View source for Logs:Meeting Persie in the Galleries

{{Log
|involves=High Reaches Weyr
|type=Log
| who = Persie, N'thei
| where = Hatching Galleries, Fort Weyr
| what = 
| when = Day 29, Month 10, Turn 13, Interval 10
|day=28
|month=10
|turn=13
|IP=Interval
|IP2=10
| gamedate = 2007.10.14
| quote = 
| weather = 
| categories = General
| mentions = 
| icons = 
| log = With no eggs and none expected for a long spell yet, the galleries are almost completely empty. Row after row after row of stone seating is vacant, almost all they way up to the top. About five tiers from the top, with a good view all the way down, N'thei has set up temporary residence with a drink and a slouch. All else is quiet and serene and at least it's warm in here.

With no eggs and none expected, Persie stands at the entrance of what she would guess is an empty cavern. Her eyes are on the sands - empty, bare sands - as she sucks in a long breath. Instead of looking around, she just drops into the nearest seat, her feet up on the stone bench in front of her and her hands tucked between her knees. Her attention drops into her lap without ever scanning the rest of the galleries.

There's a long spell after Persie enters when nothing changes. No one comes. No one goes. N'thei doesn't move beyond the new direction of his tranquil gray eyes. After several minutes like this, he pulls a drink from his flask, slides it into his pocket, and stands with little more than a shuffle of his feet. Sometimes climbing over the benches and sometimes around them, he makes his way quietly-- very quietly for someone of his size-- down and down. Closer, there's a good chance she'll catch a footstep; "And here I expected solitude."

The sound of that sudden movement makes Persie jump, makes her suck in another breath. "Oh, I'm sorry," her feet dropping down from their bench, ready to stand. "I..." But then she turns to look at to whom she's speaking and her eyes grow wide as they take in the familiar man. "Oh!" Then she's quiet, just looking at him for a moment. "I can leave." Though her preparation was quick, she seems almost stiff as she moves to get up, her eyes dropping again.

"Or you could stay." N'thei's invitation sends off with a hopeful half-smile, a questioning flicker of his eyebrows on their way up. He steps one long leg over the bench, straddles it, and drops down to a seat like that, now looking up at Persie with the same expression. "Please. I could actually go for company. I just wasn't expecting any."

"I..." Persie tries a smile, but it seems rather close to a grimace. "I don't think I'd be very good company." Her thin arms wrap around herself as she stands there looking down at him and her weight shifts anxiously.

N'thei manages to inflect surprise, to tilt his head on point with the question; "Why?" One hand dropped in front of him, he reaches the other toward the wrist of Persie's crossed arms. "I've always rather enjoyed your company, personally. If you have somewhere to be, by all means, but you're better company than none at all."

Persie's lips open to speak, but his hand on her wrist seems to silence her and with some reluctance she drops back into her seat without looking at him. She wets dry lips and stares at her knees. "You must be proud," she murmurs, skipping the why and attempting to offer what small talk she can muster.

N'thei releases Persie's wrist when she sits again, drags his hand back across so it sits near the other. "Must I?" He laughs mildly, with an edge to it, clearly a little bemused by Persie's estranged demeanor. "I haven't figured that part out yet. You're bothered by it?"

There's a little twitch at the corner of Persie's mouth. "I don't know," she finally says, letting out a tight breath. She tucks her chin down a little more. "It's complicated. - Are you?" she asks then, turning to look up at him. "Bothered?"

"No." N'thei can only shrug, some apology conveyed in the gesture but mostly acceptance. "I expected it sooner or later, comes with the territory. What's complicated about it?" The tucked chin meets a frown, and he reaches with his forefinger to try and turn Persie's chin back up.

Persie pulls her chin away a bit, shying from his touch. "Last time this happened..." But she just shakes her blonde head and shrugs. "It's silly. It's not your problem." And then she does squeak out a smile, a small one, but a smile nonetheless. "You should be happy. Excited."

N'thei's not exactly going to force the issue; she wants a chin-tuck, he leaves her to it. Though his finger is not without purpose, rolling in a gesture intended to mean carry-on. "Last time this happened...? Finish the story?" Happy, excited, shrug. "Finish."

Persie rolls her near shoulder. "Last time this happened... He left." Her mouth closes, teeth chewing at the inside of her lip. "I told you it was silly." And again she shakes her head. "You don't want to hear about those things. It's ok. I know." She takes to squirming in her seat and then suddenly she's up again.

"I don't actually live here so..." N'thei drums his fingers against the air speculatively before lowering his hands once more. "It stands to reason that I'll be leaving again when it's all said and done. My things are still at High Reaches, and I'm attached to some of them." The suddenly up again part startles him, has his eyebrows climbing once again; "I don't want to hear, or you don't want to talk? They're entirely different."

"You don't want to hear. You... It isn't..." Persie's expression grows more pained as she attempts to find a whole sentence she can get out of her mouth. Her shoulders twist again like she might try to grow smaller. "It's not easy." And neither is sitting, apparently.

N'thei looks patient, or as patient as a man can be when he praised uncomplicated as a virtue. "Which part?" He pauses just briefly, then clarifies; "You're going to have to spell it out for me a little more. I honestly don't know what you're going through, and I'd at least rather have some idea before you go tearing off."

"He left. And then he left me." Persie sighs, grimacing again. "It's that... simple, that stupid." And now she gets frustrated with herself. "But that's... not it. It's everything. Everything that doesn't work and everything that falls apart and..." She closes her eyes and her lips move, two silent syllables to call on something outside of herself. The breath that follows is calmer. "Don't worry about it," she says, trying to smile again. "This..." she lifts her fingers from her arm, a tiny gesture at the sands. "This is a good thing. You should be proud and happy and getting ready to bet on how many eggs and... Not listening to me." She scrubs the heel of her hand over a pale eyebrow.

N'thei smiles in a forlorn-looking sympathy and says, with that same threadbare patience, "It's a flight, Persie. You're a greenrider." He shakes his head in a put-the-two-together way at her, followed by a brief file of his teeth over his lip. "I'm sorry that you got hurt once upon a time. But I really /really/ don't think you need to be worried that Wyaeth winning this flight is going to change anything but the scenery." With some serious stress on the /really/.

Persie shakes her head quickly, blonde hair sliding about her shoulders. "No, it's not that. I mean, yeah, it's a piece but... It's just... one more thing. And... and that would be silly anyway because, well, it's not like we..." But then the words fail her again and she just looks at him with wide, confused eyes. Her slow inhale shakes a bit and she murmurs, "I'm sorry." And then she turns away to go.

N'thei suggests, just suggests, "You have to learn to articulate." He reaches once again, this time to try to stay her by the elbow, but it's a finger-light attempt that would be all too easy to brush aside. "I can't guess the minds of women, I never could. If it's going to bother you that I'm here, and it's clearly bothering you right now, I will avoid you. I'd rather not, but you really hold the cards here."

His touch stalls her step. "No," Persie answers, but with the next breath, "Yes. No. I know I don't make any sense." She turns back to him, dropping her arms to her sides. "I don't know what to do. I don't want to be like this. I ruin everything."

N'thei looks sorry for her, he really does, and it touches in a softness behind his placid eyes. "I'm sorry for you, Persie. I really am. Just--" He finds a collecting breath. "What is it that you want? Or maybe. What is it that you think you stand to lose? If I knew, maybe I could say the right thing."

Persie doesn't seem to have a ready answer for that either. She looks at him, hopeless. "What do you want?"

N'thei answers without having to think about it; "A life less complicated." He cracks a smile that brightens by shades until it has proper control of his face, lightens his eyes and all. "Quid pro quo. Now you."

And for that Persie cracks a little lopsided smile. It might not be her usual shining grin, but it's there and earnest. "Me too." Her gaze is still wide and lost but it seems, somehow, a little less frantic. She takes a step toward him, closing the distance gained by her attempt to leave, and just stands there, looking at him.

"Let me know if you find one somewhere? I'd be happy to put a bid on it." N'thei looks around the hatching cavern like he just might find one hiding under a bench somewhere. No luck. "In six months, if we're still doing whatever it is we're doing, then we can worry about whatever it is you're worried about. For now." He once more reaches a hand to Persie, this time to fold the big mitt around hers.

Persie kind of rolls her eyes at his search, just a little bit. It's what he says when the search if over that makes her suck in a breath. This time when he reaches for her hand, hers reaches back to meet it and she wraps her thin fingers tight in his. She looks at their hands and then at him. "Do you have to leave now?" she murmurs.

N'thei shakes his head, now with the same tolerant patience he wore for Persie not long ago; "No. Wyaeth's with Ciath, evidently discussing whose ledge is nicer." He'd like to kill the bronze right now, if tone is any indicator. "Much as I might like to take my dignity back to the Reaches where it belongs, I'm captive for now. Do you?" Briefly, he brings the skinny knuckles to his lips.

Wyaeth and Ciath. Persie tucks her lips in, but his attention her her knuckles drops her mouth open with a little gasp and an expression as if she might just cry. She doesn't though and instead another shy smile finds her lips. "Do you... I mean, would you like... to see mine? My ledge?" A glimmer of the Persie he once met over drinks now scans the ceiling of the hatching cavern with a narrowed eye. "It's right..." Her free hand points upward. "There." Though, well, one would assume that's not the -exact- location.

"Sure." N'thei could just as well be accepting a drink, a handshake. But he seems happy to abandon whatever thoughts of Wyaeth and Ciath he carries at the moment, and the brightened Persie seals the deal. He pushes to his feet, still with Persie's hand. "Saying 'lead the way' is a little redundant, since I haven't yet learned to fly, but it gets the point across." His chuckle is entirely self-amused.

"Secath's outside," Persie grins, showing now intention of dropping his hand as she turns toward the exit. "She'll take us. It's warm all the time, like here. Well, not -this- warm, but warmer than the other weyrs. And.. it's a mess." With the knuckle ofher free hand she rubs the side of her nose, half hiding the sheepish little smile. "I'm messy." But she will indeed lead him out to the bowl and the waiting green.

N'thei answers pleasantly, "So am I, so I won't hold it against you." There's two steps before he adds, "Well, I might. Depending on how messy we're talking about. There's nothing growing in it or anything, is there?" He has to kind of shuffle his steps or else overtake her, and let's not forget that he is absolutely and completely uncomfortable and ungainly riding another dragon. Just not natural.

Persie's Jungle Cabana
The vast inner weyr that seems almost uncultured in its raw unfinished quality. Still, the space has a few bold accoutrement to lend it personality. The oversized bed has a gauzy canopy overtop with netted screens that can be drawn down to surround and protect its inhabitants. For those times when the chill of winter air does manage to invade the temperate weyr, vividly hued fur pelts of bold striped patterns can be removed from their decorative placement hung along the broad walls to provide a blanketing warmth. At the far back of the weyr, a small pool is fed by a water source deep within the Weyr's caldera, the pool cool and crisp in nice contrast to the balmy climate of the weyr at large.

Secath doesn't seem to mind that her passenger is uncomfortable. She rumbles a smug little note and carries them the short distance to her ledge. It is just as Persie claimed, 'right there', a broad sandy ledge up along the side of the hatching cavern. When Persie hops down, she reaches for N'thei's hand again, as if he might get lost between the green and the weyr's entrance. She doesn't say anything, she just smiles and leads him inside. And, just as she said, it's a mess. Clothes are everywhere, bits of riding gear, pillows, hair brushes, socks, hides, glasses, bottles. A mess. The striped scarf is there, hanging on one of two chair at her little table. On the shelf of a hutch cabinet is the bottle of tequila (healthily sampled) and the glasses that came with it. Persie sighs with rather happy relief at the chaos. "Well, this is home."

N'thei's got his teeth all set on edge to predict a hard landing, and he winds up surprised and relieved when Secath lands without trying to snap his neck. "It's..." He unravels his own scarf, no doubt donned somewhere between the gallery and the green, to whom he spares a grateful nod. "It's about what I expected it to be like. Cleaner, though." While he plucks a sock off the floor with his Persie-free hand, holds it up along with a grin. "My sister's room looks like this." And there's a bundle of Freud in there somewhere, but we can worry about that later.

"Really?" Persie laughs, looking around with new eyes, trying to see the clean. "Well, I guess.. I don't have stuff growing... At least not now. Once in a while it happens. I mean, you have some juice and it sits around a bit or a plate of something that you just keep forgetting to bring down to the living cavern but... I need to pack up my laundry again. And my summer clothes. OH! Turn around." She waves a hand at him, trying to turn him way from... well something that she then dashes to and... does something with. Whatever it was. "There. Ok. Do you... want anything? A drink? A... bath? A pillow? I don't have a whole lot," she laughs.

N'thei tosses the sock off somewhere into the general disarray, laughs when it lands softly on the floor. Whatever has her dashing around, he utterly misses, but he also tries to peer at it rather than turn around as directed. "A drink, a bath, a pillow? I can't for the life of me figure out any way to put those three things together." So he gives up and searches with his eyes for something or another; "A chair?"

Chairs are those things you keep clothes on, right? Or, that's what they are here. "A chair," Persie says, turning her attention to the piled table and it's equally laden pair of chairs. And her solution? To bend and take up the whole thing in an armful and dump it on the floor. "There, chair." She's smiling, if still shyly and then she scratches at the side of her face. She's plainly not quite at ease with this whole hostess thing. "You have a sister?" Yes, she caught that. "Older or younger? Is she a rider too or... at the Hall. No, wait, where were you from before the Hall? Did you tell me already?" The barrage of questions ends as she wrinkles her brow trying to remember.

"I do. Younger. Fifteen now." With the surprise of an older sibling realizing a little is actually growing up. N'thei swipes his hand over the seat of the chair before he sits down, just to be sure!, and then settles with one ankle crossed over the other knee. "She's at home still, Benden, and I didn't tell you already. Never came up. Have you ever had anyone in here before?"

"Yeah, a few people. Not many. Benden, huh?" But Persie stands there now with her fingers fiddling at the hem of her sweater, plainly not sure what to do with herself. Her weight shifts anxiously like a candidate on hatching sands, foot to foot.

N'thei watches the fidgeting feet for a few seconds and says merrily, "If you need to turn handsprings or something to loose all that energy, by all means. But you're making me nervous all over right now."

Persie lets out an uneasy breath and... drops to sit cross-legged on the floor. "I'm alright. I'm just... I'm not myself lately. Or I am myself just... not my better self. I'm just confused. I mean, I'm always confused but it's a different sort of confused." Her means to shake her head but it's really more of a twitch. "All the things I want to do or should do or be and they all get... You think I'm crazy. Everybody thinks I'm crazy."

Entertained, N'thei leans forward with his forearms resting on his thighs, ankle dropped off his knee. "I think everyone's crazy, so don't worry about it. I just think you're a particularly entertaining kind of odd." Arranged so he can still see Persie even once she's plopped on the floor, he can't help chuckling down at her; "Why do you worry so much about what everyone thinks? Or what anyone thinks?"

Persie bites her lip in another bashful smile to be considered entertainingly odd, but as he laughs down at her, his question makes the smile fade. "People... It's just me and Secath." If there are other things meant by that --and by the continued movement of brow as if her brain my be attempting to chew through some other thoughts-- she doesn't find words for them. She just looks up at him if her hands in her lap and her shoulders twisting around.

N'thei starts as if he might have his words already chosen, but they fade before utterance, replaced by a charmed-seeming smile for a second or two. "Just you and Secath best get me back down to the ground then. It's been one hell of a night, and it's shaping up to be an equally murderous afternoon, I'm afraid. But thank you for the visit." He gestures one forefinger to indicate the wreckage that is Persie's weyr; "It's been enlightening."

"Oh." The thoughtfulness of Persie's face fades to something empty. "Right." And she pushes herself up with a righting of tangled limbs and heads past him for the ledge.

"But. Wait." N'thei follows in step, up from the chair, and wheeled around to find the path of Persie's steps with his own. "There's something I ought to explain to you. I really don't want to hurt your feelings, so listen for a second?"

Persie stops obediently, turning around toward him though her chin is down again and her hands attempting to murder the stitches at the base of her sweater.

N'thei looks at the twisted hem and the dropped chin, and he draws up his eyebrows in a sorrowful expression. After a false start, then a second one, he breaks into a dismissive smile; "Nevermind. It will keep. So." Dismissive turns pleasant. "Secath's not opposed to playing ferry a second time, I hope?"

Persie looks up at him then, her eyes round and hurt and worried. "No," she tells him. "You can say it. I understand. Just... say it."

"There's a woman." Isn't there always? "I can't have her, and I know that, but I'd give up my thumbs to make it otherwise." N'thei smiles frailly, a flicker at the edge of his mouth, a twinge of apology to the little blonde. "That's why. I like you. I think you're sweet and funny and charming. But that's why."

Persie just nods, only her chin stays down again. "It's okay. I know. I know what I am. We'll bring you down now." It's quiet and resigned and she doesn't wait before turning to the ledge again.

N'thei follows. He feels bad, and it shows, but there you have it. The bronzerider drops his hands in his pockets, tranquil eyes sad where they watch Persie, and he shuffles along behind her quietly. Just a mild, "Thank you."


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