Difference between revisions of "Logs:Bones Gives The Talk"

Greenhouse, High Reaches Weyr

A rustic and unadorned vestibule leads in from hewn spiral steps to a refitted ledge, enclosed by limestone pillars. Sturdy wooden framework captures elongated glass panes, tilted to absorb the most light during the day. The wash of heat from within, lush and humid, persists even into the dead of winter; the air is heady with the scent of fresh-turned soil and various flora.

Long, deep troughs of soil line the inner stone wall, planted with an assortment of broad, leafy tropicals - practical and decorative alike. Fruit and vegetable baskets hang from rafters, optimizing space, tempting in reach with a perpetually ripening harvest. A series of stone shelving is devoted to flourishing, aromatic herbs and new green shoots; even the softest touch releases a burst of savory scent from tender leaves. Amidst the greenery, a handful of wooden benches have been scattered, making this a temptingly warm and secluded spot to sit.

Shuttered vents serve to regulate humidity and heat given off from a small hot spring recessed into an alcove at the back; a secondary pool with cooler waters siphons off to provide a constant, fresh supply for irrigation. A small potting station nearby is cluttered with watering cans and gardening tools of various uses, with a wooden bin for composting materials tucked underneath.

"Stupid... motherloving... winds..." Bones mutters to himself as he pulls the vents closed near the back of the greenhouse, perilously close to falling into the waters of the hot spring as he teters on a stepladder. As the vents narrow, a good wind whips through the bowl and fills the greenhouse with a haunting whistle before it's silenced with a sudden clasp. A sigh of releif leaves hi mas he hops down from his perch and inspects the nearest leaves for any chill. "Wind ain't gonna getcha babies. Promise." A quiet, private whisper for him and his trees.

The next thing whipping by Bones stirs a wind. Wind in the wake of a scrawny power-walking fifteen-turn-old, with her chin down, plowing irreverently right past the keeper of the greenhouse in order to arrow straight in for the tuck of broad leaves to one side. Mave pays no mind, coming to an abrupt halt, dropping down onto her butt against a plant. Knees draw up till her crossly folded arms can wrap them and she slams her chin down on the top wrist. Her hat's half fallen off, what with her pace and the contrary breeze and a disheveled appearance is hinted at all around, though she's drawn her mouth up into a firm line of steeliness.

"GAH! What the fuck?!" His turn towards the shadowy figure slipping past his periphreal is one of instinct, genuine fear hanging in his voice. He's aimed sideways at Mave, with a shoulder bunched up to protect his face, and a leg lifted off the ground to protect his body, folded in on himself on a frozen flinch. There's a touch of anger on his face as he recognizes Mave, returning to his normal posture. "Damnit Mave! That's twice now I was almost inclined to meet you with steel. One of these days I'm just gonna deck you on accident and hafta explain to your mama how I ended up punchin' her daughter cuz I thought she was a monster!"

A flinch breaks through Mave's not-so-steely barrier, fingers grappling harder onto her crossed arms as she strengthens her position, if not her expression. "Fine, motherfucker," she blusters, the curse less spat as sounding natural; as easily rolling off her tongue as sir, or his name. "Deck me." Eyes roll to the side as her butt shifts, toe digging at the floor, then shift up, catching last remnants of Bones' pose and, momentarily, distracted from her sullenness to peer curiously at the structure. The cloudy storm can't be caught off her face for long, though, and she huffs, "It'd fit right in with the rest of the day."

There's still a touch of frustration in Bones as he puts his hands on his hips and gives a dissaproving look. It's just short of parental. More like a dissaproving soccer coach. "You're way too small to be spittin' out that kinda language. That's for old men like me. Y'can earn it with sore backs and scars." There's frustration in his step as he makes his way towards the little corner she's picked out, and holds down a hand for her to take back up to her feet. "But tough as you are, I ain't gonna beat down a damn teenage girl. Specially when she's already down." Figuratively and literally. "So let's work on gettin' you back to your feet. C'mon solider, get on up here."

Mave's face furrows into a practiced scoff, born of aunties coming after her tongue before; the easily traced lines challenge Bones back. "I got raised by sea salts with grosser on their back than sores." Her heavily planted butt slithers, a girlish instinct or two tentatively picking up on his frustration. A lip pulls back doubtfully as she eyes his hand; embarrassment creeps in through the cracks of her annoyed lines, rounding her young face back out. "Soldier," she murmurs, fingers kneading into her arm then, reluctantly, she looses a hand to let her smaller one wrap with Bones'. Seriously considering, "Maybe I'll get a tattoo, then."

Hefting Mave back up to her feet is no difficult task, his thumb wrapping up and around hers in a manly show of support. None of that girl stuff here. Unless hugs count. Both arms unfurl and circle around her, tugging her into his middle with a firm squeeze. "Wait till yer done growin' on that one. Trust me." The words are quiet as he finishes up the hug with a pat at the middle of her back. "I got a few under the cuffs that stretched out real weird when my wrists thickened up. Once you fill out though, sure. More ladies need ink, it's so damn ho-" Don't tell the impressionable little girl what's hot, Bones. "-oooorrible that you can't find anybody to do it at High Reaches, y'know?"

Widened eyes get scrunched up against Bones' torso, mashed into the body heat and, frankly, the odor, of the gardener in utmost surprise. Mave stands there, allowing herself to be summarily surrounded by the much larger man, her little back tense under the pat. Wrists, ink, questions about 'Reaches; they float by with her, still as the stick she resembles till, some odd seconds after he's done, her arms choose to function: she lifts her hands to wrap Bones-- grabbing onto him far less than he can loop her with his own, but doubly as hard. "My sailors," she murmurs, his shirt rubbed by the soft shift of her lips, "Liked to tell me I was done growing." Surely, back when she had even flatter little no-curves and missing teeth. "That I was jus' a shrimp an' one day they'd tire of me and stick me on their hook and a fish'd gobble me up and that'd be the end of Mave." Emotion quivers the ends of her syllables, and her nose flares in a telling sniff as she stops talking. Inhales meekly; thinks. "They smelled, too."

Just as Bones is convinced his hug is done, she suddenly buries into him with renewed fervor, and arms that were ready to drop to his sides wrap 'round her once again. "Your... sailors?" Was she her own sea captain? No, he remembered she had mentioned before her father being one. "Well I think you still got a little growin' to do, judgin' by your elbows and shoulders and whatnot." Thanks, doctor Bones. "So... what's up, kiddo?" Tentative, and unsure otherwise how to inquire about what had put her in such a mood without sounding fake and mind-healery.

"And my ass and my non-existent boobs." Another snort-sigh into Bones' shirt, not particularly ladylike either. Palm sliding along Bones' expanse to his front, she plants it against his abdomen, shoving herself vigorously out of the squashed-hug position. Separated by inches, Mave stands with a new air of forced composure. "Other than that I'm a freakish spazz-fuck?" Read: teenage girl. "Nothing." Sullen note complemented by the high, protective inching of her shoulders. She sinks onto her heels, keeping industriously within reaching distance, as her next act involves plucking up one of Bones' sizable wrists. Going for turning it over, studiously inspecting rumors of stretchy ink.

"... y'might grow there too." He ponders without actually looking directly at what she seems to have decreed her problem areas. As to whether his words had merit? Probably not as much as the lanky girl was hoping. The shove takes him slightly off guard, thankfully pushing him out of the slightly perverse path his mind was taking. "Hey now, don't you start goin' down that path'a self-hate in here, it's bad for the plants. Now cmon, If y'had a bad day speak up about it. Somethin's buggin' you real bad, and even if it's all just up in your head it ain't gonna do you no harm spitting it out for a minute or two." Even as he goes on his spiel, he reaches for the cuffs, making it clear they weren't to be removed and whatever ink was underneath would have to remain hidden. There were still at least a few stretched skulls and flaming vampire eels to check out that had seen their share of shaping thanks to his thickening body.

As soon as he slips out from under her inspection, Mave's hands guiltily retreat, flying behind her back to work nervous patterns into the back of her shirt, bunching it up above her hips. She begins to elusively shrug, but, catching eyes on the surrounding plants, narrowly glares at them, eyebrows defining pensive paranoia that he's, in fact, not exaggerating. A mouth beginning to open snaps shut. She sucks at her lip. "Mmmmm," is protest layered above a desire to ramble. Hips squirming, she sidles a step back, staring adamantly at the foliage presented to the new angle of her stance. "I just-- " She snorts, hard, out her nose in frustration. Stress lines on her face certainly overestimate the situation's direness but, to her, importance holds. "I was trying to be clever, and it backfired. Or more like face-fired. And this guy bitched at me, and it shouldn't matter as much as it does, but it does."

Bones takes a half step back at all her fidgeting, the motions so foreign to him that with an arched eyebrow it looks as if he half-expects her to explode. The release of information is slightly less violent, and she outlies in vague terms what has happened to make her so upset. "Well first thing's first. Y'said yourself that it shouldn't matter so much right? That's a step in the right direction. You know y'oughtta let go. Now this fella that complained about you." He exaggerates the word and furrows his brow momentarily, trying to encourage Mave to watch her language. She isn't jaded enough to use those words yet, or shouldn't be. "Is he the kinda guy who's opinion you care about otherwise?"

Complained, mouths Mave dramatically, doing so for Bones' favor, as though he were a specially fragile thing. But it's clear that her concentration is elsewhere, burrowed inside her head. If he didn't want her fidgeting, he shouldn't have asked. Eyebrows drive so deep down that her eyes close, nose scrunching up so that her freckles gather on high cheeks. Her strained noise of exasperation, and confusion, comes out little more than a girlish grunt, low and extended. "He." A full sentence. It seems to speak a lot, in her language, inundated as the word is with a turmoil of skirmishing teenage feelings: annoyance, disappointment, and guilt rising among them. "No-- I didn't think so... but then yes. Stupidly yes. Because, it turns out, he moronically thought something of me, so, naturally, I find out just in time to stomp all over everything."

Left scratching at the back of his head and looking to the ground, Bones is trying desperately to keep up with how very general her analysis is. "Okay so... he thought something good about you but then you were like, the other way? Not the way he was thinking? And so you dissapointed him with something you did." Now he looks up, trying to further understand the incident as it happened, eyebrows up high in pleading fashion. "And now because you learned that he thought you good, you care that he thinks you're bad, or whatever?"

"Y... es?" Fierce attention pinned on Bones makes him seem the storyteller, as Mave fails to filter the same story as what she told him. Eyebrows twisting under blandly staring eyes, she pinches her fingers into her bony sides and opts, "This-- this is dumb!" Hands fling up in the air and she marches a few paces, circling around Bones towards the greenhouse entrance. She gets a fourth of the way there. Then boots squeak on stone, and she's rounding on him, mouth a pinched straight line of intent. "So this guy used to bully me when we were both small. I... may've," she scratches at her cheek, "punched him to prove that I wasn't a victim. Then, something like..." the hand flings out beside her, "sevens ago, he tells me he did it all because he liked me." Palm offered up to Bones, to stop him, whether he was starting or not. "We won't go into that." Then it lowers, softer, slower, as she takes larger gaps of time to form her words. "I tried to be his friend, but it's like... I'm not allowed to buddy around with him like his guy friends. There's these constant rules I don't know. And I really broke one today."

Slowly sinking his fingers into his pockets, Bones does his best to be a good audience for the newer explanation. One that fills in the details on the who, but doesn't help much elaborate on the what. Still, whatever the incident is, Bones sticks what he feels are the core principles at work. "Okay, so the two of you got history." One hand slips from his pocket to the back of his neck, rubbing his way through his next few words. "Mave, teenage boys..." is there an elequent way to put it? "Are stupid, savage, greasy little animals." Yes, there is. "And if there's anything that make em feel the most uncomfortable in the world, it's teenage girls, which as rough and tumble as you are, I hate to tell ya you qualify as." He sighs at trying to recall his own teenage years, which he had to admit were mostly spent with burly men. Still, there was glimpse enough of girls for him to speak from experience. "They ain't ever gonna be able to see you as just one of the guys. Their dicks wont let 'em. And so chances are good they'll look for any reason they can to exclude you from places they feel are safe from your girlstink. It ain't fair, but it ain't their fault. It's just, y'know, sex stuff."

"Faranth, I knew it was dick stuff." Huff, grumble. Mave's frustrated head-shake loosens her hat its last inch. It tips to one side and she raises a hand to fetch it off, bunching the material in her hand before bringing it back up to slide over her wayward curls. "I've no interest in being a girly girl. And I can't be a guy. So, basically, what you're saying is that I'm fucked. Only-- y'know," she shrugs, "Not." Despite the strong language from a tiny brat, hurt -- and a distinct discomfort, girlish and vulnerable -- lingers in her eyes. Since she can't scratch it out, she draws her nails irritably along her arm, up and down agitatedly. "Still doesn't explain why I care." Shoulders rise defensively and she forces them back down, taste-testing, "I don't care..." but it rings poorly and without conviction.

Bones blows air in defeat, cheeks puffing as he ponders what the solution is for girls like her. Probably the same for effeminate guys. Wait a second. "Gay guys!" He actually claps his hands in triumph. "They're right in between, just like you!" He's smiling big at first, confident that he's found her perfect solution. And yet he hasn't, as there's the problem of her caring for what this one specific, and quite possibly heterosexual boy thinks of her. Oh, right, this isn't just a question of fitting in. "You probably like him. Girls ain't immune from all that stuff I was talkin' bout neither. Specially in your teens."

Mave's hands strangle the air, "But I don't!" And it's not even the high, avoiding protests-too-much of denial. She solidly shakes her head, rubbing a couple fingers under her eye tiredly. "I mean, not like the," her hand veers down, fingers pinched together so that she thrusts with the firm side of her hand towards the split of her legs that defines this problem; it's in lieu of a word, "way." That braced hand joins her other, bridging over her nose as she attempts to breathe out her annoyance. "It just-- it just-- rrgh! It just pisses me off, to get judged by some stupid teenage girlish standard!" Breath out. Fingers lose their shape, drifting off her face with a parting push down on her lips before she crosses them, shifting defensively. "And that I..." mumble, mumble, tone dropping.

He takes her protests seriously, hands moving up to put his palms out to her. "Okay okay, you don't like em. You just want him to like you. But not in that way, you just wanna like, be cool with one another. And then there's weird gender standards holdin' it back." He might finally be getting it. "Well how 'bout you just apologize? Y'know, even if you didn't do nothin' wrong, it's a quick and dirty bandage for the stuff that wen't down. Just make real clear how things went bad, and how you wish they'd gone differant, right?" It's the best solution he can offer given how little he knews. "Then, once you're back in his good graces, y'can start workin' on getting in his pants. Your way, not the girly way. Just try pinnin' em to a wall and grabbing his junk. You're pretty, it'll work." He's grinning now, hoping his smile alone is the disclaimer that warns her maybe to not do that.

Spoken out of Bones' mouth, explanation finally seems to soothe Mave who, through worrying at her lip, nods succinctly. A flash of gratitude that she wasn't asked to clarify her indistinct mumbling comes and goes. "Oy," is a first, gut, reaction to apologizing, followed by concentrated evidence across her face that she's sincerely mulling it over. "If he can even look at me through his shiner." Faranth, it wasn't a joke. Her smile jumps and dies, skittering sheepishly, then flickers back on and has to be bitten hard back. It's not funny. Clearing her throat helps diminish the irresponsibility. And lavish on the self-loathing; a fact that has her side-eying the plants closest. "Yuh har har," to his suggestion, her head dipping, as if in modesty, hiding her in a curtain of messy brown hair. But when she lifts her crooked head, her mouth is twisted mostly towards pleasant -- and skeptic.

"Oh man, you gave him a busted eye? Are you sure you aint my kid? Ha!" He crosses the distance and tussles her hair, sending it in a direction of crazy that a girly girl would be outraged for. Mave? He was guessing mildly annoyed. "Nah, y'ain't ugly enough. Now c'mon, I was fixin' to take a break anyway. Let's hit up the kitchens and see what we can snag eh?" He offers the exit as opposed to just dragging her out this time around. "And you can tell me more about this guy who you totally don't like in that way." The sarcastic accusation isn't genuine. He's just teasing.

Something brilliantly pleased, and then brilliantly sad, firms Mave's mouth -- right before he sends her hair scattering. She grapples after his fingers to try and wiggle her hat back into place, her mild so much so that annoyance fails to register. "You're such a sweet-talker, Bones," she mock-praises him. Her hand, sidling naturally towards his arm as if to take it, falters. Spying on his fixed cuffs, denied wrists, she pulls back, shoving her hands discreetly into her pockets. Idly, she pats the front, then, frowning, reaches around to pat her butt and-- swear under her breath. But her steps have moved forward, following him. "I suppose," a less confident response turns determined, "If, for each thing, you say what a piece of ink is for." Agreement or not, they steer for one thing they will definitely share: the partaking of food.