Difference between revisions of "Logs:The Legend Of The Terrible Half-Wher"

Greenhouse, High Reaches Weyr

A rustic and unadorned vestibule leads in from hewn spiral steps to a refitted ledge, enclosed by limestone pillars. Sturdy wooden framework captures elongated glass panes, tilted to absorb the most light during the day. The wash of heat from within, lush and humid, persists even into the dead of winter; the air is heady with the scent of fresh-turned soil and various flora.

Long, deep troughs of soil line the inner stone wall, planted with an assortment of broad, leafy tropicals - practical and decorative alike. Fruit and vegetable baskets hang from rafters, optimizing space, tempting in reach with a perpetually ripening harvest. A series of stone shelving is devoted to flourishing, aromatic herbs and new green shoots; even the softest touch releases a burst of savory scent from tender leaves. Amidst the greenery, a handful of wooden benches have been scattered, making this a temptingly warm and secluded spot to sit.

Shuttered vents serve to regulate humidity and heat given off from a small hot spring recessed into an alcove at the back; a secondary pool with cooler waters siphons off to provide a constant, fresh supply for irrigation. A small potting station nearby is cluttered with watering cans and gardening tools of various uses, with a wooden bin for composting materials tucked underneath.

With the weather outside the usual High Reaches frightful, its greenhouse is a warm haven of more luxurious air: currently a true escape when it lies empty of workers and passersby, as it appears to be now. Broad leaves swaying amongst the occasional gentle spin of a hanging basket. It's peaceful. Then, a disturbance: a scuffle. Just a soft scratching, something shifting. A small animal or a grossly large bug, perhaps, seeking the solitude and warmth makes its scuffling sound against the greenhouse's stone floor.

Bones' blind eye to the outside world is even blinder than usual that night. The keeper of plants is still and silent, surrounded at his bench by signs of that evening's previous activity. A sack of earth lays on it's side at his booted feet. A wooden bowl with spoon sits beside him, smuggled into his place of work from the kitchens. His shirt and vest hang across the back of the bench, while he slumbers in a slump. Skittering alone wouldn't have roused him if he wasn't so close to conciousness before, and it's with a snort that he opens his eyes and mouth simultaneously in a waking yawn.

Was it the remnants of a dream at the edge of consciousness? No; after a minute, the noise sounds again. A little louder now, and leaves to his left rustle, shaking near the ground with more than just the contained air. With eyes attracted to the floor, there's visible a clump or two of dirt. Not so out of place in a greenhouse, but out of place. Easy for a denizen of the house to notice.

"MMph." Comes Bone's half-growl, rising from his hour long nap with a rub at his eyes and a reach into his boot. "Animal or man, if you're theivin' Imma gut you." Grumbled with low energy and zero malice, he lazily retreives his straight razor and flicks it open. There's another yawn as he moves to his feet, and rolls his head on his shoulders. "Prolly won't if you come clean though. C'mon out now, I can smell ya." His blurred vision is finally turned towards the source of sounds, trying to focus on what he can in the dim light of glowbaskets.

With an excited flutter, the leaves pick up speed-- and speak: "Engarde, you-- " and rip aside, "-- Weyr-bellied yellow rider!-- " only, as the green shielding parts, loosing the dashing 'thief', it's just an adolescent girl, in pants, dirtied boots, a shirt with vest, and a banana wrapping up her red-brown hair in a high clump behind her, who, laying eyes on the monstrously tall shadow looming above her, widens them to the size of some of the fruit hanging around and, jaw dropping, shrieks in his face, making it sound more like: "ridahhhhhhhhhh!"

It's in that moment that the gardener has to question both his consciousness and his sanity. There's a tiny pirate girl in his greenhouse. Is he dreaming or had he gone mad, because either of those are easier for him to wrap his mind around than the reality. It's after a few seconds of total stunned horror that he finally moves, clicking in the button on his razor to fold it slowly back into the handle. "I... I ain't gonna hurtcha."

Tiny pirate's jaw snaps shut in time with the razor, but her eyes remain their saucers for several more seconds as she composes, well, this: "Sweet-- " a shudder runs along Mave's body, having tensed, and she releases the adrenaline with a squirm, "Mother, nut fucking, shell of a flea-bitten sea-swine-- " gasp, gasp. Her hand splays over her chest, then up into her hair, knocking the bandana off when, sweeping with her palm, she seems to forget it was there. It's grasped up half-heartedly after. "You scared the piss outta me, you know that?" Clearly, he does; she's made it hard to miss, fanning herself off and then shaking out her shoulders one last time so that, settled, she can turn a squinting examination on this remarkable figure.

Bones' motions are slow, keeping eyes on the girl as he lowers himself down to slip his razor back into it's hidden booth sheath. After the weapon is secured, he reaches an arm out behind him for his shirt, vest left in place along the back of the bench. Even through all her endearing cursing, he regards the girl with more confusion than anything else. "What in a seapickle's salty asshole are you doin' here?" Sleeveless shirt is tugged down over his torso, and he runs his eyes from her boots back up to her face. "What're you like twelve or something? Aintcha supposed to be in bed?"

Sheepishness keeps threatening her face, eyes nailed to Bones' features, but for all his looks, a sense of familiarity in his wording seems to ease her, at least into swiping her hand across her nose more casually. "Hidin'." She explains, like duh. "In the..." her hand precedes her explanation, but when she fails to word one, it just flounders, gesturing obviously to the wide-faced leaves that had obscured her scrawny, crouching figure. "We were..." Now, she talks over a particular obstruction lodged in her throat; her eyes skate sideways, "Playin' riders and pirates. I was..." Though embarrassment touches the press of her lips, she soon bores of it, shrugging, then, remembering the bandana with a knead of her fingers, raising and lowering it in gesture. "The pirate." Without it, her hair has scattered loose, in a poorly done runner's tail, where it still resembles a brown bush at the moment. "I thought you were the... brat who was chasing me..." Averting eyes do their thing, skating away again, despite being magnetized frequently back to Bones in curiosity. She clears her throat purposefully, intimidating the floor with her stare, "He has a very low voice for a ten turn old..."

There's uncomfortable pause in him at her words. Epecially that one, the p-word. He suffers through his aversions to her choice of language, and tries to wrap his mind around all the details of her story. "So.. there's another one of you runts in here somewhere?" He pushes himself up a bit taller on his feet, his full towering height briefly put on display as contrast from his usual slouch. He uses those extra inches to try and scan for sights and sounds of any additional juveniles, but is met with none. "Either he's waitin' real quiet to see what I'mma do to you..." One last wipe of his eyes comes, clearing any crusty eye leavings at the corners he had missed. "... or he ditched you. Either way, you owe him a good slap kid."

She leans back, as if that would somehow aid her against his height -- or she thinks he might suddenly topple over straight onto her. "He may not even have come in," Mave tells the garden troll levelly, stuffing her bandana into her pocket to free both hands to yank her hair's tie tighter by pulling two clumps of her hair to opposite sides; a temporary fix for her falling 'tail. "They're saying there's a half-man, half-wher that stalks this place so he probably won't even check." Her hands fall, brushing on her shirt, "That's why I picked it." There's a slow blink from her, gathering thoughts, or impressing Bones' image further into that girlish temple, before, leaving the lower lip she'd been gnawing at the corner, she asks frankly, "Why do you have a knife in your boot?"

The first smile of the evening appears on Bones' face at learning of his lore amongst the weyrbrats. There's no overt mention of it beyond facial expression, more intent on answering questions than answering them. Less brain power required. "To cut things with." He turns from her long enough to find his wooden bowl on his bench, still a few bits of stew in the bottom. He snatches it right up to scrape up that half-spoon of cold brown deliciousness and shovel it into his mouth. "What's your name, kid?"

"Right." A swift nod over the razor's purpose throws shorter hairs across her forehead, "Animal or man." Without the bandana to fiddle with, she hooks her thumbs within her trouser pockets, lending her stance an odd little swagger. "Good thing I'm neither." Sight of the stew curls her mouth to one side, lips rolling in together then letting out with a soft noise. Asked her name, feet prove they're not nailed to the floor; she drifts forward, one boot nearly in front of the other in careful, measured pacing: one, two. She stops, sways. "Mave." She leans right into another step, all the while keenly staring up -- and up -- at him, her eyes aglow with practical interest. "And you're not a half-man, half-wher, are you." Not really a question, just her puzzling, with that half-furrowed brow. "You've just been on the water." A guess, but one she invests in.

"Maaaan, this is what I hate about cute, freckle-faced kids." That seemed out of the blue, his back still to the girl as he stretches arms up behind his head. He's slow to wake. "They always gotta ask questions." Bowl is idly tossed back down into the bench with a hollow wooden clunking sound, and turns back around to the girl with one hand scratching at the back of his head. "Yeah, I'm a sailor. Was a sailor. As for the half-wher? Can't be certain on that one, I never met my old man." Small smile grows to his regular grin, now. "What do you think? Got some wher in me, do I?"

A muttered "thought so," chimes in beneath Bones' affirmations, as Mave's eyes triumphantly roam his muted, or infection-mussed tattoos, then jump off to soberly trace his face as he asks, grinning. Her thumbs rub along those pockets' insides while her mouth pulls indecisively up at one side, rounding one of those cheeks with all those freckles. "Is that really somethin' you want to be saying about your mother?" Dryness, with lent skepticism by the cool cock of her head.

There's a hefty shrug of buldging man-shoulder at her smirking question. "Why not? She's long dead. Words can't hurt the girl now." Bones mirrorss the girl without realizing, his own hands entering his pockets to fiddle with the inside fabric. "Might'a been a particularly handsome wher, too." In silence, he runs his tongue up across his front teeth, checking for any film that might have grown in slumber. "Y'can call me Bones." Everybody else did. "Tell y'what kid. I'll walk you home and answer more questions, if you promise not to go spillin' to your friends that the greenhouse monster ain't nothin' but an old man. Deal?"

Unimpressed, is the set of Mave's mouth listening, her half-narrowed eyes kept in that scolding holding pattern, even though the pupils within shift with a more tremulous uncertainty. One she tramples on when taking four more steps forward, pulling a hand out of her pocket, fisting it, and knocking her knuckles with a solid thump against Bones' arm. Probably as wide across as she is. No holding back in the thrust, likely more testament to her gumption than that the grizzled sailor will feel it. "She's your ma, jerkwad." Unlike the little malice to the name-calling; it's purely flavor, a touch of freckled girlish threat. "That doesn't go away, just cause she's dead. Like my dad-- good man, and a good sailor. He's dead, too." Her eyes flutter at his nickname, underneath a tug of her 'brows, measuring. Finally, "What'd your mother call you?"

Looking down at where girlish fist hit his arm, he brings his gaze back to her with a raised eyebrow. A silent question asked with face alone. Really, that's your punch? "Hey, don't call me a jerkward, y'little snot." In true old stranger fashion, he reaches for her head to tussle up the hair that she'd just put effort into straightening out. "She called me lots of things." In a sudden rush of motion, the gardener ducks down to put his shoulder into her middle. It's not a swift attack, merely a placement that he intends to keep as he circles an arm around her lower back, and suddenly heaves her up onto one shoulder. "You can call me Bones, squirt. Now cmon, you're going home." Burly arm is tightened around her middle as he laughs, escorting the girl out quite forcibly.

"Whh-- ahh!" A shorter squeak, as all the squirming on earth fails to stop the inevitable: her effective tossing over the strange gardener's shoulder. "Oof," as she hits into him. Mave writhes for a second before, with several huffed breaths against his back, the back of his neck, ceasing. She plows an elbow into his shoulder blade to steer her gaze towards his profile accusingly, "How about I call you jerkwad, jerkwad!" Breathe, breathe. Legs kick, less enthusiastically. She can sense defeat so, lower lip sulking heavily, her nose wrinkled as she stares at retreating scenery, it evens out into determined resignation. "Fine." Like it was her idea; she's doing him this great favor. Little more lightly, she adds, going for her pocket over his shoulder to grab the bandana, "But if we see Youston," she laces it around her forehead deftly, "Then you're a wild man-beast from the southern islands," loops the cords, "And I tamed you." And she yanks the fabric tight.