Difference between revisions of "Logs:Satiet is Something..."

There's been no secret to N'thei's whereabouts tonight, no attempt to pretend he and the people he quote-unquote trusts have not been off scaring the twilight out of harmless holders. The other Reaches riders made their way back more some time ago, but his return is delayed-- an hour, stretching toward two before Wyaeth thumps his landing and swaggers toward his ledge, before N'thei's steps sound smartly outside. Nearer, nearer, finally just inside Satiet's weyr.

The evening hour makes it simple to find Satiet should one know her habits; it's tomorrow night that she spends in the nurseries. Tonight, the slight weyrwoman, perhaps all too aware of her Weyrleader's and his trusted 'friends' activities, sits by a hearth with its unnecessarily stoked flame, perspiring in summer's dress. The delay of N'thei's return, the hour long pause between the arrival of others, is measured by how many glasses of a bottle of red she's drunk, and as she starts in on her fourth, the telltale sounds of Wyaeth's landing pause her pouring. There, with her raven-hair just visible beyond the couch that surrounds her fireplace, Satiet sits paused, bottle held over a half-filled glass until those footsteps near her weyr. "Are you tired?" queries the low alto, making assumptions of who darkens her entrance.

For the first time in a long time, to answer her question, N'thei does not look to be on the verge of exhaustion; his eyes are clear, his expression is placid, his stride is unhurried while he approaches the back of Satiet's sofa. She assumes that it's him, he assumes that he's invited in. "You?" Just for a moment, his attention lingers on the emptiness of the bottle, a question behind the lift of his eyebrows, then he's looking down at the goldrider with a jaunt to his chin; "Your opinion." Kiiiind of a query.

When the stoked hearth and the perspiration on her brow doesn't provide N'thei a ready answer, nor the half-empty bottle of wine, Satiet lifts her chin in profile -- the low upward pull of her mouth matching the brow arc of her lone visible eye. The wine pouring gesture completes, the rest of the bottle emptied into her singular glass, a glass which is then lifted to N'thei. "It's not your kind of celebration I imagine, but let's start with that. Whiskey? Brandy?" Dropping the empty bottle to her rug, careless of the red drops the scattered across the shaggy white, she then stands fluidly, the patient handmaiden, hands to hip waiting.

N'thei takes the glass, takes a token drink, can't even feing interest in being as intoxicated as the goldrider while he watches her from across the lip of the cup. With one hand loosening his collar, with a glance landing on the bottle and the mess it's making, he clarifies, "I need to know what you're thinking, Satiet. I realize that's a dangerous subject." For now, he keeps the glass, his thumb smearing across the little fluid left on the rim of it while he fixes Satiet with one of his more sincere expressions. "I'll meet with Crom in the morning. Are you satisfied that it's resolved?"

In silence, she stands there, one hand to one hip, the other raking through her hair, wiping away beads of sweat as she does so. Then, quiet and low, in a dry voice infused with amusement, she allows, "I offer you liquor to celebrate your achievements and you ask me my opinion." Those slim brows lift though her gaze remains fixed on a spot beyond the bronzerider, the low-held crooked smirk shifting as the other corner of her mouth rises to match in a faint smile. "Waiting for you in a weyr warmed with just a touch of the healing powers of cromcoal. N'thei-." Satiet's bright blue eyes shift to seek out the Weyrleader's, guileless. "What would you have me say that my actions won't already reflect?"

"Something frank." N'thei may hang helpless from the crook of Satiet's smile, but he does it with unwavering resolution in the return gaze. "Spell it out for me. In a week, in six months, in five turns, will you throw this back at me as yet another shortcoming?" Though his tone there tinges with amusement, though his own smile flickers momentarily into view. "I want to go to Crom tomorrow and know that you're /happy/ with the result. Stupid yes, but aren't I always?"

Pale eyes remain fixed, inscrutable, on N'thei's before an enlightened light shines in them. "Cognac I think," decides the weyrwoman aloud when N'thei's response is not an answer to her question and moves thus towards her liquor pantry, bare feet padding in a sticky sort of way across the bare stone. She's determined in an unstoppable, deliberately oblivious way. "Make yourself comfortable. Did you eat yet? Shall I have the kitchens send some food? You must be starving." Conversationally, she keeps up a one-sided idle chitchat while pouring out two glasses, the pours ritualistic from a crystal bottle which is then put back in its place. Two glasses, two hands, and a turn that brings her gaze upon the bronzerider once more. A beat. "Five turns is a very long time away. Whose to say you'll still be here? Or want to be here?"

Typically, none of her questions get an answer; how Satiet and N'thei manage to have conversations since neither of them will just answer a question must be one of the great riddles of time. "Did you know that I fantasize about choking you sometimes?" With his eyes on her neck. He has a barely-touched glass of wine in his hand already when she turns back with cognac, one that he tips faintly toward her two glasses. "I suddenly have no idea why I came in here, what I honestly thought to accomplish." His sigh is small, full of whimsy, drowned when he finishes the wine in determined gulp-- can't let good vino go to waste.

"Encouraging." The slip of a smile returns, faint, rueful in its thin curve. "If you fantasize of choking me, perhaps it means you think of me, if not fondly, at least think of me." What some might taken offense to, threats or dreams of violence on their person, Satiet indulges with a smile, an offer of liquor, and anything else with a rolling hand gesture encompassing herself, particularly her slender neck. "So you're not hungry. So you want an answer. Tomorrow, I'll join you. In a week, I'll not reproach you. In six months, I'll hope my head is still attached to my neck, and in five turns, I'll hope Wyaeth still flies Teonath. Drink. You deserve it."

N'thei reaches to the new cup, two fingers going farther than they need to for a glance along the curve of Satiet's neck, just a graze of his fingertips across her skin before they're occupied with glass. "I should tell you that I think of you in less violent fancies too." Should; not going to. With a thank-you smile coming to rest, a scarce-seen brightness to the eyes turned back to her-- "Was that so hard?"

The touch of his fingers to her exposed neck trembles the slight frame just a little, just enough to be noticed, to shiver against the brief encounter before she too preoccupies herself, fingers and eyes, with the sole glass left in her hand. Her face slants away, a downcast profile obscured by a thick brush of bangs spared the bronzerider, though not turning away quick enough for the prudish embarrassment gracing her cheeks to not be noticeable. Of course it was so hard. "What do you think?" Again with a question for his, Satiet drifts away, back towards the hearth. "I'm using my last allotment of last winter's coal. Good riddance."

Happy, even if it is deluded joy, N'thei absorbs Satiet's reaction right up to the point she walks off. Still enchanted by her, but who takes a second bite from a poison apple? For a second, he looks to follow her, but it winds up that he's just putting the empty wine glass on the table and sloshing around his cognac with a look down into it. "What will you do with yourself if you can't be the victim, I wonder. Without a common enemy..." He trails off lightly, tone glib for heavy subject matter.

Not quite so intoxicated as a half bottle of wine might induce in another woman her size, Satiet tenders this glass slower, a taste sip taken as she observes the dancing flames in her hearth. The white dress she wears clings in all the right places for N'thei's enchanted eyes to linger on, the beads of perspiration collecting along her bare arms and shoulders again as she stays near the heat. "Do I really seem the victim, my Weyrleader? Vulnerable, to be pitied?" As he doesn't follow where she is, she turns to train her pale eyes on him, the smile that hovers almost too girlish for her sharp features. "Was it a common enemy or an excuse?" Dark lashes flicker off a split second before her gaze follows back to the hearth. "Did you and A'son enjoy your time together at Ista?"

N'thei answers her first with an enigmatic smile still shown to the bottom of his glass, with a look flicked up just long enough to convey amusement at her question and no commitment in response one way or the other. Then he takes a drink, glass held against his lower lip while he swallows, eyes re-pinned to that slim outline. "That depends on why you're asking." Empty glass; didn't take so long for that one to land on the table too, for him to exhale lengthily across the taste of cognac and the look of Satiet, fire, sweat.

Slower still, Satiet tenders her glass, that taste sip leading to nothing further, other than her hands warming the glass. Quick to note his empty glass, however, the white-clad figure makes a casual path, an easy amble, back to the liquor cabinet. "You're friends. Now he's at another Weyr." Her intent is that cabinet, her steps, however, halt her near the table, frank eyes lifted to sketch a pale shade of intense blue around the outline of N'thei's face and over every solid feature. Sympathy; with all the words and remonstrations in between left unsaid. "You should visit him more often. He would be as promising a Weyrleader as you if he but cared for where he was, yes?"

Just a little twist, a little sideways tug adds a grimace N'thei's smile, her words cast away with the clipped shake of his head. "I never learned how to stomach sympathy, love. Obliged for the advice, though you'd know better than I would how to spot a promising Weyrleader." He says it with apology, with a left-shouldered shrug. --The shift is perceptible but the moment can't quite be pinned down, the change in his posture and the lack of lingering looks to chase Satiet around the room. He's leaving soon, in no hurry, a step taken to clear the table, another around the sofa.

Perceptive, that shift in his posture is noticed in a flutter of lashes that takes in the rest of the bronzerider's frame and his lack of hurry isn't expedited by Satiet's desire for him to leave. A smile of 'touche' rather than anger at his return, and with one easy pull backwards, her own cognac is drained, the glass joining his on the table. "Tomorrow morning," she promises, standing with knuckles rapping lightly on the table as she waits and watches him depart.

N'thei nods, makes a sound akin to mmmhmmn. He leaves with a parting, "Sweet dreams," to find its way half-cocked over his shoulder. Without a fight, almost no harsh words between them-- the choking-thing aside, since some people could mistake it for kinky in the right light.

It's almost a pity, almost, that she waits until he's gone to comment to herself, "Nice balls." Almost as if it were a pat on her own back.