Logs:Well-Behaved Young Men
| |
|---|
| |
| RL Date: 7 July, 2015 |
| Who: Dimatrin, I'dro |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Not the rudest of awakenings. |
| Where: Nighthearth, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 13, Month 3, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
 |
An irregular archway leads into the alcove that houses the Nighthearth. This cozy little nook contains a hearth, protected by a grate that can be used to prop chilled feet to warm on cold days, that is surrounded with a several leather, upholstered chairs. A small table pushed against the same wall as the hearth is kept stocked at all times with fresh, hot klah, a pot of stew, and a basket of baked goods including breads and both savory and sweet filled rolls. The Weyr's aunties also keep the space supplied with a stack of perpetually renewed afghans in interesting color choices, while the Headwoman's staff ensures that some of the older towels are always on hand on a row of hooks for riders ducking in off of sweeps in bad weather. Otherwise, the Nighthearth is undecorated but for the motley collection of mismatched mugs, bowls, and spoons that line the mantel for general use. About a month since the Hatching, and aside from the knots, it's not hard to tell a weyrling, these days--they're the exhausted-looking ones with the fleeting appearances in the caverns for the sake of food and washing-up. The time available for meals has lengthened, the schedule is getting more straightforward, but apparently two things have not changed: the sleepiness and the need for nutrition. It's not all that long after dinner, but long enough for this to be a more reliable stop for food. I'dro has acquired a sweet roll, and it sits on the table by his chair, one large chunk missing but otherwise untouched. The young man himself has nodded off, apparently for long enough to have curled to hide his face against the chair cushion. It can't have been too long, though, or someone would have woken him by now. Dimatrin could be here on an errand from someone else, as an assistant role might generally make him wont to do, but there's little urgency about the way he wanders toward the hearth, scoops one of the mugs and spoons from the shelf, and waggles the spoon through the air, casual in his survey of the space surrounding him. It was only a short Turn or so ago that he was responsible more often than not for cleaning this or for making sure it was full or for collecting cushions for other people to wash and so on and et cetera, but if he's inclined to introspection about his elevation, it doesn't show in the crooked flash of a smile as he surveys the sleeping unfortunate who has dozed off in these environs. Dimatrin hooks his foot into the leg of one of the other chairs and drags it noisily across the brief space between it and its mate. He perches on it, one leg flung over its arm, the other folding beneath him, and slaps his hand in a crack against the side of the mug he's holding. "Back at the Hall I'm pretty sure that any apprentice left alone long enough to fall asleep in public would be walking away with ink mustachios," he remarks in a conversational tone, possibly in case I'dro is already awake, but maybe just narrating a potential course of action for some invisible audience. "Guh--wuh?" I'dro really is a genius. Brilliant young man. You can tell, can't you? Of course you can tell. Something has registered that somebody is talking. It has not registered who this someone is or that words actually have meanings beyond just being pretty sounds. There are levels of alertness, here, and the weyrling pushes off any more of it by covering up his eyes with an arm. But there's an unhappy noise to go with it, suggesting that he's not in a position to just slip right back away to dreamland. Words. What do words mean? "Hall?" That's a short, simple one. But he doesn't seem to intend to invite any light to the waking-up party, even if it might rush things along. "Harpers are terrible fiends for ink mustachios." Dimatrin slaps the mug again and rolls it between his hands, turning it about. "Nice defensive move, protecting your face. But careful you don't choke on your own drool or something," he adds with sunny, companionable cheer. With I'dro's arm across his eyes, he can't see the bright gleam of humor in Dimatrin's dark eyes, but he makes little secret of it. Is I'dro really worried about choking? Maybe not, but he does move his face, and rub a hand around his mouth, like the suggestion has at least brought the idea to mind. He tries opening his eyes, squints vaguely in Dimatrin's direction. His irises are really going to have to work at that focusing thing. "Are you a Harper?" Look, it's a complete sentence, and even one that would be intelligible to a member of the outside world. "Sounds like... a ghastly place." His eyes require rubbing, too, and then there's a lengthy stretch, all expanse of slender limbs, before he settles back in the chair again and lets out a heavy breath. "Time is it?" "Once upon a time," Dimatrin says. It would be the beginning of a story, but in this particular instance it appears to also be the end of it. He watches I'dro's stretch with dark eyes narrowed by humor; his breath huffs past his nose, and he rolls his shoulder back, swinging his free foot loosely as though he's caught some sympathetic twinge of restless motion across the brief distance between them. "It's lateish," he says. "Not too late, though. Nobody's come scouring the hall for you." "I was going to be a holder. Once upon a time." There's something in it, extended as a kind of kinship--but also a lingering, dreamy quality to the words, and I'dro's posture in that chair is almost boneless, like he might be supported only by the muscles that move his chest for breath. "She's still sleeping. Such small favors." He regains, after a moment's thought, enough initiative to reach over and start picking at his pastry again. "Is molesting sleeping young men a hobby of yours?" "I kept my hands to myself," Dimatrin demonstrates his occupied hands as he says so, swinging up the mug and flashing a grin of crooked cheer only briefly across his expression. He cants his head, slanting sidelong and away as he surveys the hearth instead, dark eyebrows creeping up as he does so. "Could have been terrible, though. You were so helpless. I also didn't eat your food." An easy and entirely insincere agreement: "Terrible." Chewing occupies I'dro for at least a few moments after that. "Guess they're not very fresh, either," with a bit of disappointment, as he inspects the thing again and sets it back down. "I wouldn't have trouble finishing dinner in a sitting if people didn't act like it was weird to bring her. It's not like she's any more disruptive than any given small child." Woe is him. He is really, really woe. Way woe. "Since you're being such a gentleman, are you going to introduce yourself?" "I don't frequently get accused of being a gentleman," observes Dimatrin. He leans backward into nothing, since at his current angle of perch on the chair, the back of the chair is doing him exactly no good, and ticks his thumb a few times against the handle of the mug he's still messing around with rather than filling with anything. "Personally I can't say I want to bring small children to the table. At least your baby is likely to be a few octaves lower in pitch. More barrel." He frees a hand from his toying and pats his chest. "It's Dimatrin, though I know who you are. I've taken notes about all of you." "She's also got claws." And I'dro's got a few marks here and there to prove it. Most of them healed. Mostly. They'll fade with time. He stretches again, takes longer about it this time, like a cat, or like someone in the process of inventing their own personal kind of jellyfish yoga. "Do you? Have you? That's very novel." He seems, abruptly, much more awake than he was, his eyes sharp. "Who am I? Maybe you'll know better than I do." His stretching is suddenly all angles, and then he straightens in his own chair, like this is really a point of intense curiosity. Dimatrin's smile changes, a closed-lipped thing of bright humor as he tips his head. "What's to stop me from telling you lies about yourself?" he says. Having teased, he downplays: "I'm afraid most of my documentation isn't terribly interesting. This place doesn't administrate itself, unfortunately." Raised eyebrows. "So what you're saying is that you think I'm a bore? If I'm that dull, I'd probably prefer to hear lies. I'dro is a well-behaved young man who sleeps approximately eight hours per night, consumes three balanced meals daily, and spends every other waking moment engaged in responsible and productive activity. Can you imagine that being your whole life?" Of course, I'dro does not seem to be getting his requisite eight hours or three balanced meals, which might call into question the responsible and productive bits. "No," Dimatrin says. His teeth flash, and the broken one is particularly illustrative. "That is outside the bounds of my imagination, I'm afraid." He unfolds from his haphazard perch on the chair, tossing and catching the empty mug in an easy flick of his wrist like somebody who has spent too much time juggling physical objects to show off his dexterity, and then says, "I'dro, weyrling to green Nasmaeth, who I kept trying to spell incorrectly, very nearly twenty-three years old, and I'm afraid I can't remember the rest. If sleep's your druthers, though, you'd better stay off of this stuff." He moves to fill his mug with klah, which will definitely prevent him from using the mug as a juggler's object. Children, not adults, are the ones who tend to watch jugglers so attentively, rapt like something about the movement must be magic. Or maybe I'dro's not yet so awake as to be totally separating the real from the dream? It happens, early mornings, apparently also not-actually-very-late nights. "Spelling is difficult," distracted, like an idle musing. "I mean, theirs. I'm not totally sure that's it, but it's the only one that looks right. I'm not even always sure I'm pronouncing it right, out loud. Like there could be some vowels that mouths can't quite reach..." A pause. "Sleeping is hard in a big room full of teenagers and baby dragons." "I think the idea is to train you up so that you can sleep anywhere. Expect you've a time of it; harder coming from privilege." Dimatrin draws the full mug away from the klahpots and wanders back to his seat, though instead of sitting down in it, he leans against the back, balancing the mug between both hands and holding himself up on the prop of his elbows. "Maybe you need to sing it," he suggests with a laugh on his breath. "A lot of you lot talk so much nonsense about your hatchlings it sounds like it might ought to be a song." This sigh is entirely melodramatic. "Alas, my musical aspirations were hampered significantly during my adolescence by the complete and utter inability to carry a tune." I'dro drums his fingertips against the arm of the chair, but the cushioned leather is not a good drumhead. "Privilege is a strange way to put it. I'm accustomed to a slightly nicer mattress, but apparently I'm capable of falling asleep nearly anywhere as it is." Tap-tap on the chair more pointedly. "I imagine wearing the dragonriding populace down during Passes is... practical, if distasteful. But during the interval, I feel as though we're just carrying on traditions that were considerably easier when the average weyrling was... what, thirteen, fourteen?" A grimace for all those eons of time passed since he saw that age himself. "Hah." Dimatrin hunches his shoulders and then relaxes them by main force as he lifts his mug for a long swallow. "Of course, then the question becomes what we're even doing here, of an Interval, doesn't it?" "Easy!" Is it? "The golds and bronzes are around to provide a diverse breeding pool for during the Pass. The greens are around to keep the bronzes happy. And the blues and browns are around to give the greens variety." It would not be hard, however, to imagine this as a vaguely clever thing that I'dro heard somewhere and is now repeating with slight paraphrasing, despite the way he smiles when he says it. Of course, he adds, "I don't know about you, but I didn't belong where I was. Maybe if it had really been a life of privilege. Cotton is not a high-margin crop unless you're able to get extraordinarily cheap labor. Certainly not during an Interval, when the usual threats and coercion aren't terribly effective." Once upon a time, some people solved that problem, but never mind that. "I might not have minded if I could have just sat around with someone to feed me grapes. Glad enough there's still a Weyr here, as it is." "If I belonged where I was, I'm pretty sure I'd still be there." Dimatrin takes a longer slug of his klah after tipping it toward I'dro in an easy salute. "I mostly meant the privilege not to sleep in an apprentice barrack full of unmentionable evils, ink bombs, and detonated farts, but I'm sure if you ask someone very nicely, you could be fed a grape or two." He says this with a very nearly straight face. "Probably not your dragon, though. I don't think they're very delicate." "I'm pretty sure anywhere populated by sufficiently unsupervised teenagers turns into that," I'dro observes. "The primary advantage to being a weyrling, from that perspective, is that nobody leaves you alone long enough for there to be trouble." A just-long-enough pause, then his smile turns just a little sly. "The primary disadvantage is, of course, the exact same thing." But that look doesn't linger overlong, not at this hour. "I don't see any grapes in my near future. Nor anyone arriving with a sedan chair to transport me back without my having to walk all that way. It's a really difficult life." "That does sound tragic," Dimatrin says. He finishes off the drink and then ducks his head, teeth grazing his lower lip as he chuffs a little snort. "But it will probably build character." No such undignified noises from I'dro, but he does roll his eyes back for a moment. No undignified noises. "Character is at the bottom of the list of things I want right now. After a morning to sleep in and... a lot of other things. But if I'm not going to get to spend all morning in bed, I'd best actually haul myself back there on my own poor little legs." However slim he might be, he's probably equal to the task of walking somewhere. Low bar. Important to set reachable goals, isn't it? "Maybe you can tell me if I develop enough character to start being memorable." "Oh, I think I'll remember," Dimatrin says. He pushes off his lean against the back of his unoccupied chair to drift over to deposit his mug amongst those that have already been used. "Watch where you sleep, though. Next time, I might not be so generous." Whatever else might have transpired, I'dro unfolding himself out of his chair seems considerably cheerier than when he was first roused. Yes, perfectly adequate legs, though he leans on the chair for a moment, giving his impromptu companion a look that's entirely more thoughtful than a comment like that really warrants. "Promise?" Apparently his need to get back must be quite urgent, since he doesn't bother with a proper goodbye or nice-to-meet-you or any of that. Or dealing with his poor abandoned pastry. It's a hard life for a sweet roll, alone and unwanted. |
Leave A Comment