Difference between revisions of "Logs:Joy"

Snowasis, High Reaches Weyr(#555RJ)

It is a summer afternoon, 12:04 of day 27, month 7, turn 32 of Interval 10.

It's that lull in between afternoon activity and dinner, where the summer sun is high and bright enough that it's chased most people to find shade. So, the newly reopened Snowasis with a very tired looking owner manning the bar, is one of those places that takes advantage of both the cooler indoors and the patio archway bringing the outdoors inside. In here, holding court with an impromptu recital in the corner is Suireh, her usually sweet soprano having taken a lascivious lilt to it as she sings bawdy Tillekian sailors' song. Behind her, playing gitar and providing harmony is a leaner tenor, paired to a scruffy be-hatted man, that has to work a little to keep up.

The Snowasis still holds the memory of being untouchable during those last few months of his weyrlinghood, and as such has C'wlin's entrance still cautious. Pale eyes survey the area, skipping over Suireh briefly, before settling on the owner and heading that way first. A few quiet words shared to indicate an order of something small, the bronzerider finally finds himself free to take a seat. So he does, within full view of the legitimate harper. If he envies her the access to a craft he used to be able to claim his own, it doesn't show in the expression that maintains a slight(ly creepy) half-smile.

It's when the raven-haired harper gifts the audience with a saucy wink and a quick turn of her head that she catches sight of C'wlin. What goes on when her head is turned results in a shift in tempo from Tillekian sailor to a more sultry, jazz-esque instrumental that would do well with a fog machine, if Pern had those contraptions. The slender girl lifts a hand, pointing one finger at the seated definitely-not-a-harper dragonrider, and crooks it, the come hither gestured punctuated by a faintly supercilious smile. "It seems we have a ringer in the audience, folks," declares Suireh with a glance cast backwards at her accompanist, before looking to C'wlin again. "You still know this well enough to sing, kid?"

To C'wlin: That man, that man behind Suireh looks a little too familiar and yet still somehow hard to place.

Eyes narrow, lips thin as expression looses the affectation of amusement when Suireh beckons for C'wlin to sing. "I am no harper to sing," he disassembles and quite beautifully too as he is used to wiggling out of that particular type of request. "None here would like to hear song from me, but from you..." the bronzerider trails off, leaving the statement and implication unstated. She is holding her own! The man behind Suireh catchs C'wlin's attention, causing icy eyes to narrow as the boy tries to place him.

Suireh starts. For all her bravado that he must know this song, he shouldn't. It's something new, but with a familiar beat and melody to it - a simple song jazzed up with minor chords behind her and a melancholy verse. There's transparent challenge in the harper's gray eyes. Can you possibly figure this out?She eventually trails off into what must be the male part of her vocals. In this, the man behind her doesn't oblige by filling in with voice, merely creating a succession of fills as he waits for a partner.

To C'wlin: The hat shifts a little as the gitar the man plays is lifted, as he reaches for higher notes. It's not a big enough movement for anyone else but those trained in noticing such things. And there's further familiarity in the faux-craggy lines of this face. It's something to think on at any rate, what his face would look like if it were smooth and polished, cultivated, rather than rocky.

The crowd turns, a little restless for what is now turning into something intriguing, if less music-filled. A few pairs of eyes looks at C'wlin and a man who is already drunk at 5 in the afternoon, waves a pair of gloves in the air and tosses them at the bronzerider. "Git up there, you fool. When a pretty girl smiles at you like that you answer with your pants off, man."

Distracted by the man behind Suireh, C'wlin's slowly getting boxed into a corner -- made all the more of a challenge when the man behind him provides such commentary! Slowly he stands, eyes held on the girl first and then the man behind. Jaw clenches, but soon enough words follow. His voice is too sweetly tenor'd, too perfect by far, and the pain it brings to sing is clear in the blue of his eyes and the strained features that such sound produces. The words don't match the song, for the very act of singing shows a lack of knowledge of whatever she sings. But the tempo and chords are kept, and the voice carrying something else: an spellbound of such longing that it mingles well with the melancholy verse. The challenge, accepted.

He might not sing the words she sings, but she can meet that challenge too, anticipating his words by the shape of his mouth and the poetic rhythms and rhymes such a song must have and soars her voice to meet his in a duet. But while he might stand, still in place, Suireh is all motion, moving from this table to that, curling that finger under this woman's chin or behind that man's ear until she comes to the very drunk man who helped get her what she wants and she leans in, in a syncopated beat of the song to brush a kiss to his sweatbeaded forehead, before making her way to C'wlin. Somehow. Somehow. She manages to work in 'answer with your pants off' into a descant above whatever the bronzerider sings. And as the song comes to an end, first instrumentally, and then vocally a few moments later, she stays his departure with a hand to his shoulder. Silent for two very long heartbeats. Then there's applause, and the harper girl's turning around with C'wlin's hand in hers, "Let's hear it for the ringer in the crowd and his-," she purses her lips, looking to her gitarist, "Treasure of a voice."

To C'wlin: And there, as the song ends and should you be looking, a glint of dark eyes looks up from under the brim of that hat, filled with some sort of sad, reflective humor, and seeks out C'wlin's in a bald-faced, you know who I am, sort of look.

Stiff where she is fluid, C'wlin pales in comparison when it comes to singing /to/ a crowd; the raw talent of his voice doesn't make him a great performer by any stretch. He sings to her challenge, and even when stayed by her hand -- shoulder tense beneath -- it is for the challenge that he doesn't move. Only at the moment of truth, when a pale, icy look is cast back to the man behind the harper-girl does he stumble through the shared bow. Hand loose in Suireh's, the crowd may not even notice but the girl certainly would feel the misstep. Briefly seen before lashes veil: surprise.

"Singers need to drink as well, and my friend and I owe this man a drink for indulging my whims," announces Suireh, to the audience they've gathered. Indeed, she performs to the crowd, basking in their adulation and knowing somehow, how to push the right buttons to elicit reactions she wants. But when the limelight is gone and as she's leading C'wlin to that corner table where the gitarist sits, the farce of her public face fades, leaving thin brows arced up and a look for the bronzerider, "Sit. Your drinks are on us." Especially given the owner is her uncle. "Vik, you might remember C'wlin. C'wlin, Vik." Not anything else, hear? Vik.

Thankfully, C'wlin's natural unease with his own singing masks further reactions from whatever his eyes may have discovered. Once seated, in their out of the way place, the bronzerider has finally regained his control enough to manage to hold onto what might be a neutral expression. "Vik. I remember." His voice, strained surely from singing, struggles to maintain the same sense of neutral distance though he doesn't quite succeed. At least to the witness of those closest to him. A certain level of respect is absolutely maintained. "Thanks. I could use a," gaze flicks between Vik and Suireh, "a drink."

The drink he ordered before arrives, along with a wooden paddle of ten shots and a glass of good brandy. The serving girl gives Vik a good once over and flashes a cute smile to the stranger before departing. "Suireh's had a rough journey here. By wagon, by runner, on foot," begins the older man. "But journeymen must journey, no?" There's a wry, side long smile for the dark-haired girl, which turns rueful when pinned upon C'wlin. "How have you been these months?"

Suireh reaches for a shot glass and knocks it back with a rise of her shoulders and an exhalation of fire down her throat.

"Journeymen must journey..." the statement is murmured absently, C'wlin's attention eclipsed by the fact that he's reaching for his drink. The crowd is entirely ignored at this point, as pale blue eyes remain fixated upon Vik. "Well enough." A brief smirk is flashed, sardonic as it is ironic: "Staying out of trouble. Got taken on by the Weyrleader's wing." He pauses, rolling the alcohol around on his tongue after indulging in a sip, "Uneventful." That's the final descriptive to a loaded question.

Thankfully, the crowd's dispersed. There's no more show to watch, though every so often, the harper trio garners a quick look from the bartender, and shortly thereafter, a plate of popped corn drizzled in some kind of funky oil appears at the table with a plate of cheeses.

Suireh purses her lips, "Dragonriders should earn their keep in an Interval, no? I don't see why we have to travel by foot." If she sounds sour, it's mere window dressing to the trained ear; a pretense that she's not doing a terribly good job of hiding. It's Vik, though, who laughs, at even that pretense, and lifts his glass of brandy to the ex-harper, while nodding to his not-now protege. "We may have a request of you." This flat announcement comes from the girl, not the man. "And an offer."

Who can resist popped corn and a plate of cheeses? Even if the popped corn has some funky oil on it -- which C'wlin eyes with suspicion. A side-glance to Suireh for her comment on travel, though the bronzerider has learned well when to bide his time and curb his sharp tongue. Instead, he uses the finger foods as a way to ensure that temper doesn't get the best of him. Pale brows lift. "I'm listening," he states carefully, idly twirling his glass. Though the announcement comes from the girl, the lion's share of his attention is on Vik.

It's Suireh that keeps talking, for the knot on her shoulder is just a little more complicated than Vik's, a junior to her full; in this dream world, she outranks him, however much of a farce that is. From her pocket, she brings out a harper's badge and puts it on the table in between the popcorn and cheese. While her hand's out there, she takes the opportunity to grab a handful of the corn. "We passed through Nabol on our way here and while we have official harper presence in the Hold again, nothing's come up of Lunmein's body." And if wasn't aware of a harper being murdered, well, now he is! "You have friends. You're trusted," there's a beat there where Suireh glances at Vik, who continues to observe the rest of the bar (and C'wlin) as she speaks. "We would like to ask you to be on the look out, as discretely," another half-beat where she side-eyes the bronzerider and his lack of discretion last time, "As you can."

Finally, Suireh has C'wlin's full attention, whether that's a by-product of her words or the fact that the other man's knot is finally realized, is hard to tell. The Harper badge is eyed with unequivocal longing -- something that would not be a surprise to the pair of true harpers at the table, so he doesn't bother to hide it -- while considering the girl's words. "I have learned the art of discretion." Lips thin, pulling to a mockery of a smile. "The hard way." Despite accusations that fly through the weyr, C'wlin, still, staunchly maintains innocence of torturing those pirates. "I could do this." What's left unspoken is the question of the 'offer', blue eyes falling conspiciously to the harper's badge.

Vik idly strums the gitar he carries, playing his role to the hilt; the bodyguard, the bystander, the companion to Suireh's soprano. An almost indolent look is cast down upon that badge the dark-haired woman puts onto the table and then a flicker of lashes up to take in C'wlin's reaction, watching the various draws and pulls of his face as the longing and then the self-mocking work across the bronzerider's face. Kindly, tempering the business-focused coolness of his female counterpart, Vik remarks, "It is the Interval, after all. And once a harper..." The trailing off of his words is inviting enough, but is followed soon after with, "Think on it, and once you've figured out what speaks to your heart and soul, Ceawlin, come join us this evening for a cozy sing along in Journeyman Suireh's Reaches quarters." As her companion invites someone else to their little jam session, the pale gray-eyed woman's lips twist, as if put out, but there's an interested glint in her eyes. "We'll leave the badge here," is all she says as she stands, taking one last shot and then with a what the hell shrug, downs another. "Come along, Vik." She's taking far too much pleasure in this role. He seems more amused than anything.

C'wlin's lips move just barely, perhaps whispering the companion half to Vik's sentence. He watches them go; watches Suireh's expression and Vik's behavior. The girl's slight damper causes a twitch of a smile, but there's more of a reminder in who he was in this singular moment. "I look forward to it," cool tenor comments, and while his fingers do not reach out to grab the badge up off the table, a sense of arrested motion lingers over his hands. Ever was only one choice. One. A chilly smile displaces the displeasure lingering from having to sing, holding far more nebulous nuances, but neither Vik nor Suireh are left to guess what his decision was, is, will-be. Now it's his turn to take a shot, downing the contents with a sense of wild joy.