Logs:Waiting is Better with Company
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| RL Date: 12 January, 2014 |
| Who: K'zin, Telavi |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: A couple days after Elaruth's flight, K'zin assures Telavi he's alive and they kill time before he's punished. |
| Where: Artful Artifice Weyr (K'zin's), High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 16, Month 10, Turn 33 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Aishani/Mentions, Alida/Mentions, Azaylia/Mentions, Hattie/Mentions, K'del/Mentions, Leova/Mentions, Mave/Mentions, N'rov/Mentions, Quinlys/Mentions, Thraland/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Adult themes. Backdated. |
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| Artful Artifice Weyr, High Reaches Weyr The exterior curtain shields the pair of dragon wallows from the elements, but it's really after the interior curtain set just behind them that things become more human-friendly. The entryway narrows to what would still be wide by people standards, but narrow enough to disabuse any dragon of the notion of trying to fit inside, then the cavern bubbles open into a fairly massive main cavern. Almost opposite the entrance is a pair of doors nearly side-by-side leading to back rooms, but in between there's space. Spacious might be an understatement here. To the right of the entrance the curved wall provides space for a very large table whose matching chairs can seat up to twelve. It's reminiscent of the council chambers, really, and the backdrop on the wall dotted with low cabinets behind it is covered in a to-scale rendering of a map of Pern. A map of High Reaches sweep and the Weyr's badge get a close-up on a mural to the immediate left of the entrance . A broad hearth interrupts and separates the second half of the expansive curved wall from the first, and the latter shows the greatest display of artistry in a mural of a hazy night sky dotted with stars. Closer inspection might lead one to find that the stars might be used as hand-holds if one were inclined to climb.
Dinner is waiting when Telavi arrives. The table-for-twelve is set for two, and while not as grand as her turnday meal, K'zin's gathered enough offerings to satisfy his appetite and hers. Everything's been rearranged since his rager; the items who find homes in the many cabinets are back on their shelves and behind closed doors. The rugs that were removed for so much foot traffic have been replaced and it's on one of these K'zin sits cross-legged, his elbows on his knees, chin on his fists, staring into the flames that crackle cheerily in the new hearth. Rasavyth isn't at home, at present, but his dull bronze from can be seen winging about above the bowl; just because. Even once Solith has let Telavi loose, she stays atop the ledge for now, her wings folded neatly back as she converses with the neighbors. If the green's also not letting Telavi too far out of her sight, so be it. Tela enters light-footed, pushing her fine caprine-down sweater's sleeves up once she's gotten her jacket off, and though she does look around with definite interest-- including at the food, for it's been a long and flame-filled day-- it's to the hearth she's headed and more to the point, the other rider who sits before it. "Hi," she says when she's an easy distance away, but softly: he might be musing. And when closer yet, "How are you liking it?" He must be musing for his arms and legs don't change position until a moment or two after her question's been asked. "Easier to keep things warm out here. A good investment. I think. Can't see me ever giving up this place. We did sort of have all the luck with this pick." Well, they were the first to claim and claim quickly. Now K'zin shifts leaning back onto his hands and craning his neck back to look up at her. There's the light bruise very visible in the firelight on his jaw, the one that is certainly subject of rumor by now. "Anybody burn anybody else today?" "No," and it's timed with the giving up, a reflective inflection to Telavi's voice; as long as he's looking up, she glances down with more of a smile, toeing out of the pull-on boots-- not practical in the way that those of her flight leathers are, but also, no laces. "Not today, though there were some close calls. It," and she drops to a crouch, fingertip delicately tracing the line of his jaw, "looks like you got a little smoke." No surprise in her voice; those rumors haven't passed her by. "Weyrwoman Hattie." K'zin's grunt precedes the words. "Took exception to my presence. Or maybe to me-" And here he scrunches up his face, "-slapping the ass of one of her suitors. You know how I get during flights." And after. But he lets her have his face for as long as she'd like to examine the wound. "It's not bad. I've been putting the balm on it at night. Should be gone in another day or two." Tela's laugh is soundless, until it finds voice in her words. "I'm sure they've had worse." Still, she does know, enough to draw her mouth into a rueful purse before she turns it into a kiss for his ear and drops further to sit cross-legged. "And so have you. I'd ask you what it was like-- realizing you'd wound up there, I mean-- but, I'm guessing you've had enough of its being," not his being, not putting it all on him, "the topic of the day." The kiss is returned, of course, and his eyes follow her as she settles. Briefly, there's a fond reminiscent smile; how many evenings did they spend sitting on these carpets with hides strewn about as they studied for Silver Threads or regular weyrling lessons. How many of those nights did they get 'distracted' and have to reorder all of the papers. But too soon his thoughts are directed to the present. "I'm still working out how to say everything. They haven't called me in for punishment yet, but I'm sure they will. Maybe they're working out exactly what brand of penance I'm to perform." K'zin sighs, shaking his head. "I'm not even sure I can explain properly." Then, even though she's just sat down, "Hungry?" That not-so-fleeting dimple foreshadows an otherwise sympathetic, "At least they aren't likely to have you watching the Weyrwoman's children." The quite possibly crying children. And as for hungry, well, it's not as though Telavi can't bounce back up again. On her way to the table, "It sounds hard, anyway, the waiting." At least they don't have to wait to eat. She leans the heels of her hands on the table's corner, just looking at it all, looking for surprises. He may yet beat her to taking a seat. "That's not funny." K'zin eyes her, though his rebuke for voicing that idea aloud might, in itself, be a little funny because of how seriously he says it. He watches her rise, and then follows suit, "It's a vile idea. Don't you go breathing a word of it to anyone." Lest it come to pass. And his unspoken threat is accompanied by his catching up to her at the edge of the table, his arms wrapping around her, pinning hers to her side and pulling her firm against him, her back to his front. "Do I have your word, greenrider?" Because, you know, now is the moment to use professional titles. "Not... anyone?" Telavi cocks her head, of course she does, greeny-blue eyes wide and ingenuous-- only to catch her breath as K'zin catches her, a frisson sliding through her as she twists just enough to really feel the security of his hold. But-- since they are using those professional titles-- in the end she tips her head back even as she sets a stockinged foot on one of his, her voice dropping stern and sultry, "That's assistant weyrlingmaster to you, sir." That has K'zin laughing, a bark sort of laugh that's quickly hushed so he can play along. His lips find her neck first, letting his voice gather in a way that vibrates his lips oh-so-lightly against her skin before accusing, "Oh, so that's what you're hoping for then? That I'll be sent back to weyrlinghood and you can teach me my Ps and Qs all over again, Assistant Weyrlingmaster? If that's what you wanted, all you had to do was say so, ma'am." Then his lips are too busy for continued talk. That dinner? It's getting colder by the moment. Again that shiver, and later laughter, and just as Tela's parted her own lips to jump in--" K'zin goes and sabotages her repartee which, not that she doesn't eventually manage, does the dinner absolutely no good whatsoever. That food won't go to waste, though, even if it's significantly later when she smiles down at him and then reach-reach-reaches to snag the latest dish; with what they've gone through already, the little plates and bowls that remain are farther and farther away. As she straightens and starts in on rolling the meaty relish into the small flatbreads, she wonders out of the blue-- threaded into the easy back-and-forthing about food-- "Are you going to cut your hair?" Some would definitely say this qualifies as unsanitary, but others would simply say K'zin was just making his table that much more useful. Besides, they're still wearing most of their clothes, and the remainder of the food is at the other end. His immediate needs have been sated, so he's waiting now, for Tela to take what she wants and doubtless he'll scarf down the remaining food in short order. But this waiting means he can lounge on his back, an arm tucked under his head. "Hm?" The question takes him by surprise and he tilts his head toward the greenrider. "I usually do." When he's not out of sorts. "Haven't gotten around to it yet this month. Does it need it?" The hand of his non-pillow arm comes up to push into the layered locks that hang more or less between brow and chin at their longest point. Tela makes to bribe him, or reward him, with an offered bite; she uses the tips of her fingers, then, to drag some of the other plates nearer enough for a better view of their contents. "It's fun the way it is," she says, with a slight good-either-way roll to her shoulders and a not-so-slight smile as she gets back to choosing. "Wasn't it... longer? How much longer? back in the first days?" The shallow bowl of used-to-be-crispy dumplings, that she holds in a hover above his chest with a speculative air, as though she's tempted to use it as a table-upon-a-table. "Mm." It could be because of the food that he takes indelicately from her fingers, but more likely it's attached to his next words, "Sometimes I forget how late an addition you were to the candidate class and how little we knew each other for so long." K'zin shifts, rolling onto his side and propping his head up, elbow to tabletop and hand to cheek. "It used to be most of the way down my back. Stopped cutting it after my family left. Then only cut it when Thraland's wife would drag me down to the hairdressers saying I needed at least a trim. I 'spect it would've gotten longer if she didn't think it was improper for my hair to out-distance hers. Hers was to her hips, but auburn." He reaches up a hand to snag an olive from a small bowl, "I used to joke that bronzeriders mistook me for a woman in the baths." There's something funny about that now, K'zin's lips curling slightly with smile. There goes Telavi's plan. She gives that not-a-table a mock-mournful look, then, "Mmm," with that extra moment of an m. "Sometimes I forget how it was showing up late, with you all such a... monolith." And then, story! While K'zin's talking-- and she's listening, and smiling, and sampling, and once stealing an olive too-- she divvies up the dumplings so she doesn't eat them all. "That would never have done," she eventually agrees regarding his hair, with her nose in the air and an affected voice to match. It's followed by another glance at him and an amused, "Did you. Did they laugh?" At his joke, or in it. "I didn't make the joke to bronzeriders." K'zin answers with a roll of his eyes. "I never really fought until I asked Alida to teach me during candidacy. And only then because I'd gotten a shiner from Mave, by accident, and I didn't have a deathwish. Some bronzeriders are very touchy about their orientation." He shrugs the single shoulder not lain on before his hand is snaking up for more olives stolen and eaten one by one. No? Tela can't help but laugh for his self-tailored audience, for his eyeroll, though she soon gets back to disemboweling a dumpling. She's still eyeing it by the time he says 'deathwish' and then winds up staying that way for a few more moments, gaze half-shuttered behind her lashes as she rotates the dumpling to keep picking out its insides. But not K'zin's. "So to speak," she teases instead for that 'touchiness.' Though, "That reminds me, I wonder how Alida's doing. Since she stopped helping out with the weyrlings..." If K'zin tenses a little, well it must be because he's about to reach for more food, about to turn and sit up properly, legs spilling over the edge of the table. "Don't really keep up with her." Shrug. K'zin makes no claim of knowing how she is, and, at least he pretends, caring to. "Don't really keep up with any of them except you." And even then, they've had their moments as well. Moments, months... "Mmm," says Telavi, acknowledging and untroubled; "From what little I have seen, it's a mixed bag," but she leaves it at that, much as she doesn't-- this time-- ask about this particular shiner. Rather, less in passing and more with interest, "This is tasty. It must be nice for the cooks, too, wouldn't you think? Not having to scrimp-- as much-- and have to hear people complaining about how boring the meals are and how small they are, too? Even though it wasn't their fault... anyway, this feels like that much more of a feast." But even though they're well into harvest time, even though the food's more plentiful now... she still reaches to try and intercept a couple of those last olives now, before it's too late. "I wonder what kind of punishment they'll have in store for me." K'zin wonders aloud, of course, changing the topic after an agreeing 'mmhm' for the talk of the food, for the lack of stew day in and day out, and he surrenders the olives to Telavi as he helps himself to some of the raw vegetables. He chews the fingerroot on one side of his mouth as he slides onto his feet and moves toward the fire to stoke it. "Maybe they really will send me back to weyrlinghood. Not like I've done anything spectacular with riderhood so far." Though he hasn't, on the other hand, done anything particularly awful either. Except this. Telavi gives him a look, one that's a different flavor than the 'mind his Ps-Qs-Rs-Ses-and-T-for-Telavis' of earlier despite the not-dissimilarity of her brows. "I seem to recall someone helping out a whole lot with the Nabolese who needed it, instead of just moaning and groaning over the bare minimum," or else escaping pretty much entirely in favor of assisting with weyrlings. "Sending you back to weyrlinghood... well, what would you do if you were them?" "Yeah, but..." K'zin starts as the poker shifts in the embers and the man reaches to the nearby stockpile of wood to feed the fire, "But that didn't have to do with being a rider. That was just being a person." A decent person. An altruistic person. But a person. "I don't know. I guess I don't really grasp the gravity of it. I mean, he didn't win. It'd be different if he had. And sure, he shouldn't have chased, and I shouldn't've been there, and it sucked that we were and all, but I mean, the Weyrwoman sucker-punched me. Isn't that enough penance for something that worked out in the end anyway?" He probably doesn't really believe it, but the argument must be made aloud at least once. The poker has begun to move with some agitation, some frustration, an outlet for feelings not being voiced in so many words. "Being a rider doesn't mean stopping being a person," Telavi says, quietly. It might be partly the weyrgirl talking, the one who'd always had to take rides from her peers and not-so-peers who'd Impressed: "Except sometimes riders act like it. And some people never were that kind of a person to begin with." So if she wants to give K'zin some credit, she will. As for the rest, she presses onto her knees and starts gathering up the dishes, stacking the empties and sorting what remains. Her timbre alters with it, more reticent, less of that still-quiet emotion at first. "It would be nice," she says of its being enough. "I wonder whether our next leadership flight is going to be closed, too. I wonder whether Azaylia would be forgiving-- whether she was forgiving, didn't we have some strangers when she rose? I don't think Aishani would have." She glances at him. "I-- the thing about this is... there's the me who got used to talking about these things like a puzzle, analyzing, from when it was us with the silver threads... and then there's the me who doesn't want anything bad to happen to you." So no more penance, 'fair' or not. "It's not like they're going to draw and quarter me," K'zin answers his tone carrying the roll of eyes, even if his remain locked on the fire. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and there was a senior gold flight. Do you know how many senior gold flights there have been since I've been a rider? One. Just one. Well, here, anyway. That I've felt anyway. And this one was different anyhow. I think because Elaruth was already established senior, but I guess I won't really know until the next time Hraedhyth rises. It felt different anyway. And I should like to see anyone try to tell Rasavyth he can't chase a piece of tail he wants to chase when he's already blooding." The bronzerider sighs. "It's not that easy to kill the urge once it's there. It's like-- Well, nevermind." Chances are the example would've been crass anyway. He shakes his head, "It'll be what it will be I guess. But no, I don't think Aishani would have. I think Azaylia might be moreso as long as the foreign dragon didn't win. There were some, I think. It's pretty hazy for me, though. That night. I find I don't remember flight nights quite so well as others. Unless he really wants me to." Meaning that one awful post-flight night. That one he remembers. Thanks Ras, you're a pal! Partway through, Tela slides off the table to wash up. There's no asking what trying to cut it off is really like, and definitely not about which night Rasavyth could possibly want him to remember, though there is a moment where-- still no. "You know they're going to ask you what you were doing there in the first place," she says. Maybe wine will help! She pours for the both of them before she walks over, "Hazy sounds better. How did this one feel different, though? --Here you go." Even though it's not the hard stuff. "Maybe." K'zin's word is dubious, but probably in the hopeful way, not the realistic way. He's really just poking the fire now with no purpose. He seems to realize he might actually be killing the flames, and so with a sigh, he shifts to put the poker away and then scoot back onto the soft carpet some feet away from the danger area of stray embers. The bronzerider reaches for the wine with a grateful look. "I don't know that I could describe it. But maybe it's like Hraedhyth was taking charge of the skies that day for the first time, and Elaruth is an old hand at it? No offense to Hattie, but I can't imagine having gotten in bed with her. I mean, she's younger than Leova, but probably still old enough to be my mom. If an unfortunately young mom." The barely-just-over-twenty bronzerider puts the wine to his mouth; maybe he realizes how that sounded, and thinks it's safe if his tongue is otherwise occupied. Somewhere in the Book for Not-Girlfriends, it probably says something about rubbing one's not-boyfriend-- who's also not a girlfriend--'s shoulders, if with a footnoted reminder to not do it so roughly that he or she spills his or her wine-- or beer, or whatever liquid substance of which the not-whatever-friend is currently choosing to partake. Once Tela's settled on the carpet too, she experiments with this. She even gets in an affirmative mmhmm for the queens before also being reminded that rubbing shoulders and laughing at the same time is risky when it comes to her drink, so she pauses; possibly she should defend older women but either that wasn't in that particular book, or Tela's been skipping around. "I shouldn't laugh--" but she is. "But then again, they won't hear. Was it that bad? Just think, in a couple decades, it could be you winding up with someone who's... four, maybe... right now." Rubbing one's shoulders requires the one doing the rubbing to be behind right? So Tela won't see when K'zin turns bright red. "Um." He clears his throat. And then again. And again. And apparently has no words. All that throat-clearing, that's practically a Tela-summons; she cranes around his arm to peer up at him, bright-eyed, before that third attempt is even out of the gate. K'zin's head ducks the moment he senses the impending peek. "You know how flights are." It's muttered, with embarrassment. "Mmm," says Telavi, knowingly. The presence of her dimples might be guessed at, even if he isn't looking. "Still. It's unnerving." But unnerving does not mean that the event itself wasn't mind-blowing. K'zin drains his wine glass and sets it to the side. Reminded, Telavi sips from hers. She holds the glass lightly, at the base of the bowl, letting its stem tip just a little this way and that between sips. If it's also a little bit teasing, more than a little bit steal-able, so be it. "Just tell me she didn't give you pointers." Slight, slight pause. "Unless she did." "So far as I know I didn't need them." K'zin answers with a shrug of his shoulders. It might be a little defensive. What with it having taken Rasavyth so long to make his first catch and now this (thankfully) lost gold flight... "I'd be surprised if you did," says Tela, warm humor in her voice. "Not that 'needing' stops some people," that last with a roll of her eyes before she glances sideways at him. More seriously, but a little awkwardly because this is still different-- "Talk, sit, hit-- the sack," complete with pow-pow noises that imply that one, "it's all good by me." "Yeah?" K'zin's question has leading sort of tone, and he shifts enough to slip one arm around her waist and pull her into his lap (wine, you're on your own), "And if I want to not talk?" Not talking is given definition when his lips find her throat. That kind of not talking. Which isn't always not talking, but isn't usually substantive. Wine gets a quick gulp that barely escapes a cough, and as for the wine glass... well, it isn't quite on its own, if only because Telavi's pausing its owner just barely long enough to set it mostly by its neighbor. But then-- "I'd also be surprised," Tela assures as she not only accedes to this lap business but tips her head to give him all the access he could desire, "If you couldn't convince me." Without talking. K'zin takes advantage of the access offered, but wants more. Too soon the convincing has commenced starting with a roll that places Telavi on her back on the soft rug. If she's lucky, she'll survive the convincing without any rug-burn to show for it. |
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