Logs:Hush
| |
|---|
| |
| RL Date: 7 August, 2015 |
| Who: N'rov, Lilah |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: An on-edge Lilah doesn't handle N'rov well. |
| Where: Nightheart, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 22, Month 6, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
  |
| Even the fire in the hearth here sleeps, banked against the warmth of summer even as evening falls so that no drudge need waste their night checking on it. It is enough to keep the klah hot for those that might need it, but the only one currently enjoying it so late (or early?) is one exhausted looking goldrider, curled up in a chair with a blanket and a sheet of hide that holds only her own writing. It's been forgotten, though, or abandoned, as she stares into the embers of the fire with her fingers curled around a mug of klah. Dark bruises of sleeplessness lie under dark eyes, while thoughts churn restlessly in Lilah's expression, nothing catching long enough to show exactly what the Weyrwoman may be thinking. Into this darkly contemplative scene comes a bronzerider, moreover, one who's dripping; that fine fawn shirt's plastered to his skin, short dark curls flattened to his head, gray eyes searching out a towel and callused hand starting to find it more by habit than real sight. It takes the movement a while to register with the Weyrwoman; if it were a less innocuous movement, she'd likely never catch it in time. When she does and the weight of her dark gaze lifts to find N'rov, it's with a flash of irritation for his mere presence, or maybe that he's wet, or perhaps some trailing thought she was considering. Never the less, there is a quiet snap from Lilah as she questions, "Do you have to do that here?" Here, where they set out towels and klah for such an occasion. She snaps, he turns, both of them abrupt. Still looking at her, he reaches up to wind the towel around his head like a turban, efficiently tucking in the end before claiming a handful more towels. One, N'rov drapes about his shoulders. The second, still-folded, turns out to be for his knees just as soon as he's walked over and plopped it on the floor in front of her chair. "Mighty Weyrwoman," is his plea. "Have mercy." "Stop that," is further annoyed for his antics tonight, rather than amused. Lilah's fingers snatch at the hide in her lap, away from eyes, and it is only another moment before she sets down her klah so that she can begin folding the sheet in on itself sharply. She adds, "Or I won't have mercy. I'll send you away as well." Those last words hold an edge, a cut made at her own expense. Such fervency gets N'rov's interested gaze; rather than being dissuaded, he tracks where that hide winds up going. He does have the minute amount of sense required to shift his feet, ready to crouch. "'Send me away,'" he half-repeats, not-quite-questions. Maybe he missed something. Maybe he wants to be tossed into a briar patch. The sheet gets tucked away next to Lilah's breast, underneath the soft, worn cotton of grey that marks her old uniform. Whatever has the goldrider on edge this evening doesn't find her focusing on those repeated words, her fingers only lifting in a slight wave of dismissal only after that hide is safely away. Instead, she only murmurs, "I've only ever done anything because it's good for the Weyr." Is that an answer for him? Towel-clad, N'rov looks up at Lilah, gray eyes dark mirrors that reflect only what she reflects of the fire. An escaped droplet of water beads on his forehead; it mirrors her too. "You look tired," he finally, quietly says. Lilah doesn't admit to that weakness, her fingers only raking sharply through mussed, red-gold curls as she looks quickly away towards that fire. There is the slightest tremble of her lips before they tighten into a line, a certain glossiness to eyes before it is blinked away. "I'm fine," she finally says. "I'm not the one staying out all night, Faranth knows where, and letting myself get drowned and catching a cold." "Achoo." Only N'rov says it rather than fake-sneezing it on Lilah's knee the way he ordinarily might. The way he earlier might. Vhaeryth's a glint of doubled moons off metal, reflecting that troubled image of her to Eliyaveith should the young queen be awake to listen. Quietly, "It was a good drowning. I liked it. Are you warm enough?" Eliyaveith is awake, and tired. There's a ghost of warmth against her nephew's mind, her own buried worried acknowledging and not surprised by the troubled image. "I won't ask, then," says Lilah dryly for his quietness, only shaking her head for his question. It doesn't seem to be an answer, though, more than a gesture. "Whatever you were out doing." Warmth finds him, and then a splash of energy finds her: starshine and saltwater and swimming-like-flying. Vhaeryth has plenty to share with her. "Eliyaveith could tell you," N'rov says, switching easily to that crouch and up from there, reaching not to where the hide had disappeared but for her mug. "She might not even ask you to ask. Although I think Vhaeryth left out the screeching." "I don't care," enunciates Lilah carefully, each syllable dropped on its own measured, prolonged beat as she watches N'rov first rise and then reach for her klah. The annoyance only sharpens further, almost at the edge of something else, between N'rov's words and Eliyaveith's stirring presence. And with that, the warm of the queen withdraws quickly from Vhaeryth, going cold for once as she escapes behind steel. And she reaches to take her mug back as she adds: "Just go away, N'rov. I can't deal with you tonight, with all of your--." That has him looking askance at her, even as he's rising with mug in hand: not her cold but Eliyaveith's. N'rov does go away, but it's just far enough to give her cold mug a chary sip and, based on the results, summarily discard it in favor of fresh. Starting to sweten it, "I'll hush." Lilah doesn't just push away her blanket and rise. She doesn't even pursue the mug he has taken from her, for all that the weight of her gaze on him echoes a disbelief for that promise. But she is the first to fall to silence, almost a challenge for him to do the same where she doesn't think he will. The little spoon tinkles against the mug as it goes around and and around; finally satisfied, N'rov pours a second and tinkers with it, before returning to offer hers over. With a lifted brow, no less. Lilah waves it off rather than accepting it, then seemingly changes her mind again to reach for it. She doesn't break the silence to offer a thank you, though, as she lifts the klah to her lips. Instead, her gaze drifts back to the fire, and it certainly seems like she manages to forget N'rov's presence for a moment. There's a clammy sound of fabric against fabric, followed by the somewhat squeaky sound of metal unscrewing, and a gurgle-splash. N'rov's been one-handedly employing his hip flask, not heavily; now he waves it unhurriedly between her and the light a time or two, in case she shows signs of wanting it too. "Shells, can you just--," starts Lilah after the flash of the flask has caught her attention back, but she only ends up breathing out the end of her sentence in a sigh. She waves off the offer, instead drawing her blanket for a moment against her stomach before pushing it away and off her so that she can stand. "You win. I am going to my weyr." There's the faint squeak again, just before N'rov stashes it. He doesn't gloat at her; he just drinks and waits, in no hurry here either, for her to make good on her words. He doesn't fold the blanket; he doesn't pick up the kneeling-towel. Neither does Lilah, for either of those. Surely someone will, even if neither of them don't. But this evening, she only takes her klah with her and walks away from any of the mess left there, leaving nothing else behind. Does he walk behind her? His footsteps must be very quiet, if so. Unless, was that a drip? Lilah doesn't look back, not from the caverns across the bowl towards her weyr--. She will when she starts mounting the stairs that lead up to her ledge, whether he's still there or not, but perhaps expecting the latter. When she's all but safely home, when she looks back: there's movement in the scant moonlight, a salute, before the bronzerider fades silently back. |
Leave A Comment