he seems comfortable with, and probably a little dustier, too. "Prizes? Multiple? Please, no! Don't set the bar so high that every time I return I have to bring her bigger and more things. That sack is heavy enough," he does his best to grimace, nudging the sack at the base of his stool with a toe, though he doesn't do grimace well -- his is a face far too used to lightness, and the amused gleam in his gaze suggests as much. "Who needs proof," Tela points out, "when...." Delighted at the sleight of hand, she breaks off to applaud with three claps in quick succession, in a way that could be sarcastic were she minded to make them just a touch slower. "Very nice. Tell me, journeyman Israfi-- Israhfi?--" for she may have at least this slight advantage of him, even if she isn't at all shy about querying the pronunciation, "what little treasure have you for our sweet cook? And what do you do when you're out of the kitchen? Tell me you're not saddled with the littles, do." Three questions: enough that she essays sandwich-eating before it's too late. Her drawling of his name earns a pleased grin from Israfi, not so much put off at being named when she has the advantage of him, as delighted by it. "I'm not quite sure yet if you're trustworthy enough to share such a deep, personal secret with. Besides," a twist of his sleeve, and he has the apricot in hand, proffering it towards her, "I think a trade is only fair. A question for a question." Her very own apricot, which leads Telavi to dimple at Israfi right then and there. "I'm suddenly sure that you shouldn't," though that doesn't stop her from accepting the apricot with her free hand, if only the apricot, and that provided he'll let it go unbruised. "I would ask which question you had in mind, if it weren't for the risk of your counting that as one." It's definitely unharmed, and Israfi seems happen to relinquish ownership of said apricot back into Telavi's care. "You have quite a way with words," he states, clearly impressed, "And you have the advantage of me -- so that's my question. Your name." He could fairly easily find out, later, but that's hardly in the spirit of the game, and what else is a harper to do while he waits for food? If there's flattery as well as sincerity, either way it's found its mark, given the added rosiness that blooms in Telavi's cheeks-- and how she replies with more than he'd asked. "Telavi," and she lilts those two vowels they have in common the same way she'd done his name. "Solith's, in Boreal wing." The Weyrleader's wing, for those who know such things, not that she gives it more than an added fillip. And she may have gotten to stacking her sandwiches as though to go, now that she's finished the triangle of her first, but she adds lightly, "Answer whichever of mine you'd like." Whichever might entertain a marked harper most. "Telavi," he draws out her name in a similar way as she did with his, smiling as if pleased. "Solith's," he echoes her dragon's name, too, as if to better remember it: certainly, Israfi doesn't seem surprised that she's a rider. There's, perhaps, a flicker of disappointment that she's making preparations to leave, and he lets it show. Instead, the harper says, "When I'm out of the kitchens, I am partial to late night swim. It's a good way to get the dust off one's person after a trip." If it's an invitation, it's couched lightly indeed: he's looking sideways, likely at the approaching Milendra. One shouldn't eat, then swim, and he seems fairly keen on the eating. The play entertains her, surely, her mouth curving into a smile all over again; letting it show meets with another flicker, this time of her lashes just before she looks carefully away. "Then I trust," Telavi says half to the apricot which, by chance or design, she's stacked atop her remaining sandwiches, "that you'll enjoy summer travels while they last, Harper Israfi, unless you like swimming with ice." She mimes a shudder before smiling back at him at last, lingering just long enough to add one for Milendra, then departs with a swish of her skirt. If she's stolen that one apricot back... at least she's leaving what's left for him and Milendra to mind. "Well, there has been a time or two where I have," Israfi begins, though he doesn't finish, deliberately. He's too much a gentleman to watch her depart. (Maybe. She doesn't look back, so maybe he does.) As she's leaving, he can hear her saying, "Oh, you've outdone yourself this time, Milendra. Seriously. Are you trying to fatten me up?" |
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