Logs:Sip, Swallow, Savor
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| RL Date: 19 July, 2015 |
| Who: N'rov, Suireh |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: N'rov visits Harper Hall to hear someone sing, which eventually happens. |
| Where: Small Recital Hall, Harper Hall |
| When: Day 7, Month 4, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: N'muir/Mentions |
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| The smaller recital hall at Harper Hall is low lit about the audience and bright with lanterns and candles on tall floor candelabras. Advertised as the culmination of a master class workshop, the performers are of high caliber starting with a young man in his late teens, whose tenor alone would make his bed never a lonely place. It's unfortunate his body and face still haven't quite caught up. Suireh, distinctive in a sapphire blue gown, sits near the back, a clipboard of paper in her lap and a pen held lax as she listens. Near the back leaves room for an arrival between songs, relatively quiet as disruptions go; this one's tall and must have been waiting to take advantage of the applause, given how quickly he moves to take up a seat back and over one from hers. The scent of dragon is faint. Elusive; his gray gaze takes in the program written on the board, and then the woman with a slantwise glance. Her clipboard has not, yet, held his interest. Faint. But still discernible to one who grew up with dragons. But acknowledging his arrival would require deviating her attention from her student on stage right now. It has, however, moved her towards writing, this quiet disruption that only a few heads turn to glance back at. A few notes about the last performance: posture, his stance, the projection, but nothing about his delivery. Suireh moves, her leg crossing at her knee and her foot rotating small circles in the air. The next starts with a sweet, low alto. N'rov must listen. It's not as though he blocks his ears, and he is now watching the girl even as he slides forward in his seat; one knee's deeply bent, the other squared and unnecessarily supporting his wrist. From there, his regard alters: to the teacher's quarter-view, how she might even subtly react beyond writing to each ascension and descension, each variant of melody. It's during the cover of the next round of applause that he queries, lower yet, "Who writes for them?" Suireh regards N'rov every so often during the girl's song, that backwards sidelong glance without actually turning her head, whenever she imagines he might not be paying attention, and turning back to her notes when he does. When he questions, she leans back to murmur an answer of, "The composition students who hope to be promoted in the next round. There," a gracious drop of her chin indicates a corner of the small hall where a few senior apprentices (at least if age matters for rank) sit, furiously scribbling notes, more than Suireh's done thus far. "This one's my favorite," she says, bringing a finger to her lips and turning to pay attention to a young boy, far too young to be on his way towards journeyman, with a sweet soprano still. He's clean-shaven, at least, weather-tanned if less deeply than that second encounter at Southern Hold; his gaze is clear, if slightly more dilated than the bright-lit hall should allow; his cheekbones press hard within that tanned skin, as if he'd seen insufficient sleep or sustenance or whatever it is that a man requires. A hint of Benden burr's influenced a consonant or two. He also listens, not just to the songs but the explanation with a low 'Ah' or possibly ahh; glances over at the corner, now safeguarding a grin; and does not ask why. There are songs to wait out. The song ends. They're short songs, snippets rather than the full deal. Eventually, Suireh rises, going to stand along the side and then moves to the front after the last performer finishes. "Thank you all, for coming to the end of this intensive workshops in both vocal performance and composition. I'd like to thank Master Clendan and his students for providing our music for today and our audience," the harper's pale eyes drift to the very back for a moment. "There are refreshments in the lounge and you can speak with our performers today." Mostly family, who either live nearby or have the means to make the trip for this. "Thank you." Some families strive for decorum; a few don't at all care who sees their exuberance, their pride in those who have worked so hard within their craft... and harpercraft at that. One older man, warmly embracing his son, murmurs in the youth's ear about how he didn't quite understand the piece... but it was jolly well done nonetheless. As for N'rov, he makes the rounds with a compliment here and there, making a point of visiting two of the novice composers as well as the boy that Suireh favors; he doesn't approach the woman herself, not until the end when she might be freed. "Why the boy?" he asks without preamble. "Why not the boy?" returns Suireh tartly, shortly after she's accepted and extricated herself from an overly effusive hug from one of those parents who do not exercise decorum. The evening of pleasantries and small talk trails off into nothing rather than ends conclusively. "You tell me," is a dry, wry invitation rather than anything too tongue in cheek; N'rov, who thus far has managed to go unrumpled, slants a corresponding smile down to her and her dress. "His tone? The color of his eyes? Is he a little terror when he's off the dais?" Suireh begins to walk, reaching out to snag a glass of wine off the reception table and lifting it up in a silent toast. "His voice is pure," she answers, after a while. "A journeyman down Nerat way found him shoveling manure in the fields and sent him to audition. Most people couldn't look past the stench and the rough manners, but, his voice," she slants a look to N'rov, expectant, "Did you hear it? How crystalline. How fine. We'll have to see how it turns when he goes through puberty, but..." N'rov glances at Suireh's glass but, this time, doesn't move to steal it; he does accept this second of his own. "Remarkable." If he doesn't, can't, comprehend it as fully as a vocal harper might, he recognizes enough to sell it. "And with the manure, straight out of one of your stories. Do you lose many of them?" "A fair percentage. Some of their voices never settle into those deep manly tones you must use to enchant women with," Suireh says, her voice as dry as the wine she sips, finally. An appreciative sigh exhales loudly and she rolls her neck in circles, loosening the stress of a long day. "Others... decide to," she mimes scissors at his crotch and jerks her chin to indicate Healer Hall across the way, and shakes her head. "I hope to help him transition into his adult voice some day." Surprise becomes amusement becomes... overshadowed by the suddenly-sharp angle of dark brows. The bronzerider looks, slowly, down toward where she'd gestured; then, even more slowly, back up along her. Never mind adult voices; "Willingly." However deep his voice may be, it's doubtful. Suireh holds out the glass of wine, lifting it up to N'rov's lips. "Here. It'll help, I promise." "Good," N'rov says against the glass, but he reaches for the wrist of the hand that holds it. "Don't you-," but then her wrist is caught and Suireh is looking at the fingers about it curiously. What she was about to say gets changed to, "Do you sing, N'rov?" He moves that wrist, should she stay pliant, just enough to actually drink. "Incessantly," N'rov then agrees, if by definition untruthfully; the renewed angle of his brows suggests waiting to see just where she'll go with this. Curiosity is powerful. It allows him to do as he will with her wrist because she is curious. Curious as to where he'll go with this and curious what, and in what ways, she can react. The dancing notes of a ditty, a little naughty, a little sly, certainly not learned at Harper Hall is sung upwards at N'rov, complete with those subtle performance touches that Suireh can pull over her like second skin. "My wine, please," she requests at the end with a small smile and tip of her free fingers to her forehead. N'rov doesn't disguise his appreciation, though Suireh's a few measures in before he adds in an intimation of deeper harmony, more a not-quite-hum than anything. "Practice pays. Here," she can have her wine if she follows the dance cue, the shift of his weight, his step and lean and would-be lift of his arm for her to pass beneath. If. The hoops she has to jump through to reclaim her wine. "Practice?" she asks just before she passes beneath and finds him behind her and catches her breath, shoulders held tense. The wine's been forgotten. A breath. A voluntary step back, deliberate touching. "Off." Rather, "Pays off." He's unmoving for that moment, a hint of surprise in his low chuckle, then releases her wrist in favor of her hip. His aims to bump hers, a forward nudge for them to walk, for her to drink if she remembers: no closer than a dance, that dance a crossover between holders' and traders'. There's no grind here. "I meant," Suireh responds with a sudden arch of her brow, "You think I practice?" She has forgotten her wine entirely now, intent to move as he bids, walking a few steps ahead, down the hallway at a slow pace towards the great entryway. "What did you think of the second girl? The one who sang the dirge." "Don't you?" N'rov's grin is sudden, audible. "If only," isn't quite an end stop for all that she's summoned that second girl; but then, he also doesn't continue, except in that saunter after her that's in no hurry at all to catch up. From behind, after moments to think, "'The depressing song,' yes. She seemed," the pause could be chance, a brief word of goodbye that doesn't invite the family's following. "I'd say she didn't sell it. But I might not be her audience." Suireh's agreement is unsurprised at the song's layman's title or N'rov's assessment of it. "Aye. She didn't. She's never felt that depth of emotion in her life I'm sure. It's something we've been working on, but short of killing someone close to her, it is, I fear, something she will have to wait for life to teach her lessons on." The harper stops walking at the base of a set of stairs whose entrance is recessed away from the main hallway. "I told her she should not select that song, but the composer is her boyfriend." "Of course he is," is dry and not unsympathetic, any twist to his mouth lost to their passage; N'rov stops where rather than when she does, no true halt but rather a pause before next. Looking down at the dark-haired harper, "How many masters would off their apprentices' relations for artistic enrichment, I wonder, if only they could. How do you work on her?" "Redirection." Suireh's stop is a true one in the sense she finally turns to look up at N'rov. "I redirect her to her strengths for now until time will allow her those lessons she needs to sing a dirge and truly mean it. To become the role, if even for that moment, rather than just pretend to live in a fantasy for a moment. How do you shape your wing?" she asks in turn, without even a fleeting glance at his shoulder. Not right now at any rate. Perhaps earlier. His eyes narrow, narrowing it down: not negation. "Is that most masters' take?" has a smile behind it. "I'm more used to the weyrlingmater's whip. This," and now it's more of a half-smile, but more boyish for the noticing. "Is new. As yet, it's more of 'this is what we do.'" "Some. They'd say my methods are soft. They might be, but," Suireh's voice stretches long, trailing off until she's not speaking anymore. Not uttering one sound and the thought-filledness of it hangs heavy enough to seem to ask for no interruption. "My masters taught me there was a time and a place to learn things and teaching a teenager the truth of sorrow and how deeply to feel it when she cannot imagine a life harder than the one she has now... it'll come. She'll have time, later. We," she adds with a faint smile that looks to N'rov's knot and then reaches for it to try and touch a tassel, "We are not being trained in as little time as possible to die for our world." It receives not an interruption but its absence, or rather silence's continued presence. N'rov's gaze roves over her, her face, as she speaks and as she doesn't. It's new, and not. He follows her fingers towards where the tassel tips against the darker leather. He admits, "Gracious of you. We're not exactly being trained to die now. Unless Lessa happens to be showing up again?" Quizzical humor's light, to add a patina rather than override the rest. "If you do, send me word so I can be sure to write an epic song that sings of your heroics for you to hear of in the future." The harper's smirk is sardonic, her back finding a wall to lean against. The wine, once forgotten, is now rediscovered in her hand, a flicker of lashes looking at it as if it is not what is expected in her hand, but no matter, it's brought up to her lips for a quick time buying sip. "The way you train now will impact our lives. Pern I mean. Those first months, days, even turn. Absolutely critical in saving lives." There's still a smile on her lips, crooked and sarcastically amused. "Absolutely." She may be crooked, but N'rov plays the straight man with aplomb; it doesn't stop him from standing just off-center at that angle. He still has his glass; he touches it only to hold it in the air. "I did that once, their first days and months and moments. This is more... reconfiguring. Different voices, you could call it." "Did you?" Suireh's archness returns with a deepened smile. "Are you happy?" "Ecstatic." N'rov's got his line. Then he drops it, with a long-limbed shrug. "Irrelevant." Then: "Are you?" "Nah-," Suireh starts, "-T." Not. "As much as I thought I would be." Her nostrils flare and a double flutter of her lashes up and down at the ground in succession could indicate her own surprise at admitting this to him. But N'rov's nodding, once, twice. He switches his glass to his other hand. "Do you," he hesitates; they have seen a Lady die before their eyes, but this is not that. "Does it work for you." Suireh is either ignorant or is pretending ignorance well. Given she's holding wine and suddenly drinking a long sip, or gulp, of it, it seems more likely the former. "In what way?" The bronzerider's, wingsecond's, shrug is ambivalent. "You know how some people think they're going to be... 'ecstatic,' when they get this or that; when they earn it; when they do it." He looks at her; is she with him? "Some of them realize they're fine with how it really is. It works for them, it's good. And some people realize, or think, they want something different. Their boots keep chafing, they never do break in." The 'oh' is visible in rounded eyes and a mouth that continually mutates in the space of seconds, as if unsure of whether to laugh or be sympathetic or what. "It works for me. I'm making it work for me." It's all those mutations; right when she's busy with work, N'rov gives in and makes to tap her nose. Startled, though not enough to stop talking, Suireh ends up concluding her words with a pause, then laughter, a finger going to her nose to rub the tip. "There was a bug on it," N'rov tells her, unrepentant. It couldn't be more of a lie if he were trying. There's a cocked brow for that. "Mmhmm," sounds the schoolmarm. Her resumed steps are easier, slower paced, and less focused on a destination. "Determination and grit, what I inherited from my parents. If I think it hard enough, maybe being a Master will be everything my little heart dreamed. Would you like another drink?" Suireh's glass is suddenly empty(er). Maybe it's the schoolmarm bit; N'rov's gotten himself a smirk somewhere in there, and the only answer's got to be, "Yes." Ma'am. For the rest, he can even hold his tongue. Suireh's hand finds his, slipping into it with a familiar ease and then pulling him into that tucked away stairwell, taking the flight that leads down, only releasing his hand when she needs to reach out for a glow basket. "Have you spent much time at the Hall?" "No." Well. "More than I'll admit to, but not generally in these depths. How low are we going?" N'rov's inquiry stays as casual, but interested, as though he's fine with being led as many stories down as he'll then have to climb again. "Two flights. They allow masters to keep bottles there in the private cellars. We each get a key," Suireh pats about at her dress then, with a little smile backwards, presses the back of her fingers into her side, just beneath her armpit where a bra is likely strapped tight. "I don't have much of a collection as I try not to drink too much," a pause, "But there are a few things I've been gifted that to drink alone would be a shame." "Each of us?" has to be said and abandoned, N'rov's delivery more amused than properly dry; if he's supposed to avert his gaze, he hasn't gotten around to try. "Quite the system," might even be just the cellar, but there's a bow that accompanies, "Lead on." Dryly, "Don't be too impressed. Most of us have a tiny little door that leads to a tiny little shelf that can hold a paltry half dozen at most." Not all of us. Suireh leads the way, her steps light and quick on the stairs in their descent. One flight. The second. The air is notably cooler here, no hearths or people keeping things warm. It's dark here, other than her glow lantern, and she leads the way towards a locked cavern, which in turn has... as she said before, small square metal doors lining the wall, no names, just numbers etched into the surface. In front of '382', Suireh stops and looks back at N'rov, if he kept up. He might have gotten distracted or something, here and there. Still, there he is; N'rov not only duly looks, but sketches those numbers with a finger in the air. "Any, ah, tunneling between shelves?" he inquires without missing a verbal step. "If you could train a baby to tunnel, sure," is Suireh's ludicrous response to that. Wine glass, lantern, they're set on the ground by her feet. Then, she reaches in to her gown's collar and fishes around, pulling out the key, showing it off with a faint, snarky little smile, and turns to open the door, reaching in, patting, and then bringing out a small half bottle, the cork still sealed in wax. The door is closed, the lock clicking into place and she turns, easing her body in a slump against the wall of small square doors. The bottle, Suireh holds to her cheek. "I can't remember. We meet in such random places. Have I ever sung for you?" Other than earlier, it would seem she means. Yeah, N'rov's got a grin for that; the ripple of shadows could be his laugh, if they weren't how he crouches to secure glass and lantern out of (just in case) the way of those feet. It's from that low vantage that he gets back to watching her procedure; his reply comes as readily. "Not for me." In his presence, certainly; could it be otherwise? "You look like you have a song in mind." "I," she notes with a certain, faux supercilious lilt in her voice (the faux part betrayed more in the curvature of her smile than in the tone itself), "Am paid handsomely to sing for people." A beat. "But you," she adds in a quickly-added but slowly drawled voice, complete with a tilt of her head, "I'll make an exception for." Just not now, it would seem, her body pushing off the wall and the bottle coming down to her side, stepping into the spot the lantern would have been had he not secured it and continues to move, apparently either having forgotten it was there or assuming he'll bring it along. Either way, or other reasons, it isn't her concern as she walks out the door and waits for him to join her outside the cavern full of liquor. "Indulgent of you," N'rov assures with his own slow smile lifted up with the light; standing as she moves, "I won't tell, lest your rates be... impaired." Soon he'll escort her out, surely, but he's got to nose around just a little first; perhaps he trusts her not to lock him in. Poking around won't lead to much, all the doors of the metal variety without slits to see inside. Just numbers etched into them, though some of the metal sheets seem newer than others. Some locks look worn, easily pickable, the door scratched up where inebriated people could not quite get their key in. It is, in whole, an empty seeming room other than a three-step step ladder at the very back. Aware that new spaces must be explored, Suireh does not call in, but shortly, after a very short time, she begins to sing a quiet Ruathan shepherd song, one best accompanied by a gitar or lap harp. Stepladders need to be climbed, and the light lifted to them; it's not like it's far. Perhaps it's just there for the higher doors, but just in case.... Indeed, it is for higher doors. Or for shorter people who have higher doors and can't quite reach. But up this high, it's easier to see that the doors are stacked three high and twenty deep. Not all of them can be in use, can they? There are cobwebs and then, just under the song outside, the pitter patter feet of something tiny. That's not the sort of thing N'rov has to stick around for. He leaves whatever-it-is to the spinners and departs with humored efficiency, closing the door quietly behind him from consideration for the singer. If she still is. Only once she's done, in an undertone, "I like it. Where's it from?" There's another verse she doesn't sing, concluding the song shortly after he's come back, though her closed eyes and face are lifted to look up at the ceiling. Presumably, she's heard his approach in footsteps and the door clicking shut. In silence, Suireh flashes him a wry smile, turns and locks the room and begins to walk. "Ruatha. I spent a short time there traveling the countryside to the smaller holds that have sprung up during the Interval. Learned it from a young woman who writes verses while she tends to her flock. If she had been turns younger, but," Suireh looks back over her shoulder to see if he's following her slow steps. Her shrug says what she does not, what can you do? He is; he angles the glows when she turns back, to light her up just shy of her eyes. It's not as though she's on stage. "Does that happen often?" N'rov asks, moving to catch up. With a different sort of seriousness, "If you're looking for more apprentices, there seem to be several crawling about back there." "I didn't mean to look. She just was." There. Sheep. Alive. Not a harper. As for the things that crawl, Suireh wrinkles her nose. "Were there? Are you sure they weren't some sort of rodent?" Her steps resume, this time a little quicker, the bottle held closely to her chest as she takes those steps up a daring two at a time. He grins; he follows. Not as quickly; if she hurries too fast, she might run out of light. Which happens, but doesn't seem to stop her as much as slow her. One step at a time, slower, until he catches up. "Have you ever thought of what it would be like," she presumes to ask, "What you would be, if you weren't a dragonrider?" He doesn't seem to mind, given the quick wryness in his reply. "That's why I became a rider." He glances briefly at her. "Well, that's why I ran away to the Weyr, anyhow. Well. That was more to get a ride." That stops Suireh short, abruptly, and though she doesn't turn around there's a funny catch in the first few words she says, that must be reflected on her face, before her voice smooths out at the final word, harper polished once more. "A ride to... anywhere but here?" He stops just in time, reaching for her shoulder as though she'd need steadying; "Give me credit, Suireh." The bronzerider's grin is quick too. "Keroon was looking good. Lemos, if it weren't too northerly when push came to shove. I had plans." To have that kind of credit, "I barely know you," says Suireh, turning to look at the dragonrider with those pale, all-seeing old-soul eyes of hers. She reaches out to try and catch a corner of that grin in her thumb, to dare to touch his face and then hesitates before she does. "Yes." He can suppose that's true, though there's something of surprise in his gray gaze; his mouth isn't going anywhere, no longer shaped so freely but still with an uptick to the corners. "No, I wasn't escaping a 'fate worse than death,' not my own and not one that I gave anyone else." "I feel," Suireh starts, then stops, then tries to start again with one throwaway syllable that ultimately turns into silence. Her thumb never makes it to N'rov's face, even though she continues to stay there, still with it hanging ridiculously in the air. "I ran away from a Weyr. Ironically enough." The admission, lightly uttered, seems to propel her feet once more, to at least start to turn. N'rov doesn't jump in to complete the thought. His expression stays steady, his gaze on hers for the most part, but there's that thumb; it's on 'enough' that he moves to pluck it from the air, and wiggle it if he can. It wouldn't mean that she couldn't turn, couldn't walk; it just means he might have a Suireh-thumb for a step or two. She doesn't walk, even if she can. She doesn't even complete that turn, looking at the side of the stairwell now and the uneven surface of the rock wall there. "I don't know if I've ever told anyone that." Then he wiggles her finger again. The light has stayed low; it picks up the unevenness in the rock, but doesn't lift to seek the same in her face. Or his. "You and your grit and determination." Fact. "Me and my grit and determination." Suireh's repetition is wry again, this time with a self-mocking edge and less maudlin, though not completely devoid. "I promised you a drink. And a song." She wiggles her thumb in his hand, does not pull it free, and turns with her arm trailing behind her, slowly up those stairs. She can mock if she likes; N'rov neither protests nor does so himself, but rather matches her speed as they climb. He has a thumb to keep from dislocating, after all. "Any particular order?" he asks, as though there might be a program. Possibly even written up on a board. She doesn't even have to think on it, the immediacy of her answer: "Drink first. Then the song. Liquid courage after all." Suireh's thumb twitches. They reach the landing. His laugh is low, enjoying it. "If it works," N'rov won't knock it, but rather slide his hand up for her wrist once more, the second time tonight. Perhaps for the stairs, "How high?" There's no response other than a glance down at the hand about her wrist and then up with a faint, bemused smile. Then slower walking, where she's only a half step ahead of him at all times, her matching his pace this time. It's not far from the stairs in a recessed hallway that she stops. No more stairs. This door, while unlocked, opens into a lounge area with a lit hearth and a variety of drinks and snacks against the wall. From the ornate furniture and paintings on the wall, this is not a generic area for just anyone and given the hour, is empty. Suireh gestures. "Pick a seat, any seat." Warmer up here as it is, N'rov doesn't move to the fire, rather looking around with interest and then choosing the couch. The three-person couch, relinquishing her wrist with a moment's firmer clasp along the way, lounging back into its corner. "Do you tell my fortune with what I pick?" As long as he's at it, he shutters the glows and goes for another glance at her bottle; perhaps its shape, or even label, might tell him how 'high.' "Don't be ridiculous," says Suireh, that wryness heavier now. She moves easily about the room, finding two glasses and only then going, "Oh," in a mix of chagrinned regret, followed by a resigned sigh. The bottle's seal is cut with a wax cutter on a silver tray on the dining buffet, and the cork is wedged loose with a gentle pop before the sounds of liquid pouring can be heard. He just laughs; until, all right, "Hm?" That 'Oh.' "The wine glass. I left it. Unless," she considers him as she rounds the couch and takes the other corner and perches on the edge primly. "Unless you brought it up with you?" The heavy bottomed glass filled with some sort of golden liquid is held out. N'rov holds up empty hands, if not precisely for mercy; he also accepts the glass before saying, "I seem to have left mine as well, if that helps. If the next visitors are desperate enough, and don't mind a little dusting, they'll count themselves lucky." "Or the rats have something new to play with," is Suireh's guess; one followed by a delicate shudder. "To," her glass lifts, "Different lives than the one we grew up with." That quirks up his mouth; "To lives," N'rov agrees with an easy clink. He takes his time with the drink, savoring it. His gaze roams then; the furniture across the way, the hearth, the laces of her slippers as they rise. "Your plan?" "My plan?" Obtuse or deliberate? Suireh appears innocent of guile though, with this, the quizzical lift of her brow rising above the rim of her glass coming up over her mouth and nose. To her gaze, now; "When you ran. Was it for all this?" N'rov considers her in turn; he's kept his voice low, shared rather than secretive. He leans forward and reaches out, but to steal one of the pillows before she does, and crunch it comfortably behind his back. Suireh's silence is... confused. As if no one has ever asked her this before and she doesn't know how to answer it. That there's no easy answer, so instead, the harper drinks again, crossing her ankles for something else to do. N'rov nods once; he drinks; his gaze diverts briefly, down and up once more. The fire crackles. That's wealth right there: a room warmed on the chance that someone properly knotted would wander in. They might find courage here too; they might never think to look. Confusion fades into companionable, or at least thoughtful, silence. Suireh's thinking isn't visible or audible, but still tangible within the air and that crackling fire. Her breathing is heavier, as if working up to speak again, then doesn't, though it doesn't even out, even after she doesn't speak. So much thinking. N'rov drinks, and considers the pulse in her throat and the remaining levels in her glass, and lets the fire crackle. After a time, his voice journeying slow and deep into the sounds of his homeland, "If you have to travel in the months before Turnover. Boll to Fort's not the worst way to go." The why is in the lift of her lashes and the confused look she gives to N'rov. It's never spoken and then the question is never completed. Suireh sips her liquor and listens, her elbow coming up to rest along the back of the couch and her head resting on her curled hand. "I would never advise Tillek to Fort just after Turnover myself." But Tillek is not Boll and there's acknowledgement of this in that returned curl of her lip. N'rov sucks in an all-but-silent breath. "Quite the hike," he says. He crooks one arm behind his head while he's at it, and sips before finding a curl to match hers. "Question is... would you recommend Tillek-to-anywhere any time of Turn?" "Summer." This is resolute. Quite decisive and punctuated with a small burgeoning grin. Suireh shifts, easing back into that corner a little more comfortably, a little less primly. "If I could choose one season to return home to, it'd be summer." "It'd have to be summer," N'rov says firmly, and never mind the smirk behind it. "I suppose," he eyes her, "you wouldn't want to be anywhere near Boll during summer, come to that." "Autumn in Boll." She's a well-traveled woman, the smile deepening at one corner, dimpling her cheek with it. "When I was younger, we'd sometimes go pick fruit. Help," she amends with a snort for her lap, "Pick fruit. Eat it mostly. I liked Boll, the little I saw. How is it, leading up to Turnover?" "Such as it is." N'rov, dryly amused for his birthplace. He lounges a little more deeply, holding his glass up away from them and squinting into it as though it were a crystal orb. "Little Suireh, picking fruit. Picking and eating fruit... I can see it." He glances at her. "You didn't throw the rotten ones, did you? Not that I'm saying Norov and his brothers ever did, or had to hear about the stains from our mother afterward. Who does like to celebrate Turnover, so yes, it does get busy." "Never," says Suireh, so primly, it's likely the truth. Her mouth twitches, though, so there must be more that she says nothing on. "Did you walk then, from Boll to Fort, with your mother before Turnover?" The twitching mouth stills into an expectant smile that disappears behind the glass she does not sip from. Just lets it rest there, on the lower lip of her smile. It does take a moment, but a short moment. Then N'rov's grandly narrowing his eyes at her and her cheshire smile, just before his reply that's all the more affable; "Aye, and I carried my new nephew on my back while I was at it." A sip later, a tilt of his glass, "Not the one you met." Suireh smiles at that, the twitching mouth settled into something -- something inscrutable, neither happy nor sad. Just a neutral smile. She sips again, silently looking from N'rov to the fire and then back. "Are you happy, N'rov? Being N'rov?" Neutral. It gains a lift of the bronzerider's brow... and then he exhales. He tips his head back against his arm; his thumb moves, as though to rub the back of his neck; like hers, though, it doesn't complete the gesture. "Most days," he says finally. His baritone's different now, not like the boy singer's will change, but in inflection. Gray eyes reflect the firelight, too. He's looking at her. "Just about all, in many ways. You could ask me why I turned up here." Suireh flushes, stiffening and then looking away from those gray eyes upon her. The blush climbs to her ears, unbidden, in the silence, until she finally says, "I could. Should I?" The blush, he watches the blush, lifting just slightly into a smile as it does. "I'm not going to say 'should,' Suireh," N'rov says. "Or at least I wasn't going to. Should I?" At that, the flush recedes and Suireh laughs a little. "Yes," she decides, "You should. I'd like to know, I think, even though the knowing of it frightens me, as much as me admitting this to you frightens me." "And your admitting that..." N'rov completes the round in like tone before he pauses on an exhale. "Let's say then, I said: 'Suireh, you should ask me.' And you said, 'N'rov, tell me.'" The way he shapes 'her' voice isn't so much high-pitched, though it's a few notes up, more of a lilt closer to her way of speaking than his. Then he ducks her a grin. "You might have said please. Did you say please? Or just to do it already." The flush hovers, not leaving, not growing. It's just there for the admission, the heat of the hearth, and the way he grins at her, plus the alcohol. The alcohol, there that returns to her lips, though her glass is quite empty. In the end, Suireh doesn't say please, though she finally, finally, looks to N'rov and his gray eyes, emotionally naked in her own pale gaze. He looks at her, that way; that levity of his recedes, a slippage far slower than a glass being filled. "You ask me why," he says quietly, "and I have to look at why. I don't know, you could say." He looks at her; he might stop there, but she'd spoken. So he does. "I know... you know, everyone knows there's a lot going on at Fort. At the Weyr. What you don't know is that N'muir, he's a man I'd wanted to serve under... as long as it took, and not nearly as long as it is. What you don't know is that I wanted to hear you sing." Suireh continues to look at him, her own pale gray eyes fixed in their wide, open way on the Fortian rider, not acknowledging her awareness of Fort's issues, until his last when the flush turns pale and her eyes avert to her empty glass. The next sound from her is the glass that finds a surface to be placed on and a rustle of her skirts as she stands, the back of her hands pressing down any wrinkles in her blue blue skirts. Her hand flutters to the hollow of her throat, pressing there briefly as if massaging a frog out of it, and then up to her mouth to wipe fingers at the corners. She could ask what he'd like to hear, what of her talents he'd like to see, but she picks for him, from everything he's shared tonight: wingsecond, Boll, his opinions on her students and his feelings on the Fortian turmoil. The selected song showcases her soprano well in its minor key and carries a wistful solemnity in the andante tempo and simple verses. There's a rustling outside the door shortly after she starts, a single knock that then scurries away when it's clear the room is occupied. Through her preparations, he watches her and yet doesn't, his gaze less averted than focused beyond, keeping her in his outer field of vision; when she begins, that's when he's allowed to look once more. The knock interrupts. He half-turns, darker than a scowl for all that there's no overt change in his expression; that's slower than the scuttling to recede, but then it does, and he does, his hands at his sides. He listens, and he takes her in, not just her face but all of her that he can see, and hear. There's no hurry in him to be done. The verses pass, and last. A man might think that the song will end, and it will, but he doesn't anticipate to know. While her earlier ditty had artful expressions, turns of her hand, a role she was playing, this one, it's just her, standing there with one hand on her diaphragm and the other at her side. Even without the accessories of demonstrative facial expressions or entreating hands, her instrument, that voice, conveys what it should in all the right moments. For voice alone, Suireh's rank should be undeniable, and then, it ends, as gently and solemnly as it started. Somewhere in there he breathes. He must. The role might never have been; nor is N'rov a harper, or one so minded to evaluate her now so much as experience. Other things, many things. Not this and not now. And after... perhaps he should applaud; he doesn't, likely doesn't think to, but it's there in the expression he lets her see, unfiltered by layers of trenchant humor or any other. He must breathe, and he does, but he still doesn't speak. She allows him the moment to breathe, to think to be quiet. Suireh, clearly, does not expect applause from her audience of one. It'd be awkward for one, and for a woman who seems together most of the time, social awkwardness randomly pops up in her interactions. That moment to reflect leads into another song, one that takes her across the hearth to stand in front of him, silhouetted by the fire. Still quietly sung, it's less solemn, evocative of spring turning into summer, the joy muted by some semblance of maturity and the lyrics of a similar vein. Suireh even ventures a small smile to accompany this song and a little lift of one shoulder, shy and coy commingled in the small movement. Another song. And a smile, which gets her another from N'rov in turn, slow and welcoming; spring becomes summer, and the way she stands determines how firelight finds him, whether it flickers across his boots or casts him wholly into shadow. It's over and she stands there, uncertain in spite of the smile still on her lips. Suireh exhales, then inhales, holding it there and looks at N'rov. "I'm sorry," she says, though she has no stake to be sorry for, "About your Weyrleader." "Thank you." For that too. N'rov doesn't correct her but shares with her when he says, "He's always been my wingleader, more." The words end on a stilled note; he's holding out his hand. That is somehow news to her, the weyrbred girl whose father was a Weyrleader and wingleader. Suireh's mouth twitches at the share, understanding the inherent correction of it and nods once before giving the seated man her hand, the strength of her grip ready to aid his rise, should he move that way. Instead, he experiments with a tug: not a yank, but the sort of pull that's in league with gravity, the better to aid her... fall. It's hard, generally, to catch Suireh off guard as such. But when an unexpected tug up turns more into a fall down, she, well, falls, the reflexes of her other hand stretching out to catch the back of the couch only just stopping her from falling ungracefully into N'rov, but not quite saving her from an inane response of, "Woops," too too close to his face. Reflexes, of the emotional variety this time, also make it too easy for her to forget herself and complete a more controlled fall, so that her eyes might dare to close in anticipation and her lips, with intention, just graze his. Woops. It all but crosses his eyes, it's that close. N'rov laughs under his breath, his hands going up to her rib cage to help with the catching in case; that couch might give way, after all. Or the room. Or the Hall. She can graze him; he can tease back, barely-there kisses (the song; the Turns; the singer) for each corner of her lips and not in the middle at all. Barely there is enough for Suireh to content herself with, her head tipping forward to rest her forehead against his and then shifting so she's moving to sit next to him, rather than fallen on him. One hand rises to remove one of his hands from her ribcage and she looks at him. "You came to hear me sing," is both question and statement in its odd upward lilt. She looks at him; N'rov's looking down at her hand, his hand, and his grin flashes as he looks back up at her. He's only a little flushed. "At a performance for your students," giving that last all the emphasis it deserves. "Yes." She has a special look for that - brows lifted, head tilted, mouth quirked, the works. Then a smile that leads to a silent, shoulder shaking laugh. "Do you come to see me at all my performances? Or just the ones I don't actually perform in?" He's got a free hand; he can make to tap her nose again. "Yes," N'rov says, and his voice drawls dark and conspiratorial. "Of course I do. I hide in the crowd, disguised like I was today. Last time I had a mustache," which he proceeds to finger, long and illusory with a curl on the end. The finger tap gets a cross-eyed look and then another of her particular looks when he speaks, though she plays into it by reaching up to press that mustache thin all the way to the end of its curl. Suireh, then, rests her hand flat against N'rov's cheek. "You shouldn't stay out too late, particularly," she notes his knot still on his shoulder, "If you have to wake up tomorrow morning and be all- wingsecondly." His mouth curls, too. "It's part of my costume." Though the way he wears it, there's a subtly different purpose in his stride, and easier than the weariness she wouldn't have seen without it: license to do. Suireh's hand press gains some strength, her fingers, particularly her thumb, rubbing away at what wrinkles are on his face: laugh, age, stress. "Good costume. I'd give you above average marks for your performance tonight then," says the master to the dragonrider. "Embodying your role in body, spirit, and attire. Well done, N'rov." N'rov's eyes shut at the touch, allowed to be tired, allowed to close; that doesn't mean that, at the last of those words, the one furthest from her hand doesn't sliver irrepressibly open once more. "Do I get a two-marker, ma'am?" "Do you want one?" Suireh's hand drops once that sliver opens and she sinks back into the seat once more, the cushion next to N'rov on that three-seater. Her body relaxes, feet crossed, almost straight but liquid, as if she could just melt down into the ground given incentive. The wine, rum, and heat have started to sink in. "From me?" If she has to ask, he has to give that a contemplative moment, staring off into the fire as he rubs his jaw for a moment, two. "I don't see a downside." N'rov glances back at her, her and that liquid body that he doesn't touch now, quick smile coming into view. "Do you?" "And what of the deprived apprentice it could have been for. Some day?" Suireh folds her hands over her lounged abdomen and looks up at N'rov, rubbed jaw and all. Her pale eyes linger on the quick smile upon her and she offers a wry one in return. "I don't think I even know what we're talking about anymore. Do you need a refill?" "If you're apt to run out," N'rov begins; but he's no apprentice, not really. Nor does he question her running out of rum; the slant of his mouth may be the more rueful for her comment that just precedes it, something like demurral, but he reaches down for that set-aside glass even as he answers, "Please." Where did that bottle go? Suireh casts a look around, finding the glass too far to reach for and is still for a half moment, before pushing herself up off the seat to walk to where that bottle is and bringing it back to the couch. Along the way, her own glass is retrieved and refilled first. "I have a sister. This was something she sent me when I walked the tables. The first time." The bottle is held out, tipped slightly, but not pouring anything yet, as she awaits the glass to get nearer. "To Journeyman?" in case there were another. N'rov offers said glass; he's very well-behaved. "I can't give you my two mark piece," Suireh ultimately says, apology laden. "It was given to me when I returned to the Hall and I... I can't give it to you." What this has to do with the rum at hand that's now being poured shakily, the bottle set down afterwards, nothing most likely. "What else would you like of mine, wingsecond?" Hers, her piece, as though there truly is only one. N'rov looks at Suireh, harper-Suireh and girl-Suireh and sister-Suireh; there are easy answers, and surely most of them would be true. But he says to her when she's done with that bottle, "I don't know." And he drinks her gift before he says, "Yet." "What of you? What have you to offer me? Your token that holds the enigmatic secrets of your orphaned heritage?" Given the discussion on Boll tonight, Suireh's straight-faced words crack at the end, just enough for a smirk to escape. "You remember," N'rov says on the beat after next, no longer so contemplative but suddenly pleased. Unabashedly so, though he doesn't quite crow; rather, he tips her a crooked brow to go with that smirk. And an accent, thick and guttural. "So. You want to see my biiirthmark." Vant. For all that it was never that at all. "The ego on this one." Suireh shakes her head, seeking out her rum and sipping it, only turning to push the cheek attached to the face with the crooked brow and smirk a little, something harder than a pat, but nothing near an actual hit or shove. Just, nudge it away, wipe that smirk off. Find a reason to touch him again. Pushy girl. There's a laugh in N'rov's eyes that verges on wicked; his head turns, sliding the hard plane of his eyetooth against her finger. It's not, technically, pointed. Her hand doesn't draw back, her finger doesn't flinch at the brush of tooth to flesh and, unbidden, her own smile turns into a smirk, Suireh turning her face (and her glass) away into the back of the couch to hide it. There's a low chuckle in her wake; N'rov doesn't take such care for his glass (or his face), but tips the former to the latter for a drink. And then, of all that dark hair... surely there's a strand or several that needs to be swept away from her nape. The sheer effort not to fluster visibly tenses the harper master, though the long steadying breath that happens quickly in the wake of the hand at her neck is surely a tell tale sign. Another steadying breath leads to Suireh finally turning to face him, her cheek resting against the couch and starting with a very short (in length), "You," and ending with another breath, eyes closed, and a pride-slaying admission, "I don't know what to do next." When she turns, N'rov's not hidden that trespassing hand; it rests there on his thigh, half-open in plain sight, and she's in his sight even after she closes her eyes. She needn't wait long for a reply; it's in the next briefly-held breath that he asks of her, quiet and capable as he can be, "What do you mean?" With her mastership, she could mean. The flush she's been fighting surfaces and Suireh is too quick to shake her head. "It's nothing. Work stuff." The lie is blithe, well told all things considered, but still not quite up to par. "What do you think of this?" Her glass lifts, the rum presumably. Her body shifts again so she's sitting normally, that is with her back against the back, both legs off the side but a more prim straightening, rather than the casual slouch from moments ago. He eyes her. "I think you're blushing. I think it's," N'rov glances at her drink, his own, her, "'nice.'" He hasn't quite brought that smirk back; it's hovering there on the edges, where without that too-quickness it might not have been. The blush? Misunderstanding has Suireh's eyes flying up to find N'rov for a long second. Maybe two. But then realization hits. The drink. Right. Her gaze drops to the rum and she takes a quick sip. "It is. Vanilla, sweet, very subtly spicy. My sister sent it to me. But, I think I mentioned that already." The harper is quiet, the steadiness of her breathing getting normalized by the moment and then, "I'll be singing at Bitra Hold on the fourth of next month." Passive voice or active voice. Passive voice or active voice -- that's the war going on in her head and in the working of her jaw, until, "I would like it if you came to listen." "That sounds about right," N'rov allows judiciously, and gray eyes still haven't left her. "The burn might surprise you." He tips what's left in his glass this way and that, a slow roll that might make the easily-troubled seasick were it a Tillek fisherboat. He, and the rum, wait her out. Until, as though it were just that easy, "I would like to come listen." Words, they work. Details?" In short, will he need his mustache. "A gambling night with entertainment." Suireh being the entertainment -- well at least one variety of it. "I would rather not, I mean," that flush hints along her jaw, but doesn't get further than that, "It's not some place I'd like to be unescorted." Though, presumably, there will be other harpers. One brow crooks upward (entertainment); the other is slower, much slower to rise alongside it. "Then consider yourself escorted." N'rov has a slow grin for her in return; then he himself is rising, switching his glass to offer her a hand. The very slightest sag curls her shoulders, as if something that held her upright is now released. Gray eyes find her glass and what liquid remains and then there's that hand in front of her and Suireh looks up first at the hand then him, before offering hers gingerly. "I'll be wearing gray," she says. As if it matters. It will matter, if N'rov's training is anything to go by. "To set off your eyes," he intones, the more grandiloquent for what's also genuineness, and helps her rise. There's the firelight to stroll toward, after all. As explanation, "We don't have much left. Gulp or sip?" The daughter of two alcoholics gives him a dry look. "Sip," she says, in case that look was indecipherable. "Sip, swallow, savor," N'rov's positively required to quip. Something in that makes Suireh roll her eyes, something of the performer in her returning, past the flushing and little vulnerabilities. "You think you're funny," she states, not that she's disagreeing, her hand not releasing his even though she's standing with a glass in the other hand. "Savor. That's a good word. It sounds like what it means." N'rov tips his head to her, or his hand; "That's why they keep me around." But then he's moseying back to a slow syllable-savoring, "So. Savor. Lives," their toast of before. His thumb wanders over around her wrist. "Finish your glass and I'll go." "Is that all?" That crestfallen slip escapes before the voiced words become concrete thought in her head to stop and Suireh's mouth turns into one thin line that trembles with a self-mocking laughter that's withheld only just. She withholds her laughter; his, surprised, is a low rumble that has him putting his glass down, there on the mantel. "When you put it that way." N'rov's leaning in, leaning down to murmur, "Turn your head." To her wavy hair, not those straightened lips. "You don't-," that's the passive voice speaking, which Suireh bites down on, before turning her head as directed instead of finishing that thought. Her own glass is held in between whitened fingers, the self-mocking laughter trapped somewhere not on her face. Nor does he; some completions they don't need. N'rov lifts Suireh's hair from her ear, from the lobe without a ring, from the long neck beneath. "Hmm," is audibly all too considering as he dips lower to see, to not-yet-tickle, to taste. A small giggle, ticklish, turns into an escaped, "Oh," that is both enlightened and culminates all those feelings that can't quite be made eloquent in words of liking what's happening and just not knowing how she should feel about it. Suireh, ultimately, twists her neck away and looks at him side long with a small, stupid grin. "Good night, N'rov." She giggled. N'rov, when they come up from those wiggles, has a somewhat smug air; it's all in how he rubs his chin, a little rough since before the concert, and grins down at her. "Finish your glass, Suireh." Some part of her most be ornery, a spark of something making it seem like she might not finish her glass, just to see what would happen. But, it's late and getting later and Suireh looks at N'rov in that side long way where her face is just slanted away from his and her eyes have to widen to look at him all the better from this angle. Then, then, she tips her glass back and doesn't savor it. And he makes a glugging sound when she does, too. N'rov grins at sidelong-girl, then, and makes a show of taking his own glass and his own sweet time with the last swallow, the last drops. At the very end, he's holding the tilted glass above his open mouth, waiting for the final droplet to bead and swell and fall from its rim. She might roll her eyes, but her otherwise stillness next to him humors this long sweet time of it, including that final droplet that ... "Good night, N'rov," is said with a different emphasis than before. There it goes. Now he can set down his glass a final time. "Sleep tight," N'rov says to Suireh, and that hand of hers he still has, he gives it back to her: literally, moving to wrap it around the other one, all hers. When he leaves, rum or no rum, he saunters jauntily. "Don't let the bed bugs bite," she says, almost by rote, when he saunters off. There's a moment of why did I say that that crosses her face and a thin pressed grin. He laughs, pleased, and either he holds his liquor or he has helpful friends at Fort, for there's no keening in the night. In the morning, N'rov can wake up to the changes, the wearying changes upon changes that he has to work through and even, now, administer. Whether his time will be his own, enough, that next month... they'll have to see. |
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