Logs:Welcome, Harper Sparrow
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| RL Date: 23 March, 2015 |
| Who: Leova, Sparrow |
| Type: Log |
| What: Sparrow's mending. Leova's waiting. Sparrow talks about whys, and Leova makes her an offer. |
| Where: Resident Common Room, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 3, Month 5, Turn 37 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Anvori/Mentions, Varian/Mentions, Veylin/Mentions, Via/Mentions |
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| Outside, it feels rather as if the sky wants to open up, as though the clouds want to release all the rain they have. Inside, however, it's warm and dry and snug, and there is a mug of klah on the table next to Sparrow. The same greenrider who strode deeper into the residents' caverns a couple hours ago, a child on either hip and another trotting ahead of her, now retreats. Not that she doesn't glance back over her shoulder, but it's brief. There's less overt purpose to her now, more of a desultory wandering: a pause here, a crack of her knuckles there, a brief exchange with a pair of aunties that she abandons before it can get too far. Her next stop happens to be the chair by Sparrow's, upon whose back she leans rather than taking a proper seat. Then she cracks her knuckles. Again. Sparrow hasn't been watching the greenrider -- she's been clearly intent on making tiny repairs, raveling the edges of fabric back together -- but the way the woman wends her way around the room is not going entirely unnoticed. She's constantly straying into peripheral vision. A murmur here. An amble there. Sparrow's only reaction, thus far, has been to press her lips together even more firmly and continue with her work. Those first words gain a glance over, the first that actually holds rather than drifting over the girl and off again. "Mm. Wish you could." Her voice is smoky-low, its blurred accent hearkening to Tillek. "Not so much a matter of finding as waiting, is the thing." She doesn't pop her knuckles again, at least, though she leans more heavily into her forearms' brace, and the chair gives a faint creak of complaint. After a moment or five, "What're you working on?" The black-haired woman hesitates but nods politely at the comment. "Well. If I can do anything..." She reaches out and snags her mug, given that she seems to be taking a brief break, and takes a sip of what is now quite tepid klah. A faint grunt of annoyance, but no more than that, and she sets the mug aside once more. She lets the break carry on, though, rubbing her fingertips and her eyes, blinking rapidly before she finally takes up needle and garment again. The rider looks, of course. Leans, even, to look better. "Kind," she says. "Reckon she'll appreciate it." Then, with a glance to seamstress rather than project, "Or will she owe you her firstborn?" It comes with a smile tilting up one corner of her mouth. Favors. An amused smile curls up at the corner of Sparrow's mouth. "Kindness of my heart," she murmurs. "She's far from her old home, it's her favorite dress... and I admit, gratitude isn't the worst thing in the world. And I like to keep the old skills up. I used to be pretty good at this." "Old skills," comes with a question in its repetition, complete to a lift of the greenrider's brows. "My parents wanted me to be a Weaver." Sparrow's paying attention, but she's at least splitting it now between the mending and the chatting. "Like my mother. And my father. And my brothers and sisters. I wanted a bed to myself and to be able to read and learn things and know things. I had to fight to get into the Harper Hall. But I admit... the work feels like home. When I sit in the warmth of the fire and work and I hear the voices around me, it's... nice." "Can see that," the greenrider says after a moment, slow and thoughtful. "All those things... Where is home? And I'm Leova, by the by. Vrianth's." "Mmm? Oh! Sparrow. From Pars Hold. I haven't been here especially long." She's starting to relax slightly; most of the hard bit appears to have been done, which appears to be more like needle-weaving than ordinary stitching. She settles back in her chair and gestures to one of the others: "Make yourself comfortable, of course." After she takes another drink from her mug -- apparently cold is better than none at all -- she adds: "Not quite so many riders back home as here, of course." Leova nods by way of acknowledgment. Not that she sits. Leaning, still, "No, can't imagine so." It's pleasantly dry. "Very different, so far? From Hold and Hall. Other than the riders underfoot." "Pars Hold is small," Sparrow murmurs. There's only a few more whirls of her thread to go, and then she's running the end under the already-finished stitching, weaving the last thread in with all the others. The color is exact -- she must have used a thread pulled from the garment's hem to do the mending. "Smaller than the weyr, anyway. With herds and herds of llamas. Probably more llamas than people. Definitely more llama smell than people. And in a small place like that, with a big family like I have... I knew everyone, it seemed like, and everyone knew me. And everyone expected me to be just like my mother or my sisters or my aunt. So here, no one expects me to be anyone but me. Which is great. Really great. It's... just that I didn't realize how much that meant I was going to have to figure out who that was." As Leova listens, her hands gradually curve together, as though about some invisible mug of her own. "Mm." Sympathy's there. Empathy, even. "Hope it helped, at the Hall," she says eventually. "'Less they just expected you to be like the other 'prentices? Or so much work as makes it hard to figure out anything not on exams." "It helped," Sparrow admits. Her demeanor's easier now; the intensity's gone, and she's even smiling. "You have to specialize, to an extent. I mean, they expect you to learn at least a bit of everything, but when one senior apprentice can help you with harp technique and that one can help you with history or geography or even just teaching technique... in some ways, the work helps you carve out who you are. Or at least what people see." "So," Leova eyes her. No, squints at her. "What do you people see in you? People as know what to see, that is," friendly humor in her voice. While she's at it, she swaps eyes to squint at Sparrow with. There's almost a visible moment of restraint as Sparrow carefully doesn't ask 'why are you so interested?' It's in the look she gives Leora, though; a squint of her own, or at least a wrinkled brow. But it clears and she shrugs: "I'm not usually in the habit of making other people's conclusions for them," she replies. "I... question things. It's why I wanted to be a Harper. I want to know all the whys. I don't take anything for granted. But I suppose... I suppose the real reason I came to the weyr was to figure that out for myself. What I am, when I'm not defined by my family. I'm still working on it." Another quirk of the corner of her mouth: "Have you figured that out for yourself yet? Who you are?" That one-cornered smile reappears, deepens, at those whys. "Like to think I have," Leova says amiably. "Took me a while, but so it goes. Then Vrianth showed up, and had to do it all over again, and more." Her voice is rich with fondness, complicated and true. "Then again, some, though that's more like making room. Should last me a few more Turns." "What's that like?" The words are out of her mouth before she seems to realize it, and she can't drag them back, so Sparrow's forced to own them after a brief hesitation. "The connection between you two. I'm -- I'm sorry if it's prying." The quick lift of her hand, that's negation. "Don't mind," Leova says, settling back. "Just. Hard to describe, hm? Some aren't so close. Some closer, maybe." Her gaze goes briefly distant. "Like breathing her in, and not breathing air after. Took a right while to get adjusted, mind." Sparrow takes a short moment to spread out the dress and re-fold it, glancing over the table to ensure it's absolutely clean -- and even taking a moment to brush her hand over it -- before setting the folded fabric down. But then she's curled in the big chair, her mug in her hands, settling her elbow on one arm of it and observing Leova with interest. "I can't imagine that," she murmurs. "I expect it must have been. What was it like, that first time?" Leova watches those attentions, that care. But: "First time with Vrianth, you mean? Or something else." "Uh. With Vrianth, yes, I think. I don't... quite know how the whole process works. I mean," Sparrow adds, waving a hand a little, "of course I've read about it, but that's rather different to talking to someone who's been through it." "Hm." Leova straightens from the chair, standing squarer, but relaxed: parade rest. "That's easier. Get 'eligible young men and women,' set 'em up in simple clothes so's the hatchlings won't get distracted, put them out there as fodder and the dragons hatch and... pick. Not necessarily who you'd expect, neither. Ask our weyrlingmaster that. That sound like what you read?" "That sounds like what I've read, yes," Sparrow replies, "but it's not -- You're... connected. And sometimes I feel like my head is too small to fit me, let alone anyone else." "Can see that," Leova says. "Mind, you got access to their head, too, 'least I do. But ... like I said, a lot of adjusting. Didn't talk for the longest time." She lifts a shoulder, lets it fall. "How many Turns you got, by the by?" "Twenty-two. Halfway to twenty-three. It's different for everyone then, I guess? Does it... change you as a person? I suppose it's hard to know whether it changes them, given that you're together from their birth." Sparrow drains the rest of her mug before adding: "I shouldn't be interrogating you. You were waiting on someone? Something?" "Change, aye. Some more than others. Some say it just made them more 'them,' but don't know as they can look back and know it rightly, if they were truly changed." Leova contemplates her. Briefly, "Waiting on my weyrmate. He'll get here when he gets here, or else a message will." Less so, amber gaze continuing to encompass the younger woman, "You could Stand, you know." Blink. Blink-blink. Sparrow opens her mouth, closes it. "I... can't say I'd ever considered it," she replies. Carefully. "I know I'm of age for it." "Barely," Leova agrees. "'Round the age I was, come to that." "Barely," Sparrow agrees. It's the word she was thinking when she'd said she was of age. "Should I? I know that's probably an impossible question to answer." But she's asked it anyway. "No 'should' to it." There's that one-shouldered shrug again. Leova's gaze is intent. "Not like it's Pass, like we need all the bodies we can get to throw at Fall. And you'd have to be prepared to go to Igen if it came to that. But. Why don't you think on it, Sparrow. Talk to some riders, if you want. Some people as have to put up with riders. Think on what it might be, and what you'd regret. Don't want to? That's fine, more than fine, too." "Right. Right." Sparrow's brow wrinkles again as she looks into the greenrider's face, putting her head on one side. She gives her a long look before nodding again and finishing off her mug. "I'd -- yes, I'd better get the dress back," she says at last. "But it's been good talking to you, Leova. And I'll see you again, maybe." She moves to rise, gathering up her belongings and turning away, but she pauses and looks back. "No rush," Leova says, only to add more dryly, "Until it is. Good night to you." She waits until the younger woman's gone before making her way back into the caverns: if not to intercept, then to listen at the door. |
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