Logs:Trust by Necessity
| |
|---|
| |
| RL Date: 19 June, 2015 |
| Who: Dee, Hattie, Elaruth |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Dee didn't know she knew a secret. Hattie swears her to silence. |
| Where: Hot Springs, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 15, Month 1, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Bridget/Mentions, Lilah/Mentions |
   |
>---< Hot Springs, Fort Weyr >-----------------------------------------------<
The Hot Springs are contained within a high domed cavern, the walls
perpetually glistening with a combination of condensation and mica. Steam
drifts through the cavern from the surface of four different-sized pools.
The largest takes up most of the cavern, big enough to hold three
full-grown dragons and is easily reached through the archway from the
Bowl. Three smaller pools, more suited for human use, are clustered near
the entrance leading toward the Inner Cavern. A set of shelves and benches
line the wall nearest the Inner Cavern, fully stocked with pots of
soapsand and towels for those without the foresight -- or means -- to
bring their own.
While the dragon pool is a natural creation, the human pools are the
result of Ancient ingenuity and have been constructed with hewn steps and
seating. The water in all of the pools is warm to hot, and are a perfect
place to bathe young weyrling dragons or for residents to relax after a
long day of work. Whether it's Hattie or Elaruth's preference for quiet that has brought them to the hot springs during the lunch hour, where they more or less have the place to themselves, it seems to be working out quite well for them so far. From the entrance that leads from the caverns, only the pale queen is visible in the larger of the pools, her head propped against one of the smoother points along its edge, yet there must be someone else - presumably her rider - present, for Elaruth is too still to be making the splashing that echoes through the room, and nor is she likely to be of a mind to use soapsand - as evidenced by the bubbles - on herself. Concealed by her queen's not so bulky form, Hattie leans in against her lifemate, using her as a support as much as anything, as she sweeps a brush across gold hide. Since the incident that saw Hattie helped to the infirmary by Dee, Dee's been making an effort to show up when Elaruth needs to be bathed. Today, it might seem she wasn't coming at all, given her tardiness, but now she hurries into the large cavern, hands pulling her hair back and up and into a messy bun at the nape of her neck as she moves, dressed to dive into the effort. "Sorry I'm late, ma'am," is offered as greeting to Hattie as she slides into the pool still in her shorts and top, as if this were some sort of standing arrangement or expected appearance. "Hello, Elaruth," is polite greeting to the gold with a smile for the dragon and her rider alike. Though Elaruth has a soft clatter of sound for Dee, Hattie's retreat is either instinctive or a habit formed, though she half-manages to make it look natural and merely a push away from her queen's side to fetch another brush from the bucket at the side of the pool. She offers it over without comment or protest, surrender made in that single, silent gesture, while she looks the Candidate over with her usual assessing gaze. "You could go and eat lunch like a normal person, you know," are her only dry, chiding words, before she drifts her way back to Elaruth's side and begins to gently ease away the dirt from mud-stained hide. Someone's been romping around in the snow again. "But then who would help you wash Elaruth?" Dee asks with a sweet sort of smile. "Not that you probably need it right now, but--" She makes a gesture toward Hattie-- specifically, her midsection, and then turns toward the gold as if she hadn't acknowledged anything at all that's not been acknowledged between them before. "Any particular trouble spots today?" For the bathing or the subsequent oiling, besides all the obvious. "I've managed to survive nearly twenty tu--" Hattie starts to say, only Dee's gesture shuts her up there and then, and makes her freeze in place at the same time, brush pressed against hide. There must be increasing pressure applied there, for Elaruth lifts her head from the edge of the pool and turns her head to nudge at her rider's shoulder, then at the brush itself when the Weyrwoman doesn't move quite as quickly as she'd like. The brush abruptly drops into the water bobs back to float at the surface, yet Hattie remains staring at Dee, everything from fear to fury visible in her dark eyes, until she finds the wherewithal to say, "I don't know what you think you're implying." The candidate turns back toward Hattie, surprise coloring her features. Then, a number of emotions flash across Dee's own face - uncertainty, horror, apology. Could she have been wrong? "Ma'am-" is stuttered, the girl's cheeks coloring with a blush. "I thought you-- I mean." What can one say when the implication has been made? "I'm so sorry." For assuming? Elaruth now goes nosing after the brush bobbing along on the water, crowding Hattie against her in her efforts to reach it, and though the goldrider seems to have no objection, the combination of being hugged against her queen - a place of safety - and sheer exhaustion causes something to misfire somewhere between mind and mouth, and a fragment of her half of the silent conversation occurring slips free. "--It matters because she'll tell them and then--" Words. Ears. Oh. The word that follows, as Hattie just presses her forehead against her dragon in defeat is most definitely, "...Fuck." Too tired to drag her composure back more swiftly, moments pass before she puts, "Well, you'd better not tell anyone else," to Dee. Dee almost certainly doesn't intend to be any kind of echo of Elaruth with her surprised confusion coming out as the question, "Why would it matter--" only to talk over herself to ask, "Why would I tell anyone?" She looks, with furrowed brow to the gold, "It's... not my news to share." She chews her lower lip a moment, some emotions going unexpressed but in the discomfort briefly visible in her face as she moves to take up one of the brushes from the basket. "Because you all love to gossip," Hattie bitterly and wearily accuses, as she finally gropes for the brush that Elaruth has been attempting to retrieve. "And half of you don't even know what you're gossiping about. All of you so thrilled to brand a midwife a mindhealer." And yet: "Well, I'd rather be mad than coddled, so I can live with it. If you go and tell your little Candidate friends, it'll be all over the Weyr by nightfall, and then everything I've worked to avoid will be in pieces." Fingers find the brush, which she eventually lifts from the water. "Regardless of what you think of me, if you care for Eliyaveith or Lilah, then leave it well enough alone. Lilah doesn't need more work right now." These words make Dee step back from the brush and basket unsteadily, as if the words had been physical blows. Her brows knit as she looks at the goldrider, hurt there in her eyes. Hazel eyes search the water a moment, as if some sort of response might be there waiting to be drawn in and collected, but no words swim into sight at her seeking. Slowly, "I don't know who you've met in your life, but whichever girl you think I am... I'm not." She seems not sure how to otherwise put that. "I keep the secrets that need to be kept," when she can tell those from the rest, "and I listen, but I don't..." She stops short, just shaking her head and looking to the dragon before finding her rider again. "I won't say anything, ma'am. I just thought you could use some help, is all." One hand gestures to Elaruth. "I've met more people than you, by dint of age if nothing else," Hattie mutters under her breath, as she turns to begin applying brush to hide once more, but even those moments of panic and anger must have cost her something, since she leans all the more heavily against her queen. "...If you noticed, either we've spent too much time together or you won't have to keep any secret for much longer," she says dryly, too tired to truly take a stab at attempting proper humour. Closing her eyes, she starts to sweep the brush in a broad, light fashion that can hardly be doing anything at all. "Just..." the Weyrwoman sighs, only to give up and try again almost immediately. "Just... I'm fine. It's fine. It's nothing." "No, that's probably true," Dee admits of the timeline for truth, worrying her lower lip. "But I mightn't have noticed if it weren't for--" She adds, letting that hand move again in the air toward the gold, the bath, all of it. "It's... should I say congratulations?" She seems unsure in the face of all these confusing emotions. She takes a breath and reaches for the brush in the basket before venturing, "You know, it's okay to need help. I mean... I don't know if it is for Senior Weyrwomen, but for people..." Aren't they still people? It's reasonable to assume. "I can help, ma'am. Would. Would want to. Anything you need." All the amendments lead to this same idea. "No," is immediate, as regards congratulations. "Don't. Please." And it does sound like an actual plea, coupled with an intense, dark stare at Elaruth's hide, rather than at Dee. "If you do that, I think I'll cry, and I don't think it's fair that you'd get to see that and find out my secrets all in one day," Hattie declares, seeking sanctuary in what wryness she can summon to cover that urge, words plastered over the wound to keep anything less eloquent from escaping. "That, and there must be some rule against it in some unspoken Candidate guide. You'd have to turn away and everything." The brush keeps moving, slow though it is. "I am trying to accept help without it resulting in anyone else requiring help. So, I appreciate that. I do." Or she's trying to. "But you have enough to worry about right now." Dee's eyes go wide, "I don't-- please don't cry." These words rush out. She doesn't want to make Hattie cry. The very idea makes her bite her lower lip hard. The candidate looks away from the goldrider and to her lifemate because that's safer. She sets to the task in silence for some moments before saying, "I always have room for more worries. And I'll worry regardless, so." She rolls her shoulders, giving Hattie a faint smile that shows the humor with which those statements were meant. Her eyes are gone again, to Elaruth, and briefly, it might seem (though perhaps it's just a trick of the steam in the cavern), that the girl is blinking away some moisture from her own eyes. "You don't need to worry," Hattie insists, just as she lets her arm drop and she turns to rest her back against Elaruth's ribcage. "That's why I have the big knot; I have the dubious honour of the worrying." She's aiming, she must be, for humour, yet she lacks the enthusiasm to make it all ring true. "Just let them talk and let them believe I'm seeing a mindhealer. And, for Faranth's sake, don't feel sorry for me if it--" The whuff of air is akin to a bark of cold, brash sound. "If it doesn't work out," she manages to enunciate too clear a second or so later. "Complete your Candidates duties, get onto the Sands and see if any of Eliyaveith's babies wants you for their own. That, you can do. Don't agitate Lilah and don't upset Eliyaveith." Dee manages a slight smile for the first, giving a helpless sort of roll of her shoulders. There's a series of murmured 'yes, ma'am's and 'no, ma'am's as seems appropriate to respond. It's not blase responses, but rather that the formality of it seems to help bring the girl back from whatever brink she'd managed to find in all the emotions stirred up in this encounter. "I'll do my best, ma'am. I wish--" She starts and then abruptly stops herself, finishing with something other than what it was going to be when she opened her mouth and obviously so, "-that everything will work out for everyone." So broad and vague. "I'm available most lunchtimes, ma'am, if you need help with other things and don't want it getting around." Then, abruptly, "Would it be alright if I asked Healer Bridget a question?" It must pertain to Hattie or else she wouldn't be asking Hattie's blessing. It's taken a while, but Hattie appears to have finally wound herself down from full alert, at least enough that, when her queen looks back at her again, she can press a palm to Elaruth's jaw without an edge of desperation. "...I imagine she wouldn't object, but I'm not sure if she'd be under any obligation to answer," she hazards of her Healer, tacit permission given if only due to the fact that a refusal isn't uttered instead. She lets the brush drop back to the water, now with the sole purpose of letting Elaruth chase it around the pool a little, nosing after it, though gold otherwise remains still, then she makes to slowly, slowly approach Dee, rather than backing off as she had before. "I'm not easy to work for," she says bluntly, though she reaches a hand towards the girl's shoulder, the touch light. "And I'm not always kind." Which is probably pretty obvious by now. "But you're welcome to, if you'd like. For now--" she looks up at her queen, "--can I trust you with Elaruth for a little while?" "Old-- I mean, Master Guzman would tell you that I'm not easy to-- well." It might be apparent from the flicker of a smile that Dee has to answer Hattie's words that she means the same, but from low-ranker to high. "I'm not easily put-off," she does volunteer in answer to the matter of kindness. She turns her eyes toward the gold, a swallow coming in the breath where she should've spoken, and then she says quietly, "You can trust me-- with her." There's the smallest falter between 'me' and 'with.' When she looks back to Hattie there's a flicker of something a little haunted in her eyes, and then it's gone again. "She has only to let me know if she needs something. I'll pay attention," since the usual forms of communication aren't usually viable between dragon and not-their-rider. "Good." Perhaps it's the only word that Hattie has left, for it sounds like a response to all that Dee tells her, the single syllable a crisp affirmative that's somehow gentled nonetheless. It's as she moves to the side of the pool and turns to lift herself out of the water that the Candidate's diagnosis is undeniably obvious, wet fabric clinging heavily to the bump that is usually so well-hidden by dresses and coats, though Hattie is quick to find a towel and then sling her abandoned jacket on over the wet shift and towel ensemble to absent herself wherever she needs to go. It can't be far, or for long - not with her dressed like that. At least Elaruth is sweeter, more sociable company than her rider, and she'll happily clatter and nose at Dee for as long as she tolerates, or until her rider returns. |
Leave A Comment