Logs:Welcome to High Reaches, Madilla
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| RL Date: 8 August, 2008 |
| Who: Madilla, N'thei, Satiet |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Note: The first scene played on NorCon. |
| Where: Living Cavern, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 4, Month 6, Turn 17 (Interval 10) |
| Living Cavern, High Reaches Weyr Stalactites hang high above this enormous cavern like a jagged chandelier or an inversion of the Spires themselves, but shadows cling to them instead of light. Below lie great tables arranged in rows, each large enough to serve a fighting wing, while in the nooks and alcoves around the cavern's edge sit more sensibly-sized tables, from six- and eight-seaters down to intimate spots for just a couple of diners. The only really open space is around the kitchen entrance, smelling of food and rarely quiet, and by the nearby serving tables with their long buffet of the day's offerings. Tapestries on the smooth walls -- some faded and others newly woven -- only slightly mute the sea of sound when a meal is in full swing, but they add cheerfulness augmented by the glowlight from wall sconces and the centerpieces of each table. Still, shadows always creep along the ceiling and into the mouths of the exits -- the myriad small hallways at one end of the cavern and, at the other, the twisting tunnel to the bowl near an array of coathooks and and hatracks -- and late at night, when the glows are allowed to dim, the chamber can seem very dark indeed. With the lunch rush now beginning to clear, the queue at the serving table is short - non-existent, really - and Madilla is at the head of it, hesitantly filling her plate with the day's offerings of stew with potatoes, and shuffling on to the salad, then the klah pot at the end. Gingerly lifting both mug and plate, with cutlery clutched in one hand, the apprentice turns away from the buffet to eye the cavern with discomfort. Following behind Madilla, hesitating when she hesitates, pausing when she pauses, and while not shuffling per se, isn't particularly striding down the procession of buffet foods, Satiet waits with the infinite patience of a leisurely afternoon as the younger woman casts her discomforted study to the cavern. Though not quite kind, the cool voice, after a flickering scan of the girl's attire and knot, open dialogue with wry words, "Too many seats, too many choices. I happen to favor the tables furthest from the food. Less likely to be run over." A beat passes, the slight, raven-haired woman pointing out a free table in the center of the room, "Care you join me?" Madilla's head shoots up, and while she doesn't drop her lunch, it's a close run thing. Cheeks already pink as she turns to look at the person addressing her, they go pinker still as her quick look assesses Satiet. "I--" she begins, badly, her words trailing off into nothing. Then, with a deep breath, she nods, allowing herself a thin smile. "Thank you. That's good advice. I would like to. Yes. Please." A tacit nod acknowledges Madilla's acceptance of her offer. With a gliding confidence in her steps, Satiet makes her way towards the pointed out table and claims her own seat while a hand gestures for the healer to pick any of the others herself. "You looked-," the slender woman lifts her fork, pausing it in the air as if to use it to punctuate her thoughts. "Daunted," is how she elects to conclude her statement. "New?" Oh good; N'thei comes in right when someone's already looking daunted. That will play well! Perched on one shoulder, held by one arm, he hefts in with him a small wooden keg stamped on the end with a Tillekian brewer's mark, and he looks at first like he intends just to cut through the cavern on his way to the inner Weyr. It's fairly empty, unlikely that he'll find anything worth waylaying him-- and then he cocks his head right in the middle of a step, stops with his brows going upwards. Satiet... and a young woman... eating lunch... The weirdness is written all over his face to behold the site. Madilla follows behind the other woman, her steps more halting, and her lunch carried gingerly. She sets it down on the other side of the table from Satiet, drawing out the seat and settling in to it in a hurried motion. "Daunted," repeats the healer, hand reaching for her mug. "Yes. That sums it up. At the Hall, we sat at assigned tables. And ate what was put in front of us." Fingers wrapping about the mug's stem, she adds, "Very new. Arrived a few days ago." Weird or not, Satiet doesn't pique to N'thei's arrival, despite the eye-catchingness of it all: big hulking man, wooden keg slung over his shoulder. Instead, the fork in her hand finally finds a victim in a medley of steamed vegetables on her plate, a cubed piece of zucchini speared and brought to hover about her mouth. "I forget, sometimes, that people are new to the Weyr. That I," locks of dark hair fall forward as she considers Madilla, "Was once as daunted. Satiet," the last drops with a note of inquiry, an introduction at least that requests one in return. at least - at last. N'thei watches. For now. He doesn't make any effort to raise his comfort level, still standing two-third across the length of the room from where he entered, still holding a keg on one shoulder, still watching with that same bemusement. He will undoubtedly rouse himself ere long, but it's kind of like happening upon a two-headed dog: you just don't want to make a sudden move and scare it off. Madilla, too, misses N'thei, or perhaps dismisses him to yet another weird and wonderful weyr thing. She takes a sip from her mug, and sets it down again, smiling tentatively at her lunching companion. "I know who you are-- Weyrwoman. They made sure of that, when I was taking classes at Harper Hall. I'm Madilla. I've been posted here with Journeywoman Delifa. Were you really as daunted?" The initial flush has long since faded, and fails to be replaced by another; she eats, almost comfortable. The Weyrwoman, so sussed out, colors faintly about the cheek, and something in her manner shifts. If her prior behavior could be termed as relatively (for her) warm, it cools considerably, her slight shoulders rolling back a little as her posture straightens in the most minute of ways. The zucchini hovering about her mouth finally disappears and while she chews, the color of her cheeks dissipates into a composed regard of the healer. "Ah, the new healer. I-," To lie, or to be frank. It's then those pale eyes find N'thei and Satiet's thin lips set a little more thinly. "Once. We're all young and new once. Foolish too. I'm originally from a cothold that could fit into one of the lower cavern wings. Smaller even." Even better. Now his presence is remarked and he didn't even have to do anything. Neat. A look skips across the goldrider, the grin curving his mouth nothing short of malevolent for all that it's brief, and then the look lands on the young woman with her. From where he stands, he can overhear just enough to contribute while he approaches; "Making new friends, I see." Madilla? Satiet? With a thump, he sets the keg on the edge of their table and offers a paw to the Healer. N'thei. Not that there are other he-s here. Madilla hesitates, her fork hovering over her stew, as Satiet's manner thus changes, though her own smile falters only minutely, remaining, on the whole, in tact. "So am I," she tells her. "From a cothold that size, I mean. I was at the Hall for a turn and a half, but..." If she intended to finish that sentence, she does not get the chance, the thump of N'thei's barrel drawing fairly rapidly her attention away. She blinks up at him, finally accepting his hand for a shake. "Madilla," she introduces herself. "My mother was a harper-," But just as abruptly as Madilla doesn't get the chance, sharing tidbits of her own life story comes to a grinding halt with N'thei's arrival. Cool disregard sends her once over of N'thei and the keg he thumps onto the table away, back to her plate, and then deliberately up once more after spearing more food, to appraise Madilla. "I'm sure Delifa could use the extra set of hands and hopefully you find easy adjustment here." Sober, "We've just cleared the infirmary out of the last of those majorly injured from our last fall." Musing; "So much tact." The statement, coming after the goldrider's remarks over the infirmary, seems to have no place in N'thei's portion of the conversation. He gives the girl's hand a very warm-and-pleasant shake, a waggle of her arm inevitable in the process, then straightens to rest his hands around the back of Satiet's chair. Looks suspiciously like looming. "What do you specialize in, Madilla? So we know toward what ends you can best be used." With a cheeky smile. Madilla's gaze shifts between Satiet and N'thei, sliding from one to the other, and then back again. While her hand is being shaken, she tells the former, "So I've heard. I hope there are no more of the like. Thank you." As her hand is released, she lets it drop, silently, back to the table's edge, then lifting it to pick up her fork again, watching N'thei. "I'm a," Beaten. Slight stiffening of the expression. "Pharmacist, primarily." Beneath N'thei's looming shadow, Satiet stiffens in an unintentional mirror of Madilla, her slender shoulders held back less casually and her gaze dropped to her plate. In her preoccupation with her own reasons for discomfort, the healer's tightened expression goes unnoticed until the intonation of Madilla's words strike the goldrider enough to look up, inquisition flickering behind the distant veil over her cool eyes. But no questions, no comments, just a thoughtful purse of her lips, and a return of some measure of welcome in her deliberate, overly dry tease: "I'm assuming you've met one of the headwomen staff and haven't been sleeping in the hallways?" N'thei goes straight for it, never mind that Satiet's already asked an unrelated question. "Why a-- pharmacist?" He makes an effort to emulate the stiffened expression, but a big man attempting to recreate the tone and gesture of a fourteen-year-old girl is comically wide of the mark. A sniff, derisive, goes unmasked after the Weyrwoman's question, and he makes like he didn't hear it other than that. "Not the hallways, nor the infirmary, either," Madilla assures Satiet, ignoring, though she's apparently aware of, that inquisition, though N'thei's question is harder to side-step or ignore, and draws a twitch of-- amusement? Dubious amusement, at least. Her gaze ducks away from the Weyrwoman, seeking out her plate and fork, the latter of which is filled, and drawn towards her mouth before she finishes her comment. "I've been taken care of, yes. Thank you." Then, "I'm a Pharmacist because that's what I'm good at. It's important to play to your strengths." She almost sounds like she's sold on that, too - almost. And the inquisition transparent in her eyes flares all the brighter at Madilla's comments, but the weyrwoman's curiosity isn't appeased as a young woman from the lower caverns comes in, hovers, and then seeks her out. Low words are exchanged, and Satiet's fist tightens about her fork. Apologetic, her head cants towards Madilla, her chair pushes back into N'thei with little regard for how and where it might butt into him, and picking up her plate, she stands. "I'm afraid duty calls." But not without taking her lunch with her. "I'd-," a beat, and then a change in direction, "Welcome to High Reaches." To Madilla really; "Then why isn't it--" N'thei straightens, stops leaning over Satiet's chair as if he planned to do it anyway, as if it had nothing to do with the fact that she tries to shove a chair through his body. Which is not physically possible, just so everyone knows. It hurts, and the twinge at the corner of his eye shows at much though he smiles with his teeth. Not a freaking word though, just waits till she's gone. Satiet walks to the inner caverns. Satiet has left. Madilla does not miss the way Satiet's chair pushes into N'thei, nor his reaction to that. But her tone is even, as she bobs her head and says, "Thank you, Weyrwoman. Have a good afternoon." Once Satiet is gone, she looks, if a little dubiously, back at N'thei. "That's what happens when you lean on the backs of peoples chairs," she comments, though not without some sympathy. "Are you all right?" "Actually," begins N'thei around the small bubble of ouch, his voice a little strained for the effort. "Most people say excuse-me before they push chairs through my belly. But I should have known better." With long-standing patience shown in the teeth-bared smile. "Fine, thank you. Not really the type of thing a pharmacist could do much about, neh?" So he just rubs his belly where the chair-knob got him. "Point taken," agrees Madilla, finally, with a rueful expression, as she forks another piece of potato off of her plate. "Probably not, unless it bruises, in which case I could offer a salve. Not much use right now, anyway." She continues to eye him, as if to make sure that he's not about to collapse from some massive internal injury. While that would have some comedic value, N'thei seems to be made of sturdier stuff than that. "Which I would probably declines on the grounds that it's not manly to be wearing a salve for just a bruise." The grin that tricked briefly into place wanders off abruptly while he watches her eat, while he casts back to recover his train-of-thought prior to being chaired in the guts. Ah yes; "Why do you say 'a pharmacist' like it's not something you're proud of?" "'Manly'," scoffs Madilla, after finishing another mouthful. "Faranth forbid." Her fork stills as he asks that question, and she sighs, looking back up with an expression that suggests she's not thrilled about actually having to explain this. "I do what I'm told to. I respect my elders. And in this case, I do Pharmacy, because that's what I'm good at, and thus, how I'm best useful to the craft. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily what I would have liked to be given. I should get back to the infirmary." "Then why don't you just..." N'thei trails off. As soon as Madilla starts in with where she should get back to, his brows climb and his words stop and he finds instead a very socially correct smile. It doesn't suit him at all. "Yes? Well. Very nice to meet you. Welcome." Whatever. Niceties are for pretty people like Satiet; he just sticks his hand out again toward the girl. "I do what I'm told," repeats the girl, answering what she apparently assumes that unfinished question might have been. Her expression is awkward, her tone even more so, as she gathers up her dishes, releasing her hand to shake his again. "And you, likewise. Thank you." This done, she picks up those dishes, and heads away, expression suddenly unreadable. Awkward. Madilla walks to the inner caverns. Madilla has left. |
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