Logs:Scorpions and Lies
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| RL Date: 26 May, 2008 |
| Who: Satiet, N'thei |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| When: Day 6, Month 7, Turn 16 (Interval 10) |
| Weyrleaders' Ledge, High Reaches Weyr(#480RAIJLs) A flight of steps worn smooth with time lead up to a broad flat area with enough room for a gold and her consort to sprawl and lounge. Openings lead to a room used for conferences, the Weyrwoman's private room, and the hatching sands themselves. A round table of well polished hardwood sits in one corner and is surrounded by chairs. This constitutes an early morning for N'thei, who has already seen a bath and a shave and it's only nine o'clock. He's been a rare commodity of late, home less and less frequently, the past month telling of perpetual busy-ness. The occupation of oiling Wyaeth, who suffers the ministrations with threadbare patience, delays him on the ledge presently, now wiping greasy fingers on an almost equally greasy rag, trying to pick out any missed patches on a hide that seems perpetually dusty. And up those broad stairs, the sounds of bare feet slap. And just above the rim of the ledge, her dark hair shows, rising in time with her steps, until Satiet draws up onto the ledge to espy Wyaeth first then N'thei. It's in that shift from dragon to rider that the brief warmth of acknowledgement in pale eyes fades into diffidence and a coolness, to match the hue of her gaze, greets, "You're up early." Which could be just a passing comment, mocking, on her way into her weyr, except she stops at the peripheral of Wyaeth's personal bubble to stand and watch. A glance, a trick of eyes down to bare feet, a smile before he has time to think the wiser of it; "One to talk. No rest for the--?" N'thei looks studiously back at Wyaeth, who looks studiously back at Satiet, then leaves with sudden impetus. With a dead-leaf rustle of wings and a scatter of wind, he sails off the ledge with a rumble that might be a farewell? While he gathers the implements of oiling, "Have you heard this rumor that the Vijays are robbing us?" She obliges the fill-in-the-blank statement, however rhetorical. "Weyrleader?" Blandly spoken, her thin lips shape into an even thinner smile when Wyaeth looks and then departs, and Teonath, currently not present on the ledge, flicks out the eye-catching brilliance of her pale wings from a smoothed plateau up on the bowl's rim. As he cleans up after himself, one of Satiet's feet steps forward, a hand lifted, reflexively to help, but then draws back to rock on her heels, her hands instead clasping in front of her; one still bandaged. "Have you heard the story about the scorpion?" N'thei thought it was funny, the bland end to his clever-less prompt, and it's a rare enough thing that he'll chuckle without reserve in Satiet's presence that everyone ought to mark their calendars. Paused, kneeling where he dropped slick rags, he cock-eyes a look up at the hand-folded goldrider, falling easily back to his practiced expression: come-hither, no-stay-there. "Why don't you tell me the story about the scorpion." Calendar's marked; the thin veneer of polite regard unable to maintain itself for the initial split second N'thei chuckles. In that half-beat, her sharp features seem all the sharper, blue eyes all the colder, and her thin smile slips. But only for a flickering, unprofessional instant, before normalcy, or what passes as such, returns. That same diffidence in her bright gaze is adopted throughout her slim frame, Satiet's weight shifting with deliberate care to one side. She'll stay there. "You know what they are when you pick them up. Why are you so shocked when they sting you?" Short story. "I've heard the rumors. Do you know if they're true?" They're summer-storm gray eyes today, not the implacable flint that best matches cold blue, but N'thei holds her look through the crack in her polish. Slowly, in a sweep that lingers down the slim line of Satiet's figure, he winds up shrugging at her toes. "I don't know. But I believe them." Pacts with the devil often end that way. Rags in bucket, straightened up to height again-- "Milani told me. I'll take care of it." Important she knows that part? "Tell Hayda not to strengthen rumors, no lists circulating of what's come up missing." In his sweep of her frame and her slight lean forward to look down at her own toes, the morning sun catches the glint of linked metal, delicate around her neck, sans dangling gem, as it frees itself from underneath her camisole. Fascinatingly dusty feet only hold Satiet's attention for so long before she's straightening to look to the rising bronzerider. "An assistant headwoman told you." Something of this displeases her, but said flatly with no emphasis, it's hard to tell which part of it does. She continues on, enunciating her following syllables: "And you would appreciate it if I spoke with the Headwoman about gossip control. Hmm?" A beat of silence. "Fine." Up on her claimed plateau, Teonath's wings again flicker, snapping open to gain the buoyancy of winds beneath them before tightening to her flanks. A change comes over N'thei's placidity in the middle of Satiet's crisply enunciated summary, his head tilting to an oh-really slant while he claims a few steps in the Weyrwoman's direction. "I wasn't trying to give you orders, but I've been under the impression that you and I were beyond kissing each others' asses to get things accomplished." His arms fold and he looks down at her hard, the prying look on his face clearly expectant of some sort of answer for herself. Wholly detached from his rider's shifts of mood, Wyaeth lands in the feeding grounds, content to eat greedily, to kick up dust and blood to ruin his new shine, to watch Teonath with customary reverence. In the implied insult to her queen, Satiet finds an easy answer and refuge. But one of the facets of being paired to a perfectly matched dragon is that the perfect foil to Satiet's personality has the potential to be just as bitchy as herself. So, her flat, "Vrianth," response to N'thei, coincides with Teonath's, « No, » of negation to Wyaeth. "Forget it. It's bullshit. I'm fine. Never been better says the healers." A shake of her head dodges the finger outline, punctuating her terse statements with a shrug. "Forget it. Is their thieving cutting into the profits we gain from their payments?" Back to business, or a poor attempt thereof. Very close to justifying his actions, breaking the first rule, N'thei counters quickly, "I tried to stop that. I even pulled him--" A memory that Wyaeth greets with a snort, a clamp to exclude the man from his thoughts, his question; « No? » Inside, hand rejoined the folded arms, he actually looks sorry for once that Satiet's pulling business between them again, watches her regretfully. "Please, Satiet. Could you please not lie to me, for just even a moment." « No. Chase all the greens you'd like. » Golds are probably where the senior queen, and her rider, might actually draw a line. Not greens. Not Vrianth. A glance casts down from her plateau to the reverence cast up from the blood, guts, and grime of the feeding grounds -- it all bothers her very little, and where she's unbothered, likely, Satiet could care less too. Likely. Thin lips purse out, a stubborn set in the fullness that seems unwilling to concede ground away from business, but is broken by a question: "When have I lied to you?" Isn't lying all just a matter of opinion? Exempli gratia; "Vrianth. He didn't catch her, and Teonath doesn't care." N'thei exhales harder than conversation requires, shakes his head at her stubborn lips, briefly unfocuses his wishful-thinking eyes. « You got N'thei's gratitude. --Don't like chasing greens. » Funny thing. "Here's a truth for you-- if I thought I could make you happy, I would live and die for you to love me. Now tell me that you're angry that Wyaeth chased a fucking green." Challenge comes hot on the heels of confession. Then, if he doesn't, the question arises, why. But it's unvoiced in the clouds that churn a low lying desert sandstorm in the gold's thoughts. It's not N'thei's gratitude Teonath seeks, but possibly the slow, deliberate, mental destruction of her rider. It's complicated. And while his challenge is hot, Satiet's response after swallow is steadied and cold. "I'm angry that Wyaeth chased a fucking green." - "About as angry as I am that you didn't come here after he lost. Did Tillek mean so little to you?" Mocking, again. Mocking that suffers from an overt infusion of deliberate bite. And in between all this, as an afterthought, the queen observes the feeding grounds blandly, « The buck at the far end is the fattest. Chase him down. I'd like to watch. » For sport. "Did it mean so much to you?" As long as they're flinging accusations, N'thei throws that one back at Satiet's mockery. A breath, such an easy time she has getting under his skin, his knuckles smudged across his mouth while he looks at her with a shrug laid bare: "You are so difficult." Where killing? Killing for Teonath's pleasure? That's easy. Wyaeth's fed, made a disaster of himself in the process, and now it's just the smirk-evil torment of chasing a harmless, wild-eyed herdbeast up and down the fence line in a kicking and screaming parade of dust. Not just for evil torment of harming helpless creatures, for Teonath, as Wyaeth makes a further ruckus in the grounds, unfurls those wings again, gliding down at an even pace to alight at the far end of the feeding pens where the buck once was. On Satiet's brow, those wrinkles emerge again. A hesitation would mean a second too long given thought, which would then mean no answer to his question. But she doesn't think. She doesn't hesitate. Only says a flat, "Yes," that's followed by a slow exhalation and, "And you're a moron if you had to ask me that. But I'm fine." Her once injured wrist lifts to wave flippantly. "Deal with the Vijays. I'll deal with Hayda." Back to business. Quiet; "It's just sex. And that's--" N'thei nods slowly, tracks the waved wrist with an arc of his eyes, with a hard swallow behind the teeth that file at his lip. Business. In contrast, he nods briskly, cricks his neck to square his shoulders, and shoots a glance away from Satiet toward the opening to the bowl, squints against daylight pouring in; across the bowl, all glint and giddiness in that brightness, Wyaeth swipes a gash across the legs of the buck, reels back while it stumbles and goes down, peels away to stay out of Teonath's line-of-sight. "Good. And try not to leave anything of value." Like the chain round her neck, the one he looks back to with a catch-my-drift smile. "Laying around for a while." When Wyaeth slashes the buck, keen eyes, triple lids narrowed into slit view, train onto the staggering, then downed beast, an incongruously little lady-like warble of approval escaping her throat. It precedes her as-low-to-the-ground slink she can manage, tail lashing as she moves swiftly through the wreckage to his kill. Now hers to enjoy. To the grounds, the rider's pale eyes deviate, narrowed to catch sight of her dragon and what she's up to and so her response to N'thei's words is belated, distracted, a little angry, though, surprisingly not at the Weyrleader. "They wouldn't. You'll take care of it." Confidence that her ledge is unbroachable or confidence in him, either or. She says, "He needs another oiling," while moving away, bare feet again slapping on the path to her inner weyr. Because all of N'thei's hard work is now wasted in blood and grime. Another oiling? "Like a hole in the head." What Wyaeth needs is not to pander to the whims of a most evil queen, and it's sure as hell not to veer back around to land in the middle of a terrified herd to watch Teonath feed. N'thei looks at the bucket, all the necessities of re-cleaning his dragon still on hand, and then he tosses them carelessly just inside his weyr. An extra few seconds hedge between jogging out to the bowl and tailing Satiet to her weyr; he opts for the former, but it's a struggle crystallized in the mutter that leaves with him; "I need a drink." Daintily, Teonath eats, stripping the carcass of its fur with deft cuts of her sharp talons, and when she's done, lifts into the air again, tail lashing at Wyaeth in what could be flirtation. Or just taunting. But today? Tonight? Tomorrow? The skies, the bowl, the Weyr is her home and not the ledge that remains goldless. In those extra seconds, Satiet's back and that glossy, loose hair disappear into the cooler shadows of her weyr, and there she stands still, fully aware that she's no longer in sight. And listens. And waits. And reanimates once heavier male steps go elsewhere. His sentiment is shared, though in her case, she acts on it, moving immediately to her pantry and pouring first a few finger lengths of her brother's brandy, pausing, then adding more to fill the glass. Satiet drinks, N'thei leaves, taking his dragon with him. Apology in a rumble, business before pleasure, in a flick of wings to chase a settling herd for Teonath's viewing pleasure, Wyaeth meets his rider at the edge of the feeding grounds, the mud and mess of him. "You're a bad influence!" The man's parting words to the queen, then up, around, *between*, gone. |
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