Logs:What Are Stables?
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| RL Date: 8 May, 2011 |
| Who: Iolene, Raum |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Iolene watches the western skies from the cliffs. Raum interrupts and they play a game of 'I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.' Just less dirty. |
| Where: Cliffs, Western Island |
| When: Day 11, Month 9, Turn 25 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Devaki/Mentions |
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| It's an arduous climb, likely to take the breath of even those who might consider themselves nominally fit, but it appears to be old hat for Iolene. The lanky blonde's crouched at the very edge of the cliff, her bare toes wiggling in the setting sun; not that much of it is visible behind a layer of thin, grimly gray clouds. But there she is, toes'a-wigglin', her fingers tucked under what must be grimy feet, and the small of her back visible where her tunic's lifted to follow the arch of her upper back in a position reminiscent of gargoyles that might decorate some of the more stately Holds on the main continent. Ignoring the flickering lights of supper just ending down in the settlement below, or the dark maw of the caves that beckons just south, it's the horizon's thin line that claim the attention of Iolene's dark blue eyes. There's not much in the way of free time in this place, but Raum has earned a little now, and he's using it to go exploring. The entrance of the caves, up the river, and now he finds himself making his way up the cliffs, only to find somebody's already claimed that spot. No matter; he'll still approach the cliff face where Iolene sits, and come to a halt just behind and to one side of her, without a greeting to announce himself. You just don't get to be a hunter, even of fish, without some sixth sense for being stalked, and Raum's approach does not go unnoticed. There are discernible, if subtle shifts in her position that take her from the flat of her feet to her toes and that arch of her back deepens ever so slightly. The fingers beneath her hands slide out and grip the ground. But all her guardedness is at odds with the turn of her head with a quick-flashed smile. "You," she begins, somehow in the same paradoxical vein: both welcoming and not, "Figured. You walk differently than the others." "Do I?" wonders Raum, glancing briefly at his feet. "They train us to march, when we're only just cadets. It's not a habit easily broken." He lifts his shoulders faintly, then looks from her to the horizon and back again. "Not much of a view tonight." "Only because you don't know what to look for," says the islander blithely. The rest? The rest doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter that it wasn't the marching gait that cued her to his differences. Iolene's fingers splay further, her palm grazing the stone beneath before the slightest push lifts her thin frame up, straightened. "Can I ask you something?" Those dark blue eyes, having strayed once from the horizon to find him, don't stray again as they fixate back on where the sun must be disappearing behind those clouds. "Crabs spelling out 'free dinner here' in the sand?" Raum can't keep the dryness out of his voice then, but he does move to sit down alongside her at the cliff's edge now. "What's that?" It's a simple question, if particularly sober for Iolene: "Why are you here?" Raum slants a look at her sideways, but he's making a show of watching the hidden sunset, too. "Think that one's been pretty well covered by now." "You haven't told me." The faint emphasis on me implies she's important enough to hear from him himself. Or, she's dubious until she hears it from him? Does it matter? "My ship sank," says Raum finally, the same as he's told all those other people. "I got lucky, ended up here." "You must get tired of telling people that." Iolene muses, a shrug of her thin shoulders visible beneath the tattered edges of her tunic. It's an action that leads to her suddenly standing while Raum sits. Though she smiles, her words are flat: "I would. I mean, repeating the same story over and over and over again. Raum?" In the last, in his name, an unfinished inquiry lilts. Raum ponders that a moment. "Do you think I should change it now?" he finally asks. "For variety's sake? Make myself into a criminal, or a political prisoner or a spy, or--." Iolene's smile breaks the surface, the expression filtering into her voice and then lifting up to crinkle the corners of her eyes. Those dark eyes of her look down upon Raum: a little pitying, a little apprehensive. Her fingers curl. Her toes curl. There's a slight bounce in her stance - the easier to run if need be. "Are you a criminal? A political prisoner? A spy?" A girlish giggle escapes, even as the hunter in her makes preparations to run, if hunted. "You could be one of those sea monsters Dev constantly teases will be my demise." "Ah. You've found me out," says Raum, quite solemnly as he looks up at Iolene. "A sea monster in human form. But that still doesn't answer: have I come to destroy you, or to study your strange ways. What do you think?" There's a certain amount of clarity in Iolene's eyes as they turn from Raum back to the horizon and the water that lies just under it's thin line. "I think... you've come to destroy us. But that's ok." "That's okay?" "Mmmmhmmm," is her guttural confirmation. "I think," Iolene begins, her words interrupted by a light laughter that follows the wind the other way, "We could take you." A sudden grin splits her features and the subtle bouncing thus far halts. "You're only one man, you know?" Those eyes, clear and now guileless to boot, glance down upon the interloper. "Tell me about yourself. I want to know." The laughter almost makes Raum do likewise, except he stops it at a faintly bemused smile. "One man can do a lot. One man got you sent out here, after all. Don't discount me yet," he tells her. He pauses for a moment, and now that smile fades at her latter questions, however guileless. "You know all the important bits. My name is Raum. I'm from a land without the sea, and I made my living guarding the Blood from themselves. I'd be more interesting if I were a sea monster, or a criminal, or a political prisoner like yourself." "If you were a sea monster, I'd have slit your throat already." So evenly spoken. So matter-of-fact. "Even in disguise." The last garners a slight smile. And yet, she persists: "Did you have friends? A wife? A first love? A mother? Father? Did you have...," at a sudden loss to describe exactly what she wants to know, Iolene's balled up hands lift, fingers suddenly splaying again towards the sky to find that certain word to encompass all she desires. But it's to no avail, physical actions not giving her the knowledge she needs. So she settles. "Tell me about your first kiss." Below, in the settlement, the cooking fires are starting to die and the main bonfire starts to be stoked: warmth for cold, summer nights. "No. No. No. Not anymore. No," Raum ticks each relation off on his fingers, matter-of-fact in his own right. He adds, too, "If I were a sea monster, you would have tried. --That?" Her question catches him by surprise, his brows lifting up, but he pats the ground where she sat before, for her to rejoin him. "It was out behind the hold stables. Very pretty, better tits than anybody else our age. She was a whore, anyway, I think; somebody knocked her up back there a turn or two later. Wasn't me." Just in case she was wondering that part. "I forget her name, or maybe I didn't know it then either. It didn't seem so important compared to the rest of her." Despite her Blooded upbringing, island life isn't as sheltered as that of the Blood on the main land. Then again, even if it were sheltered, Iolene probably wouldn't have kept it sheltered for very long. Sagely (and a bit wryly), "She wasn't just your first kiss, was she? The whore?" Raum shrugs. "I think she was a lot of people's not-just-first-kiss. --Your turn." For story-time, not for kissing. Although either way would be fine with him, probably. "My turn?" She's playing dumb or is dumb. "Tell me something," Raum prompts anyway, with a don't-be-stupid look. Oh! Enlightened. That's easy; "I've never kissed anyone." Iolene has the grace to flush a little at that. "Other than a fish. But I don't think those count. Your turn." "No one?" Genuine surprise registers on Raum's face then. "How d'you manage that? Even excepting that you islanders are all terrified of accidentally fucking your cousin." "Not my turn." Stubborn when she wants to be, which is now, Iolene shakes her head and then tips it forward in a wordless: 'Yours.' Raum is silent for a moment, thoughtful. "They tell you if you want a purpose in life, join the guards," he finally says. "Bullshit. Join the guards if the other option is the mines. So I suppose you could say I was very nearly a criminal, if you want." A half-curve trembles Iolene's mouth and twitches her nose. "But not a sea monster." It's a rhetorical statement in need of no other response. By now, she's used to this game and she sinks back into her heels, digging the bony ends into the ground to balance there. "I don't want to kiss just anyone. Before she died, my mama would tell me stories about how a first kiss was magical. How she had it with my papa." Sue her and her romanticisms. "I can't just kiss any whore behind the stables." A beat passes while her brow knits. "What are stables?" "A sand monster, if anything. S'all we have, where I've from." Raum shrugs, though, and ignores the question of stables as unimportant. "My mother said it's the person who makes it special, but then, she never got around to marrying, herself. At least, not that I know of. You think you're gonna find something magical, kissing some boy some other man picked out for you just because your folk and his hadn't bred yet?" With his distinctive red hair and fair freckled skin, Raum could stand out most places. He's tall, too: a little over six feet, with a lean physique even as he heads into his forties. His face is narrow, ending in a pointed chin; there's a few lines beginning to show up around his mouth to mark the turns. His eyes are a sharp, cool blue, their no-nonsense look mirrored in both posture and attire. This skids Iolene's romantic notions to a jarring halt and she stares at him mouth gaping. At least the open mouth means a few less muscles have to move when she bursts into laughter a few moments later. "You're a funny man, Strange One." Purloining Rilka's choice term for him archly, the blonde islander shapes her features into a grin. "I hope to have my first kiss before then. Don't you go spreading that around now." A finger waggles, reminiscent of the island's pseudo-Headwoman, an imposingly tall woman with all white hair and a perpetual glower on her face. Then, prompting, not just with her voice, but with that finger that now reaches down to tousle through Raum's ruddy hair: "Your turn." "Got your eye on someone, then?" Raum poses his next question even if it's not his turn. He doesn't immediately offer a bit of information, either, instead reaching up to catch her hand when she touches his hair. "You'll mess it up." Stubbornly, there's no verbal response, though tellingly, you can't fight instinct all the time and the shake of her head all but is over before she realizes it gives her away. It's this moment of chagrin at her own lack of control that causes Iolene to allow that hand to be caught and the hold instantly freezes her entire body. Deer in headlights -- more perhaps more subject appropriate: herdbeast in dragon sight. If she stays still, he will let go. If she wills it, it will happen. If you build it, they will co- whatever. The giveaway, the sudden stillness--one or both of these makes Raum's mouth quirk upward at one corner. "You should probably go. It's getting dark; you know that's when the sea monsters come out," he tells her, though he's quite slow to let go of her hand so she can do so. Don't scare the prey, even if you might be the prey yourself. So while she's all too eager to snatch her hand away, her drift is as slow as his, until finally they're not touching anymore, and from there, her hand finds the small of her back fairly quickly. She can't quite keep the frightened look out of her dark eyes, even as her nature struggles to maintain it's good cheer. But it's finally her voice, that velvet, could-be a harper's voice in some alternate universe, that gives way with a low, "I kill sea monsters for a living, remember?" But whether he remembers or not, Iolene is gone, a flutter of tattered fabrics and loose blonde hair, the bottoms of her dirty feet visibly dark against the sun-brown of her skin. "And I guard them," answers Raum, but half to himself as Iolene leaves. He stays behind, and only follows some time later after she's long gone. |
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