Difference between revisions of "Logs:Peace Offerings"

Lake Shore, High Reaches Weyr
The rest of the bowl may be barren, grass barely surviving at best, but here by the lake, it's brilliantly green in the warmer months: thickening and thriving in the silty, boulder-dotted soil just before it transitions to soft sand and thence to the cool, clear water itself.
A large freshwater lake fed by a low waterfall, it not only provides warm-weather bathing space for humans and dragons, but has one end fenced off as a watering hole for the livestock in the feeding grounds. The water there is often muddier than the rest of the clear lake, whose shallows drop off abruptly several yards out into deep water, and whose edge undulates against the coarse-hewn bowl wall: here close enough to just be bramble-covered rocks, there far enough away that a narrow land bridge divides the main lake from a smallish pond. Between are several rocky outcroppings that form excellent makeshift diving points, though only one -- across the bridge -- has a set of narrow, slippery, quite possibly tempting stairs.

His initial arrival was excitement, energy, unstoppable as he reclaimed his ledge and his Weyr. But the days to follow? Much calmer. Much quieter. There's a comfort in home, and even a beast like Lythronath managed to define his home in his formative years (however much they otherwise allowed to form...). He's there now. Home. And he's sleepy. Not fully asleep in the lake, not yet, but the area's quiet enough just now, and there's wind enough to make little waves that lap at his shoulders and, when his head dips low enough as he slowly sways back and forth, his muzzle, too, and... A'rist, on the shore, keeps shaking his head to wake himself, as he examines their straps for any fresh signs of wear, the sunlight his aid, even if his dragon fights against any sort of helping. Slow-blink.

Since their return, Qhyluth's mind has been distant - save for that one stroke of greeting, short-lived though it was. The blue has, since, remained far and away, though for what and why will remain a mystery. His rider, too, has kept her distance, but for other - and understandable - reasons: intruding on the newly returned just seems wrong. She picks her way along the lake's shore while Qhyluth lumbers along in her figurative shadow. His narrow head swings toward the water and he gurgles low in his throat. Mental tendrils of fog and unseeable colors reach out, as if to test the borders of Lythronath's awareness and slumber. And of the girl in her blouse and skirts, she seems to be lost in her thoughts - at least until something catches and she blinks but once and slowly at that. Let the blue sort out the conundrum of the Other in his water; she'll diverge to approach A'rist in silence, arms folded around her middle.

Maybe the fog doesn't register. Maybe Lythronath is just too tired to track it back to its source. Or maybe it's just those gently lapping waves. Either way, no strong borders or fierce protection are offered against its encroachment; rather, the bronze just offers a sleepily-contented, « Mine. » Mmmm. Inner lids are closed. A'rist might be caught smiling, just a little bit, a strange smile when he's taken to being all quiet and broody since his return. Since before his departure. He does look up though, with forced wide eyes. It's an assessment that takes place there, first of the blue, never mind if Ulyana is nearer, and then tracking back to her. He stops his gentle probing of the leather with two fists closing about the straps. He blinks hard, but doesn't shake his head, not now. Maybe stealth matters. He watches.

The fog insinuates itself with phophorescent luminosity into that place between minds, between waking and sleeping. They congeal into near tangibility and threaten to hook in. Not with any sense of malice, but, rather, with an exploratory sense. Denial is a single tolling of a great, bronze bell across ancestral water; Qhyluth approaches the physical water without hesitation and, with another gurgled sound, places first one, then the other, forepaw into the shallows. Ulyana's mouth pulls to a side at something or another. No glance back at the beast; no narrowing of her eyes at what's before her. Another step, then two, every bit as slow and deliberate as those made by the nightmare blue. "I am sorry if I am interrupting your work," is unorthodox as greetings go - but, there it is, pitched low and flat as it is.

Lythronath is all in that one in-between place. It's from that place that he feels so... content? Still, those inner lids remain closed. Still, the little wind-waves lap at his shoulders. And then his muzzle. When he sighs, there's a bubble. "Could've stayed in the weyr," A'rist answers her after barely a moment, "if I really wanted to keep away from those." The bit of leather between each grip point slowly, slowly bows upward as his hands drift together. Gravity.

The appendages remain in that liminal space; the blue continues on. Qhyluth sinks into the water with barely a ripple and, almost immediately, makes for the deepest of places to wallow in. He leaves the bronze to the surface and to his dozing; he'll remain toward the bottom, lurking in his own thoughts - his domain. Ulyana shifts the hang of her skirts and, once she's close enough for quiet conversation to comfortably continue, she sits. "Regardless," is her reply with a slight dip of her chin. A glance is finally spared for the creatures in the water, one visible, one not. Then, to A'rist again. The bending of leather is noted in that look and she reaches out with one, long-fingered hand, to press down on it. "We are glad you are back," is noted in hushed tones, lest the words be heard by the wrong ears.

Barely a ripple, and yet... Those lids still don't open, but Lythronath does draw his bubble-making muzzle from the water. His swaying stills, for a moment. The in-between space ripples a little, but it isn't left. It's not the finger on that loop of leather that makes A'rist lean forward; that comes after, when she speaks, even though he's too late in his (minimal) closing of distance to actually affect his ability to hear her more closely. "We-" he starts, and then closes his mouth a moment. "We found it," is different than what that first sentence might have been.

The coils retreat after a fashion and the primordial water of Qhyluth's mind becomes indistinguishable from the water that now contains both bronze and blue. The blue looms - and all is as it should be. Ulyana keeps her finger there, the rest of her digits fanning out. There's a momentary creasing of her forehead at his aborted first sentence, but the other sentence seems to smooth things out. A shallow, singular nod follows - a mechanical up-down-center, as is her custom. "I am glad for that. I did not know how best to give it to you, but Qhyluth suggested doing it that way." It's a troubling thought, even for her, but she pushes past it. She lapses into silence, her gaze lingering on him for another beat, two, before being drawn down to the leather and his hands.

"You were in our weyr," muses A'rist, while slowly, consciously stretching that leather out again, hands drawing apart from each other. He isn't staring at her hand, but he's aware of it, watching for it. That musing doesn't hold accusation; it doesn't come out sounding either pleased or invaded. It's just toyed with. Like those straps. « home, » drifts into the waters from Lythronath, barely a strong enough thought to make it to vocalisation.

"Briefly," is the clarification, issued purely as a fact. Ulyana remains otherwise frozen in place, still as a statue - save for the fact that her fingers, all of them, eventually end up on the leather. Fingertips just barely there. Body bent forward just so. Impassive mask in place. "He wanted to leave more. I did not feel it would be appropriate to clutter your weyr unnecessarily. It will not happen again." The wording is deliberate; the tone matter-of-fact. And in the water, Qhyluth takes that barely breathed word - and echoes it, fractured voices brought into a strange union, shaping themselves into a bell-toned, « Home. » Confirmation. Agreement. Contemplation. Yes.

That was a word. Was it his? It's enough, it makes Lythronath shake some of the sleepiness from himself. Those lids lift. He looks for the blue, for where the blue should be. He looks and he tries to remember, but there is nothing to be remembered in his brain. A'rist frowns a little at the matter-of-fact... promise? He looks out toward the water, in concert with his bronze. "What else would he have left?" has to be all his own query, though.

A word. One. No more follow from the blue beast that glides aimlessly at the bottom of the lake. Still, that sense of being watched is enough to pull his attention sharply toward the bronze. Blue-green eyes shine with a tinge of sickly yellow at the edges - cautious, yes, but still content in his element. Ulyana catches that frown. "Would you prefer that I leave things in your weyr when you are not present?" It's an earnest question - and, oddly, laced with a distant thread of concern. A beat. Two. Then: "Bones. Skulls, primarily, but he managed to salvage a few spines that he was fascinated by." Another beat, longer than the first. "He thought Lythronath might appreciate them."

A'rist shakes his head; shakes his head, but says, "Lots of work, that little book," in a way that values it, a way that's almost possessive. Lythronian. "He'd probably be right." No mention made of those skulls that were hidden away in a corner of the weyr while they were gone; that have not yet resurfaced on the ledge; that Ulyana and Qhyluth might only have seen had they truly looked. There's a considering glance over Ulyana, and then back out to the water. He starts to bow the leather once more, with enough control to shift it down, this time. "How much of him is you and how much of you is him?"

"I started it when you left." Ulyana's eyes hold on A'rist for a moment longer, then drop and slide away to the water. "I was not sure if it would be finished when you came back." A shoulder rises and falls; the end result is precisely as it should be and that's all that matters. "We can bring the skulls later." And surely they must have seen; perhaps that's where the notion struck the blue. Perhaps not. The leather bends downward and her fingertips follow, as if they're stuck in place against that strap. The question, however, is enough to jerk her attention sharply back to the bronzerider. "I am still myself. He is himself. He-" and, here, she pauses, words lurching into her throat and dying back. "I am the tower on a cliff, and he is the ocean, eating away at the stone."

Simply, "Oh," for the start date, and almost nothing but a flick of his eyes to acknowledge the mention of the skulls. Hiss grip on those straps tightens, the knuckles of both hands showing white. "What happens," is quiet, A'rist's eyes set only on Ulyana now, "when he breaks through the stone?"

Her mouth presses into a flat line and her fingers lift from the leather. Ulyana is silent in the wake of that question, silent for far longer than might be expected. Finally: "There is always the ice. The chains." Her mouth flattens further, into bloodless invisibility. "And then there is the tower he built." A shudder crawls down her spine and forces her to swallow. Hard. None of that seems to answer the question, not directly, and she exhales sharply and forces herself to meet A'rist's gaze. "I cannot be sure of what will happen when the stone and ice give way. He wants everything I have, all for himself, because he is a jealous and hungry monster. I can only resist with what resources I have."

A'rist listens, but says nothing. He drops those straps now, into that rocky dirt of the shore. And then, once he's had time to think, not because his curiosity has abated (if anything, he looks more intensely at Ulyana through all this), but because his thoughts shift, he looks out to Lythronath. Lythronath, whose head dips purposefully, this time, beneath the water, searching. "Was his part in all of it... insidious? The book, the skulls?" Perhaps he's been reading lots, his time away.

Eyebrows knit. Ulyana straightens, her hands folded neatly in her lap. In the water, the nightmare stirs and shifts toward the surface. Slowly. Qhyluth's muzzle lifts, neck stretched, to bring him eye to eye with the bronze that peers down. On the shore: "He had no part in the making of that book, beyond his desire to include some small thing for you." There is no name for the mass of tentacles and stalks. No name could possibly be given for it. "I do not think his desire to placate Lythronath is insidious." And if she can catch and hold A'rist's eyes now, she will. "I think he wants to appease Lythronath because he is aware that I like you. He cannot change that." A breath - taken and released. "He is trying to make his peace, I think." Doubt will sit there, all the same, coiled and lurking. "Are you worried?" Breathed, more than said.

"Mmm. That part." But A'rist is careful with it, with that idea. His face is guarded, and his dragon does not react in the least. Shielded, the mighty Lythronath? Who stares beneath the water, and whose voice becomes strange and garbled and bubbles, when he sees Qhyluth. "For you?" A'rist asks, looking back only now, but holding once he has. "With him?" has more weight to it, but is certainly a follow-up.

"It was the least of the horrors he offered to me," says she, with a grim set to her jaw. Ulyana does not look to see what the dragons are up to; the nightmare will do as he will for now, though the chains are there, felt more than seen. Qhyluth's eyes slide to a hue of yellowed ochre that sits unpleasantly against the darkness of his hide and in the murky water. A throaty gurgle sounds and the blue turns fluidly, in search of a surfacing point that is not blocked by bronze. Ulyana does not blink once her gaze is caught and held. "He knows his place," is noted in flat, cool tones. "But. Yes. It seems that way - that he wants to make peace with Lythronath." Odd, that thought. Truly. "He does not want to share," is the addendum, carefully constructed, "but he is willing to yield ground if that will make me more accessible to him."

Lythronath watches, but he doesn't move to block Qhyluth. Here, now, that thought may not even occur to him. And when the blue rises, still, the bronze will watch. "And it makes you more accessible?" asks A'rist. "Out of gratitude? Or is does it make you different? Harder to guard?" Although there's no leather in them, those fists form up again, although this time, loosely.

There's a slight shake of her head and Ulyana reaches, this time to take the leather for herself. "What he thinks will happen and the reality of what will happen are different." Deadpan. "Nothing will change - but he does not know that. He does not need to. He will perceive things as different - and that might be enough." Her nose wrinkles just a touch. "Perhaps he imagines it will bring me nearer to him. Perhaps he imagines he will someday be able to trap me in his tower. I cannot be sure of what is happening in his head; it is as if he is perpetually dreaming and some dreams are not meant to be witnessed." The blue rises from the water and stands for a time, allowing the fluid to sluice down his limbs. When he's mostly dry, he begins to move again, slow and inexorable as the tide of his mind - his stride set to carry him to Her.

"You're very sure of that," A'rist observes. All those phantasmic images she's telling him about give him pause, though. His fists stay as they are, where they are, no move made to reclaim leather that might, on some other occasions, be identified by one or more as 'mine'. Lythronath watches Qhyluth's progress, and there's a moment where his mind wavers. But in the end, he picks up his swaying once more, the rhythm of those waves still there, and the home still his, if not, at the moment, in a way that excludes it being others' as well. "There's nothing," says A'rist, then, "that stands between me and him." The slightest lift of his chin toward the lake.

"For now, yes." A shoulder rises, falls. Ulyana tests the leather carefully, fingers sliding along with well-trained knowledge. "But I cannot say that tomorrow will be different. Or, that, five turns from now, I will be the same as I am. That the tower will yet stand or that the water will remain calm and steady in its consumption of rock and ice. Perhaps there is a crack I am not aware of; perhaps the chains will break. I do not know." A slow blink, a sidelong look to track the lift of A'rist's chin. "There are days when I would envy that," she muses, her voice barely a whisper. "And then I remember." Qhyluth doesn't look back. The blue's progress is slow and steady and finally brings him within a few yards of where She and A'rist sit. He circles loosely around to stand some distance behind her, his posture guarded and his eyes tinged in yellow.

"If there weren't anything between you two," and it's offered tentatively, A'rist's gaze tracking Qhyluth's movements as he approaches, tracking the way he circles, what the path says, "it would be very, very different from what it's like for me and him. Lythronath's horror doesn't look monstrous, or like much of anything. It sounds like laughing, just at all the wrong times." His fists slowly move toward each other, until they bump.

"I would drown." And that's the reality of it. Ulyana continues to work the leather along, cunning fingers doing what they do best - touch. "He does not sound like a horror at all," says she after the description is given. Behind her, Qhyluth coils up in his usual posture - on his haunches, forelimbs laid along his thighs and claws curving over knees. Wings flared, just so, for balance and head down to hold both riders within his gaze. Ulyana seems oblivious - or, at least, not willing to acknowledge. She tracks the progress of A'rist's hands in a peripheral sense and, only when they meet, does she finally remove a hand from the leather and extend it to touch both of those fists. Fingertips only. Light. "Are you scared of him?" Lythronath? Qhyluth? Or perhaps it doesn't matter.

A'rist's head shakes, his fists staying where they are. Under fingertips. "Used to be scared of me. What I'd be." Another, minimal headshake, a bit of a scowl, almost distasteful. "But there's not much point to it, now." He looks down to her hand long after it's touched his. "You're not. You've been in my weyr. I've been in your bed."

"Good." For all of it. Ulyana offers a thin ghost of a smile, one that fits poorly as all her smiles do - but there it is. Her fingers start to play over knuckles, light and smooth and fleeting. "I stopped fearing him when I learned I could control him." Mostly. That word can hang, unspoken, in the ether. "You are safe from him," Qhyluth being implied with a lift of her head, "unless you cause me harm." The corner of her mouth abruptly pulls into a half-smile, one that fits only slightly better. "Real harm, I mean."

"I'm not worried about him." It's dismissive, and A'rist's eyes flick to Qhyluth, not quite in apology, but certainly with a look that shows some element of his sensing an impropriety. Still, he has to add, "Even if I do. Real harm." There's something unsettled in the pull of his own mouth, in the shift that doesn't pull his hands away, but moves them back, forth. "I don't think I'd mean to, but there's some stuff that's just what we are. Or what we're not." That is to Ulyana, directly.

The pressure is there. The distress. But it sits only on Ulyana's head, making her wince just a touch. Barely perceptible - but it's there. Fingers hold their position, with knuckles rolling along them on their back and forth journey. "Yes," she agrees in muted tones. "You cannot hurt me," she reassures with a slow blink. "No matter what you do - or what you are. You and him," a tip of the head, Lythronath drawn into it, "I know enough of what you both are to accept you as you are." And of herself? She knows. Or thinks she knows. And, in either case, there is that blue, bristling in his distant way at something.

"Hope you do," says A'rist, but it's warning rather than optimism. Then, a noise of snorted water, a roar that turns into a cough, and droplets everywhere as that fierce bronze launches himself from the lake which betrayed him. Which lulled him into a false sense of security. Which then launched an attack on his nose. He claws the ground where he lands, and snaps his teeth, and sneezes, and flares those fire-blazed wings.

Her answer is a dead stare, confident - and, yet, still cool. Aloof. Perhaps she might have said something - but the moment is split apart when Lythronath rages and sneezes. She releases the leather fully and pushes to her feet, while Qhyluth, in that very instant, surges forward with unfurled wings to protect her. The water of his mind begins to churn, sickly luminous foam forming at the shore. "Is he well?" Ulyana queries around the wing that's been so quickly dropped in front of her.

A'rist, of course, is on his feet, while his dragon rubs at his muzzle and snorts and coughs and makes odd noises, even on land. Qhyluth is ignored, except for a frustrated mental 'thud', perhaps purely for his association with the Murderous Water that Lythronath has just experienced. A'rist snorts soon enough, but it's a laugh. "He's fine. He's been exhausted. Makes him... susceptible." He tilts his head to the side. And then reaches for those straps, looking to Ulyana for... not permission. Perhaps acknowledgement. "I should let him home. To rest."

And, perhaps, there is some deep, dark amusement at the not-quite-drowning on the blue's part. The water gurgles and the beast makes a sound that might be a chuckle. Maybe. Then Ulyana's pushing at that wing and forcing it away which, in turn, finds Qhyluth moving away a few steps to grant her space. "Of course," is intoned - acknowledgement readily given without implications of permission. She'll help with gathering the straps if desired, of course, but she'll offer only, "I hope he rests well. Both of you." A duck of her chin, then: "Let me know when you would like us to bring the skulls and spines."

A'rist accepts the help, nods his head. "You'll probably know, if it's a good time or not," would be easy, if not for that element of a challenge to it, that has the beginnings of a smirk curling his lips. "Just give him time to recover, now." A nod, and the straps are fully taken as he makes his way to his bronze. That, then, must be farewell.