Logs:Weyrling Camping Trip Begins
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| RL Date: 21 November, 2011 |
| Who: Iolene, Riorde, E'gin |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Three different reactions to being back on the island and a confrontation. |
| Where: Exile Island |
| When: Day 8, Month 4, Turn 27 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Devaki/Mentions, Emme/Mentions, Kh'ry/Mentions, Ch'vaz/Mentions |
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| It's a cold, foggy sort of day and unpleasant by any of their new standards for living but when Ysavaeth appears from between and alights heavily onto the rocky shore, Iolene's only impact onto the ground is only seconds later. She's unfazed by the changes, the effusive joy coloring her face and shaping her features revealing that comparative to her recent bouts of happiness, this is Io at her best. Her arms stretch her head tips back and she takes in the day with all its disgusting winter turning into springness for what it is. It's home. To Ysavaeth, Sforzath is all hard bright edges, flint and jagged stone and the pale sunlight glinting off the water. Unsettled, a sharper intrusion than he means. A complaint he brings to Ysavaeth's court. « What is so great about all of this? » Iolene takes her time, not noticing the lifted hand or Riorde being there first. Her eyes are closed, her head tipped back, with a sudden stream of tears trickling down the sides of her cheeks. A note of concern emerges from Ysavaeth behind her, as the large dragon tries to figure out a way to get cozy on the rocky shore, and failing, trundles over to gently drop her nose into the blonde's hair, causing Iolene to slowly open her eyes and look up. "This is where I grew up, Ys." The lanky girl tiptoes up and plants a kiss to the dragon's under-maw before sinking back down and looking around. This is when Riorde is noted and a moment's, distinct, hesitation, then leads to a few steps forward to the brownrider. "How-... how are you?" It's a shorter version of: how are you feeling? Are you ok? Is it what you expected? Do you hate it here now? To Sforzath, Ysavaeth is silent, allowing the sharp intrusion to go unnoted in a regal sort of gentleness. She considers the pale sunlight glinting off his waters and the flint and jagged stones that sharpens the complaint he brings, and in response, there is no real rebuke. This time at least. « If it makes them happy, shouldn't we let them have this moment? She's almost as happy as-, » a beat is followed by a reluctant confession, « Almost as happy as the day we found each other. » Riorde can wait. She drops her hand and watches Iolene's reaction at first with a small smile and then, growing conscious that perhaps it's not fit for her to intrude on the personal exchange between the gold and her rider, more uncomfortably, stealing little glances at the other pair. "Hi," she replies, turning back only after Iolene takes the initiative. She smiles a smile that grants entry past her typical restraint, a smile that is sad and sweet and happy all at once. "I'm okay. I'm fine. I couldn't imagine sitting here again." But then she looks out past Iolene to where Sforzath is discontentedly prowling around, and her smile dims. The sound of the pebbles Sforzath's kicking up and crunching together in little clatters amplifies in his mind. « I suppose, » he grudgingly concedes only to continue in the following moment, « But why can't she like this just as much? » A flash of /his/ home, the mountains and the snow and the spring wind kicking up and swirling around in excited little eddies. (Sforzath to Ysavaeth) To Sforzath, Ysavaeth's response is droll as she flashes images of the island on approach with its fogged over land and rocky-scape. « Maybe when she has lived in our home for as long as she has here, she might love it more. » A succession of images from Iolene's head, plucked without the owner's knowledge, is shared in a flipbook style: the rocky shores at summer and the legs of chubby toddlers at play. The first frost that brings with it huddling in huts, cold but comfy with friends. The calm of the ocean when out fishing. The love that pulsates in every bit of Iolene's being ripples throughout each split second memory. Ysavaeth, with Sforzath as a distraction, has relinquished her worry of Iolene which has allowed the young goldrider to drift further from the rocky shore to where Riorde waits. It's a sedate approach, at odds with the growing smile splitting her face or the impulsive hug that wraps about Riorde. "I'm so glad though. I'm so happy that I can say a proper goodbye." There's no doubts in her winter-paled features that this is her purpose here, those dark blue eyes casting about to take in the changes and releasing a small sigh. "It's hard to believe we grew up here." To Ysavaeth, Sforzath registers his familiarity with the scenes Ysavaeth's showing by picking out a few similar moments. The top of the cliffs and a windy sort of peace; the last, chilly dip in the river that can be considered enjoyable in late summer; the miniature wonder of a tidepool; balancing out on the wet rocks with a group of other girls and boys and seeing who falls in first as the waves sweep up. Love feels different when it comes from Riorde, carries something painful, fierce and sharp and protective. « Maybe. » But he doubts, and in his mind starts to jealously boil away the sea. "Is that what you want to do?" Riorde's voice is soft. "Say goodbye?" She holds on to Iolene, a hug that turns into huddled closeness. "I miss it, Io. I miss the sea. I miss everything." Being practical dreamer is an oxymoron where compromises are made daily between desire and the understanding of reality. For Iolene, the eyes that drink in the landscape and its changes come back, however reluctantly, to Riorde so that dark blue might look into green frankly. "Ysavaeth could never live here. I don't think I could anymore either. It's so much easier," says the blonde teenager as her arms slip down Riorde's side to hold in a loose finger-hold at the woman's waist, "To live without when you don't know better exists. It's too hard to imagine being hungry again, Ri." Riorde answers with a small, embarrassed smile that admits the reality Iolene calls up into her nostalgia. "I know. I don't think I could go back to how hard it was, either. Sforzath thinks I'm being stupid." She watches her dragon ruefully, who has at least stopped stomping and is now exploring the shallows, pretending he isn't interested in the crabs and spiderclaws clustered in a little rocky pool that's started to appear as the tide goes out. Confidentially, though not quite so much given the tabs her dragon keeps on her, Iolene leans forward and murmurs, "If Ysa wouldn't mind, maybe we could be happy here. But I don't know if I could feed myself and keep her fed too." It might very well be mostly tease, except the way Io's gaze drifts up the cliff. Never mind the other weyrlings, a hand snakes out and grabs Riorde's to drag her up and up to the island's tallest point, "Come on, let's climb." Sounding as if she hates to acknowledge it yet bound to do so anyway, Riorde notes, "Sforzath wouldn't like it. He likes the mountains and the snow -- maybe if he'd been born somewhere like this, but he wasn't." The older girl lets herself be pulled up and lets that act as a break in her mood too, since she grins brightly at the suggestion, throws out the challenge of, "Race you!" and is all too happy to have concentration on the proper footholds eclipse everything else. Being a dragonrider hasn't imbued her with any supernatural strength or agility, and yet, some part of Iolene remembers. She remembers how to race and how to run with a carefreeness long lost to captivity in the Weyr. Long strides keep her close enough to Riorde, and equal concentration keeps her silent (but for a heavier breathing) as she manages her toe and hand holds upwards. It's only as they approach the top and her hands push her up the rest of the way that a laugh catches in her throat. "Oh, Ysa," aloud for Riorde's benefit, as her dragon isn't anywhere actually near anymore, "Sometimes, working hard is more fun than the easier option." Which, in this case, would be being dropped off by a dragon. A grin steals across to where Riorde might be. "Damn," Riorde gasps out as she scrambles up the last part of the climb and flops first on her belly before rolling over onto her back, stretching out with what seems like contented exhaustion, "you're like a spinner." She laces her fingers together behind her head and lets go a sigh. "Wonder if some of the others would like this. Could teach them the ways up first, then have a race for the ones who weren't afraid to climb." "Down is always harder," opines Iolene, not moving from the state she was in when she first pulled herself up and over, on her belly, eating dirt. "This used to be a lot easier too." Back in the day. "I'm sure some would." The pause she allows is one of those lingering moments that fill with an, as yet, unspoken tease. She'll even giggle softly into the dirt before rolling over onto her back to look up into the cloud-filled sky. "I imagine Ch'vaz wouldn't mind learning how and where to climb. At least from you." Not Io though. "Yeah, cause you can't see where you're going," Riorde agrees. "But you can always go down the long way -- or have the dragons come up." The latter addition is remembered, ruefully. No one has to choose between the hard way and the long way anymore. The weyrling turns her head to look over at Iolene, wrinkling her nose in a pretend-scowl undermined by the way she struggles not to grin. Allowing herself to sound young, Ri answers, "Oh whatever." "At least he knows you're alive," says the teenager. But in spite of her mild bitterness, or maybe due to it, Io pulls herself up to her feet and walks a slow path to the edge of the cliff, looking down upon what remains of the settlement she grew up in. "It hasn't even been two turns but it feels like forever ago." Her mouth twitches and a gaze casts backwards to where Riorde is. "Do you think-," a finger climbs to twirl about a lock of blonde hair. "Do you think I could've married Devaki if we had never left? Would you have? Or someone else?" "I guess so." Slightly skeptical, there's more that Riorde could go on to say, but she keeps it in and saves it for later when Iolene stands up. Ri gets up to join the other girl, looking out at the sea rather than at their ruined huts. "I don't know. Neither of us wanted to get married, remember?" For what seems like an innocent answer, Riorde struggles with emotion, swallowing and avoiding Iolene's gaze. "But I suppose we would've had to eventually." "I did," is Iolene's quietest confession, sound a little ashamed of it all as she says those two little words. On the high cliff that overlooks the wrecked settlement, what remains of those huts and lifestyle they all shared at one point, Iolene and Riorde stand. Their dragons are on the rocky shore, one decidedly more placid with where they are than the other. "I wanted to. Some day. It hurts Ysavaeth sometime, when she realizes just how much I wanted to have that life but I wouldn't give her up for anything. No one. Nothing. Do you think-," but her question never materializes. Arms curled across himself, bracing against a familiar cold E'gin strides silently up to the top of the cliff. His thoughts are else where, his eyes vacant, and it isn't until he is relatively close that he notices other voices. Suddenly he becomes aware of his surroundings again, right about the time that his bulky lifemate glides into for a landing on the shore below. Vysravth offers the other occupants a rumbled greeting, as E'gin realizes that he is probably too close to sneak a way. Finishes the distance between himself and the women with a wave and a strange smile. "Hi." The simple word full of emotion and thoughtfulness, "How you guys doing?" His tone low and soft, conveying a reverance for the solemnity of his question and greeting. Perhaps surprisingly, given Riorde's vocal anti-marriage position both on and off the island, she now looks at Iolene with sympathy. "Sometimes I think I did too. Maybe it would've been good, with the right person." Her eyebrows arch in a silent prompt for the rest of Iolene's question that the other girl can take or leave, and some of the open question in her expression remains as she turns, hearing E'gin's voice behind them. "Hey." Ri has barely given the other brownrider the time of day for some time now, but today she manages a short, quick smile. "I'm alright." It's the strange smile that Iolene notes first, after E'gin's words interrupt the girl moment so that the blonde turns to look. There's a small smile for the brownriding wingleader of Cirrus and a lifted hand that wiggles fingers both in greeting and beckon. "I'm saying goodbye." Which doesn't answer how she's doing, but that's soon coming forth after a pursed press of her lips. "I think I'm ok. I was going to braid a wreath of flowers together and throw them into the water for granny and then visit the caves before we put up a fire. We're putting up a fire right? Do you," she spares a sidelong look for Riorde, though the light tease of her words are directed to E'gin, "Need me to go fishing?" Riorde receives a nod from E'gin, and a the right corner of his mouth curls up in a I'm-glad-you're-okay grin, before he turns to Iolene contemplating the girl for a moment. "No, Io, take your time doing what you need to do." He raises a hand to emphasize his point. "Besides, fishing is my job." The thin smile that creeps across his face betrays the fact that he's looking forward to it. "It's my own little way of saying goodbye...but you are more than welcome to join." He turns to Riorde, "Both of you are welcome if you'd like." His arms cross again after a pause, "Do you wonder what we'd be doing if we were here now...I mean if we hadn't left, you know? It was only a turn, but it feels so long ago, and like we are all so much olders. We were just kids weren't we?" His questions-statements stream out without pause, like he's working out his thoughts as the words spill. "You go," Riorde tells E'gin, excusing herself. "I'm going tomorrow. I want show Sforzath spots on the other island tomorrow." Her tone is even, but her nostalgia resurfaces in her eyes, in the way she looks slightly wistful. "I'll make sure the fire's going for when you get back." The you could either be singular or plural, according to what Iolene wants to do. "Married, probably," she says to E'gin's question, making herself shrug. "Doing what we'd always done." "Married," echoes Iolene. There's a twitch of a funny look for E'gin as he speaks but with teeth falling down upon her lower lip, the blonde doesn't voice anything further on the subject of fishing, taking off on the final question with, "I don't think we're considered kids after we can work and find something useful to do honestly. I don't- I think we'd be married with our first kids on the way sometime soon." Lanky limbs sink onto the damp ground, her legs dangling off the edge of the cliff as she looks down upon the settlement. "Grams would still be alive. Grandpa too. So many people would probably still be alive and yet, I guess with the storm that came back then, a lot would've died also. What do you think?" "Married?" E'gin sighs heavily, though there is a lack of sadness about the lost concept. "Can't imagine I'd have done well that, or that I would have ended u paired with anyone who liked me much." He chuckles softly, "Perhaps, this all saved some unlucky girl from ending up with me, though I guess those dragons were like raising something like a child, at least at first...A very hungry, strong, itchy child." He grins at Iolene, "No, we aren't any more, but it seems like we were." E'gin frowns softly at the back of the goldriders head, before slipping onto the ground beside her, his head turning to look at her, "Maybe they would be." He pauses, his tone is matter of fact but laced with sympathy, "Maybe, but that storm was awful, we would have lost more if we stayed," He reaches out a hand resting it on her shoulder, "Io, it would have been more..." His hand falls slowly back into his lap as his eyes fall upon their old home, his brows pulling together in a mixture of feelings that have no name. "Well-- it wasn't really about how much you liked someone." Riorde can't help but glance briefly at Iolene, though the other girl's now facing away and looking out. The young woman doesn't move to join the other two, instead wrapping arms around herself as she stays standing. At first she says nothing, with her omission letting E'gin answer for them both, until she murmurs, "Either way, we lose." Iolene looks sidelong at E'gin as he comes behind her and pats her shoulder. She manages a smile, wry, "I think you've been on the mainland too long if you thought marrying here was for liking anyone. I still can't believe they let Tom and Seani get divorced." But the mention of Tom's ex-wife, now dead, draws Iolene short and her already winter pale skin pales further. "I still haven't been able to figure out who might have killed her. I feel like- I feel like someone knows something they won't tell us. For our own good." There, there's another note of bitterness that the Iolene of two years ago would likely be incapable of. "Now that we came back, do you think we're happier now away from here?" "No, I don't think that's why we got married around here, but I know some people did end up liking each other..." E'gin frowns softly at the thought of his parents. He looks back over his shoulder at Riorde's comment and then glances at Iolene at her question and he sighs softly, thoughtfully. His pause, and indicatation that he trying to decide if he tell them. Clutching the edge of the cliff with his hands, he lets his head hang downward as she speaks quietly, "I am- I think. I have more -potential- now. Here my life was decided for me. There I have some say in it..." His eyes settle on the brown below. "I have a chance to do things, be someone, make a change..." He glances back at Riorde his eyes full of regret for feeling this way, "We lost some, I think we gained more...You can be who you want now Ri. You're not bound by the rules, get married, make babies...You decide." His gaze fall back on the abandoned houses of their past, "I'm sorry." A genuine apology. "I thought," Riorde starts after Iolene starts to speculate about Seani's killer, then stops short, lips pressing together. She walks to the edge, taking up a position next to Iolene, but doesn't drop down to sit. Glancing over Iolene's head when E'gin addresses her, the other brownrider looks back with a long, even look. "I know," she says simply. "That's why I stood." The discussion of potential is one that presses Iolene's lips thin; a would-be privileged member of the exiles and now vaulted into a position she's still struggling to understand, but a position nonetheless. And, in the past, these discussions between her and E'gin have generally gone in circles. But there's that slim hand of hers that uses E'gin's side as leverage to stand again that turns into a light pat. She might not agree, so says her expression, but no hard feelings, yes? All in the smallest little pat and apologetic look flashed downward. "More choices," begins the untrained goldrider delicately, "Doesn't always mean a better life. But, I wouldn't give up Ysavaeth for the world anymore so the point is moot I guess. I'm going to go find my old haunts." She steps past Riorde, but not before brushing her lips to the woman's cheek in a friendly goodbye. "Be safe up here. Don't," she manages a quick, tiny little grin, "Race down the mountain like we raced up it. I'll see you guys around the fire later." E'gin looks up as places a hand on his shoulder and stands and gives her a wave that indicates tha the doesn't mind she doesn't agree. He watches the gold rider disappear down the path before his gaze flickers back to Riorde. He looks up at the female with a sad grin, "I know. I can't imagine you here, tied down to something you've got too much - spunk - for that." He studies her for a moment looking away, "You've been ignoring me." He comments, no judgement a simple observation. He points to a gathering of bushes on the outskirts of a mostly hidden hideaway of water, he chuckles to himself, "Us boys use to watch you...the girls... swim there, in the bushes." He snorts in the laughter of innocent memories. Riorde's "Bye" trails after Iolene as the goldrider heads off. As she turns back to look out at the island below, her eyes inadvertently meets E'gin's to prompt mild discomfort; she looks away quickly to continue her perusal of what activity she can see in the settlement and further beyond on the beach. "Have I?" Instead of ignoring his comment or denying it, Ri turns it into a mildly mocking challenge of his assessment, voice lifting. She glances at him again, then looks in the direction he points. "We knew, you know. Sometimes. You boys were bad at staying quiet." "And I have done something to earn your discontent?" E'gin's question offered with a half-smile, leaning backwards and propping himself up with his arms he watches the girl, "Yes, we thought we were being so quiet, but looking back I recall quiet a bit of shoving, teasing and giggling." He pauses watching the girl, "How come you guys never called us on it?" He chuckles softly and raises an arm to waggle a finger at her before settling it back down, "And it isn't like you guys didn't pull your fair share of pranks on us." He faces falls, "I suppose we did have some fun, back then, eh?" Riorde's eyebrows arch as she glances at E'gin again; she isn't making this easy. "You tell me, o wingleader mine. Have you?" The rest of his remarks and questions, both rhetorical and not, go unanswered as she waits in that pose of ready observation, crossing her arms over her chest to add one more cool layer between herself and E'gin. "So this has something to do with me being wingleader again?" E'gin sighs heavily, sitting back up to study the world below him, "I didn't choose that Ri..." He pauses, standing, at least he's willing to take a guess, "Ah. Is it because I didn't ask you to be a wing second." He doesn't seem deterred by her crossed arms as he takes a step toward, "I mean, Riorde, you have to know why?" His arms hang heavily at his side, he'll at least offer his question with his defenses down, creases forming in his forehead and around his mouth. "I didn't want to be wingleader," Riorde starts up in quick, vicious protest. "I don't care if you are or -- or Kh'ry is." She picks someone she thinks improbable to accentuate the point, then, having launched herself into a tirade, shuts up abruptly as E'gin hits the nail on the head. The same watchful attention, but this time with a distinctly bitter undercurrent. "Ri?" E'gin starts and then ends simply with out held hand and, "See?" Riorde doesn't react visibly beyond the way her jaw moves when she clenches her teeth together. Then, speaking with clear, cold pronunciation: "Fuck you, Elgin." She allows a space for the words to sink in. "You think you know everything." "I don't think I know everything." E'gin's words tempered in volume only, "I just know, that for whatever reason your temper goes crazy whenever you're around me." The tone mixed with anger and frustration, "How can I work with you if everything I say pisses you off to a point where we can't talk constructively about it?" Riorde's expression is the equivalent of the 'Oh really?' that she doesn't say. "So this is," she states with a deliberate slowness, "all my fault. Have you never considered that you talk too much?" The other brownrider's mouth twists to one side in a smile that bespeaks derision rather than friendliness. "And we did call you boys on your shit. I distinctly remember dumping a bucket of water on Xoami's head one night and telling him not to look at me again." "Didn't I just say, that what /I/ say pisses you off?" E'gin sighs slightly, he offers the female's comment a slight smile, but shakes his head, "I think we should try and figure this out. I never mean to upset you, Ri, what is it about me?" "Do you?" Each of these short questions sounds increasingly mocking. "That would make you happy, wouldn't it. If everyone gets along with you and thinks you make all the right choices." Riorde, with these remarks, hardly seems willing to accept the white flag E'gin's waving and let bygones be bygones. "I worked harder than Emme -- I wanted it more -- I trained for it -- and that doesn't matter to you just because I don't want to be your best friend. That's what it is about you." Displeased to begin with, Riorde's looking even less agreeable by the time she finishes, "So no, I don't want to 'try and figure this out.' I want to take some of the others out collecting crabs and get the fire going and get started on dinner. And I don't have to ask your leave to do it either, because this is as much my island as it as yours, even if you can tell us all what to do back at the Weyr." E'gin watches her and her tirade rather emotionalessly. "Okay, if that is how you feel." Is all he says when she finally reaches the end, and turns back around, settling himself on the edge of the cliff without looking back at the girl. "It is," Riorde replies, but as firmly as she says it, somehow it strikes her as ineffectual as she speaks it to E'gin's back. So, after one hard stare at him, waiting to see if anything more's to come, she spins around and starts down the path -- only to realise that she'd rather not spend the time it takes to go down that way. So at a distance, pointedly facing away from E'gin, she waits for Sforzath to show up (and he's taking his own sweet time, less than happy for his own reasons). Awkward stand-off commence! |
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