Logs:The Sewing Lesson
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| RL Date: 30 August, 2014 |
| Who: Lycinea, Telavi |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Telavi and Lya entertain themselves with a sewing lesson and much more. |
| Where: Resident Common Room, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 7, Month 9, Turn 35 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: H'vier/Mentions, Jinja/Mentions, Moreta/Mentions, Oliwer/Mentions, Quinlys/Mentions, Tayte/Mentions, V'ros/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Back-dated. |
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| Resident Common Room, High Reaches Weyr Just off of the main passageway lies the small cavern that forms the hub of the residents' quarters, kept immaculately clean by the headwoman's staff and warmed in cold weather by a stone hearth to the left and well back from the entrance. Comfortable chairs and a plush fur arrayed before the hearth make an inviting spot to curl up with a book or handicraft, or just to sit and chat. Beyond, additional chairs stand in clusters throughout the room, some upholstered with age-softened hide, some plain wood. At the widest point of the cavern, a round table gleams with polish, though its surface is nicked and scarred from Turns of use. Beyond the table, the very back of the cavern often lies in shadow unless the glowbaskets there are unlidded to cast cozy pools of light. The commingled scents of klah, smoke and polish permeate the air along with the sweetness of rosemary and lavender. Tapestries hang across the entrances to dormitories and more private quarters as well as the exit to the outer hall, colorful protections from drafts.
"What?" Big blue eyes. Her hair's slipped forward with the abrupt lift of her head, and Telavi puffs an unthinking breath to get it out of the way... which lasts all of two seconds. Well before that time elapses, "Ew. Ew ew ew. Lya." In the next breath, "I have no i-- shells, why did Jinja have to go to stupid Monaco. She could tell us-- except I'm not sure she's that good with fabric," she finishes with a crinkle of her nose. Though, "Would you like to ask? We could, right now." Blinking blue-green eyes. Did she say something? Lya thinks it over while she blinks and Tela ews. "Oh." She figured it out. She's shaking her head quickly, "No, we don't need to." Not right now anyway. "It's only that I've been thinking about healers. Journeyman Oliwer said he would sponsor me to the craft if I wanted, if I believed in myself or some rainbows and sunshine stupidity like that." The younger girl screws up her face in the most anti-unicorns way possible. Telavi eases herself back into her chair, comfortable though it is, with a lot less alacrity than when she'd begun to rise out of it-- and then her eyes are wide again. "Would he, for serious?" Tela's supposed to act like the older one, but today... "Do you want? I mean, never mind the rainbows and believing and singing in tune, but this could be huge." Lya flops back, setting the sewing aside for now. "I think so," seriously. The girl sighs and looks up at Tela, her perspective rather upside down. "That he would, I mean. I don't know about wanting to. I'm not very smart." Well, smart-mouthed, but that's a different kind of smart. "With books. Except history. I'm pretty good at history. Local, anyway." That's a lot of qualifiers, but she'll claim what she can honestly. "He offered to let me shadow him. Well, offered. He said I should, that I'd probably like it," which is a little different than offering. "I'm thinking about doing that much because V'ros says he'll take me to Ista if I can get the time off, and if I don't get Oli to get me out of work, I'll have to be on my best behavior for ages to get a full day." Because kitchen workers with extremely bad attitudes don't get whole days off. Or undocked pay. Telavi listens, leaning over her knees to do it; there are small reactions as Lya explains-- mostly having to do with those expressive brows-- but in the end, "Why not, then? It's not as though they can give you less time off if you decide," if he decides, "you won't be doing that anymore. And," here she hesitates, her expression briefly pinched. "I hope he knows what he's doing? For teaching? Because they don't always. Know, I mean. But with him seeing something in you, Lya, if he's not being... skeevy or anything," just to rule that out, unlikely as it is, "even if you don't apprentice, you could still work there as one of their helpers, I think. Would you 'be on your good behavior' with him?" Air quotes all the way, accompanied by a little, empathetic half-smile. Lya is silent for a time as she punches the needle through and back twice over and then sighs, "No." At least she's honest. "I'd probably still be horrible," as she claims to be and as others might attest to but a quality not yet directed at Telavi. "I'd like to think maybe I wouldn't be, but... I just don't care about making people happy. And it feels like that's all it is to be on good behavior. It doesn't do anything for me. It's not like I want to be a healer anymore than I want to be a kitchen aid. Maybe it would be more interesting, though, but probably just as gross." She wrinkles her nose and looks to Telavi in a way that asks if she remembers how gross some of those dishes were from her candidate chore days. Then abruptly, "Also, he's gayer than a Harper boy picked to sing the Ballad of Moreta's Ride." Soprano. So, no chance of being skeevy. "I think he might run if I complained of an ailment anywhere here," she gestures to the problem area, "or here." Lower. Then she giggles. Telavi wrinkles her own nose, right on cue, though she's still looking a trifle bemused-- at least, until she starts laughing even before Lya does. "Well, I suppose that's good to know if you ever have to make him run," she teases. "But, not to be practical or anything," they couldn't have that! "Do you know what you want to do? What you want to do that's not, I don't know," she gestures illustratively, "lolling in the sunshine watching pretty young men-- women?-- stroll by while you nibble on something tasty? What you'd want to do for," and she gives such significance to her pause, "work." Lycinea looks like a duck. Or at least her mouth does. She flips her upper lip up to nearly touching the base of her nose and her lower lip puckers. It's a look of distaste judging from the way her eyes squint. She directs it at the fabric, but it's almost certainly a reaction to the whole of what Telavi is asking. Ugh, practicality. "I don't really want to watch pretty people." Who cares about them anyway? "But I could do with some lounging," she says with a sigh. "Who really wants to work anyway? I mean, I could handfast some holder and just stay pregnant with his kids, I guess, but that's not really any less work, is it? Also, way more gross. And frustrating. So maybe I like working over something like that." She looks at the fabric. "I don't know. Maybe... I could see about working in the greenhouse. I like working in the dirt, I guess. Only then there's all that manure." And she definitely doesn't like that part. Who would? "I thought of being a harper once, but I'd not pass the basic classes." The ones that have to do with talent that she simply does not possess. She's got distaste, Telavi's got disappointment, if fleetingly so; Tela will commiserate, of course, from that holder to manure. "That makes it harder," she admits. "I mean, unless you have a Lord planning on sweeping you up as his long-lost and much-loved child-- and if wishing could make it happen, believe me, I'd have been 'Lady Telavi' long ago-- there's going to be work somewhere. So maybe... what you don't want to do least? How much manure can there even be for a gardener, anyway?" Telavi eats the food and wears the clothes; she certainly doesn't grow any of it. "Well, isn't that how it'd go in a Harper romance?" Lya asks, fluttering her eyes at Telavi. "Me, the damsel chained in the kitchens of a Weyr Most Foul, and he, the Lord -- ooh, no, heir apparent," she decides is the better yarn to weave. "He's visiting on matters most urgent, his thoughts only for duty and honor and his Hold, and then--" She leans in abruptly dropping her practice cloth and needle into her lap so she can grip Telavi's skirt, dramatically. "He sees me, cleaning the buffet table, or-- um," what's better than that? Her face lights up when she thinks of, "Oh! Scraping plates for the dirty dish bin." So much more attractive right? "And in that one look, he falls hopelessly in love with me. But! Burdened by duty and honor, he angst about it an appropriate amount of time before announcing his deep and meaningful feelings for me, and I say, 'Stuff it, sir,' and send him packing." She grins. She's just that kind of girl. That disappointment? It may have been wiped clean from Tela's expression, but now it's pretty well gone entirely, what with how she's beaming at Lya and not protesting the wrinkling of her skirt. She even applauds! "Wonderful. Does he moon after you for the rest of his life, dreaming of the might-have-beens with his Forbidden Love?" "Of course! What kind of protagonist would he be if he didn't?" Lya answers without even having to think about it. "Maybe that's what I'll do. I'll start writing my very own Harper's romances and see if I can't convince the Harpers to make them up into books for me." Clearly she has the imagination for it, if not the life experience. "I can start with 'The Pervert and the Pimpernel.' Catchy, right?" Then she's shifting so she can lean back on her hands, only then has to shift again so she can use one hand to describe things. "So there's this girl, pretty but awkward, sitting around the caverns on a rainy day, and this big, buff but unfortunately debaucherous bronzerider who met her once before when she was naked, but just for a bath, happens across her and demands she be company for him at a gather in exchange for -- well, nice clothes and whatever else she wants him to buy for her. But not sex." The end? Telavi's all agreement, at least until she starts to protest-- where's the pervert in that first scenario?-- before realizing that this one is different. And then she's going with it, even if there's an amused quirk to her mouth at that debaucherousness being unfortunate, only-- "What, really? Who does that? And where's the flower come in?" "H'vier, apparently." Lycinea answers, suddenly ... something. It might be abashed. She's picking at the thread on the practice fabric. "The flower is the girl. And I donno, maybe he could give her a flower at the gather, though--" she's blushing now, "he didn't give me one. But the clothes are very nice," and probably more useful than a flower. "H'...vier?" That first syllable, it comes out awfully close to huh. Just in case Tela's heard her wrong, "H'vier. Clothes. No sex." She has wide eyes and a worried look. "H'vier." Pause. "Is he..." she waves one hand in the air, then leans towards the girl so she can lower her voice even further, "your father?!" "No sex." This is the most important thing to confirm. The next most important thing, "Shells no. At least, I don't think so." But Lycinea certainly can't be sure. "But I told him he could be, and he didn't think so either, but I thought that would help with the whole 'no sex' thing." Playing the angles, like she always does. Her manner is more serious when she relates, "He said I reminded him of someone. That she wouldn't let him buy her things anymore." Lya pauses, "You know, he's pretty messed up in the head for an adult." She shakes her head, "But if he wants to buy me clothes, Faranth only knows I could use them." She gives Telavi a briefly defensive look, like the older woman might tell her she shouldn't. Telavi can't exactly pat H'vier's forehead right now in search of signs of fever; she settles for wringing her hands, luckily with no needle involved, before she distracts herself in studying different angles: the angles of Lycinea's face, searching for some resemblance. Then she sits back. "He dumped my friend," she says finally. "My good friend. He's the father of her daughter." Lycinea's brows knit a moment as she takes this in. "That must be the 'her' he talks about then." She purses her lips. It's another few moments of consideration. "I think he thinks about her a lot." She shrugs. "I'm glad I got new clothes, even if he was sort of using me to pretend he was with her." Which isn't creepy at all, of course. She bites her lower lip, "I think he would have had sex with me, if I had wanted to." Though, those that know him better might know what a girl wants doesn't have much to do with what happens with H'vier always. "But I didn't. And I don't." That's with resolution. "A younger her," Telavi murmurs under her breath. She takes a deeper one. "Then... be careful, okay? Extra careful, because he has a way of making what he wants happen. He got his wingleader pregnant too and she... well, that's rumors," she ends up with, torn. Nowhere is there a 'give the clothes back already, you bronze-digger'; maybe she has compassion for Lya's clothes-scarce state, maybe she has no compunction about such things, maybe she's been there. Then it's not quite the end after all. "Especially alone." "I will," is delivered with all the cheerful brevity of the unworldly-wise sixteen turn old. In this moment, it's nearly impossible not to notice just how young Lya really is, both in age and experience. Her smile to Tela is bright. "Anyway, I don't think he wanted to. Just that he wouldn't mind. Because he's a bronzerider and aren't they all sort of like that?" It's what she's heard, anyway. In the kitchens. It's not Telavi's job to be the older one. At least, not with Lya. Stupid Quinlys and her stupid ideas. Her own smile at Lycinea flickers, then lightens in a way that's less on purpose and more just happens. "They aren't. A lot of them are," this is amused but hardly a complaint, "but most of those are just... guys, you know?" Lya wrinkles her nose. "Why do boys have to be so-- boylike." Awful. Terrible. A bane for women, clearly. Not that Lycinea seems to get along with most girls any better. "I don't even get what's so great about sex anyway, that they seem to want to do it all the time." Well, some of them anyway. She rolls her eyes. The first part Telavi can agree with, and with a roll of her eyes, though perhaps she might be thinking of slightly different adjectives than Lycinea's; when the girl goes on, though, she peers at Lya with a tilt of her head, looking at her ever so slightly more with one eye and then the other as though that might change matters. "But... it's fun," is what she has by way of a puzzled answer. More quickly, "At least, it is if you're doing it right! And feels good," slowed down again because that's obvious, right? But what if it isn't?! She doesn't want to steer the teenager wrong. "And as for boys, they can 'enjoy themselves,'" air quotes, "more easily which is utterly unfair, so of course they're going to try and do it a lot first because they can, and second because they might have to ask lots of people to finally find one who's going to say yes, and third because it's not like they can get pregnant." This, this is Telavi making a face. A Grr Men face, which looks strangely like the one she gets when she's sewing and things go wrong as though on purpose. "Well, it must," Lycinea says brusquely, "if people do it as often as the gossip suggests." There's pink tingeing her cheeks now. "But I really don't see what the big deal is." The sniff she gives marks her as either having had a bad first experience or no first experience at all. She reaches up and fluffs fingers through her hair, abruptly looking to Telavi in a wistful way, "I wish I knew how to braid like that. It would be so much more convenient. And then if I wanted to dress up, I wouldn't have to have my hair be all-- boring." She affects a moue. Was that the wind rushing past the topic change? Couldn't have been! They're cozy here in front of the hearth. Whoosh! Was the subject ever anything else? One wouldn't know it by the way Tela's managed to get all delighted; no signs of whiplash here. "Are you saying," she teases gently, "you'd like to..." this with a lift of her brow, "learn?" |
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