Difference between revisions of "Logs:N'rov, Acting Acting Weyrleader"

>---< Council Room, Fort Weyr(#839RJs$) >------------------------------------<

  The Weyr's meeting space is a long, oval space with a large stone table   
  placed in the middle. There's seating enough for twelve around the table:
  plenty of room to welcome most of the Weyrleaders and a good portion of   
  the Lord Holders from the north, though additional seating might be needed
  if a Pern-wide meeting were to be held here.                         	 
                                                                       	 
  A sideboard stands ready to serve, regardless of the occasion and is kept
  well-stocked with carafes of wine, water and several fine liquors. Fresh  
  flowers, appropriate to the season are changed out regularly in the vase  
  atop the sideboard. Tapestries depicting Fort's illustrious history from  
  founding, to Moreta's role in the Plague to Lessa's arrival to bring the  
  Weyrs forward in time bedeck the walls, leavening the omnipresence of	 
  cool, gray stone. Well-lit, the chamber boasts glows in niches around the
  room, as well as oil lamps hanging from the ceiling.

He's not making waves, not with the days he's got. No wings get renamed, no routes exchanged, though N'rov does approve a swap of brownriders between Sandstone and Carnelian at the latest wingleaders' meeting without more than a couple dry questions. He looks as comfortable in E'dre's chair, the one that used to be N'muir's, as he does rounding the table to check on a map another man has to show him; as at ease as he does when he releases them. It's when they're gone, all but the brunette weyrling still seated in the back, that he vents a sharp near-laugh and thumps his fists up in the air.

Dee's lips press together in an attempt not to smile. It's practice, you see, for becoming the austere Weyrwoman she might be expected to become. She manages not to laugh, even if the smile leaks through anyway. "You wear it well for a man who doesn't want it," is her remark, in content closer to what she might be expected to give even if the tone is too amused in the way of warm humor to pass muster.

"That's my aim," N'rov assures, turning to grin back at her. That restless energy gets a new outlet, now, as he rounds the table this time to shove all the chairs back into place, less careful tidying and more making things move. "Thought about sawing the legs off to look more E'dre's height," but he shrugs: nah.

Dee's look sobers at some thought that must have found its birth in whatever N'rov's been saying, "How long have you known E'dre?" It may be an unexpected question, but one might imagine that Dee's interest in the brownrider has less to do with height and more to do with Weyr handling.

"Since Hematite, pretty much." N'rov's still moving. His boot catches each non-shortened chair's leg (seems he hadn't sawed off the others either) before its back can slam into the table's edge. "He got weyrmated to A'ryk, from my clutch, before he went South." Table's end; next question.

"Which was when?" is inserted since Dee lacks that particular piece of local history. "Are there other bronzeriders he likes as well as you? Besides N'muir," she assumes with a slight grimace at the name. Her eyes track him at first, but then she rises, leaving her notebook where it is and begins to mimic the tasks he's performed, adjusting a chair here and there as she trails him, never meaning to get less than two chairs spacing between them.

That's a different thought; that's counting, not managing. Or moving. "Working on ten Turns," N'rov says after a moment, with something like disbelief. Resuming, not without a swift glance, a laugh, "You mean other than E'ten? C'stian? The others in our wing," and he has others to name, too: from other wings, not exclusively the older riders, though notably not X'vin nor his cronies. "What are you getting at, Dee?"

"Just that you're the one playing acting-- acting," Dee's nose briefly wrinkled in some small humor at the double usage. "I'm just wondering if you mightn't be the local favorite. Having N'muir as weyrleader... Well, I expect if he'd wanted to stay as weyrleader he'd have stayed it when Hattie gave in her knot. But having his bronze catch Taeliyth would be ... so awkward and maybe even sour the whole of the working relationships," presumably her and Hattie, Hattie and N'muir and N'muir and Dee, herself. Dee shifts a chair and then again, to no purpose. "What's your relationship with Hattie like?" In another time, another place, these might be personal sort of questions, but here and now, they're just a matter of internal politics.

"Playacting?" is that much drier. As she continues verbally, N'rov finishes the oval physically, stopping where he'd begun. His hands clasp the table's edge; he leans over his chair's back to answer her, gray eyes clearly levelling on her. "Tolerable." His chuckle is low; levelling with her. "You have to understand, E'ten was the golden boy; each mark has its second side. I like to think that she grew to appreciate my loyalty to N'muir, that I didn't capitalize on whatever favor may have been shown me, when things went... askew."

"And now that your loyalty to N'muir is no longer necessary?" Dee queries with raised brows. One only might seem imperious where two come off both thoughtful and concerned. "I think I met E'ten once," outside of passing or duties she likely means. "You said 'was' the golden boy? What happened?"

"You still don't see me... angling," N'rov's smile curls up after that moment's consideration, after the word that could be so easily exchanged. "To own this chair." He leans more deeply into its back, making it angle. "Not to imply anything changed that, except for stepping back. There was the wingsecond's knot; he's got that thing for dragonhealing, and had a child coming, and I think he got tired." He's stepped back now, too, towards the sideboard.

"No, I don't. But say that we have time to get you gone before Taeliyth rises, say someone or someones else have different plans for you. Plans that... could detain you long enough." Dee's concern here? Still N'rov's happiness. She sighs, futzing with the chair before he once more. Now she follows him to the sideboard. "What did you mean about two sides of a mark?"

She was a farmcrafter; N'rov slides the vase towards her in lieu of an answer. "What do you mean, plans?"

"I mean, what if I get word to you in time for you to go, but E'dre has a sudden, perfectly seemingly legitimate emergency that you have to stick around to deal with and Vhaeryth chases." Dee answers as she picks up the vase and reaches for a glass.

He looks distant for a moment, but only that. Then he's reaching for the selection of bottles. "I hear the thing to do is stab oneself. You'll forgive me," for pouring for her? "If I don't." Then: "Do they have you taste-testing yet?"

Dee's head draws back, looking at the bronzerider with a slightly narrowed gaze, "Taste-testing for food or something else?" It's clear from her look that she's trying not to let her imagination run disturbingly with that idea.

"Drinks," comes with a lifted brow. And amusement. "What did you think I meant, Dee?" N'rov chooses a different bottle for the second glass, splashing into it just as shallowly as before. "Give me your glass, shut your eyes, and I'll hand you back one to pick."

"Bronzeriders?" has a querulous quality and a weird look with it as if Dee finds it an odd conclusion to have come to. The look is quickly replaced with a stubborn 'you asked!' look to preempt any asking to account for the way her mind works. Obediently, she closes her eyes to await the glass.

He has to laugh, low and only a little incredulous. "No, that's next seven," doesn't miss a beat. Transient sternness (she did 'mistake the schedule') slides, though, into easy semi-seriousness; N'rov presses one switched-around (or was it) glass to Dee's hand. "Tell me what you think this is. Just roughly; is it runner swill or moonshine?"

Dee sticks out her tongue in N'rov's general direction at his proposed timeline, eyes still closed. There's moments of silence after she tastes, moments where quiet confusion shows on her face. "It's... booze," comes with all the naivety of the inexperienced pallet. "Not whiskey," this much she seems to know with some measure of certainty.

"No. It's a brandy; you might be able to taste the fruit, now that you know to look." The next N'rov gives her is a touch thicker, sweeter, tasting of nuts.

"Ch-erry?" is the guess that shows doubt in the mid-word hesitation. Dee trades glasses, tasting the next. "Hmm." The thoughtfulness is overdone. "Also booze." She flashes a smile without opening her eyes and therefore only in N'rov's general direction. "What did you mean about two sides of a mark?" She asks again, taking another trying sip from the glass.

He watches her and her testing, a faint slow smile becoming a chuckle at that booze. There are the sounds of a third glass, then, a hmm. Perhaps he's recollecting. "There were two of us in that clutch, see. When we became friends, and we did both ride bronze, one develops means of telling us apart." Then, "The real question is, which of those do you like better. Next."

"Does it make much of a difference? They all get you drunk," is quite a philosophy and also one that speaks of why Dee has drunk in the past. She gives a long-suffering sigh as she accepts the next one and then nearly chokes on the contents for her sudden laughter. "Not booze," she declares once she can speak and then her voice is lost to more laughter. Hazel eyes can't stay closed through all that and she grins at N'rov when she comes out on the other side of that laughter.

By now, N'rov has his own glass of plain old water, and a smirk. "Do you really just drink to get drunk? You'll need something to tell the people who ask, 'And what will you have, my dear?' and care less about the cost. Something that doesn't send them on a scavenger hunt. ...Unless you mean to."

"I suppose, 'whiskey cheap' isn't the best of responses when it comes to representing my Weyr," is resigned but also wry. "What would you recommend?" It might be easier to borrow his drink of choice than to determine her own. "Nowadays I drink mostly to either put a person at their ease or to forget, which is nearly the same thing as drinking to be drunk." Dee looks at him a moment before saying, "You and E'ten, that's a little bit like my brother and I, sounds like, being so close in age and raised under the same roof, our accomplishments and failures were always weighed against the other's, for the most part. Except when we both screwed up." There's a faint fond smile for that, but also a sadness in her eyes.

"Something you like," is what N'rov goes right back to, right after the shake of his head that's no. Just, no. Still, he takes it easy on her enough to say, "There's always wine, pick your color. You could also try," he gives her a handful of options along with their connotations, though, "Keep in mind that I had to pick this up on the fly, taking my girl around. So you might talk to a specialist if you care; this is just enough to get by. The right vintner might bend your ear for hours." His smile verges on a smirk. As for E'ten, that warrants more water. "'Brothers.' Maybe. Mine weren't so close," for several reasons. "I think my mother would have had a horror of measuring my sister up to any of us."

Dee makes a face. It's disgruntled but tolerant. "I wouldn't like to care, but I guess I don't really have a choice. I have to become this person the Weyr needs me to be, that Taeliyth needs me to be. I guess Dahlia needs to have a drink of choice." She purses her lips, letting herself have a moment to take that in. "I didn't really mean to say you two were like brothers, just the whole-- not being able to separate what you do from what he does. all that." Dee offers this before letting herself smile for the rest. "I'd imagine your mother had a time of it in any case. Did I tell you my mother's had her baby?" She must've mentioned sometime after coming back from Southern herself that her mother was pregnant. "A little girl. Zezenia. The birth was hard, I hear; I imagine most are when women are her age." She reaches for one of the carafes holding booze and adds as she pours, "They'll call her Zee-Zee, my mother says." The disaffected air Dee has is too telling of how weird all of that is for her.

"If you have a 'drink of choice,' you never have to think about it," N'rov reminds. "Unless they're serving something 'different' with it." The latest and greatest hors d'oeuvres. He has a nod for separating and not separating, though of the semi-ambiguous variety; then, "Zee-Zee. Well, congratulations, since it sounds like they both made it through well in the end." And while he's at it, "Just think, if you hadn't betweened, you could have raised them together."

Dee might've said something that fit as pleasant small talk, instead she glowers at N'rov. "You want to go on teasing me about that, I'll make sure I refrain from betweening when Vhaeryth gets surprisingly detained long enough to fly Taeliyth when the time comes and you can have comeuppance for a few ill words now for turns and turns to come." That comes with a stern sort of glare that might just mean she'd do it, too. (Not.)

N'rov just laughs at her. "That's right, three seasons of bloating for you, not to mention the turns and turns, just to get back at me. I can see you doing that, Dee." What he pours himself next is top shelf, a half-glass suitable for the Acting Acting; before he drinks, before he gets back to work, "Any last words?"

The sigh is defeat. Dee rests her fingertips on the sidebar, pressing her palms up and then flat instead of taking her drink. She turns her head to look at the bronzerider, "Is there anything you like about it? Wearing the knot, I mean. Anything you might like about it if it did happen?" Not that Dee wants it to, that much doesn't need to be said, but perhaps she needs convincing that it wouldn't be the end of the world if she can't get word to N'rov in time.

Of course she does; this smile is wry, and he paces away, down the sideboard's length and further before returning with the natural curvature of the room. "I don't know if you understand," N'rov says as he does, "where I'm coming from here. My goal is to make it easy for E'dre to come back. 'To the betterment of Fort,' of course, but I'm not trying to upstage him or make it mine or to show everyone how great I'd be in the job. 'Not fuck up' is a baseline. If he needs or wants to take time off, it's better for all of us if everyone can be assured that it's seamless." He tops off his glass before moving on. "Take this meeting, Dee. It's at the usual time, because wingleaders have schedules. If I really had the job, yeah, I'd change it up if I felt like it. Maybe even if I could go either way, as a reminder. If this reminds them that if E'dre's traveling off somewhere and someone knifes him that things aren't going to fall to pieces for them to pick up, so much the better." Does she get that? "In the meantime, what I enjoy is doing my job well."

Dee looks at him. She's listened, but when he's finished, she just looks at him. Then away, to the sideboard, to her drink. "It's-- you're doing the opposite of what I'll need to." The girl-- no, woman-- the woman sips gingerly and then turns to face N'rov, lips set. "I'm afraid." It's not every person who can make such an admission so plainly, but Dee has that sort of strength. "I know I'm going to make mistakes because I just don't have the experience, but I'm not as afraid of making mistakes as I am of not being my own person. Hattie gave her knot back once. If Taeliyth rises first or when Hattie passes on taking the senior's knot if Elaruth rises before her, I'm most afraid that I will just be parroting Hattie. I know that she has a lot of experience, I know that she's been through things but I need to think and do and experience for myself and to not feel like not doing it her way is going to let the Weyr down. I'm not Hattie and will never be," she sighs at the conclusion, her expression too earnest for her to be doing anything but telling him the whole, vulnerable truth.

"No, you won't." N'rov doesn't approach her except to top his glass off, not in anything other than his words. "You'll go through different things, and you were a farmcrafter and Weyrbred, not Blood. You won't be the first junior to need to make her own way. I know you haven't had all that much time to yourself, still; but have you had a chance to think much about what you want for Fort because you think it's best, not to copy or to be different?"

"Some," Dee admits, "but not enough." She takes a long breath and then lets it out. "Sir, could I have a hug?" Her eyes are big when she looks at him. Is that yet one more thing she'll have to learn to live without going forward?

"I was thinking I would sort of try talking to all of them. Maybe not in depth, but-- I should know them, shouldn't I?" Dee's eyebrows lift, though not uncertainly. "Thank you, Acting Acting Weyrleader, sir," answers the hug, returned in the way of a hugger who needed a hug, kept brief but the reassurance and comfort taken in the gesture. "If you do end up with the real knot, at least I'll know you're a willing hugger." This has a little humor to it. At least Dee isn't the sort to mind mussed hair. It's probably not even something Dahlia could bring herself to mind either.

"That works too," N'rov agrees, if still with a suggestion of Kyouri first. "Welcome," he says in lieu of willing or otherwise. "In the meantime," since she doesn't have to be a weyrwoman of any stripe yet, the bronzerider puts on a very gruff and definitely acting, "Weyrling. You're dismissed."

It's testament to the act (and perhaps to the quality of the booze) that Dee plucks up her glass and swallows down the rest of her glass before setting it with the dirties and snaps him the crispest of crisp salutes. "Yes, sir!" comes with too warm a flash of smile to be in earnest and pausing only long enough to collect her notebook, she turns to trot (bouncily) off toward the bowl.