Logs:Who Would Stay?
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| RL Date: 6 May, 2011 |
| Who: Khorde, Rhaelyn, Rilka |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Young people avoid kitchen chores, and talk about what might be. |
| Where: Settlement, Western Island |
| When: Day 5, Month 9, Turn 25 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Raum/Mentions |
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| Rhaelyn slips into the settlement with a basket heavy with vegitables for the evening meal. She quickly rids herself of the burden and goes to wash up as she strips out of her messy gardening apron. It's early in the meal preperatino but she's keeping as far away from the chopping and peeling as she can possibly get. Woe is Khorde, who obviously has been pressed into chopping and peeling simply because he's an unlucky sot. He settles over his heels in a crouch, a small knife flickering in his hands as he very carefully removes only the skin from a ground-root. His dark eyes flicker upwards, briefly, to scan Rhaelyn's new addition to the meal; they darken soon after in a 'even MORE work?' kind of teenaged woeful fashion. Thusly, he sulks. Inconveniently, the stone wash basin is set up not far from where the vegetable peeling is taking place; more inconveniently, Rilka is already standing there, her matted, wind-blown hair as much an indication of where she's been all day as her pink-cheeks and salty hands. She's scrubbing with intensity, as though by doing this she renders herself utterly invisible - or just too busy to help with anything else. Whichever works. Rhaelyn spares a brittle moment of sympathy for Khorde but a whole lot of smirking for the poor kid. She gives a prim little toss of her glossy hair too, just in case he might notice it. "Aaww, look who has got cook duty. Don't you leave any peels on those tubers." A little sniff from the girl and another as though she smells something...oh, look, it's coming from Rilka. "You might want to use a little more sand..." Rhaelyn spares a brittle moment of sympathy for Khorde but a whole lot of smirking for the poor kid. She gives a prim little toss of her glossy hair too, just in case he might notice it. "Aaww, look who has got cook duty. Don't you leave any peels on those tubers." A little sniff from the girl and another as though she smells something...oh, look, it's coming from Rilka. "You might want to use a little more sand..." Khorde is too busy being self-absorbed to give much notice to Rhaelyn... that is, until she opens her mouth. The handyman gives a single dark look upwards to the girl -- "Should learn your place an' respect your elders, child," he returns in a sarcastically pompous manner, scooting around to put Rilka a little more firmly in between him and the girl. Human shields are definitely the best, right? "Someone's gonna throw back and pop that kid in the mouth one of these days," he comments to the crazy girl, as if miss glossy-hair over there doesn't exist whatsoever. "She thinks she's better than you are," Rilka intones to Khorde, without seeming to react to the jibe aimed at her: she continues to scrub, turning her hands over and over, smoothing away the day's salt and dirt. She does, however, glance upwards, faraway brown eyes focusing long enough to give the younger girl a peculiar glance. "But we are all the same. We honor the sea, and it gives glory in return." Rhaelyn shows her age in the maturity of sticking out her tongue, "Yes elder-/sir/." She drawls, "Then again, some peole should learn their place around their betters." She makes a face at Rilka from around Khorde if he does scoot in so that she's blocked from getting to wash her own dirty hands and averts her eyes, not wanting to even look at the older girl. "You're wrong. I don't honor the sea. The sea can dry up and I'd be happy. Then I could walk my way off this stupid rock." "Salt an' brim, there she goes again," Khorde mutters to himself. "Shelling crazy." There's nothing but a wag of his head, then; "/Both/ of them, shelling crazy." He displaces himself off from the girls, giving them space while he drops the last of the peel into the fertilizer pile, moving the cleaned tuber into a stack with the rest of them. Another one procured, and the whole process starts anew, the dark-eyed boy focusing intently to the task at hand -- and not to either of the crazy women in his immediate vicinity. Shelling crazy, or not shelling crazy, Rilka is, at least, fearless in her defense of-- her beliefs? Or whatever they are. "You should. Thread killed your garden, and then killed it again, when it came back." Ten turns of surprise Thread will do that. "The sea kept us alive. The sea always keeps us alive. And if you do not honor it--" Bad things will happen! Or, at least, that's what her tone seems to imply, all ominous and disapproving. She does rather seem to be taking her time with the washing, too. "Khorde is a good boy," she adds, then. "I don't sharding care about the sea or the stinking seaweed and the salt and disgusting fish." Rhaelyn says quietly and a little too calmly, not looking at the older girl still. "I say let thread have the sea and turn it all to crackdust once and for all. You don't have to have the sea. Raum comes from a place without the sea. I bet it is -beautiful-. I bet it's -warm-." She squeezes her eyes closed as though she can dream that far away place into being without the dulling sound of the waves always rolling...rolling....rolling. Khorde is, in fact, a good boy. But he doesn't like being CALLED that. It sounds so... so... virginal. Dammit. "Like you've ever seen anything that isn't sea or seaweed or salt and fish," he complains in return to Rhaelyn's calm statement. And if he starts to snap out something snide and pentultimately Khorde-esque regarding Raum, he'll have to rein it in, the sharply red flush to neck and ears belying the effort it takes. "For what it's worth, Rilka, I think you're right." It's more a mutter than anything else, but loud enough for both parties to hear. Rilka examines her hands carefully, turning them over once and then again to inspect for more dirt-- but no, she's apparently satisfied, and steps away from the water. "Raum lies," she reports, with complete confidence. "There is no such place. We /need/ the sea." She barely reacts to Khorde's admission, but it is there: a glance, a nod, an approving half-smile. And; "This is where we belong. The ocean has given us life-- to abandon it, to disrespect it, would be asking for trouble. Shimana knows. It can be a cruel mistress." Rhaelyn's pale eyes snap open. There's a look of disgust in that look she tosses at Khorde, "Obviously." She states at his reminder that she's not seen anything else. "Neither have you. But unlike you, I can imagine. I heard -him- talk about that other place. Don't you want to know more? Aren't you curious?" She puts a dirty hand to her throat, just above her chest, blushing slightly. Oh, little girls and their little imaginations. It's short lived though, ruffled by the accusation. "He doesn't lie. Why does he have any reason to lie?" In regards to the 'religion' of the sea she just scoffs and rolls her eyes. Khorde opens his mouth to refute Rilka's denial of Raum, but closes it after a moment. Who says he can't learn self-control? Eventually, after a too-vigorous discarding of a coil of tuber peelings, he drops both tuber and knife into appropriate places and rises to wash his own hands. "I doubt you've spent as much time with Raum as I have," he directly states to Rhaelyn, "--and I doubt you realize the..." The lad has to seek around for the word as he scrubs at his hands, a scowl firmly in place, "--/ramifications/ if he /is/ tellin' the truth." He heard Shimana say that word the other day, trufax. "He lies because he can," reports Rilka, sing-song and pleased with herself. "Because no one can say otherwise." That she's probably alone - at least in present company - in this belief doesn't seem to worry her. Then again, very little ever /does/ seem to. "I don't want to hear any more of his stories. He needs to adapt to our ways. He isn't going anywhere. And neither are we." Rhaelyn snorts at the boy. "How do you know I -don't-?" She asks primly. It's not as though she's ten turns or something, she's nearly Khorde's age. Plots and plans gleam in her eyes for the second she meets his gaze and then looks away. "You can't keep him silent. I'm going to get the stories out of him. Every last one of them." Poor Raum, one might imagine her squeezing every last bit of information from him with her bare hands. Khorde finishes scrubbing. "Well, I'll leave ya'll to it," he comments with false cheer. "Gonna go help 'em pull the last nets before dinner." Anything to escape from present company -- where are all the sweet and agreeable women? Off the island, obviously, and not here. He hunches his shoulders and moves off at a dog-trot, eyes focused on the ground before his feet, ignoring the auntie's calls to summon his return to actually /chop/ the tubers he just peeled. "Poor Raum," remarks Rilka, lazily, taking several steps back from the tubers Khorde has just abandoned. She's not going to get roped into that, oh no. "Not that it matters. Stories are stories and they aren't /real/, and even if they were... We'll never leave these islands. Never ever ever." Rhaelyn gives Khorde a disgusted look as he walks off, as though he were covered in fish-guts or something. Now that she can get to the water she carefully dips her hands in, rubbing fingers together primly as she begins to get the worst of the gardening dirt off her reddened skin. "It matters to me. Even if we're trapped here and stay prisoned here like our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.....I can dream of a better world and he can tell me all about it." She doesn't look up from her hand washing until the other girl says the never ever -ever- part. That brings her head up, eyes narrowing, "/I/ would leave. If someone came. I would leave with my father and my auntie." Rilka combs at her hair with her fingers. Worn loose, the long mass is-- tangled. To put it mildly. She gives Rhaelyn a bland look as she does so, then remarks; "I didn't say that you wouldn't. But no one will come. Why would they? They never came before. We /belong/ here, besides. This is home." And she seems to find Rhaelyn terribly strange for implying otherwise. "The crabs would miss me. They talk, you know." Rhaelyn's lips twitch, "you said 'We'll never leave'...." she looks down down at her hands and picks a bit of dirt from under a fingernail hissing as a bit of splinter comes away. "You are wrong." About belonging there on the island apparently. "....Because if there were a....something....to take us away...." because she can't fathom the what or the how, just that it might be real, "Who would stay?" She sighs dreamily but really it's the fantasy of a girl who has been thinking too long and hard about such things. The comment about talking crabs? She gives Rilka the same disgusted look she had Khorde when the comment about talking crabs is brought up. Rilka corrects herself, without any particular emphasis, "If the opportunity arose, I'm sure you would. But it won't. It won't ever." Her dark gaze rests sharply upon the younger girl again, considering her with an unreadable expression. "Unless, of course, a stray dragonrider comes all this way and takes us all 'home' to some place we have never been, and turns us into Ladies and Lords and makes everything safe." Her tone is dreamy - but also dismissive. "I would never leave." Rhaelyn meets Rilka's dark warm gaze with her pale icy one and she smiles so sweetly. "We will see what happens." There's a little sneer at the end, as though she doesn't have her full heart into this dream but she's too stuborn to admit the unlikelihood of it all. "Wouldn't you just like to see something -different-? Something -new-? Something not safe, something wild and strange..." There's an intense longing in her eyes for a moment before she shrugs it away as though it doesn't matter. "Maybe I'll just have to make something wild and strange for myself here." Now doesn't that sound like trouble. Different? New? Rilka blinks vaguely at these concepts, as though she doesn't quite grasp them. "No," she tells the younger girl, rather more firmly than most of her statements end up being. "No. I like it here." Another person might disapprove of the trouble that might come out of Rhaelyn's wild and strange... but Rilka doesn't seem to notice much. She drops her hands back to her sides, and announces, apparently apropos of nothing. "I am going to check on the rock pools." Which, apparently, means 'farewell'. Rhaelyn leans with her chin at the denial from the older girl. There's nothing more to say except to argue and she bites her tongue to keep from unleashing words in frustration. It's just as good that the other is making the departure then. One nod as a departing gesture before Rhae resumes washing her hands and arms in the water. |
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