Difference between revisions of "Logs:Crossed Wires"

Snowasis, High Reaches Weyr(#555RJ)

The Snowasis is rarely quiet, and even then, the high-ceilinged former weyr is kept from echoing by the fantastical booths tucked into its convoluted perimeter. The secluded seating spaces have been shaped from the truncated stalagmites that escaped the smoothing of the main floor, and are both softened and separated by colorful hangings that are thick and opaque enough to make each corner its own private nook.

Some of the smaller stalactites still roam the ceiling, their jagged teeth tracing a bumpy, inverted spine to the hearth. There, a thick rug with a low klah table and comfortable armchairs and couches sit, their upholstery and cushions changed sporadically to match the season: bright, light colors in the summer, fresh greens and yellows in the spring, warm autumnals in fall, and clear, rich hues for winter. Small tables litter the rest of the cavern, enough to fit up to four people each, while stools stand along the smooth wooden bar behind which is the passthrough window to the kitchen. Glass-paneled cabinetry behind the bar provides a clear view of the available liquors, the many colors reflecting the soft light of glows tucked into strategic niches around the cavern.

The Snowasis is slow, but not entirely empty at the moment, which leaves Lourna largely to her own devices without troublesome riders and gardeners making life more complicated than it already is. Settled off to the side at one of the wooden tables with a half-empty cup of klah and a pad of paper in hand, she's scribbling upon its surface with a hunk of coal. A few more pieces scatter the surface of the table in front of her, some sharpened and others not, alongside a small, sharp-edged knife. Judging by her desolate expression, the young apprentice isn't happy with whatever imagery resides upon the pad, and is no doubt her own doing. A couple of crushed, crinkled sheets of the stuff are already tossed in amongst the chunks of coal.

Z'ian wanders into the bar, looking to be in better shape than he was a couple of days ago. He's not doing that thing where he clutches his ribs or anything when he moves the wrong way, so that's a start. The swelling is down on his face so he looks like himself. The bruises remain, but the tide is turning. While it's not busy yet by any means, the bar itself is full of people on stools or just standing there. He pushes through to order his beer and retreats quickly, exchanging the occasional friendly greeting. Not familiar with Lourna, he doesn't go to greet her straight away. Instead he sits down at a nearby table, within eyesight. From his pocket he pulls out a folded piece of paper and a stubby looking pencil.

A few more carefully placed strokes are afforded upon the paper's 'blank canvas', and the young woman is still unimpressed. Eyes narrow, brows furrow, and her lips purse with open displeasure. Snagging the paper's edge with her left hand, she snatches it from the pad and balls it up with poorly pent-up ferocity. It skitters in a crumpled tumble along the table's top, its momentum slowed by the graveyard of ruined sketches. Klah break. Grabbing the cup with a jerk of her hand, she takes a sip from the edge as motion catches her eyes and tears that dark green gaze away from the pad in her hands. Flitting upward to fixated upon Z'ian, Lourna openly stares. "What happened to you?" It's out before she can stop herself, and is immediately regretting the inflection of her voice.

If he hadn't noticed her before, the paper snagging and throwing certainly does it. Z'ian blinks and looks at the tanner from the corner of his eyes, one 'brow lifting slowly. But he doesn't say anything right off, just goes back to reading his paper. He chews the end of his pencil before making a couple of notes along the margins. It's finally her direct question that gets his attention. Lifting his gaze up to her, he stares blankly at the young woman. Then he turns to glance behind and around him. "I'm sorry, what? Are you talking to me?" Is she talking to him? She probably is, given her expression. Mock realization is allowed to dawn on his features. "Oh, this? I just let someone rearrange my face."

She isn't stupid, so she gets the mockery almost immediately. Almost. A slight frown pulls at the corners of her mouth, and the expression on those lightly bronzed features shifts to something more skeptical. Her pad is temporarily forgotten, tossed to rest amongst the crumpled papers and bits of coal. "Really?" Lourna's voice is filled with disbelief, peering at him rather intently. If he's going to be like that... She smothers a grin, wets her lips nervously. "If it's any consolation, it's an improvement." Lourna has an absolutely atrocious poker face, her dark green eyes gleaming even while she looks as though she isn't sure she should've said that.

"Really." Z'ian replies smoothly, glancing down at his paper to scribble something along the top of it. When she says her next, he pauses and slowly lifts his chin to stare over at her. It's then that he lays the pencil flat on the table and draws the beer towards him, taking a long swallow. All the while, maintaining an easy and assessing sort of eye contact. His lips eventually curve, full of mischief. "Thanks, appreciate it. I was really worried that my good looks would be ruined forever. You know, if you want, I could introduce you to him. He might be able to help you."

Self-consciously, Lourna raises a hand with fingers coated in coal dust to rub lightly at the angular line of her jaw. When she does so, it leaves a rather obvious smudge behind that, for the moment, she is entirely unaware of. Her dark green eyes have yet to lift from Z'ian, frowning ever so slightly in a thoughtful way. He does look passing familiar, but no more than a face nagging at the back of her mind; something tells her she should recognize him for some important reason, but whatever it is has yet to fully blossom in her awareness. "I'm not sure," Lourna says slowly, carefully. "Why? Do you think something is wrong with my face?"

He brings the beer close to his mouth again and smiles behind the glass, it's an easy sort of thing without any ulterior motives. He drinks again before leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up onto another one. "There's nothing wrong with your face, girl. It's a beautiful thing." Z'ian eventually tells her with a quiet laugh. "I was just teasing you back, relax. You never been needled back by someone before?" He lifts one of his hands and points at a spot on his own face, "You've got something there." She may be frowning at him, but the bronzerider doesn't jump to immediately introduce himself yet or ask what's wrong.

"Oh, no," she waves the hand not clutching her cup of quickly cooling klah. It's becoming less and less enticing to imbibe, and eventually, Lourna slides the cup away altogether. "I am needled every day, trust me. It is a sport." Naturally, the hand that rises to her face to brush away whatever it is on her face is exactly the same hand that put it there and does little more than move that coal smudge around. But she catches on when her peripheral vision spies the dark dust on her hands. Immediately, Lourna grimaces and calls for something to clean her face and hands. It'll be a few minutes, so she simply sits there, smudge and all, frowning. "Thank you, I guess--but I can't shake this feeling that I'm supposed to know you. I'm Lourna, apprentice tannercrafter." After yesterday, she refuses to be embarassed about that, shard Ceawlin.

"Alright, good. I mean, not good that you get needled every day. But good that you find it sporting." Z'ian stop and thinks on that for a moment. Did that sound good? Well. Maybe not totally. "Sorry, I'm off my game." He flashes her a lopsided grin. Since they're talking anyway, it's probably easier to just sit at the same table. The paper he was writing on is taken, as well as the pencil and folded away into his jacket. Slowly, he gets to his feet and drops into a chair across from her. Alright that kind of hurt, he winces. Gets over it. Without asking permission he picks up one of her crumpled coal drawings. "You are? I would have thought you were a harper or something. Just a hobby?" He asks curiously as he unfolds one to look at it. "You're supposed to know me?" The bronzerider asks, sounding sly as he glances at her over the top of the paper. "I'm Z'ian. Bronze Tsanth's." There's a flick of his fingers, no big deal. To him at least.

"Oh. You're a rider." Oh, he's a rider. Of course he's a rider. She doesn't exactly blanche at the introduction, but she balks and makes a snatch for the little ball of paper as he pulls it out of reach. The scrolling designs are simplistic, and while Lourna is no prodigious artist, it's an appreciable image with no clearly discernible purpose. Blushing is becoming all too common for her, but she can't keep away the tinge of pink that taints her cheeks with embarassment as Z'ian looks over the scrap. "Why does it surprise everyone when I tell them I'm a tanner?" She scratches furiously at the back of her neck, rubbing as if to ease the distraction that is Z'ian looking at her work. "And no, it's not a hobby. I have to come up with a design to practice tooling leather. I can't just waste leather, so I have to figure it out on paper first," she mutters sheepishly, dark green eyes directed to the table's surface.

"Yes, a rider. I ride a dragon." He explains further, always glad to be extra helpful. Z'ian pulls his hands back when she tries to snatch the paper away from him. It's another flash of a smile, meant to be disarming certainly. Holding it up and out of her reach, his eyes graze over the design curiously. The next that comes is an honest question, "So what's wrong with this one?" before he folds it up carefully and slides it across the table to her. "Because you're drawing pictures. And I have no idea how they train tanner apprentices, remember I just snap the leathers onto my dragon. And make sure they're usable. That is where my knowledge of the craft ends. Uh, my apologies for insulting you?" The rider offers, grinning lopsidedly at her before he takes another draw from his beer.

That shit-eating grin earns another of those crumpled balls of paper flying at his face, harmlessly. It's certainly better than a fist, and if he doesn't duck, will simply bounce away without anything more than a papercut at most. "You ride a dragon?" Her dark green eyes widen, and her full lips part in surprise. "Wow, I would've thought something else equally as large. Maybe your ego? No, no, that can't be, it would've smothered you long ago. Wait--is that what happened to your face? Your ego?" As soon as those words leave her mouth, Lourna instantly regrets it, and visibly cringes. "I'm--sorry. That was too much."

Z'ian laughs and rolls his eyes, dropping his elbow onto the table. "A woman telling a bronzerider that he has a huge ego. That's certainly original. Come on, you look like you're a more intelligent girl than that. You can't come up with something better?" He teases, batting the paper away when it comes flying at his face. Wincing and faking a pained expression, "Now, that was harsh. You don't like me very much, do you? Because I can always get up and go, inflict my hideous presence on some other poor unsuspecting person."

While Z'ian sheds light on Lourna's awkward social ineptitude, she eyes the door and gnaws roughly at her full lower lip. "It's not a matter of liking or not liking. And I wouldn't think to tell a rider to go anywhere they didn't want to go," she replies almost immediately, still frowning faintly. "Perhaps I've spent too much time around aggressive people lately." Isn't that the truth, every ounce of it. "Anyway, I'm not all that clever. I don't practice it much. That would require making fun of people, and I don't do it often. Aren't you special?"

"Why not?" Z'ian asks as he runs his fingers along the rim of his glass. "Some guy sits down at your table, you think he's an obnoxious dick, you tell him to go away. Or worse if you really don't like him. Shouldn't matter if he has a dragon." It doesn't take long before he's lifting his beer and finishing it. Politely, "Do you want anythng?" Leaning back in his chair, he catches one of the bar girls as she goes by to request the drink(s?). "You must be clever. The crafts don't usually accept people that are fumbling morons, if that's any consolation." He smiles crookedly at her and laughs. "Special? I'm not sure that's what I would call what I feel right now. Maybe you need to make some less aggressive friends."

"That's easy for you to say. You have one, don't you?" That's mentioned in another one of those sheepish mumbles, and even though her dark green eyes are downcast, she reaches up to sweep away loose locks of straight, short-cut blonde hair from her eyes. "Don't worry, I can fend for myself. If I'm really bothered by something, I can always leave. I really don't want to start any sort of fight. They seem to be catching." Lourna's voice is dry on that last remark as she glances pointedly at Z'ian's battered visage, and finally a dampened rag arrives for her to scrub the coal dust from her face with. She does this in short order, suggesting she's had to do so before.

"Do you think I was born with my dragon attached to me like some sort of twin? That they cut him off when I got to the weyr and that's how I became a rider?" Z'ian asks, lifting his eyebrows at her questioningly. "Because I lived nearly two decades of my life without a dragon. And I repeat, some obnoxious person imposes their unwanted company on you, you tell them to fuck off. I'm sorry, excuse me." Z'ian clears his throat. "You tell them to fuck off after you politely request they go away. No reason to be hasty." His beer arrives from the bar and he nurses it, smile wry when she looks at his face. "Don't worry darling, it's not contagious. But hey, you're right. You look old enough to fend for yourself."

"Then you aren't Bones, at least," she mutters, lips pursing while she passes off the used rag to the server that brought it. While the person lingers, she orders more klah in spite of a half empty cup of it at room temperature at her elbow. "I know how it works. I've done it--okay, I haven't done it successfully, but I do know how it works." Lourna falters a little on that, an obvious sore point for her, but continues on as if she hadn't. "It doesn't really change anything in the moment. You're not trying to tell me that you're not special, are you? I wonder how your dragon would feel about that? You're essentially saying he lacks the taste and judgement to have found better. Aren't you the best?" That attractive smile blossoming across her lips is too smug.

Z'ian regards her with a puzzled expression on his face. "Ah, no? You said it was different because I had a dragon. I was merely explaining that I didn't always have one. Therefore, it was not correct on your part to assume that I couldn't understand your position in regards to perceiving riders merely because I am one. It had nothing to do with being or not being special." He wraps his fingers around his beer and pulls it closer to his chest, glancing to her smug smile as he moves to stand. "I was serious about finding different friends. I think it's rubbing off on you. Not in a positive way." He smiles politely, tight-lipped as he pushes his chair in. "Nice meeting you, Lourna. Good luck with your practice." Then, like that, he's off.

Oof. The admonishment, though not harsh, is enough to have her sliding a few inches down into her chair in shame. "I thought you said that I should--" Practice making fun? Obviously not a talent of hers, and instead of saying anything further on that count, her voice dies in her throat as Z'ian is rising from his seat. The klah arrives just in time for her to not touch it while she tries to clear the clutter from her table with a sinking stomach. "I'm uh--sorry, and I hope you feel better soon." As lamely as she says that, the young woman sounds genuine even if she can't bring herself to look at the good-natured man, her dark green eyes fastened upon the top of the table alone. Lourna won't watch his retreat, but she doesn't need to to know that he's left.