Logs:Kicking Puppies
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| RL Date: 14 July, 2016 |
| Who: N'klas, Alysce |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Alysce tells the hard truths that no one else will tell. Or something, right, N'klas? |
| Where: Nighthearth, HIgh Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 11, Month 4, Turn 41 (Interval 10) |
| Weather: The sky is clear today. The air remains cool and damp, but the weather is overall pleasant today. |
| Mentions: Drex/Mentions, Jocelyn/Mentions |
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With its entrance located between the kitchen and the living cavern, this tiny bubble cavern is cozy, always kept warm and is filled with comfortable chairs and a small round table. At the far end, there's a hearth, outlined in ruddy, aging bricks, where a pot of stew simmers in the evening hours. Generally quiet, the nighthearth is the haunt of insomniacs and those seeking quiet from the bustle of daily Weyr life. It's the gitar that's audible first, strummed by a cheerful as well as practiced hand; sure, it's not honed the way a harper's touch would be, but it's got a line to it that supports a tenor edging into baritone and the sort of verse where everyone dies. Nik's lit by the fire, and so is his audience, a dark-haired girl with curls spilling over her shoulder and a smile like sunrise. Over in the corner, an auntie's nodded off, but otherwise the place is deserted but for the bluerider on a stool and the girl seated at his knee. If N'klas' devoted audience resembles sunrise, Alysce is the storm. Wrapped in a dark leather jacket mirrored on dragonrider styles (but without the functionality of one given the lack of pockets to keep a trimmer line) and dark, heeled boots that strike stone as she strides towards the nighthearth, the parallels certainly can be drawn. Her own dark hair has been swept up into a severe ponytail that only accentuates the black kohl used to heavily line black eyes. It's the sound of the guitar that has her pausing at the entryway of the nighthearth, a brow curving sharply upwards as her gaze sweeps over the scene. Does she recognize N'klas? Who knows, but still she clears her throat as she asks the girl she clearly does recognize, "Oh, did C'ver get tired of you already, Solia?" The strumming doesn't so much break rhythm as simplify, not at the footsteps-- people come in and out all the time-- but at the interjection; N'klas flicks a glance at the harper girl's face but it's drawn back to Solia, at her little gasp and rising flush. "It's not like that," she protests of the brownrider, and sidles a little closer to Nik's side of the chair. He's stopped singing, now. Alysce makes a soft, obviously faked sympathetic noise as she follows with a questioning, "Oh, it's not? Because that's not what he said, but I really wouldn't want to repeat all the things he said about you." She'd rather leave it vague, even as she flashes a sharply-edged smile to the other young woman and strolls into the room further. Where Solia sidles, she claims, planting herself with ease in a half-lean, half-sit on the arm of the chair closest to Nik's other side while placing the bluerider between the two of them and stretching out her legs in an obviously showy way. "Then don't," says N'klas. Which doesn't mean he doesn't look at those legs, in the moment where Solia flutters a grateful look up at him-- which then becomes uneasy again. "Do you mind?" the girl sniffs. "No, do you?" Alysce snaps back easily, amusement lilting dangerously on those words as she sweeps a dismissive look over Solia. But her gaze slides back to N'klas, lingering on him in a study given his defense of Solia. And then the harper stretches oh-so-carefully to her feet again as if she means to leave, adding casually, "You could do so much better." The girl blinks a few times, and huddles, a hand reaching for her skirt in the music's absence as though she'd leave... but then Alysce looks like she's going to beat her to it, and a look of fragile relief passes over Solia's face. Nik pats her shoulder uncomfortably, his voice gruff when he says, "What crawled up your ass and died?" "Mine? Mine?" Alysce questions with the huff of a laugh, her brows shooting upwards as her dark gaze falls completely on N'klas, ignoring the other girl beside him. "Oh, you have no idea, do you? Like, Drex is right about all of you dragonriders sometimes. Then, even worse, you have little doe-eyed, dimwitted girls literally falling all over you because you have a gitar and a dragon." A pause, as she rolls her eyes and briefly looks towards Solia and then back again. "I have a secret for you; she wouldn't care at all about you if you weren't a dragonrider. And you suck with the gitar." Dimwitted: that's when Solia's getting up and murmuring an apology to N'klas as she escapes faster than he can fumble his gitar and follow. That might even be a tear. She pauses for that supposed secret, poised on a slipper-tip, but there's another gasp and she goes faster. Nik's flushed, now, high on his cheekbones; he's looking after the girl before turning a stare on Alysce. "Shells, going to kick a puppy next? Some rider dump you?" He's got a careful hand to his gitar as he starts to rise. There's only the flush of vindication across Alysce's sharp features, her smug smile tucked into the corners of her mouths as she slides a glance at the retreating girl. Then, she's asking with a wry, "Are you comparing her to a puppy, now? See, even you know that you could do better. Unless you think I just drove off the love of your life or something." Her ponytail is flicked in one easy gesture over her shoulder, meeting N'klas' stare with a challenge of her own. "No. Harpers just tell the truth." N'klas is seventeen, and he rolls his eyes, never mind that Khajith is two; "Don't make it about that," he says, and turns another look after Solia. Solia, who's well gone. He checks his gitar's strings by habit before moving to slip the strap over his head. "Seems to me your 'truth' is like looking through goggles smeared with shit. Didn't get promoted, is that it?' One sea-blue eye peeks out at her from beneath the grown-out-from-weyrlinghood brush of hair. "If you want a tip about how to make people cry, you have to find a weak spot first," Alysce advises N'klas dryly, her shoulder rolling upwards with dismissive ease at his question. And now that Solia is long gone, she reclaims her spot on the arm of that chair, ankles hooked together and legs outstretched in front of her as she slides a glance over to that dozing auntie. "What, you don't believe me about your little girlfriend? Go ask C'ver. He said he hooked up with her one night and he couldn't get rid of her after. She was always asking if he'd take her for a ride, that sort of thing." Nik gives her another look before, uncomfortably, crouching to retrieve his gitar case from under the chair; he doesn't immediately leap to Solia's defense this time, but if he has any plans to check about C'ver, he isn't saying it now. Instead-- blame it on residual Cadejoth, Nik can be dogged-- he puts his gitar away and then finally looks over it. "You look pretty old for a 'prentice." Alysce laughs, a huffed sound that escapes before she says dismissively, "I am; I just don't care. I don't have anything to prove to anyone at the Hall. Actually, soon they might end up kicking me out, I'd guess." The harper rolls her shoulder before reaching to start at the buttons of her jacket. She peels the leather away to reveal a shirt that may as well be see-through, with it's thin, white fabric, half of which hangs off one shoulder to reveal it. "But I don't think you want to play this game. Ten-to-one I can find your weak spots before you can find mine." Kicked out sends his brows up into his hair, though given everything tonight, it's with a smirky bit of a smile; Nik doesn't dispute the weak spots thing-- she's probably right, he wears his on his sleeve, only part of which tracks what is or isn't going on with hers-- rather, "How come? The kicking out thing." He closes one clasp with a snick. "You don't walk the tables in so long, they kick you out. It's just what happens to apprentices in the crafts," answers Alysce, one of her own brows quirking upwards that Nik didn't know that. She slides from the chair's arm and into the seat, kicking her legs over that arm easily as she settles into a more comfortable position. "So why'd you pick up the gitar? Wanted something to impress the girls with besides your father's rank?" "Huh," says the teenager who'd diligently avoided being commandeered into any craft at all. "Naw, that's why I skinned a Southern feline and glued it to my chest," Nik tells her, patting his-- hardly visible beneath his predictably-blue shirt-- proudly. "Roar." Alysce's eyebrow remains in a disbelieving curve, though amusement sparkles, buried in dark eyes. She tells him without missing a beat, dry, "I'd stick with the gitar. You may suck at it, but it's more impressive. It is why us harpers never have to look." "I heard, you're not supposed to look," N'klas says interrogatively. He rests the now-closed case on the chair's arm. "What're you going to do if they kick you out, anyway? Wear a sign, 'Will dump on people for meals?'" "Where did you hear that? I'm a senior apprentice, not a weyrling or some fresh new rube from the sticks in the Hall," Alysce tosses back with her own smirkey smile, shaking her head in such a slight gesture. The latter question makes her wrinkle her nose, an answer not coming immediately. Eventually, she adds, "Well, some people could use it. Or I could always become one of these Weyr hanger-oners and get a job in the laundry room and fawn over dragonriders." Nik waves a hand, apprentices, whatever-- "Maybe I got you confused with a healer," comes with a small, more private smirk. More seriously, at least unless one looks at that gleam in his eye and then, later, hears the not-quite-laugh in his voice, "You could use some practice. Fawning. A lot of practice. Unless you're really good with stains?" "I do have an amazing bedside manner," Alysce teases suggestively in turn, that mostly-bare shoulder curved briefly forward in an innocent shrug. And as answer to the rest--. Well. "Maybe I'll just be a dragonrider, then. Let people fawn over me." Nik has a whole variety of flushes, and that shoulder-action causes one, though he glances again towards the hallway for a moment. Then the auntie. Then Alysce; "There was a flight," he says reminiscently, slyly even, deliberate with the recollection. "Hope you had half as much fun as I had." Alysce only exhales a laugh as he looks towards the hallway, rolling her eyes in an exaggerated emoting. "Don't worry. She'll be back; you have a gitar and a dragon. You don't have to chase her." Her smile, however, holds her sharper edges despite her words. "Mine was exciting. But not my first since I've been here." "Yeah, well, I wasn't worried about that," Nik says, rolling his eyes back. "She was just--" he rolls his shoulders now, a wriggle almost, uncomfortable until he picks up the case and tests its weight in his hand. "Yeah. Well. You got a gitar, you're halfway there. Unless you get that dragon and have to give it back? Like that beastcraft girl. I'm heading out." "Tell Solia I send my love," Alysce answers to that retreat, a smirky smile flashing before he leaves. "Be nice," he says on his way out, half a grunt and all a grump. |
Comments
Silva (22:14, 15 July 2016 (PDT)) said...
All the BURN.
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