Difference between revisions of "Logs:Little Lynner"

>---< Orchards, High Reaches Hold(#1798RJ) >---------------------------------<

   Sheltered from the winds while still open to the sunlight, High Reaches  
  Hold's orchards provide ordered row after ordered row of carefully        
  cultivated fruit trees. Even here, inland from the main hold, the faint   
  tang of salt is recognisable in the air, mingling with sweeter scents from
  the fruit; on fine days, this can be a pleasant spot indeed to spend a few
  hours.                                                                    

 -----------------------------< Active Players >-----------------------------
  A'rist       M   18 5'8"  slim, dark brown hair, light brown eyes       5s 
  Rh'mis       M   19 5'6"  Scrawny, Brown hair, Blue eyes                0s
 ----------------------------------< Exits >---------------------------------
                                   Courtyard                                
>----------------------------------------< 11D 10M 36T I10, autumn afternoon >---<

There's a chill in the air, unsurprisingly, at today's High Reaches Hold gather; winter isn't here yet, but she's begun to hint at her arrival. Still, the chill is good for an autumn gather-- woodsmoke and apples are certainly more atmospheric with it in place. The orchards are largely barren and bare, their harvest pre-plucked, but that hasn't stopped one High Reaches brownrider from venturing up into the branches of one of them, his legs swinging downwards. Clearly, his presence at the gather is a token thing; equally clearly, he's more comfortable here than he is at the gather itself. No doubt the flagon of alcoholic cider is improving the situation - enough so, even, that usually-disaffected Rhey is humming beneath his breath. It really is the end of the world.

The brownrider probably didn't see them; A'rist and a (markedly older) woman snuck off to a different part of the orchard, initially, and A'rist is really only heading (well, ambling) back to the gather proper via this route for the purposes of obfuscation. With a stupid grin on his face that would be hard to beat for expressions of satisfaction and inward pride. This has been a remarkably good gather, so far. The bronzerider's wandering slows as he nears Rh'mis' tree. He looks one way. He looks the other. He's just going for his belt, and squaring up to the trunk of the next tree over, when he hears that humming. And looks up and over.

It's for the best that Rhey did not see A'rist and his paramour; it would be better still if he didn't see the bronzerider now, but, well, no dice. As A'rist looks up, he is looking down, humming stopping abruptly. "If you take that thing out," he warns, with the faintest lilt to his voice that must, surely, speak to the amount of hard cider he's imbibed, "You'll lose it."

A'rist's thumbs go to hook on either edge of his belt buckle. He sway-leans in a circular motion, shrugging his shoulders back upon completing the circle, and tilting his head a bit more while still looking up to the brownrider. "Think your aim's really going to be that good from way up there?"

"Want to risk it?" Rhey's tone, this time, holds the faintest hint of a swagger. He takes - easily; lazily - another swig from his bottle, gaze still largely focused upon the other rider. "Could be I was a champion in my youth." Now long past, of course; he's old, old, old at not-yet-twenty.

Practically ancient. "Knives," asks A'rist, intrigued it seems, with thumbs still hooked on his belt, "or apples?" A pause, to consider his wingmate, and then he offers up a third option of, "Or bottles?"

Rh'mis takes his gaze off of A'rist, if only for a moment, so that he can sweep the nearby branches; no apples. "No apples here," he points out. "And bottles would be a waste of good booze, except if they're empty." His sloshes, still, as he adjusts his grip.

A'rist turns, just enough that he can lean a shoulder against the tree that had been his intended target only moments before. More comfortable, that position. Also, it sees him facing Rh'mis straight on. "How many knives have you got? What if you miss the first shot?"

Plucking his knife out of his belt, Rhey raises it for emphasis: just the one, then? He tosses it up, letting it rotate twice before recapturing it with the same hand. "I don't miss," he says, calmly.

A'rist's head tilts again, but now, with his lean against the tree, it comes to rest on the bark. He doesn't bother moving it. "That was kind of cool," comes after a beat. Thumbs still stay hooked. "Do it again?"

Wordlessly, Rhey repeats the action. He catches the knife, easily, and then raises his eyebrows at A'rist. Well?

The beginning of a little grin turns up the corner of A'rist's mouth. "You do any other tricks with it?"

It must be the cider that makes Rhey so - for him - effusive. "Used to play five finger fillet," he offers, surprisingly cheerful about this whole encounter. "But not in turns, now. Or darts." But, presumably, using knives instead of darts.

"What about," A'rist leans forward a little, the friction from the trunk helping keep him solidly braced, "tossing it up over your shoulder and catching it behind your back, or something? And I saw this guy from Igen once who could swallow knives... Well, up to a point." The pun occurs to him afterwards, and makes him smirk.

This time, the knife only rotates once before ending up back in Rhey's hand. "Maybe," he says. "The over-the-shoulder bit, I mean. Never tried swallowing knives; that's just dumb. And a trader-show trick." And Rhey is not, just so we're all clear, a trader. Not a show-man. Just... not. "If we had an apple, we could put it on your head and I could hit it. Then I'd peel it in a single piece."

A'rist's mirth dies away a little bit as Rh'mis starts talking more. Oh well. It surely was to have been expected. The bronzerider straightens up, though keeps his shoulder into the tree, his hands still on his belt. "Too bad there's no apples, I guess."

"Too bad," holds - just maybe - a hint of menace, quite as if Rhey regrets this lack with an eye to something less-than-successful. Oh well. Even booze can't make him really nice.

"I gotta pee," says A'rist, now taking leave of that trunk, and moving around it so that his back is - could be - to the brownrider. "If you stab me in the back, Lythronath will come kill you before he kills himself."

Rh'mis makes a noise in the back of his throat; an indescribable noise, nondescript in its meaning. "He wouldn't," he says, surely, after another swig from his bottle. "But I'm not a murderer. It's not your back I'd hit."

"What," asks A'rist, turning his back now. There's the sound of the belt being unbuckled. "You gonna lob it over my shoulder and hope for a hit?"

"No." Rhey lets that hang for a while. "That would be stupid."

A'rist's elbows might be seen to move. "'Cause you need a line of sight to hit something."

Rhey's, "I don't have, like, magical powers or anything," is full of scorn. Yes, of course he needs line of sight. Duh. He's not looking; not really. Certainly not at anything more specific than the whole person.

And A'rist is shielding Little Lynner quite carefully, also. Because he's probably forgotten the last time he tried to call Rhey's bluff, and everyone lost track of Rosvelth for a while.

Metal makes a noise, in the air; an unmistakable noise. A whirr. It makes a noise, too, as it embeds itself in the tree, a fraction of a fraction of distance above the bronzerider's ear.

A'rist freezes. Even once he's quite certain of the whereabouts of the knife, he doesn't turn around. "Got more of those?" is called out to Rh'mis.

"Maybe." Rhey's breezy all over again, his bottle sloshing as he lifts it back for another sip. "Maybe not."

"Sure hope your aim's as good with that one," says A'rist. "Maybe," is a mutter under his breath. Then, he's focusing. Come on, come on.

"Depends. It might be I want to hit you, next time. We'll consider that one a warning shot, shall we?" Little Lynner (if we must) better not get stage-fright.

"Even if you don't make it fatal," says A'rist, still trying, "he'll still come eat you. And don't think I'm gonna stop him."

"Are you incapable of performance, there?" Rhey seems to genuinely want to know this. There's a rustle of branches; a shifting, somewhere behind the bronzerider. It could be the brownrider is on the move; who knows!

It could be, but it doesn't matter. A'rist has a fount of reckless bravery in Lythronath. And so, A'rist has a fountain, just before that rustling. He looks around. And pees, still.

Silence. No more rustling, even; no more comments. Maybe most importantly: no more knives.

A'rist finishes up. One shake. Two. (No more, because that's playing with himself.) Then it's buttoning, it's buckling, and finally, it's reaching for the knife that was lodged in the tree.

The knife is pretty well lodged, but not so well that it can't be pulled free. It's not an especially nice knife, though it has certainly been well sharpened, and recently. Rhey, meanwhile? There's still no sign of him. Perhaps he's just, you know, gone home.

It takes a couple tugs, but A'rist manages to get that knife out. Without even washing his hands, ew. Then, he turns, back to the tree trunk. A final look, before heading back to the gather.

For the best, really. Rhey really is gone-- presumably.

And then, so's A'rist.