Logs:Too Much, Not Enough
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| RL Date: 1 July, 2015 |
| Who: Dee, Hattie, Elaruth, Taeliyth |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Hattie and Elaruth offer Dee and Taelyith their experience. |
| Where: Southern Bowl, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 24, Month 2, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
| OOC Notes: Back-dated. |
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>---< Southern Bowl, Fort Weyr(#675RJLs$) >----------------------------------< This end of the Bowl is grassy and serene, the sparkling blue beyond the Lake Shore a draw for residents, riders, and dragons alike. An earthslide has revealed a dramatic view of the mountain slopes beyond the circle of the Weyr, past the lake, where a faint misty haze often shimmers above the small Bowl Falls. The Feeding Grounds are fenced off to on the northeastern end of the lake, just a short walk from the weyrling barracks, the hot springs, and infirmary. It's almost evening when Elaruth's gentle touch reaches tentatively towards Taeliyth, her mind quieted to soft, pale sunshine and the light rustle of reeds nudged by fair winds. « Will it be better tonight? » she questions, leaving the what and who of her query for the younger gold to interpret. She's not so far from the barracks, settled at the shore of the lake, her rider safe in the circle of her forearms. Taeliyth answers her granddam's pale sunshine with a flicker of the same, dappling through the canopy of the forest that is oft part of her mindscape. As the light filters through, it becomes muted. The gold considers. She could lie, but now she chooses (apparent) truth: « No. But the dreams may not come. They don't always. » Not every night. The baby gold shifts from where she's settled in the sun room, watching the stars peek into being, her rider there but uncomfortably separate. Without a word to the girl, the gold moves toward the classroom and further beyond to the complex, leaving a confused brunette to trail her as she moves to see actual stars, moves to be closer to the dragon who speaks. Elaruth observes what she can see of Taeliyth's progress more intently than Hattie does, or perhaps it's that the queen's sight is, for the moment, even in low light, just about enough for them both to see by, for while the pale gold observes from the moment the smaller one is in sight, the weyrwoman doesn't shift in the circle of those protective arms. Dark remains snuggled against light, rider at ease against gold hide. « And if they do? What will you do? » Elaruth enquires, just as she lowers her head to make Taeliyth her focus, as if she must do so to better keep the rest of the world out. They aren't coming so far as the lake. Just being in the same chill, seeing the same stars is enough togetherness for her. Dee's arms curl around herself, and there's a murmur that might be heard through the dragon about the temperature. Southerners. Taeliyth ignores it. « I will wake, » she answers the older gold practically, with just a twinge of the pithy sass she's most inclined toward. « What should I do? » is inquired perhaps just as much from actual curiosity as to avoid answering the question herself. « Think first of why she wakes, and why you do, » Elaruth suggests, and while this could easily be simple theory, something in the nature of her response draws her attention back to her rider, one shoulder nuzzled at while Hattie turns a little to conceal her face against her queen. They remain so for a matter of seconds, then the goldrider begins to get to her feet, leaning heavily against her lifemate until she's upright and balanced. « And remember that you chose her for your own reasons. She is yours to protect and take care of. » Carefully, Elaruth lifts from the sand beneath her and stretches, sure to keep Hattie at her shoulder when the two begin to slowly cross the bowl and move towards Taeliyth and her rider. « She wakes because she is afraid. » That is simple and fairly nondescript of the nature of Dee's reaction. Taeliyth regards her rider, her rider who looks back, uncertain. Is Dee supposed to do or say something here? She clearly doesn't know and the interaction feels unnatural, to both, that much bleeds from Taeliyth's attention on the girl before she refocuses. « She takes a lot of work, » is firmly stated, « I could have chosen better. » This is a grumbled complaint, but beneath it, if one squints a little, there's the tracings of love by one whose natural inclination is to keep herself apart. « That is a very unkind thing to say about the one that you did choose. » The shallow waters of Elaruth's mind turn brackish with disapproval, salt and silt rising to taint what was, at its surface, clear. « If you could have, then you should have. But you did not, and you cannot. And now, she is yours. » Maybe her distaste for Taeliyth's assessment is what keeps her from getting too near, at least half a dragonlength kept between them when she finally stops and settles back down. « If you insist on letting her feel that you do not want her, I highly doubt she will ever be what you wish. » Elaruth's distaste is what sours Hattie's expression, her focus kept on her queen with a wary, darkly curious, emotion drifting from one to the other, or noted so for its rarity. "...Is there a reason that she..." Elaruth, for Hattie still stares at her, "is... upset for... you?" Which you - that's less easy to discern. The amount of rebuke Taeliyth lets be known is mild. « Perhaps I'm an unkind dragon. » It's not true but the tiny gold isn't willing to be chastened so easily. "I... don't know," is apologetic to Hattie in the wake of Dee's salute to the woman. She closes her eyes, face pinching a little in the effort to try to get a better answer for the Weyrwoman. "Sorry. She's very-- private," the girl tries to explain, but even that seems to fall short for she has a little shake of her head. Taeliyth's (unwise) stubbornness relents just slightly. « I don't let her feel anything. » On purpose. There's anger there, of a sort that Taeliyth is too young to know how to deal with - of a sort that some grown dragons may not, but she shuts it away, seals it tight, and just doesn't deal with it. « Have you always been in love with Hattie? » Besotted and otherwise adoring she must mean. « Maybe you are. » Elaruth doesn't argue with that, though it's plain from the mist that she casts to keep her feelings from Taeliyth that she doesn't want much part of those sorts of thoughts. She's saddened enough by that assessment, or its potential to be true, that she withdraws further, silence strung between them, until she tells her, « Then you cannot possibly hope to understand each other. » It's easier to provide an answer about her rider, certainty there, as well as staunch devotion. « I have always loved her, » is a murmur, accompanied by a flicker of too-bright sunshine. « She has not always... appreciated me. » That, she doesn't flinch from, accepting. Hattie acknowledges Dee's salute with a shallow bob of her head, and rather than continue down that line of questioning, she opts for another. "How are you?" Taeliyth doesn't argue the first either. Maybe she is. She considers the next, however. « How much of yourself do you share with Hattie? Was it different in the beginning? » Reasonably, she can't expect Elaruth to remember the beginning, but it seems important to her assessment to not only know the now of things, but whether or not there was an evolution over time. There's a touch of a petulance to her touch, if only briefly, but it goes unexplained. The girl's blush deepens at the question and her answer of "Cold," is obviously avoiding the answers that the rumors already say are worthy of the blush. Being without her coat though, Dee certainly offers a legitimate answer. "And I should be asking you. How are you? Everything's so different from before," before when Dee fetched and carried for Hattie for reasons still secret from the larger part of the Weyr. « In the beginning, everything and too much. » This answer arrives after a long pause, during which Hattie shoots a measured look up at Elaruth, though this is after she attempts to soften a flinch that has her flexing her shoulders like someone has pulled on an invisible thread. « Now, everything that we can manage, and sometimes not enough. » For the pale queen's liking, but this is only conveyed in the slightly darker taint to those last few words. « If I were to share everything and she were not to help me, I could hurt us both. If we were to share nothing, it would be worse than hurt. » And so a balancing act is required. "Yours is the life that has changed more drastically; you've no requirement to ask me. I made my choices." If Hattie is blunt, she's not sharp with it. "And you kept my secret, so thank you. We're to be of a rank, technically." If one ignores the turns served. Taeliyth's stillness, both physically and mentally, indicates her attention to her granddam's experience. « Perhaps in our beginning it's nothing and not enough. » She allows the possibility, turning her eyes toward her lifemate, thoughtful. « What is the most important thing that you share with her? » That may be a place for the young one to begin. Dee stares down at her boots in the face of Hattie's words. "I'm not sure that's-- I mean, maybe, but you've made big-- Big changes." She finishes the sentence lamely before looking up at the older woman. "I hope everything worked out as you'd hoped. "I... don't know that we'll ever really be of a rank." She worries her lower lip. "You want it, don't you?" She seems uncertain, "The rank?" It's easier to show, and Elaruth does this with the weight of knowing that her rider may not like it. She's not invasive about this sharing, nothing forcibly shoved at Taeliyth's mental presence for her to acknowledge, and, if anything, it all seems rather muted, yet at the top of her mind sits the feel of the air and its currents, the pressure in the skies, the ground beneath paws, the sound of the wind and other, more distant things, including the hum that is dragon voices indistinguishable from one another. Layer upon layer of input from too finely-tuned senses goes deeper and deeper, but intertwined with it all is her total devotion to the woman she chose - the wall that keeps things out and maintains order. She cannot help but share the one with the other, and maybe that is their problem. "At the moment, I don't want anything but a healthy baby, Elaruth and the rest of my family," Hattie replies, matter of fact, perhaps even too so, even as her shoulders hunch beneath the weight of what her queen is doing. "The rank is secondary. Maybe that will change sometime in the future if--" she glances away for a fraction of a second, but makes herself regroup and amend, "when the child is born." She tilts her head. "Do you? Want the rank." Taeliyth observes, take it in, files it, perhaps, if only for the duration that her memory will let her. The dragon contemplates what she's offered. « Hm, » is a more honest expression of her attempt to wrap her mind around that which is foreign. Does she understand? No. Is she trying to? Certainly. She looks to Dee again, Dee who is looking to Hattie. "No," is apologetic. There was never any other answer she could give. "But I--" She looks to Taeliyth and seems surprised that the gold is looking at her. Dee's hazel gaze darts away, back to Hattie to finish what she'd begun. "I'm trying to accept it. Maybe someday I'll want it." She chews her lower lip a moment before saying, "I hope you get all that you want." Another chew. "We are going to manage somehow," she feels the need to try to reassure. "It's not going to be easy." For anyone. "But it will be okay. I hope you don't feel, ever, that you can't focus on what's important--" a gesture to Hattie's midsection, "-because of me." It probably sounds odd now, but may make much more sense in the many tomorrows that will come. « Yes. » It's not so much acceptance of Taeliyth's attempt to understand, but more acknowledgement that full comprehension of it is difficult, yet, given Elaruth's calm delivery, the matter itself, and whether the younger gold understands, is not so troubling as to cause distress. "You're important too," Hattie states with that same, calm certainty. "And not because of her colour. You won't be the goldrider that I am, or that Lilah is, or that any of the other weyrwomen are. None of us are the same. We have a lot of the same burdens and we handle them differently." She shrugs one shoulder in a wry gesture. "I loved my job. Having the rank meant something different as time moved on; as I got older. What you make of it will be up to you. A lot of people are going to tell you that you're important for a lot of different reasons, but you need to believe it's so with or without Taeliyth and their reasons. And that's not the same as what you want being important." Given Taeliyth's age, she doesn't reach to make contact, but, just before she turns away, a gesture sweeps out that, without the distance between them, might have touched Dee's shoulder. It's a struggle to keep her feelings in check from the moment Hattie first speaks. Dee's lower lip gets sucked into her mouth and held there with increasing tension as the older woman goes on. She doesn't interrupt though her wide hazel eyes become increasingly glittering with the possibility of tears. She manages, just barely, to keep it together. "Thank you, ma'am," comes out strangled, but at least it comes out, along with, "Be well," before she turns to flee back toward the warmth of the weyrling complex, Taeliyth slower to follow but following nonetheless after her own farewell is made. |
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