Logs:About That Dead Guy
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| RL Date: 8 May, 2014 |
| Who: A'rist, Leova |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: An old rider and dragon have headed between. A'rist probes while Leova mourns. |
| Where: Kitchens, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 26, Month 9, Turn 34 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Anvori/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: I asked Leova to name this log and she did. |
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| Another oldster's said his goodbyes, set his rider's ring in Leova's hand, and arthritically mounted another gray-muzzled, scarred-wing survivor: another pair has taken to the skies and disappeared forever. It's not to the Snowasis that Leova goes when she's finished up all the work, though, nor even to her weyrmate's arms; instead she finds food, one elbow on the table to brace her forehead in her palm, and forces herself to eat one shallow spoonful of soup at a time. Lythronath's voice was among the keening of the dragons. Even now, he's settled with his kind, a light green to one side of him, a dark green to the other, recollecting nothing but the sensation of other dragons' hide against his. A'rist has not sought out company, though there are some from his wing, and, more importantly, a group of his clutchmates out in the evening. The young man moves solo into the caverns, with eyes only for food: the sad remains of a pie on the main tables, the plate of dried roast that a freckled member of the kitchen staff takes out to for his break, Leova's soup. Leova's soup: definitely not dry, though the greenrider might be sad. Or saddened. Every now and again there's the click of wooden spoon against ceramic bowl. Once she pokes a chunk of tuber, breaking it up. A'rist has slowed with each glance. He nearly stops at Leova. Nearly, but not quite, and once her soup has (eventually) passed from his view, the bronzerider carries on. There's a steaming pot on the stove. A'rist hasn't even seen what's in it before he's securing a bowl. Apparently, 'warm' is the most important part of tonight's hunt. The redolent smell of garlic rises up, once it's unlidded, beyond which all else pales. Leova looks up briefly, no longer. A'rist ladles. It takes him a bit longer to find a clean spoon for his own purposes of eating. Then, a few steps out of the way, and he's standing. Clink. Slurp. Well, he may not be as refined as Leova. Which is not a high bar, what with her elbow and all, but it's true that Leova isn't slurping. Then again, she's not in a hurry at the moment. Perhaps she's not; apparently, he is. A few mouthfuls manage to be slurp-free. Only a few. When he sets the bowl down, it's with a clatter. His walk is quick, right up until he's turning to inspect Leova's progress with her soup. The clatter does get a glance, and not a happy one: must he? It's a passing look, to look, not garner attention. When that walk stops nearby, the dragonhealer asks, "What." A'rist makes a little face when the woman speaks, but doesn't look up. He rubs his fingertips together, and then brushes them against his pants. He shrugs, still staring at her bowl. "You're not hungry, are you." "Been hungrier." The bowl sits there, lukewarm by now. Leova takes another spoonful but leaves it poised midair: neither fish nor fowl, not eaten but not still part of the whole. "Because of the keening?" A'rist asks, blunt, if not forceful. "Because I've been working with them for a decade. Decade and half. Something like that," says the woman whose dragon is older than A'rist. "Oh." There's something... not repentant, in that. Introspective, maybe, for all A'rist's eyes are focused, still, on the bowl of soup in front of Leova. "So did you know him?" is a bit meeker than his first lead-off. "Like, know him." By now, she's rested the spoon's handle on the side of the bowl, its working end hanging into nothingness above the soup itself. "He liked roasted redfruit better than bubbly pies," Leova says, deliberate with that past tense. "He tried not to play favorites with his children, his grandchildren, but he had them anyway. He left a sealed scroll to someone no one knew he knew." "Oh," comes again, the young rider watching that suspended spoon, now, more than anything else. He grimaces at it, of a sudden, and then makes a lunge for the nearest chair, dragging it into position, and sitting. Loud and without invitation. And once he's sat, then he can look at Leova. It's not the lack of invitation that causes her brows to lift: not far, but far enough. She looks at him. There's silence for the equally deliberate count of three. Three, or more if one is in a hurry. "They flew Fall for Hailstorm. His wingsail," the dragon's, then, "was scored twice, but his pasterns, that wasn't Fall at all. A freak accident when they were up Crom way. The rock gave way underfoot and slid. The boulders got his hind legs, trapping and banging and cracking before he could get aloft." A'rist looks right back, his head halfway mimicking a bob, but just once. He stares straight while she waits, he stares straight while she recounts. At the end of it all, he frowns a bit, and more teeth show than is normal in, "What else?" Amber eyes have grown to focus on him with unstated speculation. The dragonhealer says, "Why?" He doesn't shift in his chair, nor clear his throat, nor even blink. But he doesn't bob his head, either. "Because," A'rist answers after a moment, "he's not really a person without it. I guess," might be the slightest bit of give beneath that amber gaze. Or, failed obfuscation. "Mm." Quiet. If Leova might be able to pick at his wording, she doesn't. Instead, after a little while, "He had excellent aim throwing firestone sacks, and laundry sacks, until his sight went bad. He stopped when the sack sprung a seam and he wound up chasing shirts across the Bowl. He had a firelizard, once, but she went wild. He thinks, he thought he could still spot her among the fairs sometimes." Eyes or no eyes. A'rist listens, watches Leova, studious, and perfectly still, brown eyes attentive, if not overtly expressive. "And then he got old, and took his dragon, and went between," the bronzerider finishes for her, quiet, but more thoughtful than sympathetic. "Old," Leova seconds somewhat wryly. "Decrepit. Worse." The spoon sways infinitesimally. She hasn't looked at it. "Wait much longer, they wouldn't've had the choice." She sits back. Her gaze travels past him, toward the banks of counters. A'rist gives one, quick nod to that, though his mouth draws down into a frown. "Do you think that's how he wanted to go?" "No," Leova says. Those amber eyes track him once more. "But then Fall's no longer falling, is it." "No," A'rist parrots back to her, intonation matching, though it doesn't seem a conscious thing; there's none of the adolescent attitude behind it. "Did he feel useless before he got old? Did he hate getting older?" "Mm. Don't know about useless. Less use, though." Leova keeps looking at him, examining his expression along with the rest. "For certain. There's nothing like Fall. Lot of space between just plain older and 'falling apart,' though. Which he did hate." That last. "You got anything in your life? A'rist. That you can go after, no holds barred or near enough." A'rist considers this, skeptical, if not unconvinced, a finger beginning to tap-tap on the table. Leova speaking his name brings him from whatever reverie it is he'd started into. "No holds barred." is repeated, quite prompt, and just as promptly followed by a clenching of his jaw. A moment, and then, "Isn't a good idea. For me. For us." "Mm. Do you know what is good for you?" Singular or plural, Leova doesn't specify. Doesn't, it seems, feel the need to. A'rist is a long time in thinking that over, his fingers twitching, the corners of his lips pulling one way or another. His eyes have unfocused as he tries to make the intangible into, at the very least, words. And finally, what he comes up with, focusing on the greenrider again, is, "Tension." A beat. "Not like... stress. But like... what gets a runner to pull a cart." With a strange little smile, "And naps, in between." Leova also doesn't hurry him. She even forces down two spoonfuls of soup, if only two, looking back at him only at the beginning of that first word. That odd smile is reflected in no particular movement. "Happen to know how to get that? Not the naps part." A'rist shifts back in his chair, sitting straighter. There's a little pull at his left eye, the hint of some inward smirk that only ever gets to be a hint. "Think so," is confident, bordering on cocky. But he doesn't elaborate. "More'n a lot of people, then." The dragonhealer doesn't seem to need any elaboration. May not even want it. She looks up, at nothing. Then down, as though seeing that bowl for the first time. Emptied though it isn't, a one-shouldered shrug presages her move to stand. She's done. A'rist sits a bit taller. It should be pride, really, but there's a niggling something at the corner of his mouth. He'd probably not even realised he was waiting on her, but it's only once Leova stands up from the table that he does, too. |
Comments
K'del said...
I liked this an awful lot. Such a sense of... melancholy-but-not. Old-and-young. Presence. I don't know.
K'zin said...
Agreed. All of what K'del said. Really awesome to see this piece of Weyr life played about. It felt real and poignant-but-also-not. Some of the choices of phrasing gave me goosebumps.
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