Difference between revisions of "Logs:Visitors In Exile"

Beach, Western Island

Though beaches surround most of the island, meeting the water everywhere except beneath the great cliffs, it's a single expanse of rocky ground that is most often referred to as The Beach. Extending roughly between the rock-pools nestled below the cliffs, and the shallow bed of the river as it trickles out into the ocean, the beach is a centre of activity throughout the day. At low tide, the river is an ideal location for laundry; the rock-pools often teaming with shellfish and other seafood, and extend far enough to be a good point from which to cast nets.

More grey than golden, more rocky than sandy, the beach nonetheless has a captivating view out over the nearest islands in the archipelago. Beyond the rock-pools, there are boulders enough to make travel between this and the nearest island an easy task, though even some of the other visible islands are beyond the reach of man alone. Inland, the cleared ground makes it easy to see all the way to the shallow collection of huts and the caves beyond.

For days, now, Visigoth's been checking in: sometimes a twang against the nearest chain, sometimes it's a tug, not quite every day but close. He's alive? Good. Today, though, the big brown won't be denied, not given that swoop-swoop-swoop sound of fancy-read-pretentious bladework criss-crossing in the air, designed to grab an audience's attention. See, it's time to 'fess up: time to send the image, because he's all packed up and it's got to be boring out there. (Visigoth to Cadejoth)

To Visigoth, Cadejoth has not been adverse to those check-ins - at no point has he tried to block the other dragon out. If the chains in his thoughts are still and cold, if he's got less spark than usual, well, is that surprising? His rider may be hiding from the world, away-with-out-leave, but Cadejoth? He's mostly along for the ride. Today, there's a beat of silence as he considers Visigoth's intrusion, and then, carefully, he offers that image: the windswept beach, the low clouds. Here. « He doesn't want to talk, » he notes. But that's no reason not to come.

A few minutes later, well after Visigoth's dry, « He'll survive, » there comes the brown: out of nothingness, high in the sky, radiating not only smugness but peculiar bleating noises. Or, not so peculiar, given that each fist contains a live animal. At least, they're still alive when he drops them before the bronze. « One herdbeast, one wherry. » Cadejoth gets choices! Visigoth thumps to a landing, then, leaving Val to dismount and stare about her after a passing wave in K'del's general direction: just how bare is this place, these days?

How many days has it been now? Enough. Enough that Cadejoth - who has had to resort to eating fish - sits up abruptly, and with obvious pleasure, at the sight of those beasts. « You're amazing, » declares the bronze, abandoning the sand-wallow he's been inhabiting to pounce on the wherry - not that it's likely to get away at this point. K'del's further up the beach, but not so far: sitting near a fire built from driftwood, roasting some spindly spiderclaws in the flames. He barely glances up; only enough to nod vaguely in Val's direction. The beach shows no other signs of life, but then, the settlement is where the most of it was, and that's further up the cliff.

Visigoth is, isn't he, and if that's predictable... well, that's just the price he'll have to pay. He watches the younger bronze go after the prey with a proprietary air, even as he just as idly stretches out his wings, afterward hollowing them into partial cups that accentuate the leathery sails and shape the wind into even more of a moan. ooOOoo. That's entertainment! His rider, though, once she's left off surveying and ambles near: "Phew, man, you stink." Thud goes the sack she's been hauling like there's nothing to do it. Thud goes the other sack. "Clean clothes. The bits of char can thank me later." Maybe one or two or many other things, while she's at it. Including, "Sweetsand, too. Don't worry, I won't watch."

« You don't think this beach is creepy enough? » It doesn't sound as though Cadejoth especially likes it here, for all that he's not outright complaining. Besides: he's eating. On closer inspection, K'del is pale, with dark shadows beneath his eyes - though at least there's no sign of tears. He doesn't look up, not even at the thud of those sacks, but he does say, in a brittle, quiet little voice: "Thanks. I suppose that means you're going to try and convince me to go back."

« I don't think this beach is exciting enough, » is what Visigoth tells Cadejoth back, and sniffs in the direction of the abandoned, limping herdbeast before catching himself and pulling back. Mustn't feed off the nibbles he'd brought for someone else, after all. "Can if you want," Val says, dropping into a crouch nearby, after that one first pained glance looking away to the spiderclaws. The increasingly crispy spiderclaws. "They a metaphor or something?' she wonders with a gesture. "Anyhow, I brought booze, thought you might be out. Some other things, too. The place will survive without you, these things do. Although it's pretty well messy there."

Cadejoth spits out a few wherry feathers distastefully, then drops his bloody mouth back down to take another bite; that huff into his meal is likely as much a reply to Visigoth as it is gesture of contentment. « It's very empty. At least it hasn't snowed. Hraedhyth checked in. Others. » Liar. Hraedhyth demanded his return, but he's being careful about doing more than hint at that. "I'd rather you didn't," he says, voice rasping with disuse. "Metaphor?" The spiderclaws get a glance, and then a shrug. Maybe. Maybe not. "Thanks. Know they'll be fine. B'sil's a good man. Azaylia and Brieli and Lujayn--" They're good too.

Littering the beach? Not something Visigoth bothers with. Cadejoth could scatter feathers up and down the entire coastline for all of him, and then take Nerat as his next stop. « That's something, » the brown supposes, shaping more of those ooOOoo noises but more absently now. « She's loud. Bet she yelled at you. » He licks his maw, thoughtfully. Val? "Won't, then." Though she's got to also say, "Only one brown, did you hear? Couple of blues, rest greens. Not that I mind greens, though they have some growing up to do before they're any use," and is that deliberate teasing? Her smile is secretive.

« She demanded we come back and lead, » admits Cadejoth, around his meal (there's not all that much left, even now). « I told her I'd chase her when it was time. » The latter is a great admission than the former: from the way he says it, it's not something he's mentioned to K'del. "Heard," agrees K'del, using another piece of driftwood to drag the spiderclaws off the fire. "Want one?" Presumably he's not talking about greens - not then. Although: "When they're grown, Cadejoth can fight Visigoth for them." His heart doesn't sound entirely in it, though.

Visigoth's not so much about the thinking ahead, or at least not that far about something like that, but now that Cadejoth mentions it: « Great hardship. » Appreciatively he shapes Hraedhyth in his head for the both of them, brawny and muscular, the sort that won't break through a good solid flight. So why such a fuss? "Ha, whatever," says his rider, more dubious: just how charred are those things? Or has K'del learned the trick for tasty juicy crustaceans? "Anyhow, B'sil talks a lot, old windbag. I know you like him, but he is. The goldriders, the Monaco one's been out and about but she looks like a breeze'll knock her over." Lujayn: see above about the clutch. "The other, she left her weyr finally, word is she'd been holed up moping for days with a sky-high pile of men."

Cadejoth litters some more feathers, letting the wind carry them down the beach without paying much mind to them. « Life's hard, » he agrees, a hint of smug finally winding about his chains: much more like himself. Only, there's an obscured sun, too, honeyed and warm and-- Ysavaeth is not forgotten yet. "They're not so bad, if you pull the shells off," insists K'del, demonstrating with careful fingers. They may not be so good, either. "They're doing the best they can. All of them. Have they... they haven't found out what happened."

That sun shone on Visigoth, now and again, but never so often nor so strongly. Especially not after she'd claimed her place. Still, he can reflect the image in his mind's blade momentarily, where a human man might toast, and then move on. « So you just get to laze here all day, huh? » asks the brown, turning his head to look. « Be better if it were somewhere better. » Warmer, say. Now he's looking at Cadejoth more closely, like he expects the bronze to be all patchy-hided and scabrous. "Fine," says the brownrider with a curl of her lip. She'll try one. One. "Which isn't saying much," she adds as she reaches into one of her sacks and pulls out a bunch of sealed jars and then, finally, the napkins that had served as packing material. Now, delicately, she can have at spiderclaw #1. "The story is, there's a girl who was supposed to bring her tea, but she's not talking." And they're not making' her talk, is Val's implication.

« For now, » says Cadejoth, who looks better cared for than perhaps he ought to. « Warmer. That would be nice. » More interesting, too - the fish might be prettier colours, might dart and play. « We can't stay away forever. I know that. He knows that, too. I don't even know if we still have the Wing. » He's no longer thinking about the Weyr, not actively-- and yet there's an ache, there, too. No longer his. "They're edible," says K'del, who isn't denying the fact that they're not especially appetising - but who does seem to have gotten quite good at pulling the shells off. "A girl." His breath escapes, low and sad. "One of the kitchen girls? I always thought..." It sounds like he's disappointed. In them.

That's something: his rider hasn't lost all sense. And fish aren't bad, especially the big edible kind, Visigoth has to agree. The ones that are worth the chase, either through joy of struggle or sheer taste. « You could find out, » the big brown points out. He could reach out, see just how many chains snap into place. Val nibbles, still delicately. She'll finish it off, anyway. "It isn't necessarily her, hey? Maybe it was, or maybe she was slacking off and let someone else do her job, or maybe she brought it, someone just talked her into bringing something special and ni...ice." She stops.

« Balreth may have claimed it, » says Cadejoth, and he seems uncertain, as though - as is in fact the case - he has never really claimed ownership of the wing himself; it's difficult for him to claim it now, after everything. He's uncertain, and it bothers him. K'del has apparently gotten used to the taste of unseasoned and more-than-slightly burnt spiderclaws: he eats as if it were the finest meal imaginable, with evident hunger. But when Val stops, so does he: he gives her a wary look. "What?"

« Would it itch at you, » Visigoth has to ask, « if she has? » Could she? And would that itch more than if Cadejoth didn't know at all? He furls those leathery wings, making a mantle that blocks out the wind rather than shapes it. It's a smelly wind, too, what with all the tide's left behind. That's why, of course. His rider is awkward too, unusual for her, tugging up her collar with her clean hand. "Oh, i was just thinking about the boy. I'kris? He's got these teas and things, maybe he got lucky that it wasn't him. Imagine the trouble we'd have with Monaco then, yeah?"

"Teas?" K'del straightens, giving Val a funny look over the last remains of his spiderclaw - remains that he drops a moment later so that he can wipe his hands on dirty breeches. But, "Shells. I can only imagine. Monaco'd milk it for all it's worth. Politicians, the lot of them." Beat. "What do you know about him? I'kris." Because even in his grief, he's noticed. « It would... » Cadejoth hesitates, then abandons conversation for a few moments to drop the wherry carcass and launch himself towards the ocean to wash himself clean. The herdbeast can wait. « It would... » He has to pause and think about it. « It is to be expected. The Weyr was mine. The wing... » Less so.

Val's shrug is as who-the-shell-knows as his. "You know I like the hard stuff." What does she know? But as he goes on, the way she sits back on her heels, it has an element of recoiling. "Lonely," she says finally, picking at a bit of shell. "Horribly lonely. Isn't he about as old as you were, when he flew Iovniath? Or is that just rumor? At least yours was in the same Weyr." Visigoth keeps an eye on the herdbeast while Cadejoth goes to wash. So it doesn't run off, or anything. He'd have to show it the error of its ways, then. « Hm. » Would Visigoth be so sanguine, had he a wing of his own? It's nothing that he's thought about recently. At least, that he remembers.

There's an element of regret, and even possible embarrassment, as he agrees, "About. Seventeen. Shells--" Shells what? He doesn't continue. "I feel bad for him. We talked, once, but..." But that's all. Is that guilt? In another lifetime, in one where K'del isn't out here mourning his lover, perhaps it would be. « Balreth will look after it. And Aristath, the Weyr. » Cadejoth is trying not to sound regretful as he says that, and as he wings his way back to the beach, shaking the salt water off of himself. « We will take it back, when we're ready. » The Weyr? It's still his. Deep down.

Seventeen. In another lifetime, Val might wince at that. Instead, "We only talked twice," she offers, a half-laugh torn from the verb, her gaze sliding away to... ah. "Look what I have for you." A big container of klah, as it turns out. "Enough to tide you over, and it's still warm, hey? Doing without makes everything worse." « What makes you think it will wait for you? Already it begins. » The males, posturing. Visigoth himself is only watching, for now, though there could be something more compelling... if he let it. He snorts. No way would he be vulnerable to enticements like those. "So," Val asks, now that she's gotten the container stuck in the sand between them where he can reach it, "Now that you've run away from home, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?"

A more perceptive K'del, better attuned to the world around him, might register the way the subject is changed-- but these are not normal times. K'del lets Val's words wash over him, unchallenged, and besides: there's klah, and there has to be no question that he's missed that. He's halfway to grabbing for it when he pauses, hesitating in his reply. "No idea. Once upon a time... was going to write history. Once upon a time. Now... not even twenty-eight." Footloose and fancy free. "Can I go back to High Reaches? Suppose N'thei did. Eventually." And yet... "Miss her. Don't know what to do." « It will wait, » says Cadejoth, confident. « Hraedhyth understands my place. She's the older, of course. »

Val's head cocks, birdlike. "Are you N'thei, now, and Iolene Satiet? Really?" She'd only seen glimpses of the one, at some Hatching or other show, and as for the other, likely she has as much (as little!) time for the big man as he has for her: which is to say, nothing invested! It's around then that Visigoth snorts. « Queens. So biddable. » Though there's entertainment there too: Cadejoth can just go on believing that. "Anyway," Val goes on, practically, "the way I see it, you should get clean. After that, you can spend the rest of the winter down South, which is what I would recommend. You have choices. Anyone calls you on it, you can play the 'oh no, my lover-and-Weyrwoman died, my life was shattered, I'll never be the same, I gave up my Weyrleadership because I mourn so very much' card, and no doubt you'll have girls lining up to console you, lucky dog."

K'del exhales, long and low. "No," he says. No, they're no N'thei-and-Satiet, he and Iolene. No. His smile twists into a rueful little smile - sad and lonely - at her suggestions. "You may be right," he agrees. "Can't-- can't just sit here forever. Much as it seems like the easiest thing, you know?" The way he's turned his head away? It could be that he's trying to avoid her seeing the sudden return of tears in the corners of his eyes. « I have faith, » says Cadejoth, ever confident. « Hraedhyth knows her place in the pack. And mine. And if not her... » Well. There are other queens, are there not? And greens. He needn't be lonely forever. Nor should his rider be.

So she pokes at his shoulder, a punch she pulls: he's weak, after all, can't take advantage of that. A lot less fun, this. "That I get," Val says, and she'll wait until, if, he starts to turn back before plastering a cheery smile across... well, whatever he doesn't see. "You know he's got an eye on Hraedhyth, which would just happen to give you your job back, right? So go rhymes-with-pluck your barmaids while you may, because if he's right you'll have to go back to work, and if he's wrong, you'll have to remember what it's like to answer to someone else and you'll still have to go back to work. It's not so bad. Azaylia, she's easy on the eye, I'd do her. Both of them, really, and the other queen would be less trouble." Shows what she knows. Does Visigoth know better? He doesn't say.

Eventually, Val gets K'del's gaze back on her again, and a not-nearly-as-cheery smile to go with it, albeit one that turns rueful and rueful again as she continues. "He would," he says, with a shake of his head. "Reckon I'd rather the barmaids, right now," he declares, though it doesn't quite ring true. "Azaylia's-- don't know. More like a friend than... but you're right." He twists, stretching out too-stiff shoulders as he considers. "Better Hraedhyth and Cadejoth, though, than Iesaryth and Vhaeryth. Definitely don't want an upstart Fortian taking charge. And Br-- Well." Beat. "You should just take me wenching, sometime. Shove me into the water straight, if I seem too hesitant about sticking in the toes." Sometime. Eventually. Not yet. Not when the pain is still so obvious around the edges of his expression.

"Friend, hey?" If Val's exaggerated wince is for poor supposedly-lovelorn Azaylia's sake, that won't stop it from also seeking to conceal her reaction at his expression. Still, the coverup must go on even if it can't help but be a little softer: "Look at you, calling people 'upstart,' old uncle. Not that you don't have a point. These people fawning around our queens, I tell you. Not to mention Glacier," and the curl of her lip shows what she thinks of that wing, making for an easy continuation into a smirk, and thence into standing. "As long as you're not suggesting a three-way, we're good. And you get clean first, because I've got a reputation to maintain." From here, she can look down on him.

From here she says suddenly, fiercely, "And promise me you won't transfer, K'del. You can be gone a Turn and a day, but that... Promise me."

K'del's expression passes through a range of emotions, one after another, but it's at the last that he splutters-- and at least the reaction is genuine, and heartfelt. "Not going to," he promises, quietly. "Promise, Val. High Reaches is home. Don't know what I'm going to do in the short term, but home is still home." He'll lift his head to meet her gaze for that, too, and give her a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, despite his best efforts. "And no three-ways, either. I'll bathe, promise. It'll-- I'll get better, Val, I promise. Thank you. For--" All of this, even if he can't say it in words.

So she has to reach down and poke at his shoulder again. "I know you'll bathe, it's just a question of when," Val tells K'del, like it's the only thing that matters. Like it's shorthand for everything else that matters. And if she leaves, well, she leaves him with not only bathing supplies and klah but meals, and a tarp and blankets, and a fold-up cot, and a big jar of hide oil along with little jars of skin goo. Also, some really funny dirty 'literature.' And that herdbeast (however much it may tempt Visigoth), because best of all, Cadejoth's there too.