View source for Logs:Tiriana's Turnday, Screw Vigorously

{{Log
|involves=High Reaches Weyr
|type=Log
| who = N'thei, Tiriana
| where = 
| what = 
| when = Day 26, Month 8, Turn 17, Interval 10
|day=26
|month=8
|turn=17
|IP=Interval
|IP2=10
| gamedate = 2008.09.04
| quote = 
| weather = 
| categories = General
| mentions = Satiet
| icons = 
| log = Records Room, High Reaches Weyr(#367RJs)

Books. Scrolls. Bound hides. Maps. If it's a record pertaining to the Weyr, it's likely to be in this roughly oval room with its floor-to-ceiling cherrywood shelves, its multitude of slots for scrolls, and its wide drawers for materials that shouldn't be rolled up or folded. A scribe is usually on duty at the tall desk up front with its good view of the room, and is able to help visitors find what they're looking for via the big bound index on its rotating stand. Past the desk, several tables stand in neat rows for note-taking, each stocked with glowbaskets, scrap hide, paper and pencils. Additional lighting is provided by a many-armed wrought-iron light fixture, its glows gleaming through luxurious glass containers in fluted shapes instead of baskets.

To one side of the room, a gap between two sets of shelves outlines where another set once stood, now replaced by a tapestry-covered aperture. Peeking behind the tapestry reveals another cavern, this one likewise full of shelves, but occupied by only a few boxes of older records and a somewhat musty air of disuse. As well, two narrow but solid doors are locked when the room is unattended and a discreet staircase provides direct access from the Weyrleaders' weyrs.

Tiriana heads in from the council chambers.
Tiriana has arrived.

Look how studious N'thei's being, all holed-up in the records room with a bit of scrap hide for taking notes and his pencil and a few books-and-scrolls open on the table he's commandeered. If he were anyone else, he'd probably have been taken to task for having his feet up on a chair, for rough-handling a cracked old hide, but the scribe on duty just looks the other way with an occasionally pensive frown, leaves the man to his own devices.

With a couple of folded letters and loose, blank sheets of paper in hand, Tiriana heads into the records room herself with some purpose to her stride and her own distracted expression as she thumps everything down on the nearest table. Just about to pull out herself a chair in the process, she notices feet nearby, and then N'thei himself, with a loudly dramatic sigh.

N'thei's thumb marks his progress, pinches down on the page before he lifts his eyes to find the source of this particular dramatic sigh. Considering the twittery state of the scribe, there have probably been a few of them already. He rakes a look all the way up to the top of Tiriana's hair, then tilts his head with a sweet-as-pie smile at the goldrider; "Nice to see you too."

Tiriana glances around at the door like she's thinking of just turning back around and walking out again. She doesn't, though, with a set of her shoulders and a deliberately noisy jerking-out of her chair before she flumps down into it. Without any more proper greeting, she wonders, "Find one with pretty pictures?"

"Mmn." Sounds agreeable; N'thei even turns the top of it so there's a good glimpse of the sketch that comprises the majority of his current interest. Looks complicated, mechanical, way above his head. "What's this here say?" He has to take his feet off the chair to lean forward like that, to scrape his fingernail under the words "screw vigorously" while he tries to show them to Tiriana.

It really is a picture! Tiriana's brows slide up, a little surprised to be right, but then she takes an actual look at the picture herself and discovers it's not pretty after all. At his underlining, she slides hero own work aside to lean over the table herself, elbows on it and one hand reaching out to steady the other edge of the sketch herself. "Screw vigorously?" she repeats, blankly at first and then with a harder, brows-furrowed look at the paper. "What /are/ you reading. Vigorously, seriously?"

N'thei folds it in half quickly and holds it to his chest with a primness that hardly suits him. He sniffs delicately, raises his chin-- the borrowed image of a certain Weyrwoman's most pristinely frosty looks-- and says with delicacy, "It's not for little girls to be reading." Quietly, like he needs to know for later, "Screw vigorously." He stuffs the hide under the heavy stack of books, out-of-sight; "What are you doing in here." There, that's more like his usual demanding brusqueness.

"I'm twenty today," Tiriana counters, with her own snort for that label. "Not a little girl. And it's not like I don't know about screwing vigorously already, so." Hmph. She leans back heavily into her chair while he hides away his secret little sketchy thing. "/I'm/ writing thank-you letters." Pause. Quickly, lest he think she's actually thoughtful like that: "Iovniath's making me."

"Subtle way of asking for presents?" N'thei pats down his pockets while he slinks back into his earlier repose, his feet finding the chair once more. Ah, he's located something, pulls it out with a hopeful expression; it turns out to be a peach pit, which he put in his pocket for who-knows-what-reason, and now he offers generously on his palm toward Tiriana. "To whom."

Tiriana eyes the peach pit with a snurl of her nose; she doesn't reach for it. "What am I supposed to do with that? Everybody else got me something useful. Like marks," she tells him, with a roll of her eyes. Now that she's talking about writing letters, though, she feels compelled to reach for her paper again, and the pen, and slide them back over in front of her. "My grandmother. Aunts. The people that got me stuff, of course."

N'thei curls his fingers back around the peach pit; which is at least dry and not slimy and spitty still. He still holds it out there for her, just in case, but his attention drops pointedly to his lap for a moment. "Girl has to earn her marks, love. If you're strapped for cash..." He trails off, shifts in his seat, then lobs the peach pit so it's likely to bounce around on the middle of Tiriana's table.

N'thei glances down at his lap, and Tiriana's eyes automatically follow before she has time to catch on. "Hell no," she snaps at once, with a glare. "I don't want /your/ marks anyway, no matter how broke I am." With a superior sniff then, she makes a very deliberate show of scratching out 'Dear Gran' on the first paper in her scrawly handwriting. "/Satiet/ got me something, though," she mutters.

"No?" N'thei leaves the option open, a you're-sure quality to the voice, the tilted head, the half-smile. Then big shoulders shrug helplessly and he tries to remember where he was with his picture-books, right up till /Satiet/ got her something. "Did she. I'd have it checked for poisons before I handled it overmuch. If I were you." He only looked up a mite quickly at the dropping of that particular name, only a quick-glance to the door; fear or hope that a name might summon her?

Flicking the peach pit vaguely back in his direction, Tiriana toys with her pencil, tapping in on the table and chewing its end idly as she tries herself to add more than the greeting to her letter. It doesn't work so well, even without him interrupting. Again tracking his gaze, she shoots a look around at the door and then back at him, brows furrowing up. "It's a scarf," she tells him, as though he's stupid. "And a ring."

N'thei: "Still." He shakes his head as if warningly at Tiriana, as if this is his wisdom to impart, frail though it might be. He accepts the as-though-he's-stupid aspects without complaint, without even questioning the reason for the look, and gives up trying to pretend he's going to go back to work when the peach pit comes back to him. It lands on his chest, and he scoops it up to put it back in his pocket, then-- "Never put much stock in turndays. Or thank-you notes."

"Well," begins Tiriana, who distractedly traces over her first two words again to fix the lettering. It only makes the legibility worse, and with a frown down at the paper, she sets her pen down, too, in favor of eyeing him in turn. "I suppose if you don't even have /family/ that wants to give you something--" She shrugs, a what-can-you-do gesture, faintly pitying.

N'thei's relentless smile, the one that's mean and comfortable for him. "Some of us actually grew up and moved out. You should try it some day."

Sharply, "I did. I /have/," Tiriana says, stressing the words as she tries to sull over that helpful bit of advice. "This is the only time any of them do anything for me now, so."

"Ah." N'thei thinks about it a moment longer, his face contorting through the thought-process, then he takes a breath and asks with a few confused blinks, "Makes you throwing it in my face seem a little hypocritical then, doesn't it."

That he calls her on that makes Tiriana flush slightly, ducking her head and picking up her pencil again to scratch out her heading this time. "Yeah, well. ... Shut up." Way to comeback.

N'thei scratches the side of his face thoughtfully, his face still going through the throes of confusion and doubt. "Twenty, you said?" Really?

"Yes, I'm twenty, all right?" Tiriana grows further waspish, scribbling on her paper until it threatens to put a hole in it. "Just forget it already. Don't you have, like... somebody else to terrorize?" She's still flustered enough not to come up with anything better, although she focuses very hard on creasing down her paper and tearing off the messed-up portion now.

Long pause. Listen to those seconds roll by with nothing but the tear of Tiriana's paper. Finally, N'thei points out in a very little voice, "Actually. I was here first, love." It almost sounds like an apology on his part, like he's the one to fault for their current proximity. Big-sad-eyes don't help.

"So?" Tiriana has a quicker answer to that, flushing fading as she focuses on picking off the rough paper edges with meticulousness not generally associated with her. "That just means you should be closer to leaving. I'm sure you can think of /something/ to go screw vigorously."

Sometimes... Sometimes, it's too easy. "Yes." N'thei drawls it happily, and the big-sad-eyes turn at once bright and promising and blatantly revealing: in his mind, Tiriana's naked, and he's happy to let her know this right now. "Tell gramma hi from me." Sounds like imminent departure, plus the happy juxtaposition of mentally violating Tiriana while she writes a thank-you note to her grandmother, speaking of perverse.

Tiriana's not embarrassed, no turning red now, but she does put on a good show of being thoroughly disgusted by that, with a snurl of her nose and a snort that don't quite erase the half-smirk smug at her mouth. Of /course/ he's thinking that; who wouldn't? "Her, and Daddy, too," she agrees.

Which reminds him! "Tell your father--" Like your-father is a term that needs to be spat. "That I don't want random bronzeriders showing up at my Weyr unannounced." N'thei's frown returns suddenly, his interest in Tiriana as suddenly evaporated while he stacks stuff for the trek out with renewed vigor. "And happy turnday."

"Tell him yourself," counters Tiriana. "Not like he came to see /me/." Somebody sounds a little bent out of shape over that, too, still. Still, while he stacks everything, she watches, wiggling her pen idly and still not writing. "Thanks."

N'thei's fingers tense for just a second at Tiriana's back-talk-- want. to. smack.-- and he stops with a hand on top of his books to give her one of those looks-capital-L. Happy-turnday is the nicest place to end the conversation though, so he lets that ride, loads up and leaves.



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