Logs:In Snowdrift, We Call This Diplomacy
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| RL Date: 10 May, 2011 |
| Who: Val, Z'yi |
| Type: Log |
| What: Z'yi (might as well be Snowdrift's wing second). Val (Snowdrift's newest rider). All the pissing is figurative. |
| Where: Records Room, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 5, Month 9, Turn 26 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Mielline/Mentions, Teris/Mentions |
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| Here in the land of hides and dus-- okay, so there's not actually dust in here-- books, Z'yi holds proverbial court at a table, with a handful of signed orders from Mielline on one side and a stack of hides on the other. As wingriders trickle in throughout the day, they leave with one sheet from one stack and a handful from the other -- evidently, it is now diplomacy refresher time. That obviously explains why Z'yi's a clerk, and not anything near an instructor for this particular lesson. Additionally, it would seem as if some little time has passed since the last rider checking in, as the big man's eyes are beginning to slowly lid in drowsiness. Diplomacy. Refresher. And here Val's just recently been cleared for duties that go beyond running off her mouth. Perhaps she was warned, or perhaps it's just general principle, or lack thereof, that has her showing up in an egregiously ripped mesh tunic over a plain red shirt, her trousers rolled up mid-calf, her long hair many-plaited in a way that must have taken one of her friends hours to do. She doesn't exactly appear on time, either, and when she does, it's with a lazy, "Go ahead, big man. Catch some zs." Sleepy eyes focus on Val with all the intent of a somnolent lion, roused from a nap to consider fresh prey. The woman doesn't apparently give off enough of a vibe to draw claws, however; just a stretch of spine and flex of locked fingers above his head, a number of pops following during and after the action. "Val, is it?" Insouciance draws a brow to quirk, lips tricking upwards before smoothing into a line, fingers ruffling the stack of orders. No? No sleep, no stalling? Val, newly slouched into a seat across the table, drowns her sorrows in counting those pops. Visibly. On her fingers. And for a reply, rather than play with the bluerider's name again, she holds up the sum for him to see and says, "Got it in one." "Ha, you've the worst of the batch," Z'yi absently states, reading over the list with a definite lopsided quirk to his lips. "No less than six." The laborous process of peeling the correct hides off the sheaf is obviously troublesome to the bluerider, lazy-drowsy as he is; there's no sign of improvement upon his consciousness, either. "When you figure it out, let me know." The assignment is rolled into a neat bundle and lazily offered up in the distance between the two riders. Her fingers snap. "And what," Val asks, "Did I do to deserve that?" All that hides-peeling, it's enough to make a brownrider study the far-more-interesting cracks in the ceiling, though eventually the outthrust hides must catch her peripheral vision enough to drag her gaze down again. Mostly. Lightly, "Go ahead, brief me. Left to my own devices, I'd recommend that they all solve everything with a duel." Perhaps it's some dregs of respect for proper procedure that has her take the sheaf of hides from him, if only so it won't fall down. "Bein' an upstart from-- wherever you hail from." There's a slanting glance, almost sly, bemused, almost hidden behind that facade of sleepy quietude. "Ista, was it?" A wag of his head, slow, ponderous, in time with a slouch further down in the big seat of which Z'yi's currently holding to the floor. "Everyone knows nobody from Ista's very good at politics." Everyone knows that Z'yi's given the most, this time of turn, though he never admits it. His tones, his way of speech, find a mimic in her low soprano. "Been to Ista," Val allows agreeably, shifting in her seat so her elbow's on the table, far knee slung over the arm of her chair, boyish layabout instead of tattered rapscallion. "A time or two. Or five." And as long as they're talking smack, she makes as though to take it seriously, "I don't know. Distracting a person with plenty of sun and sand, some hardbodies swaying down the beach, just enough shade so's you can pretend you're not sun-dizzy, and a fruity drink that'll kick your ass... what's not to like?" "You're damn well making my point, kid." Z'yi's gaze rolls from reports to Val once more, his smirk now resident upon bluff features. "Ain't no politics to all that, just hormones and alcohol. Someone's gotta teach the ditzes how to figure the political climate." Brief pause here, a beat of conversational lull, and that smirk heralds in, "Ain't gonna be me, either." Kid. That knee straightens, slowly, setting her open shoe's grimy sole against the table's edge. Her brown foot flexes, just as slowly, and the table threatens to tip. His way. Lazy-lidded eyes, darker brown, see what he does with it. "You don't say," and see, she can be smirky too. "If you flip this table over on me," Z'yi states, calmly, "I will break your other leg." Wolfish, his expression; "I'll make it look like an accident." He steadies the flat of his palms against the tabletop for a moment, only to straighten up in his chair and lean back, assessing the brownrider with eyes that are less drowsy and more contemplative. High Reaches politics, as introduced by the weyr thug, obviously. It's enough to startle her own eyes wide, darker from reflex-dilated pupils, before black lashes blink down to conceal them. And up again, more slowly, giving him a long look back. Thugs? Val's seen them before, has messed with them before, and yet. And yet. Apparently there are thugs, and then there are thugs. Which makes it all the more important to smile. Sweetly. And flex her foot again, shifting the wood in a protesting creak. Deliberately. "Do you get into pissing contests with all the boys?" "Are you insinuating that you are, in fact, a slender boy?" Z'yi moves slowly, leaning further back in his chair, arms sprawled over his head in an artless jumble manifesting hard curve of muscle under taut skin. His very position seems full of do-it taunting, so lazy, so content. "I'm sure I could win a bet or two if you, in fact, are." Haphazard, the careening of smile across his face, lopsided and swift in not only appearing, but vanishing soon after. In lieu of that, "Five syllables," and Val enunciates each and every one of hers, with as much slow care as the bluerider stretches. Her eyes are still very dark, reflecting his movements, belying her tone's insouciant lightness. And if her own mouth quirks up at his audacity, she doesn't let it survive for long. "Should I be impressed?" In-sin-u-a-ting, with just a little lilt on the end. "You can ask Mielline," and here the big man's voice is dry, "--regarding the status of my vocabulary." An educated thug; so the description of the bluerider further develops. "Perhaps I should be impressed that you can, in fact, discern five syllables within a single word?" Laconic, those eyes, the clip to his local-drawl; his stance doesn't move but for his eyebrows, cocked up in mute query over bemused eyes dark with laughter. The brownrider's brows get to rise first, delicately rather than boyishly this time, as though she were considering his suggestion with the same exactitude displayed in their matched crescent arch. Would she ask the wingleader? Their wingleader? What might she rather ask? But then he continues and she relaxes, her hand lifting with all its finely layered rings, a flippant flick of her nails. "Why, you may if you like! If you insist upon being impressed so easily." She leaves a little pause. "And if you wish to regale me with any anecdotes, any other... advice... now might be the time, before I'm on my way." Under the press of her toes, the table creaks again but more steadily now, a long complaint that doesn't actually shift its position any. A flickering glance, tabletop to brownrider and back again, before posture eases up, arms dropping down, bemusement plain again. "Get your shit together if it isn't already. Mielline ain't one to tolerate a... lack of performance." His shoulders ripple upwards in a shrug, brief. "Other than that, by all means, it was nice speaking with you." Beat. "Lad." "That's what she said." It's a murmur, really, but one that seems to amuse the brownrider mercilessly. Her teeth are white and fine within the curve of her smile, another thing that she takes care of. Val starts to sit up a little more, then, more a shift of her spine than a scoot that might dislodge her shoe, but at that lad... there's a moment where she might ignore it, that returning goodbye-smile as guileless as though she'd never heard it at all, and then she's shaking her head all mock-somber. "Boyo." Right when Val pushes off her lower foot to reach across, past her own knee that splays out of the way, as though she'd polish the top of Z'yi's head. Or possibly box his ears. No quicker way to see whether he's apt to break arms as well as he threatens to break legs! Trained reflexes are just that; trained. A broad palm bats at the hand incoming, like a fly errant; should the swift onslaught move past his first perimeter of defense, there is always the shift of self sideways, hypothetically out of range. "Maybe we'll make a rider out of you yet," is his sole comment, a smirk on his face for the girl rather than shocked objection. Val evidently does fit in with Snowdrift's spirit, after all. There's a sharp clap: his palm, the side of her hand. Val feints, watches him duck, by now up on a knee that's careless of the rumpled hides beneath. Her lips have skinned back from those white teeth. "I fought Fall when you were mucking out runner stalls." Z'yi has nothing but a shrug for that, nonplussed. "What was then is not now, kid. Living in the past will not get you far in this wing. You want that, go join Glacier, livin' fifty turns ago." His dismissive wave of hand is left to right, a decisive chop. "We save lives by working as a team. Get over it." Eyes flicker, amused again, as if this slip of a girl can't really be taken seriously; "Can't take the heat, get out of the fire." She must know she's being baited. Might even know that there are workers sidling around shelves to look at a rider half-crouched on what should be a sacrosanct table, nearly close enough to hear past the edge in her voice. But. "Don't think you get to decide that, boyo. Mielline and me, we have an understanding. We've been through what you haven't. You know some things, I'd have thought you'd know better. But if you can't see what a blind man should..." The brownrider has a shrug to her shoulder that's eloquent, artistry there in the way it becomes a reach without looking down for the hides she'd pinned, in the way she masters her bad leg to ease back to her feet like she's about to leave without taking leave. And if she's also made off with other hides, interesting hides that maybe she hadn't been meant to have... so much the better. Z'yi has nothing but the patience of the icecaps themselves, staring at Val with eyes steady in the face of this wildcat perched on his desk like a savage. "I'm sure you have an understanding with the wingleader." Sarcasm slips serpentine under his basso tones. "Don't matter. Snowdrift doesn't stand on that. Snowdrift stands on performance. If you perform well, y'do well. Don't think you're going to slip through the cracks just because you had the ill luck of being born before some of the rest of us. If you haven't noticed," and here Z'yi is leaning forwards as to follow Val's progress in retreat, "It ain't Pass no more, girlie." Something, something in what Z'yi says appears to brighten Val's day. "Just wait," the brownrider says encouragingly, if unhelpfully, with such a gleam in her smile. Perhaps that's what standing back on the ground instead of a dramatic but awkward, could-be-pushed-over position can do for a girl. She makes a show of rolling up 'her' hides, stuffing them into a pocket all happy-to-see-me. It makes for a stiff-legged sort of stalk, heading out, but with enough swagger to make it seem natural... is it ever worth it. She'll rub her sore leg when she's alone, possibly throw a knife or two, or a pillow. She'll even read through those hides, the ones meant for her and those purloined. When she's alone. Only after she's left will Z'yi deflate enough to make bad reflection that he should stop baiting Teris so much, if this is what it feels like on the other side -- and only after she's far gone, and two more Snowdrift riders aside, will he realize that he's missing quite a bit more than he should be. Only time beyond will determine if he figures out the light-fingered thief to be Val: but that is quite beyond the present, and a story for a different day. |
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