Logs:Still Too Soon
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| RL Date: 29 December, 2015 |
| Who: Dahlia, Ka'ge, Taeliyth, Zymadiath |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Dahlia and Ka'ge talk for the first time since just after the leadership flight. Dee still isn't ready for Kael, his feelings or his truths. |
| Where: Herb Garden, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 9, Month 9, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Weather: Although the clouds are patchy with glimpses of sky in the early morning, they turn gray but rainless around the time the sun comes up. The overcast weather, with a hint of humidity, carries throughout the day with early evening winds starting to break up the cloud-layer. |
| Mentions: Baliol/Mentions, Mirinda/Mentions, N'rov/Mentions, R'oan/Mentions, Tavish/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Angst. Grief. Death/loss triggers. |
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>---< Herb Garden, Fort Weyr(#792RJs$) >-------------------------------------<
The herb garden is a veritable feast for the eyes and nose. All manner of
herbs from medicinal to edible are grown here and tended on a regular
basis. The area is fenced in, separating it from the rest of the grounds
around it, with a trellis arch over the gate leading into it. The pathways
are lined with irregularly shaped stones that lead between the various
plots and patches of exquisitely aromatic plants, each section labeled
clearly. Pots and boxes provide alternative growing spaces for plants that
do not thrive in Fort's native soil.
Stone carved benches scattered throughout the sprawling garden provide
places for quiet conversation or for gardeners to take a rest. In the
southeastern corner of the garden is the shed where gardening tools and
supplies are kept.
Although the clouds are patchy with glimpses of sky in the early morning,
they turn gray but rainless around the time the sun comes up. The overcast
weather, with a hint of humidity, carries throughout the day with early
evening winds starting to break up the cloud-layer.
-----------------------------< Active Players >-----------------------------
Dahlia F 18 5'9" sturdy, dk. brown hair, hazel eyes 0s
Ka'ge M 17 6' toned, black hair, blue-green eyes 2m With fall only just begun and temperatures still delightful, the herb garden is full of green, growing things, some flowered already, others soon to. There's scent enough in the air from some of the more fragrant plants that it makes the benches dotting the garden a nice place to sit. Dahlia doesn't have much time for just sitting these days, but she's still a Southerner and a farmer at heart so here is the natural place to find her. The overcast day makes it not too bright for paperwork, a small stack sticking out of a bag on the bench next to her while a clipboard holds a handful of sheets, though it's been largely forgotten in her lap as she leans back against the bench, head tilted toward the cloudy sky, eyes closed. She might even be napping were it not for the way her pencil's butt taps a little rhythm on the top-most paper. Quiet steps, not perfectly silent, are of soft-soled boots on still-lush grounds and damp soils. The bronzerider pauses just at the edge of the fenceline, and then continues forwards until he comes up beside Dee, his intention to be seated beside her. Close, but not too close as he normally takes to being, he settled about a foot from her, leaning with forearms over folded legs. Ka'ge turns his head just enough to be able to watch her, his somewhat-hood-shielded expression tweaked in a rather pleased thing. Across his shoulder, he's burdened with one of the many satchels he'd borrowed from her, the remainder left somewhere else. "Goodday, Dahlia." He doesn't full emit the slight caution in the otherwise sarcastically-toned greeting he offers beneath his partial grin. That Dahlia reacts to someone joining her means she's had enough practice at being joined that the subtle sounds of it are familiar to her. That has to be a good thing for those who worried about her general hopelessness in self-defense lessons. Her eyes crack open and she tilts her head toward Ka'ge as he settles. Her expression is blank in the first moment. Once he's spoken, she straightens her head and sits up a bit more, "Ka'ge," she offers politely in turn, hazel gaze looking down to the top most paper before she moves to slide the clipboard and its contents into the bag leaning against her thigh. "Enjoying an afternoon stroll?" The question is so void of meaning, it's a wonder the goldrider bothered to ask it at all, but perhaps that's the point. Ka'ge's grin flinches slightly but he maintains it with effort. His attention can't help but stray to the clipboard she slides back into her bag, but moves in short order to looking out over the garden. "One of many leisurely strolls today. Been a little while since I visited this. As much as it should hold memories, it's always changing." He lifts a hand slightly to gesture towards the plants, though he's fairly clear that it isn't his direct meaning, "Never sure what there is waiting for you the next time you stop by." His blue-green eyes shift back to her with that, a light, brief, side-glance and a pause before he adds, "Am I interrupting?" "As with all life," Dahlia acknowledges, agreeing. "Soon it will die. I've been dreaming about a greenhouse like the one in High Reaches. I mean, we can still grow some of the hardier for a time, but the snow will take it all in the end, leaving it or us to renew it come thaw." She looks down at her hands in her lap and then up to the garden before finally turning her head to look at him again, "Yes, but it's rare now that one doesn't have to interrupt me in order to have my attention. Zaisavyth is a demanding clutchmother so Mirinda's helping make this a learning experience for me. It will help us see what training I still need, a bit." Then, "What do you want to tell me about what you've been up to, Kael?" It's probably the best way she knows to honestly ask him how he's been and get an honest answer. "Can't have new without losing the old. Can't have stronger without losing the weaker." Ka'ge adds, with some degree of thoughtfulness, "But," He offers in the wake of his opinion, a semblance of a shrug diffusing whatever weight he'd given to it, "It couldn't be so hard to build a greenhouse, if we can get the materials without too much difficulty." To her next, he's quiet- an approving sort of thing from the look of his unperturbed expression, until he asks, "And Taeliyth?" Neither he nor Zymadiath, so removed, have reached out to the other busy pair, even if Chiv continued his regular visitation with notable avoidance of the young goldrider's vigilant green. But her well-worded question leads to a quiet chuckle beneath his breath, and a dismissive shake of his head. "I was visiting a friend at Ruatha around the time of the Conclave. There were some interesting turnouts. Have you met any of the recently elected?" "Appointed," Dahlia reflexively disagrees with the choice of word, her look briefly hard, even a little sour, before it smooths into something more politic. "Glass is expensive," is all she says of the greenhouse, catching her lower lip briefly, worriedly, between her teeth. "Maybe in a few turns," she allows almost cautiously. The last she considers the longest, "Briefly. Weyrleader N'rov," she uses his title because her tone is tart and nearly argumentative even though the weyrleader isn't here, "saw fit to have me hand over my liaising duties once the hopefuls began arriving. At least I haven't had to hand Fort's handling over to one of the wings yet." Her teeth bare a little, probably more playfully mad than truly mad. "I understand the necessity, but I don't like giving up hands-on work in favor of paperwork, even if it's important." For a moment, they might just be Dee and Kael talking about her goldrider training, but as she looks back to him a shadow passes across her expression and it becomes painfully neutral. "Aye, it is." Ka'ge responds on the topic of glass, though he seems briefly captured by her worrying her lower lip, and blinks once to turn his attention back to the gardens. "So he's terrible, but not too terrible?" He summarizes, faintly amused and notably less cocky than his typical presence. "It could only be a matter of time, with all this extra training and whatever. Can't imagine anyone keeping your hands out of the dirt for too long." This, playful, and challengingly so. He happens to look at her at the same time she does him, and the return to neutrality is not missed. His head tilts down to shadow his face beneath the hood of his black riding jacket. As good as the weather may be, he's yet to wear anything but layers of course. This leads to a stretch of a silence, before a more physical weight jars something further. Ka'ge straightens, shrugging the larger satchel from his shoulder to instead lay it across an arm. "Very helpful, all the extra supplies I could carry with your satchels. Better than I'd planned to start." It's a 'thank you', even if the words themselves are foreign. "He's a tyrant," Dahlia says so darkly it can only be deep humor. She has a half-smile as she looks askance to Ka'ge - did he buy it? However briefly? "He's my best-friend," she offers honestly. "We agreed it would be best," though the eyeroll says that just because they agreed doesn't mean Dahlia's not going to place the blame of making adult and responsible decisions on N'rov, for this one. "I potted some plants in High Reaches the day of the clutching and brought them back. Three of them have managed, but the other two are dying," this is probably shared in answer to the matter of dirt, all too literally. "You're welcome," Dahlia offers the bronzerider simply as she looks, but does not reach for, the satchel. "I'm a little surprised you didn't use the need for return of them to come take a look around my new weyr with your own eyes." She doesn't ask if that's because he already has, but probably only just since her lips are pressed firmly together to keep back more words. "A tyrant as a best friend." Ka'ge sets the pack down in his lap when she doesn't reach for it, leaning over his legs again. "And what's he call you?" He doesn't manage to fully hide the smirk he gets from that question, shifting as she describes the plants to finger one of the satchel's buckles with his gloved fingers. "Not terrible odds." Is of the plants, but her comments of returning her items gets him to look at her again, a sideglance, those blue-green eyes of his curious and suggestive-with restraint. "If you're disappointed I found you in daylight instead, there are more to return to you." As if 'surprising' her at some odd hour in a place of his choosing is not off the table. "Impossible, I'd imagine," which makes Dahlia smile in a way that would prove the point. The rest tempers that profoundly. She sinks into silence, expression faraway and sad as her eyes lose focus. Ka'ge hesitates, in both a physical and verbal manner, his form stilling in that eerie way that makes him more shadow than man despite sitting in open, light space. The buckle 'tinks' softly once as he stops messing with it and it's let to fall back on itself. "Do I really make you so sad?" The words don't come with sarcasm or other expected emotion. The young man- perhaps he's grown in these months of plague and absence?- seems earnest, if reserved and a touch stern, in that heavy question. His question draws Dee back, from wherever it is she goes when painful memories rise to the fore of her thoughts. It's a slow thing, her eyes closing and expression smoothing by increments. When she opens them, her hazel gaze falls on the young man, expression sober. "Grief makes me sad. The hollowness here," she touches her hand to her heart, "makes me sad. Flirtations and more are only reminders of the pain that never leaves and doesn't lessen." She glances away from him, "It's still too soon." For what? She doesn't say, but it might well be guessed to be any number of things. Ka'ge's grimace is not one of pain, but of something from his thoughts. A set of his jaw, a release of his otherwise too-still form to look away from her are all tiny movements as he seems to take time before offering a response. But when he does, it's neutral, calm. "Grief is everywhere. The plague left many with it, not unlike Thread many times before it." He speaks of such with the ease of one who hasn't flown it, "It's easy to say 'too soon'. But you look at me as if I hurt you." This draws a different expression, one which he hides with a hand that pulls his hood farther over his face. But his voice grows harder, as if anger is beneath it not at her but at the concept in and of itself, "And that's something I'd never do." He pauses, taking a breath for himself, bringing the degree of his response down a few notches, "I hit him once, but I would never have hurt him." An admittance of one thing, and a definition of something more. "Not-" Dahlia says very clearly after a long moment of silence, looking at him even as he doesn't look at her, "-if you thought you could help it." That, however, does not mean never. Still, "I don't blame you for the reminder. Reminders are frequent, but grief is what it is." She can't help her reaction, yet. "Why are you telling me now?" she finally asks, expression unreadable again save for the sadness that lingers in her eyes as she looks at him. "Does it matter now?" She might once have been shocked or appalled on R'oan's behalf, but he's a dead man with all the care of a dead man's concern. Ka'ge blinks, though still hidden beneath the security of his cover. His hand hesitates there, still pulling on it. And when he releases the edge, he turns to look at her face. Restrained disbelief colors him, his slightly narrowed eyes searching hers. "Not even then. I've done-" He catches himself on what seems to be a list of things on the tip of his tongue, instead changing tracks, recovering with her question in its place, "Because I never told you before." Is not really a good answer, but an answer regardless, "And you can't face me because of him, so I assumed memories still matter." "There are a lot of things you've never told me," Dee answers quietly, and it might answer both his words and his denial as one. It's not a guilt trip, simply the fact as she knows it. "You mean I won't bed you because of him." It's obvious it upsets her to say. It's not like she's bedded anyone else in the months since his passing. "I can't give you that. And not just because of him." Ka'ge had a hand in that too, as did Dee. No one gets spared blame. "What else would you want of me?" Ka'ge doesn't turn away this time, but the intensity of his look on her speaks enough for the disagreement. "Some things are better to not know." He responds, but the rest of it clearly angers him even if he keeps the reaction out of his tone of voice. There's a slight red flush to his otherwise darkened skin. He lifts a hand, rubbing his gloved fingers over the stubble of his face roughly. "Even after all this time, you still think that's all I'm after?" "As you say," Dahlia allows; it's probably why she doesn't ask him pointed questions. At least she seems to trust his judgment to some degree still. "But I'm a weyrwoman now, and I will be for the rest of my life," it's said quietly and carefully. "The things that it was better I didn't know before are not the same as the things it would be better if I didn't know now." She laces her fingers together and lets them fall to her knee, ladylike. "Even after all this time, you expect that I should blindly give you my heart? I can't give you that either. Would you want less of me?" She studies his face, her own impassable again. She's at least gotten that goldrider skill down pat. (Sometimes.) There's a long moment while Ka'ge studies her, listens to her. Expression controlled again, a significant pause preceeds a cautious question, "Would you imagine giving it to me if you felt less blind?" A huff of an empty, soured laugh follows, "And be able to forgive in the same breath?" Perhaps it's the laugh that makes Dahlia's impassible expression seem cooler still, "I can't, presently, imagine giving my heart to anyone, Ka'ge. You may like to dismiss my loss as just one more among the many I feel keenly, but life is seldom as we wish it." Certainly not as he might wish it, in that aspect, the tone says without question. "If telling you would change nothing..." Ka'ge starts and ends, dismissive. "You never told me why you shut me out for him. Had I started to bore you?" He closes his eyes, drawing a leg to his chest, boot scuffing on the ground as if preparing to rise. Dahlia eyes close against memory, but this time she manages to stay here, even if it takes a long moment to control it. "It wasn't a real possibility anyway," she tells him of the first. The second is harder. "For not even a whole seven," she says it quietly, but with no surprise that he noticed anyway. "Do you know how sharding lucky you are not to be dead now?" Suddenly she's angry, suddenly there are tears in her eyes as she looks at him, and her voice is too loud. She seems to realize at least that much, that last. She drops her voice to a whispered hiss, leaning toward him to make sure she's better heard, "We slept together, you could've died along with him." Perhaps it might be comforting that that seems to distress her. "He asked for a life with me. You didn't." Ka'ge 'let her' be non-exclusive. Even if he hadn't been keen on it, ever. Woman logic is the worst. "Lucky?" Ka'ge is equally as angry, but simmering, in that too-calm, too-cold manner. "For this?" While he doesn't specify- his life? Dee's words?- he rises then, sliding his second leg up to meet his other. When he straightens, he shoves his gloved hands in his pockets, his hooded head tipped to continue to watch her. Blue eyes severe, he's rigidly silent. "You begged promises from me. I kept those that I could, all with intention to have you. You said I couldn't be it. I let you go because of how I felt about you." The words, though heavy, aren't able to stir his stoney expression, "I would have lost you either way, under your rules." He looks up and away, likely in the direction of wherever Zymadiath soars, and then back. "We'll leave your satchels on your ledge, but I would keep one for a little longer if I may." The tears spill over in the face of his reply, her cheeks hot and red, ashamed. Perhaps it's a thought that has occurred to her, too. "It was unfair," Dee manages quietly. "I'm sorry, Kael," and she is. But the admission and the genuine regret of it does little to change the now. It's a shuddering breath later that she simply nods, probably for the satchels and his request for the one longer. Ka'ge steps beside her, and somewhat behind, slow in the action but deliberate. He does not hug her, but he does place both of his hands on her shoulders. His expression doesn't change, likely prepared for a denial of some degree. "I'm used to unfair." He says quietly from the now-closer quarters, diffusing the blame but not wholly removing it. He doesn't pursue affection. He doesn't push boundaries, not now. "I play many games, Dee. But not with you. If you really need more from me, meet with me in private when you're ready. I told you I would wait for you. Waiting doesn't mean I don't want what he was so quick to ask." And he squeezes one of her shoulders, and releases her after. At least Dahlia doesn't flinch at his hands, she's come that far, at least. Only, his words don't seem to have what is likely the intended effect. Instead, the goldrider's hands come up to cover her face, weeping into them instead of where the whole world can see. "Don't cry because of me." Ka'ge says, his voice a little fainter as he must have stepped away from behind her. And after consideration, there's a deep breath, a deeper exhale. "Do you want me to walk you back to your weyr?" Dahlia can't seem to manage words, which explains why Taeliyth's annoyed, « Tell him to just go. She'll regain herself faster, » is directed to Zymadiath. It's annoying because Dee is crying in public and annoying because Taeliyth has more important things to do right now than to play messenger girl. The night is heavy, an impass in its utter lack of light. The gravely, low and as-usual unpleasant voice comes from a farther distance than usual, distracted. « So be it. » Comes Zymadiath's short response, fading away again as soon as it's given. Ka'ge's gaze fogs faintly, briefly, in the subsequent exchange. He shakes his head after one last look at Dee before he turns to begin walking across the bowl towards the main caverns, leaving the satchel he'd brought with him beside her. Within it, similar to when she was sick, are a couple of fresh sweet fruits of Southern, wrapped in a small hide covering. Taeliyth doesn't really want any part of this, not really, but that doesn't stop her from extending a clipped, « She saw horrors. Too many. Her heart is hurting and doesn't stop. He shouldn't have brought it up. It stings and opens the wounds all over again. » That's all she'll give him, turning back to her day's work, splitting her attention between that and offering Dee the support she needs to stop crying. There is some sense of vague understanding within that darkness, and yet still unforgiving at its core. « He, too. » Is cryptic, intentionally so. Bound in his world by layers upon layers of darkest night, and yet somehow revealing of something. There's no figments, not now. No writhing things. Just blackness. But as Taeliyth had reached out once more, the massive, eerie presence of Zymadiath lingers on the horizon. Not vying for Taeliyth's attention, but rather just being there. |
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