Logs:A Disagreeable Sort
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| RL Date: 28 September, 2009 |
| Who: Kash, Xhonya |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Nakasha encounters Xhonya-the-soapmaker, and does not make a friend. |
| When: Day 14, Month 11, Turn 20 (Interval 10) |
| t's not raining, that's something at least. It is, however, downright cold outside, at least by one Neratian's standards. That's probably why Xhonya has taken up residence here in the commons to do a little light work, up at the counter built into the wall. Her legs swing boredly from the stool she's perched on, a selection of jars, vials, glass bottles and baskets spread out all around her on a significant portion of the space. There's a whole stack of little papers, too, pushed off to the side, and it's at one of these that the soap maker now peers, eyes squinted while she tries to make out her own bad handwriting. Scrubbed and tubbed, short-cropped curly hair hanging at her neck in limp, but briefly tidy, coils, Nakasha makes her way across the caverns at a lazy pace, indulgently unoccupied despite the hour of the afternoon. Her passage ultimately takes her past Xhonya and her industry, and it's evidently interesting enough that the girl lingers, leaning up against the wall to take a proper gander. "/What/ exactly is it that you're making, then? All that stuff you've got there." Hi. Xhonya turns her body at the waist to look Nakasha up and down in full at that question, her eyebrows raising briefly beneath the sweep of her bangs. "Ahh," decides the brunette, taking in the younger girl's measure at last and offering her a grin. "I'm filling orders." The paper in her hand is flashed, revealing it to be an order chit. She points to all the things sprawled around her and names casually, "Bar soap, body wash, shaving soap, shampoo, oils... I think this whole supply shortage has been a boon in a way, I've expanded my line." Unfortunately for the new girl, if you get Xhonya talking about soap, she's unlikely to stop. Wait for it, wait for it... the cogs in Nakasha's mind are obviously working, albeit not very fast; it takes her a few moments before, finally, and rather stupidly, she says, "/Soap/. That's not like any soap /I've/ ever seen before... Suppose that makes me enormously country cousin, or is this unusual even for here?" Soap is perhaps a disappointment, compared to all the weird and wonderful things it /could/ have been, but Nakasha's smile is warm enough despite this. "People keep talking about supplies, where are all the supplies, then?" Xhonya is, alas, no apothocary or super-secret poison assassin. Soap, very boring -- but don't let her hear you say that. "It's considered a bit of a luxury, yes. That's probably why I get plenty of orders for it." Turning back to her work and reading the names off vials she finds the one she wants and places it with its chit. "Sit down," she suggests, motioning with one hand gracefully towards the stool on her side. "I assume the supplies have been lost in transit, in some way or another, or just never sent. I imagine if we actually knew where they were, we'd have them, hm?" "Because... it's a luxury? And people around here want luxuries?" Nakasha teases this out with a furrowed brow, but accepts the suggested seat without further comment, swinging her legs into place in a most unladylike fashion, her long skirt the only thing protecting the world from a view of her underwear. Of the last comment, "/That/ is not what I meant. I'm new, and people keep complaining about supplies that aren't here, but no one bothers to mention anything more than that. Where from? What /do/ we know?" "Everyone wants luxuries," responds the little soap maker with an air of smugness about that fact. "No, I suppose it isn't what you meant at all." Her hands stay busy while her mouth guides the conversation around the questions posed. "Let me see -- now I'm hardly the one to ask for the most recent discoveries about all of this, being as I am rather new myself, or as new as three months can make a girl at the Weyr. I know that the tithe that came from Ruatha River came in light and that Fort Sea covered what was missing in addition to their own tithe. I know that Fort Sea has had a nasty little history with the Weyr as far as withholding things in the past. I know that anything that we order that doesn't come out of the tithes seems to simply never come and the Crafters are ready to lynch somebody -- don't go into the Workroom, darling, if you can avoid it. Your head will pound for days." Another order gets set aside and her hand pauses over the next paper. "Well, you'll find out plenty on your own, as well, I'm sure." Nakasha, despite herself, nods along: everyone /does/ want luxuries, even a girl with hacked off hair and utterly unflattering clothes on. Her interest is evident as she listens, lips pursing in as she hears it all; at the end of it all, she frowns. "Don't go into the workroom. Right. I don't think I had any particular desire to do so, anyway - but I'll remember that. The whole business sounds shady, anyway, definitely shady. High Reaches had a problem with tithes a while back, but that was different... /their/ holds weren't awful about it." Not them! Xhonya chuckles and looks up from her work to study Nakasha once more, tipping her chin into the palm of her hand. "You should go see Tobas. He could do something nice for your hair there, soften it up a little." Ever the one to be obsessed with hair, this one. "Did they? I hadn't heard. I'm from the east, we don't get much news on anything happening anywhere but there, you know." A shadow falls over Nakasha's expression at mention of doing something about her hair. Quietly, and with a firm shake of her head, she tells the soapmaker, "I couldn't. It--" But whatever her reason is, she doesn't expand on it, allowing herself a moment's pause only, before she pushes her smile back on, and tells Xhonya with great enthusiasm, "Oh, yes. It was traders! They kept stealing things, and it was awful. But my brother - he's the Weyrleader of High Reaches - he stopped them. And they even /hung/ the ringleader, though that's--" She breaks off, makes a face. "Less cool." Xhonya lifts an eyebrow at Nakasha's dismissal of a trim and shrugs her shoulders with a sigh. What is with these young girls and their insistance on bad hair? Xhonya flicks her own long hair back off her shoulder thoughtlessly and considers this new information. "Interesting. Traders? I find it hard to consider traders as theives. But I take your word on that. Your brother is the Weyrleader? That's very interesting." Though she sounds cheerful, she doesn't actually sound interested in Nakasha's familial bonds. Her nose wrinkles at the hanging, though, without any comment made there. Nakasha seems quite content to stare Xhonya's eyebrow lift down, defiant in that way that some teenage girls are so naturally good at. "Think /most/ traders are good, it was just these ones, who hated High Reaches and everything it stood for," Nakasha explains, sounding thoughtful. "That's what Kas said, anyway. Yes," she continues, sounding proud. "He's the Weyrleader. Has been for over a turn, now." She lifts a hand, fingering the knot on her shoulder thoughtfully. "Hope I'm going to be a dragonrider, just like him." Xhonya is perhaps only a few months older than Nakasha and thus immune to stare-downs. Or maybe it's just her happy-go-lucky nature that makes her unaffected. Either way, she continues to smile pleasantly and turns back to her work. "I traveled with the traders up here from my home. Can't imagine them hating anyone, you know. Not their way. Perhaps your brother mistold you something. Perhaps it was only people /pretending/ to be traders." That seems to satisfy her enough to move a glance at the girl's knot. "I suppose a good luck would be appropriate, then. Have you been to see the eggs yet?" "Pretty sure there are a whole bunch of different groups of traders. So... your traders, they were okay. But the ones up at High Reaches? They definitely weren't." There's a stubborn tilt to Nakasha's chin, now, as she adds, "He wouldn't misstell me. Besides, everyone heard about it, up north." Despite this stubbornness, she greets the reaction to her knot with evident pleasure, that brilliant smile blossoming up again. "Thank you; I'm awful excited. Mother never let me go to the weyr even to visit, and now... no, not yet. I'm almost scared to, you know? But I should. Mikhuth was lovely, and they're his eggs and all." Xhonya lets her hair fall in a little barrier between them so Nakasha can't see her eyes rolling, much too nice to ever give away that she's not, well, nice. "They're pretty, there's fourteen of them. Elaruth is a really nice dragon, too." She hesitates over a vial and offers it over. "Smell this? Tell me what you think." "Cadejoth's clutch had sixteen," reports Nakasha, as though this makes Fort's clutch highly inferior, except that she looks so excited and pleased that it surely can't be taken /too/ seriously. "But suppose I should like this clutch better, seeing as I'm here, and all, /for/ it." Curiously, she reaches for the vial, bring it up to her nose for a sniff. "What is it? It's nice, though, whatever it is." Xhonya's fingers twitch in annoyance. "Perhaps --" she says slowly, her tone polite even if her words aren't. "-- you should have gone and stood for your brother's clutch, if High Reaches is so much more superior to Fort in every way." Business is safer though and so she brushes her hair out of her way again with her fingertips and replies, "Cucumber extract and verbena. It's an experiment. I'm glad you like it. I'm trying to find more..masculine scents for the shaving lathers and whatnot." Nakasha goes pink. "I didn't mean it like /that/," she insists, looking pained. "Truly I didn't. It's just-- one has to be /proud/ of their siblings, doesn't one? I've only been here three days... I'm /excited/, but how can I be instantly proud?" Her expression has fallen, her eyes grazing the ground. "I'm sorry." Biting her lip, and sounding more cautious now, as she speaks, she adds, "Cucumber? Truly? It's very fresh. Clean." Xhonya hums acknowledgement. "I would say that it shouldn't be too hard to be proud to be standing for this clutch, since it's the one you got Searched for, and the one your potential dragon might come out of, yes? Just a thought." She brushes the apology aside casually and gives Nakasha a reassuring smile. "No need to be sorry, I am just...very fond of Elaruth and her rider. She was the first dragon I ever met, you see... and D'kai is a very fun person as well." Taking back the vial she caps it and says, "That's sort of what the cucumber's for, actually." Nakasha's expression takes in a mulishness that is unbecoming. "It's not an insult to Elaruth, or her rider, or Mikhuth or his, truly. I--" she sighs, struggles to find some other way of expressing herself, then gives up except to say, "I'm honoured to be here, and proud of that. The clutch, the weyr? Give me a little time." Her hand drops back towards her lap as she adds, "Suppose that makes sense. The cucumber, I mean. Never thought of it as a scent, though." Xhonya decides to let Nakasha off the hook on the whole thing and focuses instead on the part of the conversation that won't bugger them both. "Well, you can mostly get a scent out of anything if you're clever about it. There's a few things that you can't -- berries, for example, just sort of mush and rot when you try to heat them up. But anything oily? Coconuts, most plants, flowers, that sort of thing, those are really good for getting the scent out of." Relief all round; better not to get into an argument. Nakasha's expression softens, and then takes on a more curious cant, her head tilted to the side as she bites at her lip thoughtfully. "Right. Know my mother used to scent things with rose, sometime, and other things. Though - it all took more time than we often had to spare, so it wasn't that often. How come you got into all of this? It's kind of neat." Xhonya nods her head emphatically over the rose thing. "Rose is one of the easiest, or lavendar. You don't even have to break it down to get the scent out, you could just throw the petals into something and there you go." Reaching her last chit she places what it calls for with it and admires her nice tidy line of orders to be packed up and delivered and then begins to put the extras off to the side in a neat stack. "My grandmother taught it to me. I've never done anything else, /she/ never did anything else and I imagine her mother never did anything else before her. It's sort of an obscure craft now days I think, with soapsand so easily available, nobody really bothers. But I like what I do, so I do it." "And, as we said before... everyone likes their luxuries." Nakasha comes to this conclusion with a light smile, pressing her hands into her lap as she leans forward to get a better look at the row of orders. "Very nice." A beat, and then she adds, "Did I even introduce myself? Kash. Formerly of the Tillek area, and now of here." Xhonya tips her head the other girl's way and drops her a cheerful wink. "I do try, of course. It makes it easier, when one is tidy." It's probably a motto that follows her through life, if one can believe the way she usually looks(And worse if they see her pristine work and living space). "I'm Xhonya, it's nice to meet you, Kash -- though I feel silly saying so when we've been sitting here talking so long already!" Nakasha gives her own dress, which is probably not as clean as it could be, a guilty glance, though she says lightly enough, "Suppose it does." More bright is her added, "Xhonya! Nice name. Right. Does seem silly, but better late than never, eh? Probably a good lesson to introduce one's self earlier. Life lesson, all that." A snicker follows Nakasha's bit about life lessons and Xhonya inclines her head in agreement. "Between you and I, I'm terrible about introducing myself, and half the time on purpose. I don't like giving more out to people than they've given to me, you know? Fair knowledge trade." And unfair if she can manage to suck more out of them than she gives away. Beat. "On /purpose/." Nakasha sounds outright surprised by that, leaning forward while supporting herself with one hand on either upper thigh. "You subscribe to the whole knowledge is power thing do you, then?" Her head shakes. "Remind me not to share too much with you!" You know, more than she already has. Xhonya laughs, tipping her head back so that the sound spills from here throat gleefully. "Oh but my dear, knowledge /is/ power, and you're always saying something, didn't you know?" A long-fingered hand indicates the way she sits, "See that? That tells me you aren't open to influence or suggestion, you've closed your body off and in doing so, close your mind. On the other hand, if you were to, say, fold an arm over your lap, you'd be expressing interest. It's all very delicate, what the body says when the mouth says nothing." She taps a fingertip to the corner of one eye. "I do a lot of people watching." Nakasha stiffens visibly as Xhonya speaks, brows disappearing above her hairline in surprise, whilst the mulish draw of her lips makes a comeback. Defensively, she says, "Can't see that you could possibly be able to read that much into what I'm doing." Beat. "Suppose you think you know people really well. All their secrets, their business." Xhonya wiggles her fingers at Kash and shakes her head. "My, but you're a disagreeable sort. Are you such a mule for your friends or do you save this for strangers only?" And as if to signal that she's more or less tired of dealing with Nakasha's quick-to-correct attitude she begins gathering up her things. "Do you go out of your way to judge people all the time, or just when the wind is blowing in the right direction?" counters Nakasha, though there's no malice to her tone. "Not trying to be disagreeable. Just don't really like being told by someone who barely knows me what and who I am." Rather than be petty or throw down an insult like she could, Xhonya simply gives Kash a flat stare that says the conversation was better off dead two seconds ago. "And I do not like being called judgemental by someone who obviously thinks herself in high regard because her brother won a flight." Basket packed up nicely she scoops it off the counter and stalks off before poor Nakasha can reply to her unusual spate of snippiness. Nakasha's jaw drops open. "I do--" she begins, though it's obvious a lost cause. Sighing, she shuts her eyes, shakes her head, and murmurs to herself, "Good going, Kash. Making enemies already, great." |
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