Difference between revisions of "Logs:Notes in Books"

Books. Scrolls. Bound hides. Maps. If it's a record pertaining to the Weyr, it's likely to be in this roughly oval room with its floor-to-ceiling cherrywood shelves, its multitude of slots for scrolls, and its wide drawers for materials that shouldn't be rolled up or folded. A scribe is usually on duty at the tall desk up front with its good view of the room, and is able to help visitors find what they're looking for via the big bound index on its rotating stand. Past the desk, several tables stand in neat rows for note-taking, each stocked with glowbaskets, scrap hide, paper and pencils. Additional lighting is provided by a many-armed wrought-iron light fixture, its glows gleaming through luxurious glass containers in fluted shapes instead of baskets.

To one side of the room, a gap between two sets of shelves outlines where another set once stood, now replaced by a tapestry-covered aperture. Peeking behind the tapestry reveals another cavern, this one likewise full of shelves, but occupied by only a few boxes of older records and a somewhat musty air of disuse. As well, two narrow but solid doors are locked when the room is unattended and a discreet staircase provides direct access from the Weyrleaders' weyrs.

A seven after the accident finds Sabella in a good mood. She's not participating in some of the more physical drills but she's doing what she can, where she can. The trade off for less of the heavy lifting means a focus on the academics instead, even more than before. In the days following she was plenty distracted with recovery and getting her act together with the upset in her schedule. The greenrider has seemed a little depressed about not being able to fly with everyone else, but she appears to have been keeping that disappointment in check. She spent the morning listening in on the wingleader meeting and this afternoon she's in the records, copying her notes on it over again before she goes to leave it on Taikrin's desk later on. Her casted arm remains in the sling, a multitude of signatures and little drawings covering it now.

One of those drawings is of a meatroll standing on two legs, that waves a hand at Sabella whenever she looks down and says 'hey buddy' in a little thought bubble. That one is E'sren's, one of the earlier additions to the cast. Speaking of, it's E'sren who shows up now, pausing when he sees Sabella in here. Even though things have been a little weird between them since the accident, and maybe even since the baths, he'd never be the sort to avoid her, he doesn't have it in him. He walks over to her table and sets his own books and papers down and takes a seat, as always without feeling the need for an invitation. "Hey."

Sabs has been distracted. She might have been noticing the difference in him after the baths, but it never got the chance to come to a head. Because then there was the fall and all the chaos that's ensued the last couple of days. She's spent a lot of it going over her broken straps too, removing the offending portion and painstakingly trying to piece another strip of leather on. Sewing one-handed is taking awhile. In short, she hasn't quite picked up on the awkwardness again until very recently. In her short handwriting, she makes some notations before glancing up at him. E'sren gets her easy smile. "How were the afternoon drills?"

"They went okay." E'sren isn't looking at her when she smiles at him, but that could just be because in that beat he's looking down at the books and pages and getting things settled so he can start working. Still, he isn't looking, so the connection between them isn't made until a moment later when he does look at her and returns her smile with his own, including a dimple. "Not as cool as they could have been if you were there. How's it been in here?" Because obviously it's always super exciting in the records room and he can't just look around and see that nothing is going on.

"It's been great in here." Sabs responds initially, getting back to her work. She follows a line on the paper with her pencil, tapping at it before going to copy it over. "An hour ago I got up and rearranged some book cases. You know, for fun. I figure it's job security for the scribe on duty." Because there was any chance that the scribe was going to fired for lack of productivity. The smile she flashes him now isn't the easy one, but the sly little troublemaker one. Maybe she moved things around, maybe she didn't. He'll never know unless he decides to get up and look. And would he able to tell?

Now she's not looking, but he still is, it's fine. This way he can watch her calmly while she works, he hasn't actually started yet. He pulls his mouth down, making an impressed face, but then she gives him that smile. He knows her smiles, he knows this one. E'sren narrows his eyes at her, not quite sure what she's trying to imply with that smile, and a little one of his own begins to form. "What? You didn't really rearrange anything did you." He looks over at some of those shelves as if maybe he could squint and try to figure it out.

"Or did I? I've had all afternoon. I could have done plenty of things in here. All on my own without any supervision." Sabella glances up to smile at him slyly and waves her pencil around. "You'd have to look all over. There's lots of shelves that I could have potentially tampered with. Left little notes in books. Directions to hidden things." When he's looking over that way, she hazards a longer look in his direction. It lasts only as long as he's got his own eyes off of her, before she drops them to her writing again.

"Little notes in books? Did you write them anonymously so they'd be universal? 'To whom it may concern'?" She'll get to have that look, he's inspecting the shelves kind of thoroughly considering she probably didn't actually do anything to them, or at least not anything he can see. They pass inspection, and E'sren returns his attention to the books and stuff, opens one up, pulls the papers closer and a pen, and poises the tip of it as if to start writing. Which he does, after a weird moment spent staring down at the blank page, his eyes not really seeing anything and kind of looking like they might want to look at her.

"Actually no." Sabs answers, her attention turned back to the work at hand. She doesn't have much left to copy over and her hand gets to work on it again, finishing up those last couple of sentences. "What I wrote on one was: 'Hey, E'sren. Why the fuck are you acting weird?' And then it referenced another book with another page and that one has a note too. It says: 'It'd be really great if you could stop staring awkwardly into space when we hang out.' and then there's another hint and it says: 'I'm sorry if I made you feel embarassed. But it would be really great if I didn't lose another friend. So please talk to me about this before I get mad at you'." Another person would lose control and get emotional somewhere in there, but instead the greenrider just manages a neutral, if tight, expression. And she doesn't look at him at all, because that would be too hard.

It's become habit, writing and talking, and a large part of their friendship has been spent at this, so to listen to her while taking notes or skimming bullet points for study is second nature to him. 'Actually no' just means she might add something funny, like they do, to embellish and then they'd start one of their back-and-forth exchanges bent on making each other laugh. This is not one of those, he comes to find out, as she goes on. And as she goes on he stops writing and stares down at the words he got out while he could, and eventually his little smile comes back. It's a smile for a lack of a better thing to do. When she's done he thinks on her words, makes a decision, and sets the pen down. "Okay." She's forward; E'sren's honest. She might not be looking at him but he's looking at her, after a glance to make absolutely sure they're alone. "I'm sorry. I... I'm not good at... When I saw you fall I was really fucking scared."

Sabs chooses the moment that he smiles to look up at him. It might not seem like the right thing for him to be doing right now, at least to her. Because she lifts an eyebrow up to consider him for it. The glance that he takes around the room has her looking around too, there's really just the scribe way on the other side of the room. His explanation garners a slight frown, a furrow of her eyebrows. "This was going on before that. It's just been... on-going for awhile now." Her voice is pitched low and at the end she takes a breath, holding it before she exhales. "I'm sorry that you were scared. But everything turned out alright." You know, comparatively. To what the alternative could have been.

Lucky enough, E'sren isn't smiling anymore, so if it was the wrong thing to do at least he stopped doing it. Now it's a rather trouble look indeed he shares, his brow furrowed and his dark eyes serious. At first it doesn't seem like he really knows what she means by that, by before, but that's the thing about seeming. He looks down, scratches his head, gestures vaguely with that hand. "Yeah okay, you're right. It was before your accident. I just..." His chin is tipped down but he does look at her, which wrinkles his forehead. "That day when we were both in the baths, I felt really weird about it. And I felt like maybe you felt weird about it. And I didn't know if that was my fault, and I didn't know how to talk to you about it. Or if I should even bring it up."

"I'm sorry that you felt really weird about it." Sabs apologizes slowly as unease begins to settle across her shoulders. They hunch a little and it's obvious her posture is beginning to turn somewhat rigid all over. "I didn't feel weird about it, I mean, not really. I don't know, should I have?" She asks, but it's almost rhetorical. The greenrider breaks her gaze to glance down, adding a period to the end of a sentence with her pencil. It doesn't matter that she's the one that opened this can of worms, because it seems like she's not quite ready for what's inside. Or what she thinks is inside. Her arm moves mechanically as she flips books closed and slides papers together, the hallmark signs of someone getting ready to run (or walk rather)

Yeah none of those are good signs, even if E'sren didn't know her as well as he does he'd know that. And as she tenses up he winces, one long, continuous wince that doesn't get better after her reply. And definitely not when she starts to collect her things, like she's going to leave. "Really? That's all? You're just gonna make me confess that I felt weird and then you're gonna leave me here?" He's trying, trying so hard, to lighten everything up, maybe partly to stall. "You didn't feel weird? That's good. I thought maybe you did so then I... Sabella, please stay." He's pleading with his eyes, but also that hand that comes out to rest on the table, between them, palm down.

"You didn't ask me to confess anything." Sabella tosses back lightly, trying to infuse a more jovial tone into her voice. "I didn't feel weird until this exact moment and now I feel very, very weird." It's hard for E'sren's pleading eyes to get much of a hold onto her if she's looking away from him. But his hand is down now on the table in front of her and she takes another of those steadying breaths. Her gaze gets fixated onto his fingers instead, a long pause before she looks away and says quietly, "I made you uncomfortable? That makes me feel, it makes me feel just terrible." And by now the reason she's becoming slowly but surely upset could be obvious. Your physical presence making your close friends feel awkwardly would probably bother just about anyone.

"You didn't make me uncomfortable. I never said that you made me uncomfortable. I said weird. I said I felt weird." It's suddenly really... really important for her to not feel bad, in fact you could say it's all E'sren wants to do right now. He isn't dense, he knows she's upset. "And it isn't even your fault. At all. You shouldn't have anything to confess. It's me. Believe me when I say... it's me." He looks at her not looking at him and he might as well be feeling a million things for all the things going on in that look. He thinks everything through in his head, weighing it all and trying to make sure it all sounds okay, but eventually he stops lingering and just says words. "When I saw you... it was like for one second it was just me and you, no rules, no Weyr, no dragons. And you were so beautiful, I just..." He stops, failing, and just purses his lips. Stop.

"Oh, the old 'It's not you, it's me'. You know, that usually doesn't work, right? I thought you'd know better." It's a joke. She's joking somehow in the midst of looking like she'll begin shoving all of her things roughly into her old canvas bag. But she doesn't, not yet. Because he's E'sren and her friend and he's still talking to her, she wouldn't run out on him. Not at this moment like this. So she just listens without interrupting him or making remarks or injecting her own feelings into it. As he goes on, her expressions shifts to one of cautious suspicion. Her gaze slowly begins to move towards him again, the one eyebrow lifting. "E'sren, you don't have to- You don't have to say things like that. It's alright if I- I know I touched your hair and you're maybe not okay with that. With-" She struggles for the right thing to say fails, losing it. Starting again, "I was trying to just-" Oh that's not right either. "Oh fuck this." She doesn't get up she just leans forward and puts the heel of her palm to her forehead. "You said we were getting close. And I thought you meant us and you were just talking about the dragons, weyrlinghood. I was disappointed that it wasn't us."

Oh, she did have something to confess. Hers puts them in a very interesting place indeed, and E'sren is still looking really, really concerned about it all because while it's good that she didn't just leave, and what she said isn't bad, there are still a lot of Things. There are always so many Things. He watches her with that same look on his face, rolling her words around in his head for just a little bit, just a little bit to allow himself some time. Then suddenly he quirks a smile, but his brow is still furrowed so it looks really kind of pained. And it might be. "I meant... us. I meant until we aren't this anymore. When we graduate. But I didn't know how to say any of that. I still don't so it all just sounds really lame and I'm sorry I made you feel like shit. I just felt like if I fucked it up, you wouldn't be my friend, and that's all I really have right now to..." He trails off again, not that good at finishing sentences today.

Yeah, yeah. So she did. For now, keeping her forehead pressed into her palm like that and supporting her is working out really well. Maybe it's pushing important parts of her brain together so that she can continue to think coherently. Because he begins to speak again and she swallows nervously. "Look, E'sren. If you think that you're really bad at this, you have no idea. I'm the worst, I barely know how to be anyone's friend. We don't all come from families, we don't all know how to be whole." It's not accusing or resentful, it's like an explanation. She almost sounds a little in awe of it. "And you're so together, so healthy and honest and I don't know how you manage it all the time." Drawing herself up, she comes out from hiding behind her hand, though she does bite down on her lower lip as she considers him. "I've really liked being your friend, I think that whatever happened, it would be hard for you to get rid of me now. ..Does that help?" And she hazards a little hopeful smile, like they might just make it past this awkward moment.

"Hey, you're not the worst anything, no more of that stuff okay?" If nothing else, he'll make sure to drive that home with confidence. "I'm the one who gets to decide if you're a bad friend or not, and you're not." As for everything else? Her description of him especially draws a strange reaction, he looks down and shakes his head a few times. "I wasn't so together when you fell," he points out quietly, giving her a look. When everyone heard him scream her name, saw him run to where she'd hit the ground. But her little smile does help and he answers it with one of his own, those worry lines smoothing out of his forehead. "Yeah it helps." There's hope yet! Still, he looks down at his hands, picks at his finger with the others.

"If I want to be the worst something, I'm going to be the worst something." Sabella rejoins, narrowing her eyes at him. Though her expression is lacking any weight, there's nothing serious there. There's another smile for him then and she tips her head to the side, glancing away just briefly. "I don't think that really counts. Your friends don't usually fall out of the sky everyday. You didn't show up to the infirmary and trash it or break in while they were setting my arm. So I think you were fine." Really. She's not disappointed in him or worried or wanting for him to have done something differently. When she returns to look at him again, her attention drifts from his face down to his hand that's picking at its own fingers. Tentatively, to give him time to maybe pull away or slap at her or whatever she extends her own. Her eyes flicker up to register his reaction before she carefully put hers on top of his, gently and experimentally tangling fingers. It might as well be slow motion. That's how long it takes.

E'sren has to laugh at that, she would be that stubborn. It's a snorted laugh, the kind that doesn't really have a sound, just kind of is a breath with maybe a little 'ch' thrown in for flavor. His glance up was quick, fleeting even, with it, but he's looking down again when she goes on to describe what he didn't do that day she fell. At first he doesn't have a response, and then he sees her hand wander into his vision like its own character in a play, and his both stop moving until he realizes what she's doing and then he adopts a similar position to hers from before, one hand cradling his forehead while he definitely reciprocates the tangle of their fingers there on the table and watches that happen, watches his thumb move against the back of her knuckle. His hand is bigger than hers, a fact that just now seems a lot more obvious. "I kinda wanted to do those things," he admits, his expression tight again. "You were just so scared after. I hated that I couldn't be in there with you." He was scared, she was scared, it was scary.

Maybe it really wasn't this obvious before. Because there's that silence that falls over them, comfortable somehow despite the whole tone of the conversation before it. And in that empty space between talking, she's able to just stare down at their hands there on the the table, fingers linked together. She wiggles her smaller ones against his, a playful tease to them as she looks back up to E'sren. It might be on purpose, it might just be natural girlish delight but her eyelashes do a little flutter right when she smiles. Her voice is soothing, "I'm glad that you didn't. You were okay, you did right. You got scared but then you calmed down and you waited. It was the only thing you could have done then." She might have been scared before but she's fine now, calm even. Really. "You were there afterwards. And you've been helping me carry my stuff." Sabs laughs then, giving his hand a squeeze. "And you wrote more of my notes for me than Telavi. You've both been really great."

It's the teasing wiggle that brings his eyes up to meet hers, in time for that flutter; E'sren grins, suddenly himself, and straightens from his slouch and lean to square his shoulders and rest on an elbow, his other hand brushing her wrist. "Yeah I know. It's just too bad I didn't get to actually see you clock I'zech in the face." A much talked-about thing, and he still hasn't worked it up enough to actually talk to the weyrlingmaster about it himself, though it's an item on the list. He shrugs when it comes to him helping her, chooses instead to put the spotlight on their greenrider friend. "Telavi was really worried about you too. We talked about it." No big deal. He launches into a recount of that talk, telling her all about Telavi's imagination and questions. And even though they have work to do, they're not going to get to that until later; instead they spend the next hour or two talking and laughing, and making each other laugh whenever possible like nothing's changed. Nothing but their tangled fingers there on the table.

...

Jade?
Alexander?
Do you remember that day you fell outta my window?
I sure do, you came jumping right out after me.
Well, you fell on the concrete, nearly broke your ass, and you were bleeding all over the place, I rushed you out to the hospital, you remember that?
Yes, I do.
Well, there's something I never told you about that night.
What didn't you tell me?
Well, while you were sitting in the back seat smoking a cigarette you thought was gonna be your last, I was falling deep, deep in love with you, and I never told you till just now!

(Home, by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHEOF_rcND8)

Comments

K'zin (Wakizian (talk)) left a comment on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:14:02 GMT.

Aww, so cute. I thoroughly appreciate how very believable E'sren is through his desperation for her to stay and to make her not feel bad, etc. I love Sabella's hard-headedness "If I want to be the worst at something, I'll be the worst!" Cracks me up. (Unsurprisingly) I loved the scene!

Azaylia (Dragonshy (talk)) left a comment on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:14:55 GMT.

Awwww.