Difference between revisions of "Logs:Born to Nothing"

At nearly twilight, the nets have been gathered in, and now the catch is being hauled back to camp to become dinner. While the cooks get that underway, the fishers, Raum among them, are left with the maintenance of their own equipment, as they settle down to go over the nets, checking for frays and holes before folding them up for the morning. Raum, when he finishes with the one he's been checking over, stands and stretches, grimacing faintly.

Emmeline slips quietly back into the settlement; much of her free time these days is spent wandering the coastline or on the climb up to the cliffs. When she does make the mistake of dipping her toe back into the social waters it's been rather a disaster, so her expression is etched with trepidation and a little more closed off then normal. Otherwise, she finds herself falling back into a faithful rhythm. Stop a few kids from playing a prank, shuffle another one over towards their parents, and then on to see if the fishers need anything before she settles in at one of the benches. "Evening."

Once he's got stiff old muscles into something approaching order, Raum moves away from the collected nets, over toward where Emmeline's set up her own post to watch. "Evening," he offers, rather politely all things considered. "Mind if I join you? Could use a break for a few."

The early shift of fishers, those who are up for the pre-dawn attempt at their catches are helping with the fires and the cooks or making themselves available for cleaning duty. Azzarion is one of those fussing over a fire and helping a few youngsters try a hand at making a fire for the first time. Perhaps not safe for children, but someone has to learn the way of things down the road. Now and then he looks up, away from his task as though looking for someone in the fishing group. Raum gets a bob of his head in greeting, even if that's not the person in particular he's waiting for. Even Emmeline gets a wave, it's a quick one though, unsure how softly to tread.

Emmeline is suspicious of course, when Raum is all nice and polite to her. *Especially* considering the tone of their last encounter. Yes, she apparently has extroardinarily bad luck having conversation with the opposite gender. Don't Judge! "Alriiiiight." she decides, primarily because it's a large public area and there's plenty of people nearby. "Good catch?" is wondered idly, while she nods at Azzarion. Warily. "It ah, looked like a good haul when I passed the prep area."

Raum, so permitted, finds himself a seat and stretches his legs out again, rubbing one knee idly. "It was all right," he concedes with a shrug. "Not bad for a day's work, though that's about as far as I'll go. I'm sure it will make plenty of nice bland fishy plates for dinner." The nod from Azzarion earns that boy a longer look, just for a moment, before he glances sideways at Emmeline again.

"Are you -sure- you're doing it right?" The boy Azzarion is sharing the delights of firestarting asks in a snide, youthful tone. All question of the fire making ability are answered when, at last, the curls of shavings ignite. There's a hoot for the boy who holds palms to the crackling flames but a warning look keeps any fingers from getting too close. Once the flicker has worked into a better blaze he gets up, motioning to the boy to go help gether wood as one of the cooks move in to use the fire for torching a fish on a stick. Yum. Azzarion gathers himself up, nose crinkling at the burnt smell, it's going to be an 'interesting' dinner for sure. Blackened fish.

"Don't say that around the wrong people. You'll get an earful about how the ocean's bounty is the only reason we've survived here so long." Emmeline warns, though it's with a bit of bemusement at least, and not censure. Even lifelong residents get a litle tired of fish, fish, fish, and more fish every single day. She's seated now with her arms already folded across her chest in classic defensive posture. Though it's not really obvious who or what she's defending from. Her gaze is habitually drawn to the main part of the settlement to see the activity there. And then back to the fishermen. "Oh hey, look. We might get something a bit different this time. Burned is better then bland sometimes, wouldn't you say Azzarion?"

Emmeline's words draw a bemused sort of smirk from Raum--or perhaps it's more smug than anything. "Shimana and I have reached an accord," he tells the younger girl. "She'll peddle her chicanery elsewhere." The burning smell, though, doesn't seem to please him nearly as much as her, and his mouth tightens slightly when he looks back to Azzarion's efforts with the fire. "One's as bad as the other; it's no real variety."

One of the benifits for helping with the fire is getting to grab first dibs at what comes out of the flames--sometimes. Tonight happens to be one of those rewarding evenings thanks to the fine catch and not over-boiling of fish into that paste some cooks call a 'stew'. With three fish-on-sticks in hand he heads towards Raum and Emmeline to share. The question directed at him makes him quirk an amused smile and he offers the fish out first and then answers, "I think anything is better than the stuff we had the other night. I think Amella got her heart broken and sent back to wash-duty after that stunt."

Emmeline raises an eyebrow. She simply can't help it. "Who said I was talking about Shimana?" she points out, making no comment on whether she sees the Elder's words as chicanery or truth or some combination of both. "Anyway, true enough. But can't really be helped. Unless you have some way of making different food variety appear." Something the young teacher obviously doesn't think is going to happen anytime soon. "Thanks." Azzarion gets another nod as she takes the skewered fish in order to start picking at it for her dinner. "That *was* pretty terrible stuff." she agrees obliquely, recalling the disaster vividly enough to cause a small shudder.

"It all stems from her," points out Raum. "She's the one planting ideas in your little heads, about the great sea and all her bounty providing, when if you're going to take that logic, the sea's the one thing keeping you from enjoying the whole rest of the world." He shrugs, though, and lets that tack go, in favor of watching the fire-building again. "One of the first things you learn in basic: eat what's in front of you. Don't mean you ever got to like it, though."

"Bounty comes from the dirt too, but tubers are disgusting." Azzarion continues to offer the fish-stick to Raum as he watches the other man, partly curious, partly worried as he talks of 'rest of the world'. His nose crinkles up and it has nothing to do with the smell of burt fish. "Nothing out there beyond the sea that we -need-."

"Perhaps it was thought that would be the best way to help us all accept our circumstances. At least in the beginning. And then it simply took hold. There /are/ things one can read from the ocean. The weather sometimes. The tides." Emmeline muses, placing herself in the role of teacher for a moment. "Oh, tubers aren't so bad. And maybe there's nothing out there for you, Azzarion..." The words are spoken without rancor, but rather with the weight of some thought that's been sitting heavily on her mind. "But there are some here that would surely discard all of us as worthless, useless -things- in order to gain their freedom should we ever find out what's beyond the ocean first hand."

Eventually, reluctantly, Raum takes Azzarion's offer, though he's in no hurry to taste it. Instead, he slants another look over at Emmeline, brows lifting. "You wouldn't?" he wonders in turn.

Azzarion's head gives a little shake, as though to keep Emmeline's words from taking root in his mind. He knows a few things are constant. The sun comes up, people die, the roll of the tides, and they will always have their island. For a moment he works his jaw as though he's going to say something but is kept sielence by Raum's question. Better to eat the burnt fish while he waits to hear the girl's answer.

"I wouldn't discard anyone, and certainly not as heartlessly as it's been implied to me that some would. Though maybe that was just meant to apply to the unfortunate women that wind up married to blooded males here." This is certainly the calmest way Emmeline's expressed that implication since she heard it. Though it's taken a few sevendays for her to calm down long enough to say it to anyone at all. Likely she's only calm now because she's not particularly close to either of her dinner companions. "Did you know that we're apparently just a fun diversion, or at best maybe we're breeders to keep the bloodline going. At least, that's the impression this little teacher girl who should remember her place walked away with." Ok, the bitterness starts to enter her voice then, but she shakes it off quickly. "Not a fate I intend to accept lightly. Nor should anyone else. So maybe for some of us there's a real sense of worth waiting on the other side of the ocean. Unless it's all the same there too."

"Way of the Bloods," and Raum seems prepared to accept it with just a faint twitch of the shoulders. "Can't say as they're any different back on the mainland, and I should know: I've guarded more'n a few of them. Thing there is, you can be something without them. Here, you're just stuck on one itty island with the lot of them. Doesn't sit well, but what can you do?" It's rhetorical, surely, but both youngsters get a rather intent look then, all the same.

Azzarion's nose crinkels up. He gives a little sighs and suggests, "I have not heard some women complain much about having the status of being married into the blood." He glances warily at Raum, the idea of a 'mainland' not sitting well with him at all. "Who is to say there will be any place for them /if/ they make it back there?"

"Are they really /all/ like that? Every last one of them?" There's something about that idea that seems to cut right into Emme's stoic demeanor at the moment, and make her slump a little in her seat. "That's because they don't realize that if there's a way off the Island? They won't *be* married anymore." she points out, her appetite faded. "WHen I said discarded, that's exactly what I meant Azzarion. No longer married, no recourse. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. You gave us some kids, now go screw off cause you're no longer good enough." Saying it as many ways as she can think of, her shoulders lift in a bit of a shrug. "I'm sure some of the women don't care. I have more self-respect then that. I'd make my own damn place if I had to, worse came to worse." But then, she concedes Raum's point. "Not much to do about it being stuck here though. We're justy waiting for a miracle that might never happen."

Raum snorts. The finer points of island relations and Emmeline's funk might be lost on him, or just not concern him enough to earn comment. Instead, "You forget the whole reason you're out here on this damn island: the thing about miracles is they never really come. You make it yourself, or not at all."

Azzarion's expression is guarded for a moment as he takes in Emme's remark, "I don't understand how it wouldn't be the same 'out there'." Through the guard, he looks almost guilty at something he's wrestling with inside. Another bite of fish to mull it over but he's still obviously troubled. The quiet suggestion is, "You shouldn't marry someone of the blood if you're worried about being discarded then." At Raum's suggestion he draws back, "Plenty of people have died trying to test out those waters. Anyway, not sure why anyone other than Blood would want to go there. I don't want to be a...a..." he fishes around for the word 'slave' but it fails him so he ends up just mimiking toiling with a bowed back.

Look at that, a smirk with a hint of humor curls the young teacher's lips upwards. "It pains me to say it, but I'd have to agree with you there Raum." That she agrees with the man on anything is worrisome in itself. She's under no real illusions though - we can thank Tomaeron for ensuring she'll never take anything at face value ever again. Whether she hears or accepts Azzarion's advice remains unknown since she simply stands up then (with fish stick in hand). "If you gentlemen will excuse me... I think I'm going to turn in for the night. It's been a long day." On the bright side, this may be the first normal exit that Azz has ever seen her make!

"A... farmer?" Raum tries to read Azzarion's gesture, his brows knitting up; but he misses the mark, sort of. Anyway, he shrugs it off. "There's more to life than that--other crafts, I mean. Enough food to go around, so you can devote yourself to making--or enjoying--the finer things in life. Things you savages don't even have an idea of."

Azzarion watches Emmeline depart, the normality of it not going unnoticed either. He gives a little shake of his head to Raum's guess at what he was hinting at and sighs, face screwing up in dissapointment that he can't recall the word. Perhaps Farmer and slave are close enough anyway. "Why would they let 'us' partake of anything like that?" The harper-teacher's opinion about this world discarding all their hard work and family ties weighs more heavily on him. "Did they let you .... enjoy the finer things?" Not that he has any concept of what something fine might be.

"Well, that would be the question, if you found yourself there," Raum concedes the point there to Azzarion. "But why would you let anyone deny you if you wanted it? If you're content to be their serf, so be it, but don't ever think that something other than your own unwillingness to take what you want is keeping you down. --I enjoyed many fine things, myself. Wine and women, and others too. I was born to nothing, after all, and I /made/ myself captain of the Lord's guard."

Azzarion's eyes narrow in thought rather than anger, the rebelious idea testing a lifetime of not disturbing the status quo. He watches Raum, so many questions in his eyes but then he looks away with a little chuckle. "It does make an interesting story." Because this dream world is as close to him as suddenly discovering he has 'blood' and can be someone amoung the exiles too.

"It does at that," agrees Raum as he gets back on his feet. "I'm going to go see about something else for dinner, but we'll speak again later, I'm sure." And with a nod in parting, he turns to head back toward the main camp for the evening.