Logs:What Are Friends For?
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| RL Date: 10 September, 2015 |
| Who: Dee, N'rov, Taeliyth, Vhaeryth |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Dee asks N'rov for an awkward favor. |
| Where: Dee's Touch of Pink Weyr and Bowl Sky, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 10, Month 10, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: E'dre/Mentions, Ka'ge/Mentions, Maj/Mentions, Nala/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Adult topics. Finally finished, back-dated. |
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| It's early when Taeliyth's mind seeks Vhaeryth's. The sun is up, but only barely. « Vhaeryth, Dee needs you and N'rov. Please. » It's unusual that the queen would say so; manners aren't her strong suit, but she uses them now because at this sort of hour, they might help her get what she wants: their presence near the junior ledges, N'rov's within Dee's weyr, the gold briefly allowing the glimpse of pacing Dee and the feel of her nervous anxiety. « Is she throwing up? » At least one of them asks it, pacing or no pacing, once glass shifts against glass and steel and Vhaeryth looks. Which shouldn't slow them down, not after the bronze has used whatever mechanism he must to waken his rider; there's the briefly-allowed stretch of muscle moving bone, of the push into leather, of the rush of wings. Vhaeryth hadn't needed to change. « If she were, she wouldn't need your help. » It's a wry remark with layers of humor that remain shrouded by branches. « Please, do come now, but Dee says to tell you it's not an emergency. » The gold considers, « What she really means is that N'rov oughtn't hurt himself trying to get here quickly but that it is immediately time sensitive and she wishes she'd been willing to rouse you before dawn. » The sense is that the gold had pointed out that was the most practical option for Dee's purposes. Vhaeryth doesn't fly in with maw blazing; neither does he take the most circuitous route, but it is near-literally elliptical: sliding down through the still-grey dawn. « Understood, » has its own humor, even before he lets his rider off where he can dismount directly from the bronze's neck to that ledge. (Time, he saves it.) Said rider's still heavy-lidded with sleep, flight jacket loose over an equally rumpled shirt; Vhaeryth moves away as N'rov steps inward, but not far. "What's going on?" waits for the weyr, but not further. Cue Dee's awkward look of apology. "I... need a favor. I could've asked another woman, but I don't know any that won't talk after." She's trusting him, see? N'rov eyes her, even as he's knuckle-rubbing the sleepiness out; his brows muscle upward: Huh? "I need a trip between." Dee braces to say it. "I'm drinking the tea, but the tea doesn't always work and at Southern I had friends to take me when I needed and here, the one guy took me himself, but this time-- and we can't between yet." She truncates the babble but adds, "It would be next to the worst thing if I got pregnant. Anytime in the next ten or twenty turns." She regards him earnestly, if embarrassedly. Well, shells. N'rov might even say that out loud; he glances around the weyr, and then back at Dee in her need, and it's time to wake up. "Yeah, all right." That's the easy part. "So, what, forty?" That's autopilot too. But though there's surprise, there's no astonishment, and none of the 'how do we do this anyway.' "You know I'm grounded." If not, surprise! Either way, it's not a 'no.' "Sorry," is sheepish and immediate. "Later. When I'm settled." Children. "Definitely not now," Dee reiterates. "And not with-- well, not now." She settles for. It's okay to want to get it on with someone and not want to immediately bear him many strong sons, right? She doesn't seem to be putting thought into that just now. "You are?" is indeed surprise. "Well... Crumbles." It's a weak swear but the timbre is there. She moves to the table and sits, hard, hands folding between her knees. "So," N'rov leans on the word, "We'll just be careful." Which they would anyway, surely. He doesn't ask after her partner of the night (or, well, minute), even though for all he knows the man's still in her weyr right now; he may not think once, much less twice, about anyone likely to take his taking her personally. "Come on, before everybody wakes up." N'rov should be more careful with his delivery if he expects to be hugged less. Here comes Dee to fling her arms around his neck in her relief and with gratitude. "Thank you!" It's almost choked. She releases him quickly, moving to snatch up her riding jacket and tug it on, a worn thing decidedly well-used on loan from the stores. It's only once they're walking toward Vhaeryth that she asks, "Why are you grounded?" as not quite idle curiosity. That doesn't make N'rov look any less rumpled. He pats her on her shoulder on the way down before fastening his jacket up; "Assailing to avoid ankle amputation. Long story." Nothing that's slowing him down, either. The bronze prowls up to her ledge, even leans against the outthrust rock for an idle scratch for all that it's only a few steps up, as long as he's making it easier to climb. "Ankle amputation?" is shock and disbelief enough to still Dee and have her reaching to grab N'rov's wrist to try to stop him too, expression a mask of worry, "N'rov, are you okay?" "No, I'm walking on stumps." Normally, he's even taller. Except, "Dee. I'm fine." N'rov isn't inclined to be slowed, though he does look back. "E'dre thinks I should have stopped the altercation better, that's all." Is he? questions too wide hazel eyes as Dee is drug along by that grasp she'd intended to stop him with. "Up you go," N'rov tells Dee unhelpfully, except for where the help is doing her the favor she asked him for. He'll swat her rump if she doesn't hurry, too. No rump swatting proves necessary (all the better to not encourage any other altercations). Dee sighs softly for whatever she wanted from the bronzerider by way of explanation or reassurance as she moves to climb up. "Thank you, Vhaeryth," she offers as she touches him. "I really should've thought this through better." It's more mumble than intentionally voiced thought. She does look like sleep was lacking last night. She's not the only one. The bronze can rumble with not-always-trustworthy reassurance; he's still quite a bit taller and broader at the base of his neck than is Taeliyth, and any immediate feedback is all for his rider. At least Vhaeryth's well-oiled. N'rov, mounting up behind her, pauses to grab a length of strap and hook it through his belt before handing it to her and settling in. Yes, he'll check her own buckling before they take flight; she's a weyrling but she's his passenger now. Vhaeryth, as he waits, « She's so polite. » The snort from the gold in her wallow heartily disagrees. « She is kind, » is counter that Taeliyth must have mixed feelings about. « Polite people only sometimes mean what they say or do. She always means it. » That seems to be enough to define her as kind. An inward sigh has her adding, « She's more afraid of one more thing happening to her because she made what she thought was an innocent and well-intentioned choice than she's willing to say. » Dee's hands work deftly to buckle herself in; she is a weyrling but she's also been flying on dragons since before she could walk, no issue here. "If you were him, would you understand if I said we couldn't--" somehow she stumbles over the choice of wording and settles for "do 'that' again until our dragons could between on their own?" « Not kind of kind, then, » Vhaeryth determines by Taeliyth's description, dry if not disinterested. « 'To courageously shoulder one's mistakes is character.' » So they say. « Fear, » reflection upon reflection upon equally amorphous reflection all result in, « gets in the way. » "'Do that,'" in N'rov's low, mostly-amused baritone right there behind her ear, might as well be fuck. "Unless I was fifteen or something, yeah. It's a big... thing." He's reached around her for Vhaeryth's neckridge, not to touch her. "And it's not like there aren't other fun ways." It doesn't change, barely pauses, during the shift and release that's Vhaeryth's turning and then bounding into flight. And for all her rider said she'd done this before, « You know what we are to do, Taeliyth? That we will stay longer, » in the shuddering, bone-freezing, exultant cold of between. That she will need to stay... quiet. There's a quiet moment where Taeliyth considers, not just his words, but in her mental looking she takes the measure of him. There's something in what she takes away that makes her retreat, however momentarily. « Yes, » is quiet. Fear does. She understands. « She shared the memory of a time before with me. From her-- Southern. » Taeliyth, at least, refuses to say 'home'. Their home is here. Here. « I will wait. I will hold my breath. You, » the word has gentle emphasis, « will bring her back to me. » There's another moment where it seems like the gold might want to make clear that that trust is-- special, but there is no more. "You're right," Dee accepts with an exhale. "He's nineteen. Older than I am. I'll tell him." She sighs a little, "He won't like it." She doesn't say 'neither will I', but it might be thought. She understands. He understands. And they deal. But, « I will bring her to Fort, » Vhaeryth confirms. « To you. Not to Southern at all. » Though he remembers it, or his rider remembers, the way the sun's light falls to earth like the warmest of rain. The smell of it, the vegetal heat that has no place here. "He'll deal." She'll deal. N'rov is dealing with it right now, with Vhaeryth's casual upsweep just as though he were headed for his ledge. Except, in an area where the ledges are quiet and nowhere near his ledge at all, "Hold on." In that breath they disappear. They hold. All of them, in that darkness, the place of waiting nothing but not for no purpose. Dee's exhale is a gasp when they once again hit breathable air, a shiver rippling through her in spite of the jacket. She's tense and quiet, as is Taeliyth, their thoughts turned inward, perhaps with one another or simply separate. They can breathe again. The air at Fort is not so humid at Southern's, and yet there's a fine tracery of frost along Vhaeryth's hide beyond human hands, human knees, wherever they do not touch. It cracks and falls, or else disappears. "Let's hope that did it," N'rov says briefly; if it didn't, it wasn't for want of trying, though better yet if it weren't truly necessary at all. He frees a hand to rest it on her shoulder, brief human touch, and then just before Vhaeryth reaches his ledge, « A moment, Taeliyth. » This is part of it. The bronze lands, and stills, and takes wing once more and then it's truly down to her. For Taeliyth to be on her ledge, watching, would raise brows. Not that she doesn't watch, but would the gold be able to control the intensity of her regard when her rider is on the bronze's neck? Best not to chance it. Best to sell the story, so she only raises the hint of a question that never fully forms at Vhaeryth's notation. That she doesn't ask, doesn't demand answers from him speaks volumes. Dee must pass something along though because neither does she panic by landing on the unfamiliar ledge. She only waits. "Thank you," is simple. "Sorry to have asked. I-- I'll do better. Think ahead better. I'll have to. For the Weyr." If this is the kind of example of pre-planning that the Weyr can expect, they might be in just a smidgen of trouble, even if hopefully Dee's not finding herself in any after those moments between. Still descending, "It happens." N'rov's seated behind her; surely she can't feel his thinking. "Pretty soon you'll be able to handle all that yourself, for as long as she's not with egg. It's not like it's the Weyr's business." Lower. "The tea could have worked. But you didn't want to wait." "I know," Dee is quiet. "I just... I like him." It's a quiet confession. "I've never liked anyone that way before, and I do him. I can't even explain why because I feel so much at the same time like I don't even know who he is." The girl sighs quietly, "but I don't want to take any chances. My friend, Maj, was pregnant the turn before I left Southern and it was awful for her. I mean, worth it because of the baby and everything, but really hard to do anything and there's just so much I need to do for the next-- forever. I'm not ready for that. I don't want to give up nights that make me feel alive, but I have to do everything I can to make sure it's not a night that lets the whole Weyr down," she turns her head as if to look at him but doesn't twist about, the question of if he understands what she's saying is in the silence that follows. Even now, N'rov doesn't ask, and he could. "Some people like not knowing," he says briefly. There's Maj, the baby, Southern and more Southern and, behind her, he grimaces. "It's hard," he says. "I get your not wanting to yet. Sounds like you have a solid approach. Wanting to do right by the place and working for it, that's important. And remember," Vhaeryth's great wings cup the air, slowing them further before the moments-away landing, "when something happens, even if it's just that you get a cold, the Weyr's going to cope." "I'd... rather know. Long-term. If it were to be long term. Strangers are fine for-- well, not things that have to do with feelings." Dee decides with a dismissive shake of her head. "I-- imagine you're right. And there'll always be Hattie. But I'd rather not make the Weyr cope while I'm still learning myself, if it can be avoided." There's a wistful sigh but not more. "Thank you again for doing this," is simply offered as Dee moves to dismount. "I owe you one," if favors among friends are held in some sort of ledger. The brief touch to his shoulder before descending is just to drive home the genuineness of her gratitude, but already Dee's thoughts must be moving on to the expectations of the day to come (and where she will find at least one mug of klah before reporting for duty, more likely than not). Feelings accentuates the wry twist to N'rov's mouth; some small part of the wyness lingers in his half-smile as he's helping her down. If he's counting, he doesn't say; just, "Clear skies." When Vhaeryth returns him to their ledge, it's to sleep in. Not that he makes it. |
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