Difference between revisions of "Logs:Both "Late" and "Old" Are Relative"

>---< Nighthearth, High Reaches Weyr(#1549RJ) >------------------------------<
  With its entrance located between the kitchen and the living cavern, this 
  tiny bubble cavern is cozy, always kept warm and is filled with           
  comfortable chairs and a small round table. At the far end, there's a     
  hearth, outlined in ruddy, aging bricks, where a pot of stew simmers in   
  the evening hours. Generally quiet, the nighthearth is the haunt of       
  insomniacs and those seeking quiet from the bustle of daily Weyr life.

In one corner of the bubble cavern, while a stew burns over the hearth, a messy-haired young woman is tucked in a chair, her legs folded up on the seat. Farideh's clutching a mug of some indistinguishable brew between her hands, currently sitting on a handy ankle, but otherwise, seems to be slumbering with her head slacked back against the chair back; all evidence points to having fallen asleep while enjoying a late night snack. Remnants of sweet treats litter a small plate on the table next to her. Soft sleeping sounds escape her parted lips every now and again, but it's essentially silent beside the nigthearth, even as snow falls outside in uninterrupted drifts.

The trim, dark-haired apprentice tanner that slips into the quiet cavern is seeking more, maybe, than just the warm, cozy retreat from the busy living caverns. Her hood, dusted with thick white snowflakes, is still shielding her face when she comes to a stop in the doorway. Gloved hands are clutched tight to her chest, the corner of a slightly-crumpled envelope peeking between her fingers. Slate grey eyes fall on that sleeping, tousled-hair woman, and Laine hesitates; after hearing one of those soft snores, though, she collapses into plush, overpadded chair. She pushes back her hood, strips off her gloves, and gingerly opens that letter. Skims it. And gasps, loudly.

Not a stir or a sound, aside from those tiny unconscious noises, follows the apprentice's entrance, but her subsequentgasp jolts the laundress upright, blinking sleep muddled eyes on confusion. "I was-- I was just--" Her speech comes to a halt and she frowns, tossing her head to the side to find the cause of her sudden wakefulness; hazel eyes lock on Laine suspiciously. "When did you get here?" She doesn't have a welcoming greeting, but neither are the words wholly irritated. Shifting, she drops her legs to the floor and sets her mug on the table. "It's late." Did Laine know?

Laine flicks her eyes up at Farideh, ignores her, and pins that letter again with a tense, intent gaze. She reads it--rereads it--and one last time, as though the contents might change if she just tries hard enough. Bites her lip, hard. With a crinkled, worried brow she glances up again, this time to meet Farideh's sleepy suspicion. Laine's expression wobbles, fitfully alternating between a furrow-brow concern and what just might the verge of tears, then finally settles on some bemused middling ground. She even musters up a sallow smile. "It's, uh. Not actually that late." She compulsively crushes the letter in one tight-balled fist and stuffs it in her coat pocket. "Sorry for waking you." Stands, as though to go.

The other girl's obvious brushoff is accepted with aplomb, or disinterest in this case, and Farideh uses the silent period, while Laine reads, to stretch out her arms over her head and mobilize all those previously resting muscles. With a sound of satisfaction, she props an elbow on the chair's arm and drops her chin on her upraised fist, watching the other girl with a half-lidded, languid stare. Her eyebrows lift in question, her eyes raising when the girl stands. "Not late? It feels late. Is it dark outside? Then, it's late." She yawns softly and lets her head semi-loll to the side. "Not a problem. Who're you anyway?"

Narrowing her eyes, uncertain, Laine peers at Farideh, taking in that leisurely look and lazy yawn. There's a long pause before, but that uneasy expression gives way as Laine replies, with something akin to exasperation (but kinder), "it's always dark here. Doesn't mean anything." She speaks with clipped, crisp words, but not unfriendly. And she flops back down into her chair, her trim figure nearly swallowed by the pudgy cushions. "Laine. 'Prentice. Tanner. You?" Laine doesn't shed her heavy winter layers, but stuffs her hands into her jacket pockets and, though it's only evident by a faint rustling, squeezes that letter.

"Are you saying you can't tell the difference?" is Farideh's tolerant reply, her eyes rolling towards the ceiling before coming back to rest on the other girl. Little changes in her expression when Laine sits back down, her posture relax but immobile. "Laine. That's a pretty name. Tanner. Not as much." She picks up her chin and reaches her hands instead to rake the hair back from her face, lifting the length of the wild curls behind her shoulders. "Farideh. I'm a laundress." It's the rustling that pulls her gaze from the apprentice's face to where her hands are shoved in her pockets. "Letter from home?" referencing the letter she was reading - see, she pays attention sometimes - and crumpled up in her jacket.

"No," and this time there is exasperation in Laine's tone, and a grey-eyed eyeroll to match Farideh's, "saying there's a difference between 'dark' and 'late'." And there's a sniff and a nose-crinkle for the other girl's comment on her trade, though Laine lifts and drops one shoulder in a lazily dismissive (or defensive?) shrug. She crosses her arms, now; brushes an invisible speck of dust off the sleeve of her well-loved, fur-lined--and leather--jacket, and grimaces. "Yes. Kinda. No." A deeper frown. She doesn't elaborate.

"I thought the sun went down at night," Farideh supplies tartly, leaning back into her own chair. Her eyes imperceptibly narrow and her arms cross over her chest; she's quietly evaluating the other girl until she speaks again. "Yes or no? Which is it? Did you get horrible, tragic news? If so, you really should share. It's only fair." There's the slightly twitch of her lips, hinting at mirth underlying her words. It may be an attempt to lighten the other girl's mood, but it's a poor attempt at best.

Laine is so not debating semantics right now. The slender apprentice girl is slouching in an oversized armchair, exchanging eyerolls and introductions with Farideh, who is lounging nearby in her own chair; presently, Laine replies (so put-upon, so aggrieved, the poor thing), "there's more to it than that. Like, the angle of the sun, the tilt of the planet, or something." She flicks her fingers, drums them impatiently on her crossed arm, and curtly says, "Nevermind. You're right. It's late." And she narrows her eyes. The contents of the letter in her pocket is probably not something she wants to talk about with a snarky stranger in the nighthearth, but, reluctantly, she mutters, "Yeah. It--sucks. Sucky news."

"Who cares?" replies Farideh will drollness; an atypical teenage response with another eyeroll. It's the part about the apprentice's sucky news from home that she's interested in anyway. "There's been a lot of that going around lately. What happened? Did your mom die? Did your sister run away with a drudge?" She goes back to chin-on-fist-elbow-on-chair-arm mode, watching the other girl with genuine interest.

In comes Z'riah like that guy who doesn't really care what's going on because he's more awesome than anything else that could be happening. Also, maybe, he looks a little tired. So it's the klah he's focused on more than the girls. He does note Farideh on his way through the small cavern, evening eyeing the person she's talking to before pausing to say, "Well, hello, gorgeous. Farideh, you never told me you had hot friends." Were they having a conversation? Fortunately he doesn't just stand there staring at Laine. He continues on to get himself that klah.

Laine might've spilled all those secret that she's got clenched in her pockets--indeed, she was nestling her chin down into her scarf, eyeing Farideh from under her long dark lashes, and had begun to say something--when the klah-toting Z'riah interrupts. The secrets? They remain firmly unspilled. Instead, Z'riah earns an open-mouth, gaping look of bewilderment. Tipping her chin up to meet his gaze, the apprentice manages to school her expression into something more... stoic. Coloured with confusion. Okay, it's mostly confusion. Laine doesn't even reply; she just goggles over at Farideh. Gestures, wordlessly, up and down at Z'riah. Who is this guy?

The laundress' eyes cut to Z'riah. "I don't tell you anything, and whether I do or don't is none of your business," she tells the greenrider firmly, unkindly, with a fake smile. It's after she's dismissed him that she turns back to Laine, expression expectant. "No one important. You were saying? Your sister, with the drudge, or was it your dad with the cook--"

Ignoring the laundress' snark, Z'riah approaches again when he has his klah so he can slump into a nearby chair. "Hey," is said to the unknown. "Z'riah." His name is important for people to know. He sips at his drink, evidently joining this conversation he's only now just barely paying attention to. "Some drudges are really good at what they do. And if they're cute on top of it, well." The greenrider has very little shame.

If Laine's armchair was already engulfing her slim frame, it veritably swallows her as the young woman tucks her whole body in: knees folded up under her body, arms crossed even tighter across her chest. Farideh recieves one more plaintive, bordering-on-accusatory, 'help-me' glance, but when no help arises from that quarter, Laine angles a pointed stare at Z'riah--that 'as-if' scorn that all teenaged girls seem to master by the age of fourteen. "Ew. No. What are you, like, forty?" And, as if bolstered by this act of youthful derision, she squares herself, sniffs, and addresses Farideh with the tone of one granting a great favour. "The arrested thieves. Nabol. Grew up with 'em. They're my friends." Is that a lip quiver? No. Nope. Definitely not.

"Z'riah is very old and very annoying." That's Farideh's helpful comment, her patience and tolerance for the day having run out. "And drudges are never cute, that's why they're drudges." It's at this point, after one more poignant stare at Laine, that she stands and heaves a deliberate sigh. "If you make friends with thieves, bad news should be expected, right?" Her eyes flick to the girl, her expression both affronted and pitying. "I'll see you around," surprisingly, to Laine and not Z'riah; he just gets a face, tongue stuck out as she's turning to leave.

The greenrider arches one well-groomed brow at the girl. "Ew, no, what?" He didn't ask for anything. "But, sure. I'm exactly forty," is offered with a dismissive flip of one hand before Z'riah flashes a glare at Farideh. Wench! That's what his eyes are saying to her. "Careful. Don't trip on your boobs, Fari," he says cattily to her departure before his attention returns, more or less, to the remaining teenager. He sips at his klah. "So. Thieves, huh?"

To that 'what?', Laine doesn't reply; her lips purse, as though considering a suitably scathing reply. Then, abruptly, the apprentice tanner is struggling to hide a smirk as she catches Farideh's parting, tongue-out expression of contempt, and Z'riah's responding dirty look. She buries her head in her heads. Mumbles, "Thieves." Her hands scrub through her short, thick hair and when she looks up again at Z'riah, it's with a wild sort of light in her eyes and her thick hair sticking straight up, untamed. "They've been locked up for Faranth knows how long. Months. I find out now." She scoffs. Sniffs. Scrubs her eyes with her knuckles.

"Wow, that must really suck for you," says Z'riah without any actual sympathy at all. "I could take you to be locked up with them if you want. Could be a nice little reunion. You could be with your friends." He doesn't sound very happy. Maybe he's proddy. That's why greenriders are always moody, obviously. "How are you even friends with thieves? What are you, like twelve?"

Gazing past the dragonrider and into the hearth's low-burning fire, Laine drawls, not without a touch of irony, "Sure. I'm exactly twelve." Fingers tap-tap-tap against her jacket sleeves, and Laine pauses; Z'riah's sarcasm has Laine quirking one thick, dark eyebrow. She's shaken off her mope--the apprentice is in full-on, bratty-teenager mode. "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't ride on dragons with strangers." As to why Laine's friends with thieves? She shrugs one shoulder. "Nabol."

That's okay. Z'riah might (or might not) be forty, but he's totally a teenage girl at heart. "No? You have lots of dragonrider friends, then? How'd you get here?" Not riding on dragons with strangers definitely limits a person's travel potential is all he's saying. "Interesting. I didn't know Nabol was full of juvenile thieves. Good to know." Except for the fact that he doesn't sound super interested. In fact, his attention is wandering toward what he can see of the lower caverns.

Laine squinches up her face, one part amused and one part quizzical, an expression that wavers and morphs into something entirely bemused--she doesn't look like she's quite sure how to take Z'riah. So she clarifies: "Okay, I don't want to ride on your dragon, with you." Another skeptical look, up at the man from under thick eyebrows, follows his gaze out the entrance. "Somewhere you'd rather be?" It almost sounds like a... suggestion.

"Suit yourself. I can see how I'd be intimidating to a kid like you. But no skin off my nose." Not giving rides to strangers is kind of win-win for him, after all. Z'riah's blue eyes shift from their focus and back to Laine, then down to his mug. "Yeah, actually." But he'll finish his klah first, evidently. Sorry, not sorry. "Don't you have something you should be doing? Work? Drama about shit that doesn't matter?" Girl things.

Well, good. They're agreed. No skin off either of their noses, then. Laine harrumphs, mutters sullenly, "flown on a dragon before," but it's mostly under her breath and Z'riah might not catch it. And she replies to his last, rather pointedly, "You came in here." Implying that if there's any drama: it's him.

"Cute." The greenrider says it sarcastically. But, fortunately for both of them, it's around now that he pushes himself back up onto his feet and heads back out into the lower caverns without even putting his mug down somewhere for a drudge to clean up at some point. Z'riah is out.