Logs:A Subjective Two Inches
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| RL Date: 2 October, 2014 |
| Who: Suireh, N'rov |
| Type: Log |
| What: The Harpers rehearse in front of a live studio audience for a bigger production sometime soon. Southern Hold reaps the benefits. N'rov runs into Suireh. |
| Where: Southern Hold Gather |
| When: Day 21, Month 12, Turn 35 (Interval 10) |
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| Southern Hold(#1250Rs$) Southern's large grid-structured gather spills over from the grand courtyard onto the grounds. There are even festival tents littered across the Hold's beaches and for each sub area there is a small dais for the best of what Harper Hall has to offer, with the main attraction being the much larger stage up near the entrance to the Hold. And best isn't an exaggeration as several well known performers are doing acoustic sets throughout, their fans clustered nearby, with a magnificent production of Lessa's great journey being set up on the main stage for later at night. Southern humidity is mitigated by the summer breezes that cause banners and strings of triangular flags to flap cheerfully. It's Southern's first gather of the season, and many northerners have find respite from winter here, something, perhaps, the Lord has been counting on. Tourism! Pern style. Dressed, uncharacteristically, in a simple shift dress, one might attribute towards a higher class of servant, Suireh stands near the main stage, a critical eye cast towards a handyman making sure all the pieces of the elaborate stage is safely in place. "No, to the left, two inches." Pause. "That's the right. Left." Never mind that her left is his right. If he grumbles, she pretends not to notice, instead glancing down at her clipboard and making a mark. When a man approaches, she speaks as if she recognizes his gait, and automatically hands the clipboard out, "You'll want to make sure Matre is backstage an hour before the performance starts. Otherwise he'll drink too much and we can't have a F'lar that's drunk, even if that's probably what he was all the time without Harper romantic notion nonsense." There's the shush-shush of pages moving, of the notes being examined; a beat later, an affable baritone layers over the not-quite-rhythm. "Only an hour? Your man's not much of a drinker. Then again... you may underestimate the market for the after-hours version." His accent has nothing to do with Harper, but nearly two Turns later, there's a patina of Southern Weyr (or the Hold, if the neigbors are that close even to a trained ear) overlying what's still mostly Southern Boll. Distracted with making sure those two inches are met and her hands balling up ineffectually at her side when it's not quite the two inches she wanted, as if those things are subjective, Suireh startles visibly when the fact that the voice she expected is not the voice that responded. Nor is it a voice she recognizes. "What the-..." She turns sharply, her artistically tangled and dirtied hair whipping about with the motion. But it is a face she recognizes, even turns later, and there's a very tangible moment of indecision etched in her face and in her rapidly blinking eyes; that visible tell that there are so many responses she could choose from and she can't quite decide which one to pick. So the reaction she ultimately ends up with are pressed lips and a hand. "That's not yours." If this isn't a venue where inches are subjective, it's also not one where N'rov concerns himself with such things, not when he has these notes before him. Notes on performances, hers and others'; notes in what must be her writing and, so far, one other's. He's quick to slide a finger between the topmost pages, quick enough that one might doubt whether he's read the first or just inhaled it; it gives him that instant in which to consider Suireh's features, far more than her hand for all that it's the latter he moves to accept. "Taking back your gift already?" Clipboard, hand, one or the other. Not moving quickly enough, her hand is accepted, and instantly, Suireh's fingers test the limits of their mobility but she doesn't draw her hand back. Just testing. Wiggling. "If you want to keep it, you can consider it a gift." Her response is a little too dismissive. "There's nothing there worth a dragonrider's time unless you'd like to make a sport of mocking me." Her pale gaze drifts, seeking out the stage and the pillar that is still half an inch off, not having to make a pretense of her distraction from N'rov by it. The fingers in his hand curl into his palm, the ineffectual fist starting up again and ending with a very audible, 'Faranth save me' exhale. There's certainly room enough to wiggle, though not a whole lot more. "Don't say things like that to me," warns N'rov, a low laugh in his voice but seriousness there, too. He's been searching out that second page, awkward though it is when the clipboard's leaning on the arm she's got. It's without the laugh (and after the distracted pat of his thumb for that sigh) that he says, though, "It seems that you do a creditable job of taking yourself apart." More than that other handwriting does, still critical but so much less harsh. "That is, if I read it right. Bronzeriders commonly can't, I hear. Here." The words are so close together, and with them comes the shush of that page turning back, the clipboard nudged to the hand he's releasing. Next, if only she doesn't jump to hit him on the head with it, will come the step back. The curled fingers find themselves free and then full of clipboard, and retrieving it seems to eliminate some small measure of stress in Suireh's frame. For now, the out of place pillar, if only in her own eyes, is forgotten and she brings the board back to her body, hugging as if casually, except not. What those other pages might have held? "I'm honest with myself. I don't believe a performer can get any better if you can't just be ruthless. Ego has no place in perfection." The words, uttered low, are spoken like a mantra that's oft-said in private. But now with her secrets pressed to her body, the young harper manages a smile. It creeps up along her features unbidden. "I'd wondered if you were a figment of my imagination." "And now you know." N'rov skips a beat, humor in those gray eyes even once he adds, "Sometimes, ego can get you to do something you, ordinarily, couldn't." Sometimes, implies his tone, that's not at all bad. This time, "How frightening is your performance apt to be? On a different note, that is. I've a nephew who /insists/ it won't be his bedtime, which his /mother/ insists is my fault for explaining time zones." "It's outlandish. There'll be fireworks and smoke at all the appropriate times and we commissioned the smiths and the woodcrafters to make the dragons look realistic." So scary? "Depends on if your nephew is scared of your dragon I imagine. Unless you meant my particular performance specifically, and if so, I'll choose not to take insult in your question and refrain from answering. You've seen all my notes." A quick beat then leads to drawn brows and a teasingly incredulous, "You have a nephew?" Then, "My father notwithstanding, it's hard to imagine bronzeriders with family." Though there are many of them that do, oh stereotypes. Or maybe just, oh, N'rov. "The good kind of scared," N'rov assures. "Excellent." While he's at it, he reminds in a tone much like hers, "Not all of them." That's followed by, "Indeed. By adoption, mind; I was found an orphan on your crafthall's steps, all wrapped up in a basket with a costly token to enigmatically refer to my true origins, and these brave souls took me in as one of their own until I could accomplish my destiny." All of which might also imply, given his equanimity, that her father hasn't seen fit to accost him yet. "Harper bred?" is Suireh's sudden, curious question. It certainly shifts her stance and the look she favors him with. Is that a sliver of respect breaking through the prejudices of world generalizations and personal experience compounded on each other? Then the rest of what he says finally sinks in and she turns her head, hair tossing as she does so and scattering some of that carefully caked in dirt off. "You're mocking me and I think I will elect to find insult in this one. For that," her clipboardless hand extends, fingers at the ready for an arm to slide beneath them, "I think you owe me another drink, since I declined the last one you left behind. I don't drink by myself." N'rov cocks a brow at that, but there's no way he'll preempt her finding her own answer; rather, there's an inclination of his head in lieu of a bow when she does, right before real surprise rolls out with his laugh. He does oblige with his arm but, mock-sternly as he steers Suireh towards the booths and away from the pillar (not that the beleaguered handyman thanks him), "I think you owe /me/ for wasting it." It doesn't mean he won't buy her a lemonade, though (and then his nephew, and his sister), in the short while before they part ways. |
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