Difference between revisions of "Logs:To Escape Awhile"

The summer afternoon is perhaps a little more humid than comfortable, and the smell within the stables is thick with fresh hay, the mustiness of sweat and the odor of runner hide. The scent of manure is minimal, thankfully, as somone has done a good job of tending the numerous stalls of the ancient Weyr's stables. Unfortunately, that someone is probably not the hooded kid that's sitting cross-legged just inside an open stall with a young mare laying tethered inside. Belly rounded, either she's eaten far too much grain this day or she will foal soon. The boy, Kaelige, is fiddling idly with a piece of straw between his fingers. Clearly not working, and not obviously aware of anyone else around.

While many head for the caverns and the inner tunnels of the Weyr in search of the midday meal, one of Fort's riders is heading towards its outer edges with steady, purposeful steps, the dark leathers usually worn for soaring in the skies now donned for another sort of racing the wind. There's little mistaking the knot at Hattie's shoulder, though thankfully, for the runners, her queen has chosen not to accompany her and spook either the herds or those tethered in the stables. Not that the Weyrwoman herself seems at all concerned about spooking anyone, and when she fetches up against that stall, planting her arms atop the dividing wall, she peers between the mare and Kaelige and dryly remarks, "So, I doubt she wants to get some fresh air."

There's a hiss of an alarm above them both, though a bad one as the firelizard is delayed moments after the Weyrwoman speaks. A few fingers flick at the straw in front of one of Kaelige's nigh worn-out boot in a sharp but subtle dismissive gesture, and the tiny beast disappears from the room. Without standing, the boy turns his head upwards to view the ones speaking, hood falling away just enough to reveal those blue-green eyes and a ruffled mess of blackened hair. "Not one to ride, nah." Is the lackadaisical reply, with a smirking grin to make it worse. Realization of who she is comes after, but not with an appropriate adjustment of his attitude. He rises in no hurry, straw and dust clinging to every awkwardly lanky inch of him. "Might be a challenge to find you one." Sarcasm admist the numerous stalls of appropriate standing runnerbeasts.

Hattie angles a brief glance towards the ceiling, but beyond a brief arch of one eyebrow, she's likewise rather dismissive (or simply accepting) of the firelizard's alarm. She observes the mare for a moment longer, then turns to lean back against the wall, gaze following Kaelige as he stands, though she refuses to tip her head back and look /up/ at him. "If you think it's a task beyond your capabilities, I'm sure I can spare you the stress of it and saddle up one of them myself," she drawls. "Unless you can confess to having some charm that will make it infinitely easier for you."

"It might be." The young man may be a glutton for punishment or simply lacks regard for authority. His hand rises to pull his hood back into place, casting a shadow over his face only interrupted by the thin bright beams of sunlight cast through the stable's walls. "I might manage, though. You have a preference?" The fact that Kaelige /is/ moving may be enough of a sign that the boy with no obvious rush in the matter has some persuasion by the goldrider. "That one," And he tips his head towards a black gelding not three stalls down, "Might give you a fright. 'fraid of his own shadow." A mysterious look is past, watching Hattie out of the corner of his eye.

She doesn't appear to be in a hurry, or perhaps the lazy tilt of her hips and prop of her elbows behind her are affectations and nothing more. "Good thing I'm here to supervise and potentially rescue you then, isn't it?" Hattie replies with what's not quite a smirk, but merely the beginnings of indulgent amusement sharpening the line of her lips. The runner in question is regarded with a distant, assessing sort of stare, but ultimately she swings her focus back towards the boy, the chill in her gaze softening some. "Is he one that needs a firm hand, or does he need a good run?" she enquires. Is she talking about the runner?

The mysterious, unreadable look simmers a moment more before it gives way to that mischievious amusement. "Ah, but shou'n't be your duty to dirty your hands with sav'n the likes of me." Kael's long arms shrug somewhat dramatically as if all hope is lost with that before he leans himself over the open gate door upon his elbows to study the weyrwoman. "Particular, that one, with who's astride him. As if it's his job to determine what's best all the time." A returned broad assessment as he changes position again as if to move out of the stall, uncoiling to his still-growing height. "Who doesn't need a good run, soft or hard headed both."

"People who won't muck in aren't worth their knots," Hattie remarks, her shrug a shallower, much less dramatic echo of his, statement made for what it is and little more, imbued with no particular inflection. "I'll tell you what," she suggests, leaning now to free her arms from their awkward, wing-like angle and fold them across her ribcage instead, "you decide what you believe I can handle, and if I come back bored to tears, you do better next time. If I don't come back at all, well, then I suppose we've both made something of a mistake."

Kaelige's reaction to that statement is a wordless one, his studious, cryptic gaze on her narrowing with a strange hardness about it. But, he never loses that smirk. He looks away and appears to have no set direction as he walks away from the goldrider, back turned. His step is one of cockiness mixed with laziness and altogether adding to his mid-growth gracelessness. Heads appear down the line, snorting from various distances and a couple of hooves stamping from some restless beasts as Kael relieves a wall hook nearby of its set of reins. "Fair enough." A rise to the challenge, quirkiness entertained by the prospect of determining such for the weyrwoman. An old buckskin mare is passed, greyed in her muzzle. "And what sort of experience have you? Saddled once with bravery to to pretend to say many, or grooves in your palms from all the reins you've pulled?"

"Had my own runner when I was little." It's an offhand thing, a lot less spoiled rich girl than it is than taken for granted matter of practicality. "Ran away on her, once." That memory prompts a wrinkling of her nose and a pang of something like regret or guilt, yet she's as dismissive of that reaction as she is of anything else. "And it may not be the same, and there may be no bond communicable by words exchanged to bring a less intelligent creature under control, but some of the physicality required of dragonriding is similar, as is something of the /unspoken/ bond." A flick of her fingers punctuates that stop, before, "If you'll excuse the being fanciful. If it /is/ being so."

Kaelige does not, apparently, miss anything the goldrider chooses to display nor dismiss, quiet in the immediate moments following her answer. Then, he stops- though the pause is almost an afterthought as he nearly passes the door he intended. Or perhaps his legs are just too long. He gives Hattie a smirk over his shoulder, that suspicious- dangerous?- glimmer in his green-touched eyes overshadowed by the rim of his hood, before his attention is on the roan gelding whose head shoves against his shoulder with the spritefulness and energy of youth. "He's bit smaller than your dragon, I think." His sarcasm is unhidden, though an attempt to maybe look serious is made. "But, as long as you promise not to run away on him, you might enjoy his ride." He unlatches the door, and limberly shoves himself between the barrel chested runner who attempts to push his way through before the appropriate time. "As long as you like going fast."

"Most are," Hattie answers dryly, some measure of humour in the twitch of her brows. "If she," she juts her head back towards the mare, "births one that grows to rival a green, do let me know." Humour aside, she seems to have a degree of sympathy for the aforementioned mother to be, and she turns to check on her, as if her words could inadvertently make her foal appear. "I promise nothing," the goldrider informs Kaelige, though as she props her chin on folded arms that sit atop the wall, she adds, "but if I do run away, I've given you fair warning. Still, you should probably do your best to look surprised."

"You'd get further on wings." Kealige, busy with tempering the excitement of the long-legged runner of perhaps an average height of 14 hands at the shoulder. It isn't just once that he's shoved, and admittedly the interaction gives away hints of something about that boy that the laziness may well be a cover for. Adept and quick, hunter-like if nothing else, he flows with the circling of the runner in the stall with languid short steps. Perhaps he doesn't care if she sees or, more likely, it's necessary regardless if she does. The reins slip over muzzle and ears and the buckle is threaded. And, once under physical control, the pair are out in the hallway. "He's Klick." A moment, "As he'll be a klick away before you can blink." He's back to that slouched stance, and given the comment towards the mare, his glance strays from the weyrwoman to the mare he was initially keeping company with a wry but unagreeable twitch of his lips, "Never know. That stallion is a big 'un. I dunno what the herders were thinkin' with him." And the mare, poor girl, rather small for that stock.

For all her comments on rescuing, Hattie makes no move to get involved at all - certainly not when it doesn't appear to be necessary in any shape or form. If she watches the boy more than the runner he tames, perhaps she's simply less familiar with the human half of the pair, and though her dark gaze runs slowly over the lines of the latter, it lingers for no longer than she must believe it takes her to get the measure of him. "Likely so," she agrees. "But with a queen in the family way herself, she's a little more interested in sleeping and less in going anywhere fast, right now." And yet it sounds awfully like an excuse, delivered a touch too much on the forceful side of matter of fact. "He's Klick," she echoes a moment later. "And you are...?"

"Is that what you're running from?" The boy asks in regards to the 'family way' though leaves it otherwise up to interpretation to press an answer, uninhibited perhaps because of youth or natural boldness, or both. Even as he retrieves a saddle after tethering the beast- still with no intended rush in his task- he stops a moment to pull his baggy long sleeves despite the summer warmth down better on his arms, his fingerless gloves more securely on his hands, ensuring their coverage before hefting the blanket and saddle itself in a single go. "A good head on this, though. And won't spook for nothin." Is added as a buckle is strapped here or ther. In this, his gaze lingers on her even as the apathy of his motions eventually makes progress on his task. Her question brings about something of an odd, suspicious reluctance that's short-lived, "Kaelige." Simple, short. Of nobody and of nowhere.

"No," Hattie declares, with the tiniest bit of self-deprecation. "It'd be quite the failure if I tried, for one word from her and I'd come running back." There's evident affection there for her lifemate, enough that it softens her gaze and the edges of her voice for that little while. "Besides, we'll be tethered to the Sands soon enough. Ask me again when it's time." Unfolding her arms, she pushes away from the wall to stand taller, though not without another quick look back into the stall at its occupant. "I'll see him back in one piece; that much I'll promise you. Provided we're both right and he doesn't run away with me." It's both runner and boy she regards now, gaze darting from one to the other and back again. "Klick and Kaelige." Maybe the smirk is just enjoyment of the similar sounds.

There is a quiet struggle there as the runner does what so many playful hooven beasts do, holding his breath as the boy pulls at the girth strap. Tension is applied and held on the strap as they both attempt to wait each other out. However, Kaelige though slow for his own reasons, is not one to wait all day for a stubborn gelding. A quick knee in the beasts belly earns him a snort and the strap is pulled two notches tighter. "Surely it can't be so bad." The smirk hasn't left, and finds renewed strength in the talk of being on the sands. "What with everyone around you so excited and admiring." He's untied from the pole and the roan is led closer to Hattie, and coincidentally a stepping stand meant to assist in mounting. "Weyrwoman..." deep unreadable eyes find her again. He better know the ones who run the Weyr. "Hattie, aye? We'll get ya back in one piece, won't we boy." The latter, of course, given to the beast stopped on his left, as if Klick is wholly part of the conversation too.

"I can't say that it's ever truly awful," Hattie confesses, meandering steps bringing her closer to roan and stand, and though there's a second or so of pride clearly warring with sense, she doesn't disregard the assistance that the latter offers. "But some mothers want only peace and quiet and to keep their babies." And, from her wry smile, none of that is available on the Sands, nor will it come of them. She's more gentle with the runner - and more cautious - than she might be were she entrusting herself to her queen's care, and once she's situated and reaching for the reins, that smile has softened again to something easier. "Yes," the Weyrwoman confirms. "Thank you, Kaelige." For Klick, she has the brush of her gloved hand against his neck, careful at first, and only more confident in gauging his response.

"I can only imagine the kind of work that would be." Kaelige's amusement is evident in regards to keeping the 'babies,' "I hear dragons require a bit more than a curry comb to keep well maintained." As if this would be news to the experienced rider. Not that he has any real idea what it takes, but he can venture a sarcastic guess. And if he can, he will. It may be that he has something of a gentleman side, or perhaps he just has the whim to do so, but he dips his hooded head in a bow, one hand sweeping towards the open wide doorway of the stables as he takes a step back from Klick and the Weyrwoman. There may be a creepy side to that, really, given his eerie grin beneath the shadow. "Always welcome."

"Just a little." Whether the low burble of laughter that accompanies those words is in answer to his sarcasm, or just at the prospect of freedom, however brief, yawning before her, Hattie's otherwise rather restrained composure doesn't really let on much. A gentle nudge, then runner and goldrider are moving forward and away from the stables, a glance back clocking gentlemanly-creepy at the periphery of Hattie's vision. Her parting shot is a dry, "Don't tell the Weyrleader." Perhaps she's joking, or maybe she really isn't, for sooner than is wise, she can be seen putting Klick's name to the test, as they head for the road leading to the Hold, soon to be lost in the distance.