Difference between revisions of "Logs:L-Words"

Hatching Galleries, High Reaches Weyr

Ringing the southwestern side of the hatching sands are ample tiers of carved stone benches, the lowest of which is some six feet off the ground -- just high enough to separate wayward hatchlings from unwary viewers, and vice versa. A metal railing on the outside helps prevent anyone from falling off; it also extends up the stairs that lead the way higher into the galleries. While most of the area is open seating, ropes section off some of the closer tiers when dignitaries are expected; those areas even feature cushions in the Weyr's blue and black.

The higher one climbs, the more apparent the immense scale of the entire cavern becomes. The dragon-sized entrance on the ground is dwarfed by the expansive golden sands that glitter in the light. Everything on them is easily visible from the galleries, whether that's a clutch of eggs and a broody queen, or simply its emptiness and the handful of darker tunnels that lead to more private areas than the bowl. Wherever one sits or looks, however, one thing is constant: the overwhelming, suffocating heat.

It isn't so cold yet that the hatching cavern's populated by people trying to warm up their bones, nor close enough to a flight that others are betting or just wishing. It should be empty. Instead there's a Fortian bronzerider sitting hard to the right of the entrance and up several tiers, speculating from the shadows. (That, or taking a nap.)

K'zin doesn't see him. In fact, K'zin doesn't even spare a glance for the galleries on the whole as he steps off the last stair and swings straddles the bench just to the right of the entrance, a small stack of papers hitting the bench audibly as the man gets himself settled, one leg drawn up on the N'rov side of the tier, the other bracing his weight against the floor and he leans a little between the two to start scribbling on the topmost sheet. Whatever he's doing, there's no time to waste, evidently. Good luck to N'rov if he wants to get out unseen though, engrossed the K'zin might appear.

What also might be audible, once he approaches (or might not; it isn't loud) is the quiet hiss of card-shuffling and reshuffling: quiet enough to be a flexible deck that's seen a fair amount of use, controlled enough that the deck's not so ill-worn as to be floppy... or else it's just plain controlled. The Fortian doesn't look down at his hands. There is the briefest of pauses once, when N'rov first looks K'zin's way, but then the rhythm resumes. If there's no returned notice, there's time for more scribbling (and more shuffling) before N'rov gets around to a dry, "In a hurry?" that's more remarked than truly asked.

No, no notice. Things are never so easy as all that. When the Fortian with the Boll accent speaks, K'zin's head pulls up from it's bent position and brown eyes slide up to the source while the tip of his pen hovers over the paper. He looks for a moment before he makes answer. "Just want to get it over with. It'll take me at least three drafts to get it right." He glances down toward the empty sands then back up. "Here officially?"

"Never." Clever hands shuffle, shuffle, shuffle while his boots stay flat on the floor. N'rov might speculate out loud. Instead, with some humor weighting his voice to extra slowness, "What difference would it make if I were?" Occasionally things are... easy enough. Just not now.

"If you were, they might've been meaning to have you take it back with you. It's my letter of apology to your Weyrleaders for intruding on a closed seniorship flight." K'zin speaks the words in such a way that one would speak of an unexpectedly bitter dish after swallowing the serving down. "Which might've made the deadline all the sooner. As is, I don't really know what to say." His pen is set down and he leans back against the edge rail of the stands, eyes casting ceilingward. "What would you say in my place?"

"Chain of custody, yeah? It's not like I'd have minded." N'rov stops shuffling, as it turns out unnecessarily, long enough to stretch his legs out with his bootsoles flat on the bench in front of him; they can't be as muddy as all that, surely, or if they were, they've had time to dry. Not that he's paying the state of the bench any attention. "Huh." Commiseration, of a sort; if most bronzeriders are aware of risks and consequences around queens, he's no different. "First draft? 'It's not like I wanted to chase your fucking queen,' or at least I wouldn't have, did you?" with a sardonic lift of his brow, "'and it chaps my hide that I've got to write this stupid letter, no, waste time writing this stupid letter when I'd be better served wiping my ass with it. I wouldn't want your Weyr if you handed it to me on a solid gold platter," with the slightest break before, "and said please.'" For all that the words are heated, his tone's far cooler than that, if with a not-dissimilar acrid bite.

"What, and take a chance at ending up in charge of you?" K'zin's brows lift dubiously, but there's more humor there than the previous barbs they've exchanged in this very gallery. "Nah. It wasn't intentional. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong circumstances." He looks down at the page, "I get there's etiquette here. That I shouldn't have been there when she might go up; but sometimes life just doesn't work out like that, and it seems like people are butt-hurt over a line taken from an etiquette lesson; upset because they've been told such a thing should upset and outrage them. It's not like he won, or even really stood a chance. He's over two and a half turns old and we just won our first green flight a few months back." The younger man shakes his head, staring at the paper like it bears the fault for all of this.

That gets a smirk, quite naturally, and N'rov waves off the mere thought. Given the confirmation it's unintentional (and a confirmation he doesn't appear suspicious of), he listens to the rest and right when he's leaning forward and about to break in, he breaks out in a guffaw. Seriously? K'zin is serious here? He doesn't apologize, does swipe the back of his hand across his mouth before trying to talk with anything like sobriety.

"You know, I can give you that bloody lip we skipped the last time," K'zin answers the guffaw with a look, though one that doesn't seem entirely serious.

"Yeah, yeah, I get you've got to have something to make yourself feel better," N'rov says with great solicitude.

"I can think of plenty of things better than giving you a bloody lip for making me feel better." K'zin's answer is quick and his eyes roll before landing back on the other bronzerider as hands come up to interlock fingers behind his head.

"So you have an imagination," of sorts, and N'rov has a white grin to go with his easy drawl. "All right. 'K'zin,' yeah? Here's the thing. I wouldn't put it past my senior to have a brief on every bronze and his rider across Pern, but she's got enough of a time keeping tabs on us. She doesn't know you and your... harmlessness... from that fellow from Telgar, the one that was trying to fuck up N'muir," whose name N'rov says with possessive familiarity: nobody gets to mess with his wingleader before he and his wingmates do. "That's point one." If K'zin wants to barge in, N'rov will give him a chance right here.

"Did you ever doubt it?" A single eyebrow arches at the Fortian. "I met her once," is K'zin's answer to N'rov's assertion of dossiers, an answer that doesn't seem to disagree, "When I was still a weyrling." The 'Reaches rider makes a show of looking bored, "Is point two more interesting?"

This time N'rov may give K'zin a brief look, but his focus lies elsewhere: namely, "I'm not your wingleader or your weyrlingmaster. Entertaining you isn't my job, remember." Evidently his job involves helping K'zin stall when it comes to writing that letter.

"You might've at least tried to make it your pleasure." K'zin's eyes roll again. "I liked your first draft answer best, so far." Even if K'zin's first draft sounds nothing like it.

"K'zin." Firmly. "I liked it too," N'rov will say; it was his, after all! "But. Backing up here: are you going to try to deny that my weyrleaders," no limiting it to his senior, "have a right to say who gets to be part of my Weyr? Who gets a chance to lead it? Who gets a chance to knock someone else out of leading it?" The set of the Fortian's brows implies that there could be a wrong answer here.

"No." K'zin doesn't withhold the answer. "All I am saying is that it was an accident. No one's trying to deny that it was a closed flight and it was within their rights to have it as such, but it's not like I was there to try to elbow in. If I could have left, I would have." There's frustration there, genuine frustration, and he reaches for the topmost piece of paper and starts crumpling it up.

"So it sucks that you were there, that you didn't want to be, that her mighty golden powers went and combined with your tail-chasing dragon to keep you when you didn't want to be kept," N'rov both sums up (though he's left another chance to barge in) and agrees. "I'm not going to deny that. Queens. Shells. And that's when they aren't even doing it on purpose, well, it is on purpose but it's not like it's their fault right then."

The ball of paper just crinkles tighter. Whatever interruption N'rov expected is not forthcoming from K'zin, brown eyes just flick away from the tight ball in his hand and up to the Fortian.

N'rov meets his gaze, holds it. He glances down at the other man's hand, then back. More slowly, not looking away this time, "So that leads to my second draft." He makes the cards in his own hands arch again, and then he makes them stop. "I'll give you the rest. If you want. But it's also not like you have to stick it out to the end."

"You know that me asking you what you would say wasn't me asking you to write it for me." K'zin responds with furrowed brow. "It was more... curiosity. Since you know them. And I don't really." Maybe it's something about the phrasing 'give you the rest' that makes him frown now.

A sharp slant to N'rov's own brows precedes even the quick curl of his mouth. Dismissing the mere thought, "I know." Beat. "He'd recognize my handwriting." The cards move again, an arch so slow as to be exacting. His tone changes again. "I figured you for wanting what you said, what I'd do. Then you'd figure out what you'd do, maybe the total opposite. Only thing is, mine's more a process, no good to skip to the end." His shrug affects his shoulders but not the work of his hands. "N'muir's a good man, couldn't ask for a better wingleader. Say you're sorry for being there, sound like you mean it, and he'll get over it; he knows what it's like to be a bronzerider." Which would leave Hattie.

"You do seem to be sort of a process kind of guy." K'zin's comment carries some humor, and though he doesn't look at the other bronzerider now, his lips curl as he stares idly at the paper. Likely because, in this, they are similar. And after so much antagonizing in this very galleries... who might've expected to Pretty Boys to have things in common beyond being pretty? "Yeah?" He's not questioning N'muir being a good man, although it might sound that way, given rumors, "Weyrwoman Hattie was less intimidating when we met than your Weyrleader. Less suspicious too." But only by a hair.

"Sometimes." That has humor too. There's the continued flick and hiss of the cards, regular and irregular as the sea. "Is that how they worked it out," N'rov says now. "I suppose someone had to be. Should I," humor again, or still, "have heard of the occasion?" Did he miss its being drummed out from coast to coast, or from the Barrier Range to Boll?

"No, I wasn't particularly ill-behaved at that Hatching Feast. Left a few girls without a dance partner when I left early, but that was about the most of it. Had to give a particularly persistent woman the slip." K'zin's brow raises toward N'rov, "I'm sure you know how that goes. Even if your usual gaggle are aunties." Okay, well, probably not, but the only one K'zin has ever seen him with.

"That's it? Well, set a higher bar next time," N'rov tells him, amused. "I don't know if I want to give my aunties the slip. They bake really, really well; that's worth some chatter," as surely he couldn't possibly have any other reason. "Even when you all were on short rations," but he doesn't complete the thought out loud, instead looking past the other man, abruptly intent.

"So kind of you to thoughtfully get the best for yourself while we were," K'zin returns, humor somewhat lacking now. But anyone could've told N'rov that talk of months of just stew would make K'zin cranky. He bends his head over the paper once more, taking up the pen in his free hand.

He's still looking out at the sands, is N'rov, or rather past them, towards the even darker mouths of the more private tunnels. But he can spare a dry, "Not funny," as supposition.

There's no answer forthcoming from the younger bronzerider, his air suddenly studious as bending to the task of writing the note has become all the more interesting because it means he can ignore N'rov all the more effectively.

Definitely not funny. Which somehow, now, is funny. The cards change their shuffle-sound, no longer arching into each other but flattened to a blatttt. If only it wasn't his own deck; if only there wasn't... whatever that is. N'rov makes no effort to conceal the sound of his footsteps as he starts to head down. "Thought I saw something down there that shouldn't be; going to check it out."

"Pretty sure the only Fortian here is you..." K'zin answers with all the sense of a lazy jibe. It might not make perfect sense, but. Well, he's trying. His eyes lift from the paper to follow N'rov. "Not that I'm sure you can be trusted to report it if it were something out of the ordinary," Beat. "Maybe I ought to come with you. To make sure."

Who, when he passes by K'zin, aims an easy slap to the other man's shoulder without slowing: his writing shoulder, just because. "You can trust me as far as you can throw me," only something amused about the Fortian's tone suggests that might be even less. "If I don't come back? Have fun with your... writing." With that, N'rov uses a hand on the rail to vault down to the sands with the easy, proprietary air of someone who's lived and breathed the place for a while, and starts for the tunnel in question.

The pen skates across the page. "Color me shocked." K'zin rolls his eyes, and sighs as one much put upon by the necessity of starting a fresh page. "If you don't come back, I'm sure I'll be first in line to mourn the great loss to Pern." The now crumpled and ruined page is lobbed at the other bronzerider's back.

"You do that." The projectile, such as it is, hits; N'rov does look back, with a much put-upon air. "Litterer." With that, and a smirk, he leaves the page where it's fallen. And, of course, he doesn't come back. Maybe some giant tunnelsnake's about to be gnawing on his bones.

"Lurdane!" K'zin returns L-word for L-word. But none of them mean there's love.

As instructed by K'del, on day 19, month 10, turn 33, K'zin officially submitted his official letter of apology to his Weyrleaders so it could officially be sent along and be officially received by Fort's leadership.

The letter reads:

Dear Weyrwoman Hattie and Weyrleader N'muir:

Please allow me to express my deepest apology for being in attendance at Elaruth's mating flight. It was never my intent to be present at Fort when she rose. If I were a more experienced rider, perhaps I could have forced Rasavyth from the chase once he began blooding. But that is no excuse for this serious breach of etiquette. My sincerest apologies.

I have been disciplined by my leadership, but in addition, if there is anything I can personally do as a service to you or your Weyr to serve as recompense for my participation, please let me know and I will be too glad to perform the task.

Sincerely,

K'zin, lifemate to bronze Rasavyth

High Reaches Wingrider