Logs:Exile Balls
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| RL Date: 7 July, 2011 |
| Who: Celadion, Riorde |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Celadion's teaching kids how to make fishing lures while Riorde's sulking. They talk about their predicament. |
| Where: Candidate Quarters |
| When: Day 25, Month 2, Turn 26 (Interval 10) |
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| Candidate Quarters, High Reaches Weyr(#286RAJ) Two caverns lead one right into the other from a hallway just off the Common Room. Taking advantage of the high, vaulted ceiling, bunk beds march in four neat rows of five beds each allowing up to forty people to sleep in one cavern. Functional and spartan in atmosphere, there's little in the way of decoration here, just the one tapestry depicting a hatching on the wall of the first cavern and eggs on the sands in the second. Each bunk is made up when there are candidates in residence, with standard sheeting, gray woollen blankets and somewhat lumpy pillows. A trunk stands at both the head and foot of the bunks, providing a little space for the occupants to store their belongings while the wait for the eggs to hatch. The archway between the two spaces is covered over with a hide hanging, easily hooked back when both caverns are in use, but tacked into place when only the first is needed. A proper wooden door closes out noise and drafts from the hallway.
Rather than go to class or find another way to busy herself and be useful, Riorde has chosen to indulge her bad mood by lounging around the barracks, surrounded by the rest of the island folk. She lies on her stomach with a book between her hands, but Celadion's impromptu lesson is garnering a great deal more of her attention than anything else. "Don't know why you're teaching them," she grumbles, pitched audible enough for the complaint to reach his ears. "Since there's nowhere to practice and they won't let us go elsewhere for it." Celadion moves across the room, just a short distance to where Riorde is reading. His head tips and he looks over at the youngsters having fun with the 'old fashioned' way of making the fishing line. It might be noted that one or two weyr-children have been smuggled into the brood as well. "There is plenty of fishing to be had at the lake. It's good for them to remember our ways. Where we are from. We can't have them forget." "There's fish in the lake?" Riorde's eyebrows lift in surprise as she tilts her chin up to meet Celadion's gaze. "I suppose I thought they only came from the sea." Her grumpy tone breaks enough to let her sound rueful. She gestures with one of her hands while the other holds down the pages and her place. "I didn't mean we should forget. Just, you know, can't very well cast a line when we're stuck in here, can we." Celadion's smiles are rare these days, but one flutters over his features now at the remark about fishing, "I have been bringing in a small catch. They are different fish of course." Puzzlement wars with the smile, making it hitch slightly in one cheek, "I don't know what you mean. No one has stopped me from fishing the lake. Of course we're tied here like prisoners--I would rather be sea-side or back on our island but...." His shoulders roll with a sort of discomfort at the reminder of being held captive. Lifted towards the light and with her hair falling back, Riorde's features have the reddened touch of sunburn - nothing she could ever gain at winter in the Reaches. She's been mum about where she's got it, but it's not that hard to figure out that it certainly wasn't at the Weyr. "I just never thought to try fishing in it. Thought it'd be like a spring - deep, fresh water but empty." No smiles from Riorde, only dark scowls and dissatisfaction. "For our own good," she relates with a vicious edge. "Like we can't determine our own good for ourselves." The change in coloring had gone unnoticed by Celadion until now. Being closer to the younger exile, he can actually see the change that the sun has done to her skin. More puzzlement over this and little censoring not to ask, "What happened to your face? It looks like you've been out gardening in summertime. And yet, it's not summer, nor do I think you garden much here. What's going on?" Piecing her broodiness alongside the new coloring, it's enough to draw the question out. "I was out gardening in the summertime," Riorde deadpans, holding a straight expression against her inclination to smirk. She runs with it further to explain her bad mood. "You know I hate gardening." To change the subject, she gestures towards the youth Celadion's been teaching. "Give me a bit? Haven't made one in far too long." There's a frown for the deception, "That doesn't make any sense. Really, what have you been up to?" Press-press. Waiting a moment longer, watching her to see if she'll bend and give some history to what happened, Celadion doesn't respond right away to the request. "Hhhmm? Oh, certainly." At the pouch at his hip he draws out some of the familiar reeds, though these are not the island sort but stuff found lake-ward here at the weyr. Riorde can be stubborn when it suits her and now stares silently up at Celadion in an effort to out-wait him. She looks satisfied when he pulls out reeds for her to play with, and she lets her book fall shut as she reaches to take them. "Thanks." Her nimble fingers go to work. "I know we haven't always been friends," she says then, a phrase that sounds like the start to something more. Except she doesn't go on. A look drifts over to those at the cot but none of them require Celadion's attention. So his gaze drifts back to Riorde, not impressed at her lack of 'sharing' but shelving being nosey about it. He draws out a length of reed himself but only gets as far as measuring it out before her comment makes him look at her in question, "Hmm....I guess we haven't." Watching her in silence, apparently he's waiting for her to continue her thought. A long silence passes between them while Riorde twists and ties, fraying the ends until she's created a suitable lure. "There." She puts it on the cot just in front of her. "One more for the next time you go fishing." She sets to work on a second, glancing at Celadion in the meantime as she completes her thought. "I heard that you were going to marry Kima. I never told you sorry." The offered lure is looked at and then taken up at last with a small smile of thanks. "You make quick work of them." Cela's complement is quiet as he admires her work and then tucks it aside within the pouch. Her comment makes him nearly drop the length of twine he's toying with and his head comes up, his expression guarded. "I...yes. I had thoughts that it might be a good match. Thank you." He is about to let that be the end of his comment but he has to ask, "Do you think she would have been happy?" Knowing that he's not Riorde's favorite person, she might be honest. The bad mood doesn't run so deep that Riorde can't give Celadion a quick smile for his compliment. Then she looks down again, allowing him his privacy as she brings up the match that almost was. Riorde's fingers slow and then still, and when she looks up again, she considers him frankly. "We weren't friends like we were when we were younger. But yes, I expect she would've been." If she's lying, at least she does it well. The lie, if it is that, is one of mercy for the young man. Celadion's head tips away so she can't see the raw expression that's too close to the heart to cover up with a mask. Long fingers pull the threads together a little too firmly, "It seems like a very long time ago." There's a depth of sorrow in that statement that is more than just the loss of the young lady. "I think my bloodline will die with me." Riorde studiously looks at the reed she's twisting into a lure, working slower this time. "It does," she agrees quietly. His second statement draws her regard, quick and fleeting at first to make sure she's not intruding merely by looking at him. "Don't say that," she says, firm and a little fierce. "Just because we've left, doesn't mean we just all fade away. And you're -- there's time." Celadion makes a short, disgusted sound under his breath, a faint but distinct noise. That's the only sound for awhile as he finishes his lure and makes a few last knots in the trailing edges of it. "Perhaps you're right. Although I think they'll need to neuter me before I settle down here and what sort of children could I father then?" He glances over at the children and their work, "Perhaps fostering the offspring of our dead kinfolk will have to be enough for me. They don't pair up the way we did back home. There is no family here." Riorde laughs outright, the hard coarse sound spilling out of her throat before she thinks to hold it back in case Celadion thinks her tactless. "Maybe Evali'll do it if you ask her nicely." She follows the direction of his gaze back towards the children and looks between them and Celadion. "Are you fostering /all/ of them?" The openness brought with laughter is lost as she considers what he says towards the end, looking down at the lure again with a frown. "No, not the way we did," she murmurs; the words sound like agreement, but there is something else besides. Looking up, she asserts, "We're each other's family now." Celadion's lips purse and then form a nasty smirk for that laugh, "No, I think I'll have some mainlander so it with rusty scissors or something. I'm sure they will get their jollies off on it. They can jar them up and display them...Exile balls, to prove we are good and tame. Then they might allow us to roam free without fear of what we might do. Pollute their bloodlines with our taint." Yes, that is one thing he's assuming--the reason behind their lockdown. As for the children he would foster, there's a small shake of his head, "I would like to take as many as they'd let me, but it's fairly clear they are not going to allow us to foster our own--no matter how we might beg for it. We are at their 'mercy'." Riorde doesn't shrink from the crude words and the coarse picture it conjures. Instead her own smirk mirrors Celadion's. "I don't think they're worried about bloodlines." Her relatively innocuous comment has an edge to it. She tosses out the second lure to join the first. "Well, if they won't let you foster, keep doing what you're doing," she endorses Celadion and his instruction. "They shouldn't forget." His finished lure joins hers inside the pack. "Riorde? Where do you stand in your feelings for this place? These mainlanders. Are you happy here with this new life? At first I thought you were and now you seem...disheartened." He gives the other matter a rest, the answer will only come as time unfolds. There's a nod about the teaching of the children, as limited as it might be for now. Riorde doesn't answer at first. With a lingering frown, she pulls herself up to sitting, swinging her legs off her cot. "It's too simple to say that everything here is either good or bad," she says in the way of an equivocal answer, her gaze penetrating in its solemnity as she finds her feet. "There are things here that I couldn't have on our islands. That I wouldn't want to give up without a fight. But there are things that they don't want to give us still." From the set of her jaw, she looks like she intends to fight back. "I don't understand. What here could you possibly want to fight for?" Celadion utters a little snort of laughter, "Apparently I am missing out on the bright side of things here." Riorde's answer is a mysterious little smile and, flippantly, "Klah." She might as well not answer at all. "Perhaps I'll get some now." She picks her book up off her bed and goes out to wander barefooted through the caverns. Celadion rolls his eyes, "Disgusting. A bunch of weyr-lovers....the whole lot of them..." Sad and disapointed, he watches Riorde leave, one less person to have for his cause. |
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