Logs:Same As Ever
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| RL Date: 17 September, 2014 |
| Who: Erablen, Suireh |
| Type: [[Concept:{{{type}}}|{{{type}}}]] |
| What: Initially against her will, Suireh begins to see a mindhealer regularly. This is the 'n'th visit. |
| Where: Healer Hall |
| When: Day {{{day}}}, Month {{{month}}}, Turn {{{turn}}} ({{{IP}}} {{{IP2}}}) |
| OOC Notes: Obliged to Leova/ST |
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| The first visit was at Vesik's request, some reasoning or other about how a harper unable to be fully honest with themselves about their motivations and desires, as well as their failings, could never fully give themselves over to the role. She'd obliged. She always did when he asked, even if they went a few rounds with her arguing and ultimately defeated against his calmness. The silence, that first session, had hung a tangible awkwardness in that small, rounded room. He'd offered her tea and she'd declined, but as the silence grew, where he seemed to be waiting for her to do something, she reached for the cooled tea cup and took a sip. It had been delightful, that tea, full of tropical flavors her tongue had never had never encountered. She explained why she was there and he said he knew. The second visit proved more productive. She'd accepted the tea immediately, sitting a little less properly and a little more comfortably. Still, there had been nothing much in the exchange of words. He'd seemed satisfied, nonetheless, which had left her feeling discomforted. And so it continued for a turn, each successive visit drawing more out of her until various topics had been discussed and journals had been started, returned, and then restarted. She'd almost started looking forward to these moments of not-quite-complete release. The setting is the same as ever in that small rounded room, muted tapestries warming the walls and carpets the floor and tea the healer's comfortably burred baritone. This time the window is closed, condensation lingering upon it, though the air is fresh and just cool enough to have been opened in the recent past; the dragon's tongue plant grows healthily, as does the fern in its jewel-glazed pot. "Easier on your throat, Suireh?" he says with a nod of his chin towards her own mug: informal for all of his master's knot, for her journeyman's of another craft, for the decades that separate them. The tea is floridly red, something complex in there that speaks of careful blending. "It's- interesting," is the word Suireh finally settles with. Her tongue licks at her lips, as if savoring the flavor, or perhaps trying to brush it off her tastebuds. But then she goes for another sip and another uncertain tongue-flick of her lips. "Fruity and floral at the same time. My brain is confused." Her initial uneasy claim of the seat, perched at the very edge, slips into more comfort with each sip and each moment passed, almost ritualistic in its slow, backward descent into the softer cushions. "I think I prefer the basil mint one from last time." "I'll let Wesha know," Master Erablen says, as he always does, part of that same quasi-ritual; his left hand easily employs the stylus without his having to look, just one of the notes he'll continue to take throughout the session. "Last time, we left off with what you'd heard from your sister. Has there been anything new to change that, or anything that feels more important right now?" The silence today is long, Suireh finding solace in the tea she doesn't like as much as the last time. Perhaps she doesn't like the question that picks up from the last time either. Or she needs more time to ruminate as the brow works itself and she sinks further back into the seat until she's reached the back. A sigh then exhales audibly and visibly in ripples across the tea she holds close to her mouth. "She seems happy," offers the girl first. "I never imagined her as a bluerider, for sure. I don't know what I imagined her as, but not a bluerider." All the prejudices of her upbringing, those little things polite people don't talk about or dismiss as nonexistent surge in these words. The man's in no hurry, not with her words, not with his own share of the warming drink. "What is it about a blue dragon?" he does ask after a little while, his voice one of genuine inquiry; of course, Erablen's notoriously Hall-bound and gives every appearance of liking it that way. "Does it seem as if he changed her much?" "Being a rider has made her more Riahla than ever." There are definite notes of envy and longing shaded in her voice; Suireh makes no attempt to mask those now, this many visits in. "I wish I could have that same certainty. I," the tea is set on the table right by her, placed there specifically for this purpose most likely as it happens every time, "Can't tell if it was the dragon that made her right or if she just knows herself better than I know me." It's a miserable reflection. "Have you ever asked her?" he asks, simply. "No," is her equally short response. But that never suffices, and in the silence Suireh sits in, she conveys she understands that with an anxious flutter of her hands to her throat and then through her hair. And then down the front of her chest, tracing the buttons of her blouse to her lap. "No. We've never had to talk about such things. We just know. We've always just known. I know it sounds ridiculous, but we used to be so close." So close, that now when they're not, it's hard to figure out... just how to be close. He listens with sympathy, and also with silence. "I notice," he says only after a while, "that you weren't posted to Monaco Weyr." "No." It's a day of negatives. Suireh reaches for the tea again, something more for her physical being it distract itself with, for her eyes to track instead of seeking out the master's eyes. "I'm not really posted anywhere. Wherever the Masterharper wishes for me to go, I'll go. Whatever he asks me to do, I'll do, but I try to avoid the Weyrs other than home." The man who listens nods; he doesn't have to confirm that Monaco is not home, doesn't have to pin it down in logic, not given what she's said before... and what she hasn't said. Instead, "Yet you aren't there either." In a slightly different tone, "Have the headaches lessened?" She doesn't answer that. It's not a question. But the latter? Suireh lifts a hand to her temple and brushes against the hair there, pushing it back and hooking it back over her ear. "No. Well, no. No, yes. I don't know. I'm crazy, aren't I?" The harper mocks her indecisiveness. A gulping swallow then releases, "Yes. They have gotten better, most days." Suireh's pale gaze finds the healer and she purses her lips. "Do you want to know when they're better? Or does it sound like I'm too eager to share when." He honors her mockery with a quiet chuckle, though by his expression when she does look, it's not at her expense. "I do want to know," Erablen says. "Track them along with your travels. Also your cycle," he says without pause or blush. "Lack of sleep or excess of drink. Also," now he pushes his wheeled chair to the side that he might rummage within his desk. As he does so, "Are you disappointed in her, Suireh? That she's so satisfied with her blue dragon?" The question pauses Suireh from her motions of reaching into her bag for the journal she keeps for the healer. The tea is back on the table, and it's when she's halfway there that the meaning of his question sinks in and sits her back, ever so slowly. Did it ever occur to her? Given the surprise that reflects in those gray eyes, apparently not. Does she have an answer for it? Her face is transparent enough in its shock and then sudden narrowing of her eyes and thinning her lips. Yes. But it's a yes that doesn't find voice. Instead, aware that she's given that away without saying it, Suireh completes her action, returning to retrieve that journal for Erablen, holding it out silently. The master mindhealer accepts it, though he doesn't now turn the pages. Instead he sets it down, squared to the table, and hands her tools in return: parchment, quill and ink, longer-lived than the waxed slate upon which he jots his shorthand before it's transcribed. His steady gaze recognizes her having come up with something, realized something. Self-knowledge. She's earned it. "What do you suppose it would take," and he poses the question calmly, without judgment, "for any dragon to satisfy you." Anyone. Suireh stares blankly at the parchment, the quill, the ink. It's accepted, but with a note of uncertainty. The ink is set on the table near her tea, the parchment and quill in her lap. And then there's that question. That question that turns her cheeks scarlet and her gray eyes indignant. She ignores it. She has the option to. "What would you like me to do with this," is less query and more statement. "Write down," Master Erablen says, surveying the results of his question writ large upon her face, "five traits you want," not 'would like,' "your future Suireh to enjoy. I'll start warming the wax." His is not the traditional healer's hue, but a warm brown a shade lighter than the depth of his eyes; there's the click of flint as he sparks the small warmer's fire. It's an escape from the question that still lingers in the air, ignored as it is. It's an escape that she fulfills quickly, as if the answers are always on the forefront of her thoughts and what she yearns for. Five words. The parchment is folded and handed to the healer. If and when he should reach for it, Suireh might hold on a second too long before letting the paper go. Erablen does reach for the paper, and take it. But then he gives it back, the wax pooled across its seam, to receive the print of her thumb. "I'll keep this," he says. "For now." It's possible he could peer in from one end to read them, of course, but that isn't the point. "Now, about the song you performed with the lutenist last sevenday, after the quartet..." She's gotten used to this. The fact that he drops in on her concerts. That he spies on her real life, the one that's not in this imaginary safe world where she can share. "I flubbed the bridge..." and from there Suireh shares those small details of her life: her failings and her successes, cause even the superficial day to day stuff matter in the end. |
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