Logs:Persie is Naive. Sweet. But Naive.
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| RL Date: 4 May, 2008 |
| Who: N'thei, Persie |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| When: Day 1, Month 4, Turn 16 (Interval 10) |
| N'thei's Weyr At this hour of the morning, most of the Weyr has already started their daily routine and the whole place is busy with spring-morning chores. Wyaeth is not on his shared ledge, but the keen-eyed could see the rangy bronze lording possession over the feeding grounds, harassing a younger brown about something or another. The inner weyr shows signs of life still, the dying crackle of the day's fire, the clear sound of a tuneful whistle, the quiet splash of water and clink of metal-on-porcelain. Without a dragon on the ledge to act as welcome and warning (not that Wyaeth is particularly prone to either, but that's beside the point), Persie faces that anxious moment of, 'do I stand here and call or do I go in?'. She pauses by the entrance, giving her shoulder a roll in its fluffy sweater, opening and closing her mouth, turning her ear to listen. And then with a big breath, decision made, she steps hesitantly inside. "Um, N'thei?" N'thei calls an answer from the back of the weyr, all the way through that ornate outer weyr to the smaller cavern inside; "Hope so, or someone's got some explaining to do." Again, the splash of water, this time vigorously, and he emerges to the front cavern with a small towel scraping spare shaving foam off his chin. "I wound up taking out all the boobie traps, safe to come in." Said once he takes stock of the hesitance of Persie's posture from across the outer weyr, smile just tugged into place. Persie answers with a little laugh. "It would be pretty weird if someone snuck into your weyr to shave, huh?" she returns, smiling, if uneasily, and giving her nose a little wrinkle. "I..." Nope, not quite. "Are you on your way somewhere?" She takes a few more steps, uncertain, wavering little things. "Just out for the day. Come in." Because a few uncertain steps don't match the beckoning flex of N'thei's fingers. Hands wiped, towel wadded and tossed unceremoniously onto an ornate table, he looks around the room a moment with a glimmer of his own uncertainty, frown creased when his attention glances across sofa, chairs, all of it comically elaborate. "Did you need something?" Her eyes look over that freshly-shaven face, flick to the paw that waves her in, and Persie grins a little more--it's a smile she bites back just a bit. "I..." falter. "You look nice." She gets that much out and comes into the room a bit more properly, though still awkward in the way she ends up just sort of standing there in the middle of the space. She's in, though. No doubt. "I've been thinking." "Yeah?" N'thei runs a hand along his chin, under his jaw, shrugs helplessly while his hand drops away. "Shame it doesn't last. Half a beard by day's end. --Don't stand like that and say I've-been-thinking, makes me nervous." Not as it would show in expression or tone, but pleasant and buoyant, he pats the back of the too-nice sofa with his perpetually scraped and calloused mitt. "Sit. What's on your mind?" Persie shakes her head, blonde hair swinging. "No, no I'd rather stand." So she can fidget like she's doing now, her hands playing with the hem of her sweater. "I..." Her nervous smile starts to fade, replaced by the press of her brows the work of her teeth at her lips. "I know that I'm nobody. You're... the Weyrleader and I'm nobody. And I know..." She frowns sharply at her own hesitating tone, lets out a frustrated breath like a little horse. Taken by surprise, already halfway round to sitting himself, N'thei's eyebrows climb to a high perch; he settles to leaning his hips against the back of the sofa, weight half-rested, arms crossed while he attends Persie's continued discomfort. Her fractured explanation turns down the corner of his mouth, sets his frown to thoughtful and confused. "And you know...? What?" Prompting. Persie has to take a big breath because she's going to need a lot of air for all the explanation that comes spilling out. "I think that you think you're a terrible man. But I don't. I don't think you're terrible. I mean, I know that you're all... rough and stuff on the outside but I think that... I think that underneath that you're... not. I think you can smile and laugh, and not just, you know, at someone. I think that underneath it you're... someone sweet. Someone gentle. I've... I remember you that way." And with that she has to look down. "You said that you remember me like a flower. To me, you'll always be that man who took me on a picnic, who laid in the grass with me and told me things you said you hardly tell anyone. I don't believe that was a lie. It didn't feel like a lie." Slowly she lifts her gaze to him again. "I think you are that man." N'thei could laugh at Persie right now, for all her kind-of kind words, a fact shown by the brief wash of cold humor that lights his eyes and tugs his lips back from that frown. "You came all the way here to tell me you don't think I'm a bastard?" So he laughs, less bitter humor, more sparse amusement. "A lot--" Hard pair of words. "A lot has happened since then." He catches her lifted gaze and holds it with a kind of 'what can you do?' smile-and-shrug. Persie can't help but lose a little confidence under his cool amusement. Her mouth opens and falters, but with another breath she's certain again. "I believe you're still... him. Somewhere." Whether he's amused or not, she seems quiet serious, determined in her faith. "I know that I'm... me." Which is where her certainty seems to fail her, making her glance drop again. "And maybe I can't make you feel like that anymore. I wish I could, though. I wish... it could still be like that." And for all his rather callous reaction, she looks at him then, fondly. "I wish you could be happy." "Are you?" N'thei sounds doubtful, matches it with a shrewd look back at her fond one. "Happiness is small doses, darling, not a state of being. It's a good drink, a long kiss-- hell, a close shave." This time, his chuckle isn't so cold, isn't so helpless, just quietly entertained. "I will always have that as a good memory of you. But. I hurt people on purpose, would you think so highly of me when it was you on the receiving end?" "I know," Persie says, her glance pulling to the side for a moment, a twitch of her brows. But when she looks at him again it's with the smallest vestige of a smile. "I don't mean, like, big, silly, nauseating happy all the time. Just... I think you can be like you were, sometimes, in some places, just... a piece that is happy." And for the last bit, she looks down at her sweater, at the bunching her hands have made of its hem, and she smooths it out. "I..." She seems almost sad to say it, but no less sure. "I would." Teeth set abruptly, exhale through his nose like a clipped snort, N'thei argues patently, "No. Even you wouldn't." Frustrated at her? The conversation? At something certainly. "When Wyaeth flew Ciath, I saw it in your face that you were hurt. I don't think then that it was my fault, I think it had something to do with someone else entirely, but I don't want you to be a person that I've hurt just because I can." He never does look away from Persie through the hard-set words. "I would," Persie returns, something sort of breathless about it. "I..." But he continues and so she's quiet and listening, watching his face. Only when he's done, she's hardly more eloquent. "I..." It takes her a moment, a moment of looking at him and thinking, growing confused if that pondering frown is any indication. "So you're just afraid that you'll hurt me?" And then, "I'm not." Certainty; "Not afraid. Positive." That she's not really only makes it worse, makes N'thei set his jaw stubbornly to match the steel in his gray eyes. "I wanted you to sleep with me, Persie, that's all. Then, after Ciath's flight, you became this person with feelings that could be hurt, and there was an end of it. I won't fuck someone who'll cry over it later." "What I mean... I know you'll... I know you would," Persie tries to explain, struggling to find the right words, and moreso under that hard look he gives her. "I'm not afraid anyway." And for the recounting of those events from long ago, she starts to shake her head, almost smiling. Her hands come up to hang on her shoulders, wrists turned inward. "No. Even if that's all you meant... You liked it." She takes another big breath. "I would have." Slept with him? Cried over it? She doesn't specify. "I'm not here to convince you or to change you or change your mind. I just... She takes a few steps forward, drawing closer to him, an arm away. "I just wanted to tell you what I think." She starts to lift a hand from her shoulder, as if it might just be brave enough to span the distance to him, but it pauses midway. N'thei will catch the hand that hangs there, fold it up in his coarse fingers carefully, a thing he might crush if mishandled. The hard look stays in his eyes, hackles slow to relax once raised, but he takes the rough edge off his voice; "You're a really sweet girl. Foolish. But sweet. It's a nice thing you've said, suppose thank-you is the most appropriate response." Very belated gratitude. With his hand covering hers, Persie's fingers close gently on whatever bits of him might be in her grasp. And she waits, letting him soften that little bit. "Well," she shakes his hand a little bit, silly, sort of. "You're welcome." And she flashes him one of those very bright smiles, still anxious around the edges, still bitten back just a touch. "I wasn't sure, for a long time. And I tried to stay away for a while--I guess I was afraid. But I know it now. I wanted to tell you." She breathes out a self-conscious laugh. "And I did. So... I should probably go." She tucks in her lips altogether, but it doesn't fully hide the fact that she's still, if just barely, smiling. "So should I." N'thei's dread for facing the day is dramatic, overdone, put with one last tightening of his fingers around Persie's before he releases her hand and scrapes his fingers down his chin again experimentally. "Come and visit some time when you have less..." He picks and chooses for a particular word, casts his eyes thoughtfully toward the ceiling while he seeks. "Overwhelming things on your mind, neh?" Persie considers him a moment longer, eyes on his bare chin. "I..." Her grin caught in her teeth, she starts to step backwards, facing him just a while longer even as she leaves. "I will." A few more steps of heavy boots on spindly legs. "And you should. Visit me, I mean. Overwhelming things or not." She's laughs, anxious and light. "You can even be mean to me if you have to be." Her backward steps have her nearly at the ledge. She lifts a hand, not to wave, but to put her fingers on her own chin and offer in parting, "I like your face." N'thei says nothing in response, just wears a light looking smile to answer her compliment, a smile well-suited to an encounter with Persie: little bemused, mostly entertained, mildly concerned (for her? him? the world at large?). Not so eager to get up and about, he stays leaning against the sofa while she half-backs out of his weyr. Wyaeth's returned by now, and he watches her departure with a drowsy snort. Persie turns on a heel to continue her leaving while forward facing, though Wyaeth's snort gives her a little start. She just smiles sheepishly at the bronze, puts her head down and picks up the pace, trotting away to the plump green who waits for her in the bowl. |
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