Difference between revisions of "Logs:Candy in the Records Room"

The records room at night is a quiet place, certainly quieter than any of the handful of people who know Finne might attribute to her. For once, the bright chattering girl is quieter having the entire glorious room to herself. Well herself and that recordskeeper on duty who seems to want to go to bed already, but has /somehow/ been wheedled into staying open a little while longer.

Finne is sitting on the table, rather than any chair, with her feet in the chair and an array of books and hides around her. In her lap is that journal she keeps and she seems to be cross-referencing something or other. Overall, she's made quite the visible mess and is mumbling some litany of phrases under her breath. The perplexion on her brow is all too clear, and the recordskeeper might have noticed, if he weren't too busy nibbling on some confections the candidate's bribed him with.

N'rov swings past the main doors and down the short tunnel and inside with nary a hesitation: no questioning glance to the recordskeeper to confirm he's indeed open for business, no deference paid due to the time. He's awake, and evidently has some mission here; that's enough. Which isn't to say that he doesn't get distracted /staring/ at the recordskeeper and /staring/ at those confections and /staring/ back again. "You're allowing these things now?" he inquires with a decided smirk, one that's admittedly slightly marred by his reddish nose and by the nasal quality that inflects his ordinarily round Southern Boll drawl. His gaze scopes out the rest of the chamber next, and look: someone is sitting on a table. On the table. Not that worse sacrilege undoubtedly hasn't happened there. To the recordskeeper, all astonishment, "/Many/ things."

"Oh." Finne's mouth rounds and sounds that very long held vowel, her big blue eyes /staring/ at N'rov's arrival, much like he might be staring at the recordskeeper. "Shhhhhhhhhh!" Except she's not shushing him to be quiet, in spite of her finger to her lips. And two fingers trill him with a franticness that begs not to be denied. "Come quick, before he changes his mind. Shhhhhhhhhhhh!" Do not wake the sleeping beast that lurks inside every recordskeeper. "You're trapped here now. If you want to live."

N'rov eyes Finne slantwise, then the recordskeeper, and waggles his fingers all spinner-like in the direction of those confections as though he might just go steal one. But as long as she's begging... in the end he shrugs, scruffs his hands in his pockets, and ambles towards the girl. Not quickly. "So if I don't want to live, we're set for escaping? I admit, death by records room, or entrapment for that matter, wasn't on my to-do list for the day."

"Good. Clubbing over a good looking man and bloodying such pretty pretty treasures wasn't on /my/ list for today. So we're agreed, you wait here while I finish up, and don't look him in the eye. Just don't. He might make me leave. Worse, he might make me clean up and then leave." What Finne put in those confections, one can only guess, that allows her this much latitude after hours. "While you're here, you can help." She's decided and hands him a bound book. "Trying to find out what happens if more than one dragon wants a candidate. But it doesn't look like it ever did? But what if it happens? What if... like... what if? Hasn't anyone thought of this and made a contingency plan? How? Why? Why not?"

"Club me," N'rov says, then makes it, "/Try/ to club me, and I'll sneeze on you. Twice. So why should you not have to clean up after yourself when most everyone else does?" It could be pitched as a stern hint; instead, it's invitation: if she's Hattie's long-lost daughter who doesn't happen to look a thing like her, this is her chance to speak up. The bronzerider leans hipshot against the table's edge, takes the book, but doesn't bother to open it. Presumably, where he's concerned, the rest of the question can wait.

"Your sneezing can't be any worse than Lilah. Gross. So gross." Finne shudders and wiggle-twitches her entire body, repulsed by even the thought of her fellow sick candidates. "I'm probably already infected. Going to die soon anyway. And easy, he doesn't trust that I'll be able to put this entire mess back where it should go anyway. Incompetence has its perks." She beams, like this is something to be proud of. "Oh, and I'm cute. And I brought him candy and gave him a kiss on the cheek. And I taught him how to curl his tongue like this," a pause to show this guy the tongue curl, "But then he can't really do it himself without using his fingers, so it's kind of cheating," this spoken a lot more lowly, almost a whisper, "But I didn't tell him that."

Gray eyes reflect the girl, opaquely. "I see." Then, "What did /Lilah/ do." N'rov puts a curling intonation into the name, not quite as much as Finne had with her tongue, but then he hadn't the benefit of candy.

"She got sick." Finne's reply doesn't sound as distracted as she does flipping through a hide. "Really? The thought that two dragons might want one rider hasn't ever come up? Do you think it happens? But the stronger personality wins out? I don't... I don't understand how this works."

"What kind of sick?" Perhaps it's that partial answer that inspires N'rov to go on, and while she flips through the hide, he fans the pages of his book. It might be sort of as though he were reading it... except it's fast enough to be flicking cards, or looking at those pictures people draw sometimes on the corner of pages to give them the illusion of moving, and he's also holding it upside down. His voice drops. "They do, sometimes. But you're a candidate," or at least knotted like one, "and if you don't already know... I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to tell you." He even manages to sound apologetic.

Bug eyes bulge at N'rov and Finne gets out, "What?" The book falls to the side and her hand immediately goes to her little notepad and pencil.

N'rov swears under his breath at /that/ reaction, and then promptly claims, "I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have even said that much." He glances over his shoulder towards the recordskeeper, all furtive, and then back at her.

"You're stuck now. Can't leave. Can't say no to me. Right? Right?" The second right is more earnest than the first. Finne leans in, a lock of her ruddy brown hair falling into her face as she does so. "Please?"

"Right, I'm stuck," N'rov says. He grimaces, does the glance maneuver again, then lifts his elbow to cough into it. Even once he looks back at her, he can't just begin, he has to warn, "Your hair's falling out." /Then/, "See, most of the time it doesn't matter, because one hatches /and/ Impresses before the other one does. So the other one, it's too late, it has no chance. All it can do is, later, look forlornly at the other candidate sometimes when nobody is looking. You got that?"

"That sounds... very sad." Finne speaks slowly, her voice mired with all the sorrow of that kind of pathetic situation. A hand lifts to push back the lock out of her eyes and tuck it into the mess of her ponytail. It'll do for another few moments. "Oh well, then, I guess I can stop researching. It's kind of like really awful love triangles where a couple is happy, and one sad one is left outside. Not," she notes, "That that's ever happened to /me/. Oh well. Thanks, Puffy Nose. I'm Finne, by the way." Wait, is that a smile glimmering in a twitchy mouth curl?

"Of course it hasn't," N'rov says gravely. "It wouldn't dream of it." He coughs into his elbow again, then says, "Glad to help, Finne. I'm E'ten. Here," and he extends the contaminated book back to her, with nary a mention of what would ostensibly happen if one /hadn't/ Impressed first. "Good luck on the sands. And say, have any more of that candy handy? That would be dandy." Since he was so helpful, and all.

Finne sets all the books down in neat little stacks for the recordskeeper to clean up. Incompetence, remember? "E'ten. Right. Dragonrider, I assume? Do you ever wonder, what if someone else Impressed your dragon?" She pauses for just a second. "Adiulth? Well, it's either Adiulth or Hircith, but Hircith hatched something insane like four hundred turns ago, so I'm assuming not that E'ten." Finne closes her little notebook and tucks it into one of her myriad pockets. "I might have some more candy later. Or could teach you how to make it. It's real simple, s'long as you have the ingredients. But maybe not now. I don't really know you, after all. I can't just be handing my candy out to every boy who asks."

"If it were Hircith, I couldn't tell you," N'rov says just as gravely as before. "I couldn't even applaud your deductive skills, or perhaps it's your memory," this with a brow tipped up in inquiry, not that he doesn't go on. "So let's just say Adiulth, for now. I have complete confidence that no one but me could ever have put up with him, so it's just as well things worked out the way they did." Here he pushes away from the desk and says, never mind the recipe for now, "It's too bad about the candy. I'm sure you're wise to be conservative when it comes to your generosity, with all those boys lining up for a taste." He doesn't look back at the recordskeeper, but a smile surfaces briefly, wickedly. "Otherwise, you could give me /two/, and I could pass one on to someone else, and tell you the story if I ever ran into you again. Too bad, indeed." He nods to her, starting to turn away.

She doesn't stop him, but she does sigh a very obnoxiously loud dreamboat sigh. "The man of my dreams, there he goes. I like you. I'm sure I'll give you my candy some day." Finne sighs again before giggling. The recordskeeper looks over at this decidedly not-records room noise, and she wiggles fingers at him. "I'm all done. Can I watch you shelve these books? Maybe next time I can clean up after myself." And maybe, just maybe, pigs will fly, and cheating with dragons carrying pigs doesn't count.

"I'll hold my breath," N'rov tosses after her, making a show of taking a big one so his cheeks bulge out, and if it's not /quite/ as non-dreamboat-y as he could imagine... it's getting there. He doesn't hurry out, though; he has some paper to sign out, first, and if the recordskeeper gets sufficiently distracted... maybe he can pilfer his own hand-me-down piece on the way.

The recordskeeper is distracted by Finne's Finne-ness and abandons his box to go rectify his domain. The caramelly, burnt sugar rolled in powdered sugar treats have half of one left. Does he dare?

He /does/. And he'll lick his fingers, too. Let's hope the powdered sugar isn't really poison!