Logs:Broken Bottles
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| RL Date: 29 January, 2013 |
| Who: K'del, Val |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: K'del gets some therapy, Val-style. |
| Where: Lights in Darkness Weyr, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 6, Month 12, Turn 30 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Brieli/Mentions, I'kris/Mentions, Iolene/Mentions |
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| Lights in Darkness Weyr, High Reaches Weyr A heavy, brocade curtain separates the ledge from the weyr within, which opens up into a long, wide wallow and a walkway beside it. There's easily enough room for a bronze in here; the ceiling is high enough that sound tends to echo. Down the wall beside the walkway, small circles appear to float within the dim light like miniature moons; a high panel of them that's perhaps four or five times as long as a man is tall. They end abruptly as the wall curves around and opens out into the rest of the weyr. It's a good sized weyr, and laid out nicely with a fine collection of solid, expensive furniture. A niche off to one side offers built-in shelving and a desk set out beneath it, while much of the rest of the space has been taken up by a couch and several chairs, laid out in front of the hearth. It's reflective, that hearth, made up of squares tiled on point, many of which look very new indeed. To one side of that is a dark opening that might be another niche, or perhaps a passageway. A tunnel leads off from that dark opening - narrow, if still tall. It turns a corner and then opens out into an expansive room set against the other side of the hearth. Most of /this/ space is taken up by a bed that has clearly been made to fit the space exactly, although there's still room to step around to another niche - this one with a plugged basin above and a drain below. There are more of those moons here, too: moons that glow with light from the room beyond. K'del's not super enthusiastic about visitors at the moment, but Cadejoth didn't say no to Visigoth's suggestion, and what's a bronzerider-who-isn't-a-wingleader-or-weyrleader supposed to do under those circumstances? It's probably for Val's benefit that he's presently busy clearing up empty bottles, glasses and mugs into a tub, and adjusting glows as he passes; the whole weyr has a definite bachelor vibe going on, rather less tidy than the Weyrleader's Weyr ever was, children or no. Cadejoth's abandoned his ledge for a more distant, star-filled vista: if a person didn't know better, perhaps they'd assume K'del simply isn't home. Perhaps that's the general idea. Val and Visigoth, of course, know better. It's not that Visigoth perches like he owns the place, but more as though he's flown into the wrong part of town and isn't sure that he likes it, one paw after another rising and treading air. Maybe the crushed snow has something to do with it: he's kicked it all off his ledge. Though his old buddy Cadejoth might like it. « Hey, Cadejoth! This place, do you care what I do with it? » Go on, stick with your stars, there'll be a surprise for when you get back. Meanwhile, Val is even more finicky with treading across the ledge, and yet more so while making her way into the place. Her heels sound hollow on the stone as she passes through the weyr, and she's looking around. "Next time they ask what you want for your long service," she says, "tell them a lifetime supply of drudges." « Make yourself at home, » replies Cadejoth, his thoughts distant with wind and air and stars and snow; they freeze up his chains, freeze up his thoughts, and let him concentrate: in his thoughts, in his mind, he's still king of the jungle. There's melted snow and dirt drying into the floor, inside, though at least K'del has managed to avoid treading it through any softer floor coverings, and when K'del glances up to acknowledge Val, he's got an expression of near guilt on his face. Guilt-- but mostly just exhaustion and an icy kind of sad resignation. "With Brieli half in charge? Doubt anything like that'll ever happen." An empty bottle clanks as it drops into the tub. "What brings you out of hiding?" As if he can talk. « Done. » Visigoth drops out of the picture. Hello, Cadejoth's neighbors! Are you happy with him, y/n? How about his visitors? Because there are great clawing sounds coming from up above, where the big brown's scraping a good chunk of all that snow into a sort-of pile. Val: "The trick is to do that before." And: "You call this not-hiding?" Eyeing the cave again, she strolls down the tunnel, plinking her nicely filed nail-tips against the tiny circle-moons as she comes across them. "I didn't think you and she got along that awfully. What did she do, not fall down on her knees and thank you for saving her from herself?" Lucky neighbors. "Wasn't exactly in the right headspace for making demands, before," K'del points out, dumping his filled tub on the floor, mostly out of the way, and crossing his arms as he watches Val's progress through the weyr. By all means, make yourself at home, Val! "We get along that awfully. She hates me. Don't ask me what I did, or why she's decided that I'm a terrible person who must be stopped at all costs, but I am. Not sure what her game is, but it worries the fuck out of me." There's something else, something he's not saying, and it may well have to do with the not-hiding he's doing, given he doesn't answer that... or perhaps not. While Visigoth rearranges, Val refrains from touching any more than he has to. "Whenever someone says, 'Don't ask me what I did,' I promptly ask him. You know this." She does have a brilliant smile to go with it, though, as she finally looks at K'del straight on: "What do you think you did? Or might have done? Also, you need a haircut. I can fix that, anyway." She raises two fingers, snip-snips into the air. Of course there are sound effects. K'del's immediate reaction is to run his fingers through his too-long curls, both resigned and exhausted. "Fine," he says. "Cut my hair. Half figured if I'm going to be labelled a mutineer or whatever I might as well like the part, but - no." He doesn't have much of an answer for the rest, just kicks the tub further out of the way and heads for the mantlepiece where there is - thankfully! - another bottle of whisky, even if it is only a third full. "No idea. Turns out there's a lot of stuff I don't know about this Weyr and the people in it." Val doesn't follow him, being busy slipping a knife down from her sleeve and testing its edge, making a little face, and then making it disappear in favor of another one. Surely there's one blade whose finely honed edge she can sacrifice to the cause? "Do you have shears?" she asks. "Shears where you know where they are, that are sharp? Though at this point, I'd settle for dull. And of course there are a lot of things you don't know. It's a Weyr. What, did she sell your secret weyrleadery 'I really hate that Aughan, I'm-a-gonna kick his ass' notes to the Harpers?" Conveniently, K'del does have shears - and where better to put them, out of reach of little playful hands, than on the mantlepiece? He brings both bottle and shears back to the table, plonking them down with an open-palmed gesture of 'come and get it'. Them. Whichever. He slumps into a chair, letting his shoulders droop, and is silent for quite some time. Finally, "When-- when Ysavaeth died. Did the Weyr feel different? Like there was air again? Room to breathe?" There's only a slight hitch of his voice when he names the dead queen. Val saunters over, hands behind her head as she puts up her hair, afterwards picking up the shears and giving them a trial snick: the only way she's going to 'come and get it' in K'del's weyr, ever. Unless, no: whisky! She'll have a swig of that before getting to the haircut, that'll help, her voice still raw with it when she finally replies. "It was awful. I hated it." She still has the shears in her hands. "I couldn't believe he'd do that." K'del side-eyes the whisky, but only reaches for it after Val's put it back again, taking a swig of his own. It'll have to be his last swig until after the haircut, though, and probably that's why he takes one and then a second before putting it down again. Doing that gives him time to formulate an answer. "Yeah," he says. "It was." His words are an understatement, the kind wreathed in not-quite-suppressed emotion, though if it were easier to, he'd probably have turned to stare at Val by this point. "Aside from that, though. Aside from... all the awful. Did Visigoth notice?" By now she must be back behind him, those footsteps quiet now on these plush rugs. Cloth settles on his shoulders, familiar, one of his old shirts that gets patted into place. "I can't really say. It's been so long, and he never looked to her quite the same way he did with Iovniath, much less Elleth, you know? It was always about the wings and Cadejoth, that's my boy. But now that you mention it..." Snip, snip, she's already begun, if only evening. "How short do you want it? I can take you down to stubble if you really want to mutineer-mutinize-whatever, but you'll be cold, you'll regret it. But I do remember people talking, I think." "No, just shorten it," says K'del, distractedly, because that's really just filler while he works himself up to what he really needs to say. At least he's able to stay still - and stare, wide-eyed, towards the opposite wall. "That's because... Brieli told me, the other day. And it all made sense. Ysavaeth never rose. The clutch she lost... it never existed. How did I never see, Val?" He sounds old and tired and sad, and more than a little lost. "She told Brieli, but not me. Brieli helped, she said." Shorten it. Val can shorten it, and does shorten it, and it's only by a hairsbreadth that it isn't too short. There's pressure then, a low creak coming from the chair where she's leaning on it, not touching him, the shears a metal presence behind his neck. "Well, damn." The chair creaks again, this time the exhalation of her leaning upward, not quite on her toes, looking forward and up towards the ceiling before swinging down to stare at the part of his hair. "She got away with that? K'del, this is huge. People thought that 'lost' thing was strange, but still," finally, it kicks in that K'del is a friend, or what counts to Val as a friend, and he's hurting. She has to stop, rethink, lose that fleeting admiration. "She had to fool you first, didn't she. You wouldn't have let her fake it." She sounds certain. "Never." If there's anything K'del knows for certain, in this whole fucked up situation, it's that. "She-- not sure how she did it. It's all hazy, that whole day." The way he says it, he's replayed it in his mind a hundred times, by now. A thousand. Quietly bitter is his, "That's the thing, isn't it? It's huge. It's - world changing. They got away with it. Not saying anyone could again, but it says something, doesn't it?" What it doesn't say - what he doesn't say - is exactly how personal this is, and how much he'd probably like to start crying again right now. His eyes bore holes in the wall, instead. "Makes me wonder what else was a lie." "Probably a lot." Val, no help! She looks at the back of K'del's head and says, "Forget this." Abandoning him, she rounds the chair to set the shears back atop the table, and then puts her weight into moving the couch to expose a blank wall. Maybe she hasn't looked at his expression too closely, yet, but maybe she doesn't need to. "You look like you need to break something. Throwing her bed off the ledge always worked for me, but failing that... You need that crap that you just cleaned up? Grab an empty bottle and let's get started." She'll just make sure he doesn't throw himself off in lieu. It's not helpful, but something about it-- probably because this is Val, and really, what else can you expect?-- is absurd enough that K'del begins to laugh. It's not a happy laugh, not the kind that will make him feel better in the end - if anything, it's more closely related to hysteria, though he's not that far out of control. It distracts him long enough that he seems downright confused by the state of his couch, and by her suggestion. "What?" It could be worrisome, given how her fine, winged brows pinch together, but Val hefts an invisible bottle anyway and mimes throwing it at his wall. Hard. "Throw your glass," she explains. "Throw it hard. Make it break. ... Stand back far enough so the shards don't fly up and hit you, of course." She pivots, all the way around in a three-eighty circle. "It doesn't have to be this, of course, but get it out." K'del, who has never been more than a social drinker, who had never even been in a barfight until a few months ago, who has lived his life on the straight and narrow as much as anyone can, with the exception of his habits with women, stares at Val blankly for several seconds more. And then? He gets it, and it's suddenly there in his expression, wide-eyed and semi-feverish, but alive. That's when he turns, going to pick up the tub, and the closest bottle to the top. It's a fancy bottle, the kind you get with expensive alcohol, and he throws it at the wall as if it were nothing: it shatters, and he has to surreptitiously wipe tears away from his eyes with the back of his hand, but so what? Val's certainly applauding. Val, who's been much more than a social drinker, but who's also more apt to egg on a barfight (or cause it) than actually sully her pretty knuckles unless absolutely necessary. Val, who's retrieving another, and a plate, offering him the latter before going to town with the nice clear glass that explodes into bits like chips of ice against the gray, gray wall. He can cry. She won't let him catch her looking. So he'll cry. And throw plates and glasses and mugs and bottles: all of it. There's stale klah and all kinds of alcoholic remnants on the wall and the floor by the time that it's done, and K'del's face is red and blotchy from all the tears, but his shoulders have lost some of their tension. When he slumps onto his knees, on the floor, he announces, in a voice that would be quite even if it weren't for the whole has-been-crying thing, "I'm going to get laid tomorrow." He makes it sound like this is a momentous occasion. Maybe it is. What? "You do that," Val agrees just about immediately. She doesn't move to sweep up or otherwise clean up: not her job, not her weyr, and besides: trophies. instead she leans one sleek hip against a chair, not breathing hard but with a pretty flush to her cheeks and parted lips that speaks of enjoyment. "Every day for a seven. You know... I almost set you up with a girl, a couple months ago. She likes men," poor girl, "she's tall like you, red hair, a good mouth." K'del's gaze takes in the carnage, meandering over it idly before he lets it return to Val. He even grins, in that wild-eyed kind of way. "Send her my way," he says. "Bout time I got myself back on the horse." His nod is probably as much of a 'thank you for helping me out, Val' as she'll get, but really, isn't that meaning clear? He can clean up later. He can start his life again, later. Right now? Sitting on the ground, with a floor covered in glass is totally good enough. |
Comments
Comments on "Logs:Broken Bottles"Azaylia (Dragonshy) left a comment on Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:28:08 GMT.
Ahahaha. Of course I'm thinking: well that's 2 metallic riders who have recently decided to get over newly developed issues with intimacy.
GOOD FOR K'DEL. And Val is best psycho galpal! VALPAL.
Brieli (Brieli) left a comment on Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:25:08 GMT.
Good mouth. Man. I love Val.
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