Logs:Hanging out with Patient Zero
| |
|---|
| |
| RL Date: 9 February, 2013 |
| Who: Vienne, Z'ian |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Z'ian has sunburn, Vienne has a cold. He brings her chicken soup and they play cards. |
| Where: Vienne's Weyr, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 8, Month 13, Turn 30 (Interval 10) |
| Weather: Light snow. |
| Mentions: K'del/Mentions, H'kon/Mentions, Brieli/Mentions, Azaylia/Mentions, Tiriana/Mentions, Teris/Mentions, Ezalea/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: I made up a new suit in the playing card deck. Behold and enjoy Vienne's player mocking me throughout the scene and me not even realizing it~ |
  |
| Close To The Ground Weyr, High Reaches Weyr The rest of the weyr is small and somewhat battered. An attempt at sound-proofing remains in the form of a heavy canvas sheet hung over the entranceway, though the elements have done some damage to it. There's a dragon couch large enough for - perhaps - a decent sized brown, and past it, via a narrower passage, the living area. Within, there's room for some chairs and perhaps a desk or table, though it's currently empty. At the back, an even smaller cavern, barely large enough for a double-sized mattress, has been carved free: a bed built straight into the stone, with walls on three sides and a tattered curtain providing complete seclusion.
The small bronze lands gracefully on that low to the bowl floor ledge, sending a consoling warble to the concerned blue. During the visit he'll try his best to keep the other dragon entertained, even if the talkative and sometimes rambling thought process of the older dragon may be difficult to get used to at first. Z'ian looks better for that after-sun care, he's at least not poking at his skin repeatedly in some sort of sick, morbid fascination. He's done the proper detour for the food, bowl of hot chicken soup well-lidded thanks to an overzealous member of the kitchen staff. He gently raps his fingers on the wall, even if a real announcement of presence probably isn't warranted under the circumstances. "I've got good news. You're not going to die!" Holding the bowl up high. "At least not from starvation. I even brought a spoon." Which he produces from his jacket, it looks clean enough. Oswinth will no doubt try his best to be entertained. It is, if nothing else, likely that Tsanth's rambling thoughts will keep him occupied, confused at times and intensely curious at others, but occupied nonetheless. He's not beside himself about Vienne, at least. Just disconcerted. Vienne herself is caught between being sheepish to need the delivery service, grateful that there is one and compulsively welcoming, as it's polite to be. And also sick. So she smiles warmly, even if she has to raise a fist to cough in the middle, and leans forward to set her tea down on the trunk she uses as a table. Her smile is just a little more wry for Z'ian's glorious declaration. "My savior," she gets out, once the coughs have abated. "Thank you so much. Did you eat? Do you want tea or something?" It's the least she can offer him, and her lips purse, knowing that it isn't much. She really does not have a good record as a hostess here. There isn't even a second chair for him, at least not by the fire. He does something of an unconscious sweep of the area with his eyes, taking in the sparse furnishings of Vienne's weyr. "So do we subscribe to the same interior designer? It does help to have a table, but I appreciate your multitasking furniture pieces." Z'ian comments teasingly as he crosses the room, delivering the life saving soup. He waves aside her offer of tea as he unceremoniously drops onto the floor of her weyr, seemingly content to make himself at home right there. "Don't worry about it. I ate before I even went to the infirmary, so I'm full up for at least a couple of hours. Do you know who gave you the plague? Should we visit them later and take revenge?" That the bronzerider is currently hanging out with Patient Zero herself and very well get sick also? Hasn't occurred to him yet. Vienne does try to stop him, a hand held out as the bronzerider drops to sit. "I... There's another chair," she tells him, pointing toward the back of the weyr, where said chair is currently covered with clothes. "You can move it, if you want. Just... just throw all that stuff on the floor..." She doesn't sound certain about it, and not because she's worried about her thing but rather because: "I am so bad at this." It bewilders her, though only until she coughs again, careful to turn her head so that Z'ian doesn't get any of it. At least he's eaten and she can show him an apologetic smile for her poor hospitality. "I don't know. Maybe... Has K'del been sick? I don't think it was him, though. I think it was the freezing rain." She wiggles her shoulders around in the bulky warmth of her oversized sweater, as if she can still remember how chilled she was that night. "I'm not sure how to get revenge on rain." "That sounds like a great plan. I'll throw your clothes on the floor for you to pick up later." Z'ian doesn't sound like he thinks that idea is really a good one. "But I think I like mine better. Where I get up and just leave. And your belongings are still clean and folded." He has a lopsided smile for her bewildered reaction to her supposedly bad hosting. "I don't think he has, he looked great the last time I saw him. Well, until later. But that was a different kind of sick." Lopsided to wry and deviously amused he goes. "I heard you don't get sick from weather. It just makes an already there problem worse. Only solution I see is for you to go and cough on everyone you've been in contact with the last forty-eight hours. Except for me. I'm innocent, obviously." "No, they're not..." Vienne is about to explain about her clothes, but she stops herself, since he's still talking and seems comfortable on the floor, and by the time he mentions leaving, she looks rather mournful, all glassy eyes and sad little mouth. "Are you leaving? You can - I don't want to get you sick - but I wish you wouldn't." It's a little more forthright than she might usually be, but: "I've been stuck in here all day. I'm so bored." She takes a deep breath, then, and inches herself forward carefully to pick up the bowl of soup and that probably-clean spoon. She's slow to dig in and just settles the whole thing in her lap for now, unlidded, letting the chickeny steam waft up at her. "What... kind of sick?" Because maybe it was K'del who brought this on her. Z'ian shoots her a quirky grin, mouth pulled to the side. "Not yet. I figured I could keep you company for at least a little while." He's very generous. Her weyr is warm enough with the hearth going, warm enough for him to delicately pull his riding jacket off. There's a momentary lapse in his usually jovial expression, wincing as the material pulls on his tender skin. "Too bad we don't have a deck of cards. We could play War or something else that's sort of mindless. I could go for some mindlessness." Folding it over he lays it across his lap and glances down at each arm. "Hung over sick. We got out of here and went to Ista few days ago. So I'm pretty sure it wasn't him that got you. Unless a hangover means something different than I think it does." Teasing again, always.
Z'ian moves onto his knees and drags her trunk a little closer to him, turning it around so he can pop the latch and open it. It's always a little awkward going through other people's belongings, but he manages it without making too many jokes. Or any at all. Even if he does hold the third hair brush he encounters up with a questioning look. Really? "Ah, found it!" The hair brush is dropped and he picks up the pack of cards, closing the trunk triumphantly. "Yep, Ista." He answers distractedly as he slips them out of their sleeve and begins to shuffle them. "Where I got...? Oh." The bronzerider clears his throat. "No, that isn't where I got the sunburn from. That was a different day. And not with K'del." He begins to deal the cards out, sitting cross-legged across the trunk from her.
Rather than keep him waiting with the cards, Vienne sets her bowl aside and scoots to the edge of her chair, keeping the blanket tucked about her waist. She reaches forward to turn over a card, but it's reaaaally hard to beat 'two of aces'. Or maybe it's hard to lose. Either way, she smiles now, the slow reveal of her teeth. "You know, not many people have asked me that," she remarks. "I just impressed in there. Five turns ago. Oswinth is pretty young." And then also, "It hasn't really been anyone particular - leaving the Weyr. I just... there's a lot of coming and going. Not just wings headed out for drills but individuals. And people I'd expect to see around more, but don't. Igen wasn't really like that as much." She gives a little shrug of her narrow shoulder. "Long months?" So, so hard to beat. Z'ian settles into the easy rhythm of the game. A card down, lost or won. The pile neatened again as his paper thin resources come and go with the tides of the game. "I like to ask questions." He fires back, glancing from the surface of the trunk to her face with a quick reveal of teeth. "Where were you searched from? Like, where did you come from before that?" There's a certain element of curiosity that comes with the things he asks, a genuine sort of interest in them. "High Reaches has a lot of people that seem to have business elsewhere." He comments, his lips pursing momentarily before flickering his gaze up to her. "Family business, mostly." Which is true, overall. "How're you faring with all the big Weyr intrigue? A fair bit different from Igen there as well?"
"Where did you come from before the Hall? Or is that where you're from?" Z'ian doesn't make a big deal out of the actually being a harper bit. Just a piece of information filed away in his brain somewhere. He watches sympathetically as she coughs chunks of her lungs out. Her next gets his lips pursed and pulled to the side. "Uh, both? Father in failing health and mother slightly overwhelmed by the chores involved with taking care of a very small herd of llamas. Welcome to the Reaches." Llamas. He smiles and rolls his eyes before snapping his next card down. Four of clubs? Narrowing of the eyes. How is it possible to be this bad at war? "I think what's going on is a healthy case of chaos and internal conflict as the result of upending centuries of tradition and reason onto its head. Really pretty simple even on the grand scale." His smile is wry, he knows what she's getting at. Really. "Where do you fall in all of this? Or are you staying way the fuck out of the way?" A thick swallow holds another cough at bay, but Vienne has her fingers to her lips anyway, just in case. "Ista," she answer tightly from behind her knuckles. "Weyr." More information for him to file away. Anyway, she's much more interested in what he has to say, and her brows lift high. "Llamas? Really?" There's a quick flick of her glance over his face, picturing him anew on some mucky farm with a bunch of hairy llamas. It makes her smile. "I can honestly say that I have never set foot on a llama farm." She tucks her grin away as she takes his four - really, when you start with two of aces, you can only improve, right? "I'm sorry about your father." And then there's a pause for more soup while he waxes about the Intrigue at High Reaches. Maybe it's the pairing of his sweeping recap and harsher language, maybe it's that wry grin he gives her, but Vienne smiles back, a little more shyly this time. "I'm just a bluerider and no one knows me here. I'm pretty sure I'm not in the way. But, if you want my opinion," and he did ask, "I think they'd better sort it out before even more hands start showing up to stick their fingers in the pie."
"When I was a child too young to apprentice? No, I didn't hang out at the bars," Vienne says with a wry little laugh and the shake of her head, her smile wide and easy. "But I do know about them," in case that look he gives her means he thinks she's just too prim to have a clue. Of course there's still the chance that, even now, if she did her hair in braids maybe, a bartender would look twice before agreeing to serve her. Anyway, "It sounds nice. Having a place of their own, being independent," she muses on his family. "Oh, though having to leave the Hold when you're a teenager..." She wrinkles her nose. "Plus, is it just them now?" Ok, so maybe the little farm holding isn't all it was cracked up to be. But she does catch the terseness that rejects her sympathy and so she's willing enough to let it drop, turning her attention to reshuffling her cards for the next round. "I heard a rumor that Igen is planning on putting forth their junior. She was here a while back. Ezalea." She swallows against the soreness in her throat and adds, "If they'd just called both of them junior flights and kept B'sil in charge, or someone else maybe, perhaps it would have all been simpler. Now, I feel like they're going to need someone to step up as senior if they want to avoid having another gold brought it."
"Ditto on that feeling." Z'ian can agree whole heartedly. His next card is a winner too. Well, this is just amazing. Maybe the tide is finally beginning to turn for him. He flashes her a bright attractive smile for her congratulations. "Thank you, thank you. I'll remember you when I give my celebration speech." That next card, not so much. Sighing he shoots her a 'what can you do?' look. "I'm not sure what anyone from the outside can do. I hate to say that it might be a matter of waiting to the next goldflight." One of the cards has a tattered edge, he fingers the loose bit. "I don't like the feeling I get off the other one. Not to mention those rumors that leaked after their big four way 'leadership' meeting. That she was planning to have someone out of the weyr win the flight or... fixed it or something. I knew that didn't make any sense. She didn't realize her gold was rising? Really. She threw Azaylia to the wolves while she plotted out the perfect solution her own problem. Do I want to see her as our senior? No." He shakes his head. "Azaylia is honest."
"Don't take away one of my few precious rays of hope, please." Z'ian comments on the goldrider flights. Not sounding exactly like she's crushing his spirit but more or less saying it for effect. He meets that suggestive look when she sweeps her cards and raises an eyebrow at her, a tiny smirk pulling up the corners of his mouth. "Maybe blueriders could win both flights. And you thought you weren't important." He narrows his eyes and gives her a mock meaningful look for that jest. "It isn't obvious?" It's not phrased to make Vienne sound stupid, but more to highlight that he himself thinks it's quite obvious. "Azaylia and Hraedhyth have to deal with the wolves at the weyr. The chaos, the emotional turmoil. The day of the flight and all the days proceeding before. Meanwhile, this girl, has the idea that her dragon is rising too. Tells no one. Meets with whoever and arranges to be out of the weyr at the same time with some lark about being ill. So that her dragon won't get caught by our bronzes." He takes a breath before concluding, "Now, what if a bronze had caught Brieli's? Not H'kon's brown? Would she have a greater claim to be Weyrwoman? If they'd both been caught by bronzes would she have contested because they rose at the same time? What's Azaylia to do anyway. Confused. She's two steps behind to begin with, while this person likely pretends to be her friend." Vienne has no pity for him, not when he losers the pairing of cards and not when she squashes his hopes. He'll just have to be strong enough to carry on. And as for a future full of blueriding weyrleaders, she rolls her eyes. "If Oswinth was the only dragon to chase, he'd still..." She doesn't finish it and the jovial teasing in her eyes is clamped down before she actually disparages her lifemate. Out there where the dragons sit, the blue has a moment where he would prefer if everyone would just ignore that almost-comment, thank you very much. Vienne does him the service of moving on quickly. "N'rov?" she suggests in place of Z'ian's 'whoever'. "She said they're together. But I don't see how that's throwing Azaylia to the wolves. Maybe Brieli did know, maybe she did plan it, but with Hraedhyth rising, she'd have had to leave anyway." There's still something processing behind her expression, though, some machinery moving that hasn't yet turned out a product. "Do you want a weyrwoman who's two steps behind? And if they aren't friends, what do you think Brieli is waiting for?" The questions are thoughtful, too busy musing over the possibilities to have much in the way of preference perhaps. And then she's coughing again. "Who's N'rov?" There's maybe the barest inkling of recognition to that, but nothing significant. Her further explanation clears that up and he just rolls his shoulders. "Maybe? I don't have the answers. I'm a spectator at best." Z'ian shakes his head, adding mildly: "Yes it is. She knew and she left. She pulled the strings for herself and kept it a secret because for whatever reason, 'Reaches dragons weren't good enough. Azaylia had to deal with everything else while she kept herself insular and safe. He leans his elbow onto the trunk and brings his hand up to cover his mouth. He spreads his fingers and speaks through them, "I'd rather she not be tripped up by someone deceptive and given the chance to lead properly." The bronzerider produces a lopsided smile just then, shaking his head. He's pushing the thoughts out. "Look, I could be totally wrong. What the fuck do I know, anyway? Could be she's just along for the ride now." He drops the last remaining card in his pile. Another loser. He sighs mock-dramatically. Managing a laugh he throws up one hand. "Congratulations. You're not going to starve and you're a winner. " Vienne struggles to control her cough while Z'ian talks, nodding along for him to continue even as she struggles to control the spasms in her chest. In the end, she manages to find a break long enough to reach for her tea, a sip helping her regain her composure. And only after that can she shake her head. "I don't have any answers either," she admits, clipping it with a harsh swallow. When he brings his hand up to his mouth, the bluerider's head tips to one side, sorry for things that aren't her fault. "Sometimes I feel like... deception is just the local dialect. Or suspicion is." Her mouth tightens around those words, regretting them. But a quiet has fallen over her, and she has a hard time meeting his gaze, even though he puts on the dramatics for his last, losing card. She starts to gather up the deck before a small smile finds her lips again and she glances back at him. "Oh yes," she says with dry humor. "I definitely feel like a winner." "It wasn't always like this. At least it never felt like it before to me. Deceptive." There's something in his voice that's regretful for that. Z'ian is back to shaking his head, one hand giving it all a dismissive wave. He breathes out and ventures, "Sorry I dragged you into my vortex of suspicion and paranoia. I've been getting much too swept away with it all." As she gathers up the cards he leans over and reaches out, snagging the sleeve for them and tossing them over to the cough ridden bluerider. "Next time I see one of my friends I'll make it a point to keep my big mouth shut." It's an easy sort of self-deprecating humor accompanied by another lopsided smile. "Even if you don't feel like a winner. Act like one. It's the new rage. The new black." Well he can't himself from making at least one terrible joke about it all. His jacket is close by on the floor, picking it up he begins to shrug it back on and catch the buttons. His apology, the humor in his smile, they make Vienne pause in sorting the cards back into her sleeve, hands stilling as she looks at him, her expression gentle, thoughtful, instead of equaling his jokes. "A lot of things have happened here, troubling things. I think that makes people wary. They worry about who they can trust. Not all deception is dark at heart, just like not all honesty is kind. Maybe I'm naive," she'll admit with a shake of her head to take the weight out of her own words. "But one way or another, there will be weyrleaders. Not everyone will love them, but we were never meant to choose them in the first place." She tries to take a breath, once it's all out, and of course, coughs again, but that's her parting thought for Z'ian, some attempt to offer a more moderate spin on everything that's happened and their place in all of it. "Thank you sitting with me. On the floor," she points out with a flare of her eyes toward the spot, just for empahsis. "I really appreciate it. It wasn't until I got sick that I really felt like I didn't know anyone here well enough to call them friends. And you... helped." Which might not be the same as calling him a friend now, but certainly, "I owe you one." And for that, she will give him another wry little grin. He twists the last button into place, tipping his chin down to make sure that they're all lined up properly. "Hopefully it sorts it out soon." Is the only other real comment that he has left in him. Z'ian drags himself to his feet and stuffs his hands into his pocket. "I don't think that you're naive." There's a flicker of his eyes down towards the floor he just got up off of. "Hey, well. Anytime you want a man that talks way too much to come and sit on your floor? Now you know who to reach out to." The bronzerider flashes her a smile before beginning the first step backwards. "Don't worry about it. I have to get back. I hope that you start to feel better, try not to cough up too many of your organs, alright?" He'll stay for parting remarks, but otherwise it's a quick departure for him out to her ledge and his waiting dragon. |
Comments
Brieli (Brieli (talk)) left a comment on Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:03:06 GMT.
< It's funny that the one thing there's actually a simple explanation for is the one thing that people attribute more complex reasoning to.
Great scene. :)
Zian (Zian (talk)) left a comment on Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:48:46 GMT.
< I wish there was a reply option in these comments! Rawr!
And right? ;)
Azaylia (Dragonshy (talk)) left a comment on Sun, 10 Feb 2013 04:07:21 GMT.
<
I just love how Vienne gets the juicy answers out of people. ;) She's a really good harper-rider!
Awesome scene, guys.
Leave A Comment