Logs:Fill In Bartender
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| RL Date: 22 February, 2009 |
| Who: Ananta, N'thei, Phara, Rimara |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| When: Day 7, Month 1, Turn 19 (Interval 10) |
| Snowasis, High Reaches Weyr(#555RJ) The Snowasis is rarely quiet, and even then, the high-ceilinged former weyr is kept from echoing by the fantastical booths tucked into its convoluted perimeter. The secluded seating spaces have been shaped from the truncated stalagmites that escaped the smoothing of the main floor, and are both softened and separated by colorful hangings that are thick and opaque enough to make each corner its own private nook. Some of the smaller stalactites still roam the ceiling, their jagged teeth tracing a bumpy, inverted spine to the hearth. There, a thick rug with a low klah table and comfortable armchairs and couches sit, their upholstery and cushions changed sporadically to match the season: bright, light colors in the summer, fresh greens and yellows in the spring, warm autumnals in fall, and clear, rich hues for winter. Small tables litter the rest of the cavern, enough to fit up to four people each, while stools stand along the smooth wooden bar behind which is the passthrough window to the kitchen. Glass-paneled cabinetry behind the bar provides a clear view of the available liquors, the many colors reflecting the soft light of glows tucked into strategic niches around the cavern. N'thei, in his element. The Snowasis teems with business at this time of day, most stools occupied, most tables alive with the sounds of card games and dice games and the murmurs of conversation that accompany slightly inebriated men trying to convince slightly intoxicated women to go off some place less crowded with them. Behind the bar, there's one merry-looking man filling up mugs of ale and lining them up before a cluster of loud-talking folks, and there's N'thei-- ostensibly teaching a pretty, young, curvaceous girl how to mix drinks. "--art form, love. Not just dumping shots into glasses, watch." Phara comes in with a big smile on her face, a flower tucked into her hair and wearing a pretty dress. She swings between tables, winking at people who look up to meet her gaze, smiling at the ones brave enough to speak, all the way to the bar. She leans against it not so far from N'thei, folding her arms under her ribcage to support herself and waiting for the 'keep to come around. "Blow on these for luck!" "I've got something she can blow on, though it ain't for luck!" Such are the clever remarks of the patrons that frequent the Snowasis, chasing Phara toward the bar. It's the eruption of raunchy laughter that has N'thei peering in that direction, an easy view once he straightens from hovering over his pretty barmaid. "And here you are, darling, your first customer," he directs, laying his hands on the girl's shoulders to steer her up toward where Phara's landed, the what-do-you-want dryness of the look on his face failing to mesh with the affectionate lilt with which he plies the barmaid. Phara isn't fussed by such raunchy remarks. She's probably got a few of her own in reply. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the barmaid and then N'thei. The girl gets a friendly little grin. N'thei is glanced at - and dismissed. "What's good?" she asks cheerfully, turning to lean her elbow on the bar and open her body up to them rather than hunching against the bar. "Weeeeelllll," drawls the girl thoughtfully, too damn pretty to be particularly bright to boot. She taps her pouty little lip with the end of her index finger, sends a questioning look up-and-back at her unlikely mentor, draws a deep breath to prepare herself for the list she's supposed to be able to recite by memory. Instead, she lowers her voice and says in a confiding little whisper, "Frankly, the ale's the best you'll find outside the crafthall, but it's not a very adventurous drink, is it? The spiked klah's a little less tame, maybe?" Behind her, N'thei realizes the dress, the flower, and his raised eyebrow questions the whole ensemble. Phara gives a tolerant sigh to the girl and her eyes rove away, up towards N'thei and an eyebrow lifts. "What's good?" she repeats. It's rude, she knows it, she doesn't care. His own look just gets a shrug and a jerk of the corner of her mouth in a smile. "Can't a girl dress up?" N'thei, lips lowered to a pretty ear, says something to the girl that alleviates any possibility she'll take offense to being ham-handedly ignored by the visitor. She bobbed cheerily off to dry mugs or wash tables or something useful but brainless. "Depends on why you're here," is the eventual answer, put while the man reaches behind him, a hand around the neck of two distinctly different bottles: whiskey and berry-flavored vodka. The one will get a person dead drunk; the other is for mixing into fluffier little drinks. Both bottles land on the bar in front of Phara, awaiting selection. Phara follows the retreat of the pretty little barmaid with her honey colored eyes. They return to N'thei's face, studying him. She leans back just a little, unconciously holding her breath. "Probably shouldn't get too drunk, not when I have drills at the buttcrack of dawn." Her mouth twists sourly. "Though I have a thing for whiskey." Her hand slides along the bar, exploring the texture of the wood, until her fingers touch the base of the vodka bottle. Derision turns up the corner of N'thei's lips at the corner on mention of dawn drills; that strikes him as funny, in a sad little way. His fingers play at the cork of the whiskey bottle, easy enough to wiggle loose, even while he fingertip-pushes the vodka toward Phara's reaching hand. "Which," he questions simply. They both look like expensive bottles as these things go, might as well lighten a Fortian's purse if she's going to visit a Reachian bar. Phara sighs in disgust and reaches out to grab the neck of the vodka bottle. "So. Still hate me?" she wonders, dragging it told her with one hand. And then. "Going to get me something to mix it with or should I just drink it straight?" Ah, but N'thei's too much of a tight-wad to let the bottle slip away entirely. His hand cuffs the bottom of it, chases it across the bar, keeps it from living his possession in the strictest sense of the term. Phara may have brought it toward herself, but he can still take it back, and that's what counts. The very idea that he hates her meets a bland look, eyebrows cocked just a touch; "Hate's a little harsh, don't you think. --Pay and I'll make you something." But buyer beware. Phara keeps dragging until it becomes evident he's not going to let go. She doesn't let go, though. She stares at him just as stubbornly, the bottle suspended between them. "Would rather know what you're making me before I pay for it, yeah? How'm I to know how much to pay, anyways." Her mouth quirks just a little, a repressed smile lingering. "Just keep putting marks on the bar till I tell you to stop." That's N'thei's version of a suggestion. Also-- "You haven't ordered anything, darling. Leaves me assuming that you don't care all that much what I make. So pay." Only takes a little effort to start pulling the bottle back his way, whether or not Phara remains attached to it. Phara's eyebrows draw together, staring potulantly up at his face. She huffs, taking a step into him when the bottle is drawn back, and continues to takes steps as long as he pulls. "You'll poison me." The brief silence that elapses is just long enough for the loudness of the bar to penetrate the conversation, such as it is; laughter, conversation, dice, all the buzzing sounds of a hopping bar. "Bad for business." His bottle, he'll keep right on pulling. Phara will keep right on walking. "I'm just a bluerider, a Telgari transfer one, at that. Fort probably won't hold it against you too much." Her head tips, her eyes lower to stare at his chest rather than his face, because she'd have to tilt her head up at an uncomfortable angle. "You think that's the business I'm concerned with?" As opposed to the dozens of people drinking all around them. Word gets out there's poison in the Snowasis and... say goodbye to the overflowing customers. N'thei reaches his free hand to the neck of the bottle, all set to pry it loose now that there's nowhere nearer for it to come. "Let go." Mouth pulled in a grimace, Phara turns her head to the side to glance around the room. "Oh, you'd give me something slow, of course. Something that'll take days to work. They'd never be able to trace it back to you, or the Snowasis." Her fingers open, palm spread out wide. "I'll go somewhere else, I don't trust you to tell me when to stop. Even if you aren't going to poison me, you'll bleed me til my purse is empty." The things N'thei does in this particular bar seldom raise a brow these days. If no one's getting shouted at-- if there's no staff getting fired, it's a pretty good day. "Be a helluva lot of effort for someone I hate so much, neh?" Head cocked, he retrieves the bottle and strolls around to the business side of the bar, puts it between him and the suspicious bluerider. "Probably," he answers honestly to Phara's last. "Came in to the wrong place if you want someone who'll coddle you, precious." Phara returns to leaning against the bar, her arms crossed over her ribs, her face intent. "Then I'd be forced to conclude that you liked me." She reaches one hand up, traces her lower lip thoughtfully. "Didn't we already conclude that I don't necessarily like being coddled? Honestly, N'thei, I'd avoid you if I didn't like you." N'thei could just set the record straight: like, hate, whatever. Instead, he taps the bar with his knuckles to remind the conversation of certain matters which must be attended before anything gets poured, namely the lightening of Phara's wallet. Fortunately, he can multi-task, and he puts the bottle away to dole out a pair of mugs to the /paying customer/ at the next stool down. "Good to know. It was keeping me up nights." Whether or not Phara liked him. A quarter mark drops onto the bar and Phara glances at N'thei. "I know what a drink oughta cost. You're not gouging me. You're a lousy bartender. You're supposed to give me a drink in /exchange/ for my money, not demand up front." She sinks down onto a stool and turns her back on him, watching the room at large. "Fill-in." Bartender. N'thei glances down at the actual bartender, who does a lot better with the clientele. Almost reflexively, he covers the mark with his fingertips and slides it across the bar, turns one-quarter to start putting together the drink. For all his people skills are lacking, he does know his way around a liquor cabinet. "Why don't you tell me more about what I'm supposed to do," he suggests drily, scraping ice into a glass-- at least the ice is cheap around here, not like Ista. Phara looks back at him now, fusses with her skirt and the top of her dress, straightening it out. Again, her eyebrows draw together. "Smiling helps. Ask me what I want. Recommend a drink if I don't know what I want. Schmooze. I order a drink, you tell me what I owe you, I fish around for the right amount while you make it. Mark and drink change hands. If you're sweet and tell me my dress is pretty and the drink is good, I give you a good tip." Ahhhh. That explains the misunderstanding; "Don't want a tip." The collected mark goes into the till. The drink-- a sugared glass, raspberry vodka, peach liqeur, berry juice, and cherry syrup, chilled but no ice left in the glass-- is pathetically girly, and that's likely the reason it gets such a disparaging look when he slides it toward Phara. The drink is good, but no comment from the man about the dress. Phara eyes the drink and drawls. "I want you to rip my head off and you slide me this?" She traces her finger around the lip of the glass and watches him. "It's cuz I'm wearing a skirt, isn't it?" She shakes her head gently and takes a drink. "Didn't ask for whiskey," N'thei points out with a shrug, runs a rag neatly along the edge of the bar where he'd been working to clear away a few grains of sugar, and leans on his hands in the clean wake. An aside, like this is news to him; "You're wearing a skirt?" On his toes a moment, he peers over the bar to get a glance down toward Phara's knees and such. Ah, so she is. Phara shrugs. "If I was going to have whiskey, I'd ask for a sour. Or shots. But I don't want to be too messed up to get back home safe. Bennath hates it when I get all... ossified." She licks her lips when he lifts up to see her legs. "I am," she confirms, as if it amuses her that he'd have to relook. "You already knew that, though. You gave me a funny look for it when I came in." She spins her glass idly between her fingers. "You're not like normal men, you know. Certainly not normal Weyrleaders." Did he? N'thei concedes the possibility over another heedless shrug. Having set up Phara with a bit of fruity fluff, suffering a snicker from the men down the bar drinking their very butch ale, he settles himself with the whiskey that the bluerider declined. "Tell me what I'm like." Patiently, he eyes the shot glass and tips juuuuuuust a smidge more in before he's quite satisfied he's getting his money worth. Yes, even the boss pays. Rimara heads up a short flight of stairs from the Weyr entrance. "What are you like?" Phara repeats aloud thoughtfully. "Hmm. Aside from the obvious. Well, I don't know. How many Weyrleaders work shifts at the local tavern?" She stretches her hands along the length of the bar, leaning down onto it. "/Most/ men find me pleasant to look at. You can't even remember I'm wearing a dress." She is sitting at the bar, wearing a dress with a flower in her short hair, and something distinctly girlie to drink. N'thei stands on the other side of the bar. It's later in the evening and the Snowasis is hopping, with bodies everywhere. Contrary to the fluffy crap that Phara's downing, N'thei drinks whiskey-- or, he's about to drink whiskey, having just filled the glass, just put his mark into the till. To her first question, he offers a conceding half-nod; she has a point, most Weyrleaders don't sling drinks on the side. (Do they?) To the latter-- "So we're really talking about your ego. If you really need to get laid that badly..." He trails off, lifts the shot glass and uses it to gesture around the crowded bar, to any number of gents that would be only too happy to oblige Phara and her dress and her flower and her fruity drink. The gesture does not include himself. Phara snorts. "Ain't about getting laid. I have a few guys who are moret han obliging." She takes another sip of her drink, wrinkles her nose in distaste. "Faranth, I paid you good marks for /this/." Sigh. "Look, I'm just saying you're not what I'd expect. It ain't bad. Ain't good, either. Just is. I'd ask if you could be at least civil to me but I have this awful feeling that this /is/ civil." Helpful; "Next time, order what you want." Rather than trust someone who has made no effort to make nice. N'thei puts his own drink down in one swallow, exhales over the taste-- thankfully aiming his lips down at the bar and not straight in Phara's face. "So who's the dress for." It's obviously not anybody /here/, since nobody's come up to greet the Fortian-- which could have to do with her present company, but that's ignorable. It's a rather tired looking woman who wanders into the Snowasis. Though some effort has been made to clean up, there are still some tell-tale signs of foot travel about her--dusty shoes, a backpack over her shoulders, a leather satchel, heavy coat, scarf and gloves. None of her clothing spells affluence, and most of it looks kind of travel-worn. Her cheeks are flushed with the cold. She steps inside the bar, then stops, looking around herself with a little bit of hesitancy. Kind of like, she's there, but wondering why. At least it's warm inside, and there's drink. And people. Plenty of people. She removes the backpack, and divests herself of her outer gear, putting them in whatever appropriate place is provided. Taking a deep breath, she turns around and seems to brace herself for the walk across the floor to the bar. Phara just smirks at him, a pretty little smile all things considered. "You, of course, darling," she teases. "Don't you like it?" She flutters the edge of her skirt at him, and the guy on the next stool gets an eyeful of her thigh. Lucky guy. "Next time, I'll have whiskey," she promises. Trailing behind a dark haired woman, Ananta works her way into the room. A quick scan for a familiar face. Nothing. Heading over to the klah table, she notices a few she's owed favors to, opps, detour. She turns toward the bar instead. And sees the back of a familiar head. Ay, deep breath. And, after a brief pause she continues forward. To get a drink. Of course. No other reason she could possibly be heading in this direction. Making her way through the crowd, Rimara seems to be kind of uncomfortable---like she's not used to being amidst so many people. She's also considerably shorter than some, which makes the trek to the bar difficult, but not impossible. Standing behind a couple of men, she waits until one of them leaves and quickly snags the empty stool. A sigh of relief, then her hand is digging into her leather pouch, pulling out bits of this and that, then a quarter-mark. Then comes the process of getting the bartender's attention away from the woman he's talking with. A lifted hand seems to be her solution to that dilemma. Hopefully, he'll notice. Thankfully, N'thei is not the only so-called bartender. There's the man down the bar, and a pretty but seemingly incompetent barmaid who's not allowed to do much more but fill up mugs of ale. What he says in answer to the bluerider is largely lost under cover of the thrum of conversation filling the bar. He mutters to Phara, "Unless... asking... while... No, don't like it so..." With a threadbare smile, he adds, "Next time, you'll have whiskey. --What'll it be, darling?" To Ananta, to Rimara, to whoever pays first. He's not real picky. Setting her bag down on the bar, and then rethinking and moving it to the floor. Ananta pulls up a stool, and slides up. In a fog she notices the dark woman sit next to her. But, now her interest is in a drink. To the weyrl, er, bartender she smiles. "You know how I feel about my ale bottles." He does. "Whatever's your most palatable." A look of doubt around the place. Expectations are not high. "Might be asking that," Phara says cheekily. She glances down the bar when N'thei's attention wavers towards the other women at the bar. Maybe the look is annoyed, maybe it's not for them. Either way, she goes back to sipping her drink with more grimaces. "Whiskey," Rimara orders, probably about the same time as the woman next to her speaks. In that case, she'll defer, setting her money on the bar so it's seen. Not far out of reach, though; she at least seems aware of her surroundings, despite her apparent youth. "When you've got time, of course," is added. It doesn't matter who waits on her. She's cold and in need of bolstering, it would appear. She does glance over at the woman beside her, and the one talking with the big man behind the bar. The most palatable thing in the bar at the moment really is the barmaid, toward whom N'thei beckons with affectionate command; she puts one of the mugs she's been filling in front of Ananta with her vapid, lovely smile. "Shame I'm such a damn faithful guy then," he answers Phara over a sigh, his attention settled questioningly on Rimara now. "Whiskey it is." Set neatly on the bar in front of Rimara. --And people say he's good for nothin'! Well, not the person she hoped would serve her, but she's not complaining. A pretty barmaid's better than an ugly one. "Thanks." is offered as she passes over her marks. She notices the evil eye of the familiar woman, and just returns a pressed grin. And after two less than friendly faces, she hopes the third will at least say hello. To the dark haired stranger, "Hi, are you new here? Passing through?" Phara observes N'thei for a moment. "Last I'd heard, you weren't really with anyone to be faithful with." Makes to wonder who's gossiping about N'thei's lovelife, or lackthereof. "Weyr gossip says you and Satiet don't like each other. Unless it's somebody else." Light brown eyes twinkle in amusement, but only for the disappearing liquid in her glass before the last of it vanishes as well. "It's an open offer. If you're ever feeling... less than faithful." Because faith isn't something she understands or even believes in anyways, it's easy for her to ask for it, accept that it might happen. When the drink is placed in front of her, Rimara takes a moment to purse her lips, as if contemplating whether or not she made a good choice. The drink is taken between the fingers of her left hand, toyed with a second or two, then picked up. Another brief pause, and it's knocked back with the apparent ease of someone used to strong drink. At least in theory, since she does cover her mouth and cough almost immediately afterward. Not the splutter of an unseasoned drinker, but more like someone who hasn't had whiskey recently. A nod of her head as the empty glass is set back onto the bar. When she's hears a greeting, she turns. A hand swipe across her mouth, then a nod. "Traveling, yes," is answered. "Passing through?---don't know yet. Looking for work, mostly." A pause. "Rimara." The voice is whiskey-roughened at the moment. "Oh, we don't like each other." There's no lilt of "we /love/ each other" like one might expect if that's what he was angling at. It's a simple fact: they don't like each other, and N'thei's not trying to pretend otherwise. "Generous," is where he ends it, signals down the bar to catch the attention of the real bartender with a quiet word between them-- probably to the tune of "make sure those two pay before they leave, neh?" As an aside, he promises toward Rimara, "The ale's a sight better for beginners, love." He indicates Ananta's mug with a toss of his chin and ducks toward the back room, ostensibly to count the night's take so far. "Damn..." said as a certain furrowed brow slips off out of sight. "Oh, did I just say that? Sorry." An apology offered to Rimara, her new companion belly up at the bar. "So, you must be glad to have your butt on that stool, if you've been traveling today?" She holds up her mug of weak liquor, "Here's to forgetting our names." Assuming the other woman is even interested. Phara sighs and gets to her feet, running her hand through her hair. A glance is given aside to Ananta and Rimara but they get no extra attention than anyone else in the bar. Just more people come here to drink. She sets her hand against the bar for a moment and then exhales and walks out. Somehow, at some point, a tip appears next to her empty glass, but nobody saw her touch her belt purse. |
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