Not gonna happen
What: Directly after the Zoma Encounter, Aivey and E'sere return home where they talk about what is now a black listed subject.
Who: E'sere and Aivey
Where: Their place
Having stalked herself right to Morelenth, Aivey lingers by the bronze while waiting for the rider half of the pair to show up. While not recipient of the angry mutters she issues under her breath, Morelenth is none the less audience to them and they are quite colorful if nothing else. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest and she paces a tight line of no more then three steps in either direction. On the turn from the left end of that little six-step long line, Aivey glares at the bronze while moving past his oh-so large eye.
Morelenth does nothing but sit there, letting Aivey pace and mutter at him. He waits, patient, while E'sere trots up the path after Aivey, his pace slowing to a quick walk, then hesitating further as he nears the woman and his dragon. "Aivey?" he ventures, finally stopping a few feet away.
"/Jealous little thing/?!" Aivey retorts, turning mid-step to face him, "I am not jealous." The jump of her jaw muscle as she clenches it surely indicates such, "You let that nut kiss you, and you expect me not to be mad?" One hand goes flying up then drops to press against her face as she mutters more curses into her palm.
"You are jealous," E'sere points out in his most reasonable tone of voice. He does not move any closer to Aivey for now. "I couldn't have stopped her. She caught me off-guard, Aivey--if I were going to /choose/ to kiss some other woman here, I assure you, she would not be it. She'd not even make the list, Aivey. And no one else here is crazy enough to try it."
"You're a damn dragonrider. Don't tell me you couldn't have stopped a girl from kissing you," Aivey counters, unreasonably ignoring his very reasonable observation, "And now you're telling me you have a list?" Aivey's arms come up and cross over her chest, "Don't keep me waiting. Who else do I need to have a talk with?"
"If there /were/ a list," E'sere emphasizes that word as he steps carefully closer. "If there /were/ a list, she'd not be on it. She didn't give me time to react, is all. I assure you, I am quite as disgusted as you are--I feel like I need a bath now. Don't be like this, please, Aivey. Don't let her get to you. You said yourself, she's a nut."
"She'd better not be," Aivey relents with a small frown, "And that list had better be only one name long," There's a quick pause and a quiet, "And if I knew how to spell my own name, I'd have a few more restrictions for you..." As he takes a step closer, Aivey takes a step closer to him, and then another until she's able to snag the lapel of his shirt and draw him in the rest of the way, "There is no list, right?"
"I'd... Hm. Ask your daddy how he spells it," says E'sere. "Names are too personal for me to be able to reel off letters for you. There is no list. There's you, all right? Just you," he tells her soothingly, closing the distance the rest of the way when she grabs his shirt, moving to slip his arms around her again.
"Until Morelenth wins some stupid greenrider's flight," Aivey protests as she draws E'sere into a hug. It doesn't last long because they're in public and you can't very well be a Big Mean and Bad person if you hug another not so big, mean or bad person in clear view of the entire settlement. Dropping her hand to catch and tug on his, Aivey turns to approach Morelenth, "If I ask him how to spell it, he'll know I didn't know to begin with. So I'll trust your judgement. C'mon."
E'sere, in contrast to Aivey, doesn't seem very anxious to pull apart again, though he doesn't stop Aivey, either, when she does so. "The greenriders aren't on my list," he tells her with a shake of his head, lacing his fingers with hers as he starts toward the bronze. "They're on Morelenth's. He just drags me along for the ride, willing or not. There isn't a list, Aivey." A pause. "Let's see. A, of course, then V, E, Y, is the basics, I suppose. But that's not very pretty when written. A-I-V-E-Y? A-I-V-E-E? That... Hmm. You can think on it, and decide when you know your letters a little better. If your parents don't teach you how to spell your name, then you can spell it however you want."
"Then I'll have that talk with Morelenth," Said bronze is not spared any mercy as Aivey tugs E'sere closer toward him, and while she listens to E'sere's rendition of how her name is spelt, she has nothing helpful or useful to offer in return, "Never thought much about names having to be pretty when you write them out. Mine was always short; made it easier to shout when they were trying to find me."
"Mine was ugly," E'sere admits. "Before I impressed. I knew what I was going to change it to well before then. Eseren--it's just... flat. Plain and ugly. Ess-er-en." His nose wrinkles to think of it. "Names are very important, second only to appearance. People notice them both first, before they know anything else about you." At Morelenth's side then, he reaches up to offer Aivey a hand.
"Esseren?" Aivey repeats, her lips and tone twisted with amusement, "Essy?" Accepting his hand up and sliding her arms around his waist once they're both settled, she waits a moment before saying, "I always thought it was appearance first, names second. They're both useful though, you're right."
"Don't you dare call me that," E'sere says, lip curling with distaste at the nickname. "I hate that name. I hate nicknames in general, in point of fact." He affects a shudder at the very thought as he settles in place, then cues Morelenth to take them home.
Adopting a very serious attitude, Aivey nods and says, "I wouldn't dare dream of it, E'sere." Over enunciated, Aivey stills into silence for the flight; arms, back and whole body tensing as a large breath is held in anticipation of the launch from the ground and into the air.
E'sere casts a look as best he can over his shoulder at Aivey. Morelenth lands shortly, letting E'sere dismount and offer his hand to Aivey again. "So we're okay now?" he asks, serious himself now. "You're okay?" Pause. Wincing: "You don't think Zoma will go spreading stories to your father, do you?"
"No," Releasing her breath and serious enough herself, Aivey shakes her head. "But it's nothing you can fix today, here and now." She accepts the hand down and then draws back in for that prematurely aborted hug. It's there that she stiffens again, more for the question then anything else. "She's crazy. I doubt he'll believe anything she tells him. There's nothing to worry about."
"That's a relief," says E'sere. "She's... something. To say the least. I think your father is smarter than to listen to her." He's silent a moment, hugging Aivey up in return. Then: "What would it take," he asks, "to fix it?"
"My father is smart," Aivey confirms with a small smile that slowly disappears as she shakes her head, "I won't ask because you won't promise me what it'll take to fix it. I don't even want to think about it because then I'm just going to get mad and probably try to hit you again-" Her eyes switch to the side of his face she'd slapped him on, and she raises a hand to trace what distinction she can pick out, "Shouldn't I be asking /you/ if you're alright?"
"You slapped me," E'sere observes again, as though for the first time--his voice is bemused again, to match his smirk. "What brought /that/ on?"
"Do you really want to run the risk of getting slapped again?" Aivey counters to his bemusement, "You called me jealous, remember? I told you I'm not. I'm just... invested in you, is all, and I can't have everyone else thinking you're fair game. You're not." Pointed, those last two words, and sealed with an attempted kiss.
"You're jealous," E'sere insists. "It's cute." Always amenable to kissing, he indulges Aivey with one now, mouth tilting into another easy smirk when he leans back. "You really won't tell me?" he asks again. "Not even for reference?"
"I am not cute. Or jealous," Aivey counters with a light jab of her finger just below his lowest rib. Then, after a considerable pause, "Why would it be so difficult to come to me if he wins a flight. The greenrider can always find someone else if she wants sex that badly... another rider who lost. They always came down to the caverns looking for someone to comfort them. Why can't you pick who you get?"
E'sere's smirk fades, growing into a wry smile as he releases one hand to rake through his hair. "Because... It's not the same," E'sere notes. "It is just sex, but at the same time it's /just/ /sex/," he stresses the difference. "It doesn't mean anything to me--and the reason it means so little is because it's not me. I don't think you really understand what winning a flight is like. You... lose yourself, in it. If Morelenth wins, I don't care if it's you, or some other woman I may not even know, or even a man--it doesn't matter. And if you get hurt in the process, well. Wouldn't make any difference to me just then." He frowns, shakes his head. "I'm not putting you into the middle of that. If you get upset at me because of that, I'm still not going to put you into that situation."
"I'm not a rider... I won't ever understand but I'm not afraid of getting hurt. I've been hurt worse - you try getting stabbed twice or getting... I'm not afraid," Aivey re-emphasizes while tugging on his lapel. That he admits there's little to no difference between the rider paired to the green being male or female gains only a small frown and narrowing of her eyes; whether it's made easier to take because of the earlier admission of it not being him is hard to say. Aivey releases her hold on his shirt and draws away, toward the makeshift fire pit.
"I know you're not afraid," E'sere says, shaking his head still. "And I'm sorry. But I'm not going to do it, still. If you're going to be with a rider, this is something you're going to have to accept--not like, necessarily, but accept." He watches as she steps away, himself staying where he is as he turns to look.
Aivey begins the process of building up a fire while listening to his reply. The end brings a pause in which she looks over her shoulder to him, "And if you lose, what then?"
While Aivey starts the fire, E'sere moves again, heading over to join her there. "If I lose," he tells her, offering a half-smile, "then I'm yours."
"You make it sound like I'm fortunate for that," Aivey counters, almost pointedly ignoring the half-smile as she turns back around to the fire. As she starts the actual fire, she asks, "Wouldn't it still be the same? How you act if you've lost?"
"You were around the Weyr long enough to see," E'sere notes, seating himself alongside her. His eyes remain on her, not the fire. "You know what the losers look like. They're not the same--they're wound up, yes, perhaps not thinking with the exact organ they should be, but they /can/ control themselves. General principle when you lose is go find yourself a nice girl--there's always one hanging around in a Weyr-- or get drunk if you can't grab one of them. Or jump in the lake, or just suffer through it. It's not the same overwhelming, can't-help-yourself emotion as winning."
"I never knew any of the guys who came looking. It seemed all the same to me." Pulling her hands back from the fire as it becomes self-sufficient, Aivey settles them atop her knees. She's still not pleased about the whole notion, as much is apparent, "-whatever, I guess." Stiffly shrugging a shoulder, Aivey at last turns to look at him - saying nothing, just looking.
"Aivey," E'sere begins. He falls silent again though, just shaking his head a moment. He glances to the fire when she finally looks at him. "I am sorry, but there's nothing I can do about it," he finally says, simply. "I'd rather you were mad at me about it, than I had put you in the middle of it."
"It's fine," Stiffly again because Aivey can't /not/ be upset, and doesn't feel compelled to pretend she's not. "I didn't want to talk about it and I still don't, so let's talk about something else." Glancing around to try and find the next likely target, Aivey points vaguely toward the opposite side of the fire, "The chair would look good there. Maybe a couple of them."
"I'm relatively certain," E'sere notes, looking back to Aivey and not where she points, "that no matter where we put it, it will look fine. It will not clash with the rest of the decor."
"You mean the bare walls?" Aivey counters, once more not looking at him, "Yeah, I think we're pretty safe on that count, yeah." Easing out of her crouch, Aivey says, "Did you talk to T'gar or do I need to pull some strings?"
"I talked to him," E'sere notes, eyes following Aivey upward. "We're getting a chair, though he says it will take a while, maybe even a couple of weeks. I asked about a bed, but he's never made one before. But he says he'll think about it, see if he can come up with a good way to do it."
"I was thinking about that. A way to make one... it'd be nothing like what you had back at the Weyr but it's better then that-" That being the current bed which is indicated with a jerk of her head in it's general direction, "I'll talk to Nera too, or someone. See if we can't get it sooner." Aivey, content enough with shop talk for the moment, reaches up to pull the handkerchief off her head and to set it somewhere safe before returning to the fire and E'sere, "You're heading back out today or no?"
"Just about anything would be better than that," admits E'sere, without having to look. "You can look into it." A pause. Without much enthusiasm, he notes, "It's early enough I might ought to go work a little more."
"Well, have fun then if you do go back out. I think I'm going to make up for lost sleep," Though Aivey doesn't yet move, she does look toward him, "Tell Morelenth to stick around on the ground tomorrow, though, because if I can get a chair he'll have to lug it back up here."
"All right," E'sere says, nodding once as he gets to his feet. "I'll bring you some dinner up, when I get back. And he will--he usually does, these days, unless you're already home."
Surprisingly, Aivey contains her surprise that he's actually leaving. After a moment, she nods and turns back to looking at the fire, "Sounds good." A pause, "I'll wait up, then."
"Sleep, if you can," E'sere notes. "We can heat dinner back up, if we need to." He lingers a moment longer, watching her, then flees out to Morelenth.
Aivey offers a non-committal noise, waiting until he's actually gone to look toward the ledge. Frowning and shaking her head, Aivey eases out of her crouch a second time, crosses the weyr and sinks down onto the bed.
Who: E'sere and Aivey
Where: Their place
Having stalked herself right to Morelenth, Aivey lingers by the bronze while waiting for the rider half of the pair to show up. While not recipient of the angry mutters she issues under her breath, Morelenth is none the less audience to them and they are quite colorful if nothing else. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest and she paces a tight line of no more then three steps in either direction. On the turn from the left end of that little six-step long line, Aivey glares at the bronze while moving past his oh-so large eye.
Morelenth does nothing but sit there, letting Aivey pace and mutter at him. He waits, patient, while E'sere trots up the path after Aivey, his pace slowing to a quick walk, then hesitating further as he nears the woman and his dragon. "Aivey?" he ventures, finally stopping a few feet away.
"/Jealous little thing/?!" Aivey retorts, turning mid-step to face him, "I am not jealous." The jump of her jaw muscle as she clenches it surely indicates such, "You let that nut kiss you, and you expect me not to be mad?" One hand goes flying up then drops to press against her face as she mutters more curses into her palm.
"You are jealous," E'sere points out in his most reasonable tone of voice. He does not move any closer to Aivey for now. "I couldn't have stopped her. She caught me off-guard, Aivey--if I were going to /choose/ to kiss some other woman here, I assure you, she would not be it. She'd not even make the list, Aivey. And no one else here is crazy enough to try it."
"You're a damn dragonrider. Don't tell me you couldn't have stopped a girl from kissing you," Aivey counters, unreasonably ignoring his very reasonable observation, "And now you're telling me you have a list?" Aivey's arms come up and cross over her chest, "Don't keep me waiting. Who else do I need to have a talk with?"
"If there /were/ a list," E'sere emphasizes that word as he steps carefully closer. "If there /were/ a list, she'd not be on it. She didn't give me time to react, is all. I assure you, I am quite as disgusted as you are--I feel like I need a bath now. Don't be like this, please, Aivey. Don't let her get to you. You said yourself, she's a nut."
"She'd better not be," Aivey relents with a small frown, "And that list had better be only one name long," There's a quick pause and a quiet, "And if I knew how to spell my own name, I'd have a few more restrictions for you..." As he takes a step closer, Aivey takes a step closer to him, and then another until she's able to snag the lapel of his shirt and draw him in the rest of the way, "There is no list, right?"
"I'd... Hm. Ask your daddy how he spells it," says E'sere. "Names are too personal for me to be able to reel off letters for you. There is no list. There's you, all right? Just you," he tells her soothingly, closing the distance the rest of the way when she grabs his shirt, moving to slip his arms around her again.
"Until Morelenth wins some stupid greenrider's flight," Aivey protests as she draws E'sere into a hug. It doesn't last long because they're in public and you can't very well be a Big Mean and Bad person if you hug another not so big, mean or bad person in clear view of the entire settlement. Dropping her hand to catch and tug on his, Aivey turns to approach Morelenth, "If I ask him how to spell it, he'll know I didn't know to begin with. So I'll trust your judgement. C'mon."
E'sere, in contrast to Aivey, doesn't seem very anxious to pull apart again, though he doesn't stop Aivey, either, when she does so. "The greenriders aren't on my list," he tells her with a shake of his head, lacing his fingers with hers as he starts toward the bronze. "They're on Morelenth's. He just drags me along for the ride, willing or not. There isn't a list, Aivey." A pause. "Let's see. A, of course, then V, E, Y, is the basics, I suppose. But that's not very pretty when written. A-I-V-E-Y? A-I-V-E-E? That... Hmm. You can think on it, and decide when you know your letters a little better. If your parents don't teach you how to spell your name, then you can spell it however you want."
"Then I'll have that talk with Morelenth," Said bronze is not spared any mercy as Aivey tugs E'sere closer toward him, and while she listens to E'sere's rendition of how her name is spelt, she has nothing helpful or useful to offer in return, "Never thought much about names having to be pretty when you write them out. Mine was always short; made it easier to shout when they were trying to find me."
"Mine was ugly," E'sere admits. "Before I impressed. I knew what I was going to change it to well before then. Eseren--it's just... flat. Plain and ugly. Ess-er-en." His nose wrinkles to think of it. "Names are very important, second only to appearance. People notice them both first, before they know anything else about you." At Morelenth's side then, he reaches up to offer Aivey a hand.
"Esseren?" Aivey repeats, her lips and tone twisted with amusement, "Essy?" Accepting his hand up and sliding her arms around his waist once they're both settled, she waits a moment before saying, "I always thought it was appearance first, names second. They're both useful though, you're right."
"Don't you dare call me that," E'sere says, lip curling with distaste at the nickname. "I hate that name. I hate nicknames in general, in point of fact." He affects a shudder at the very thought as he settles in place, then cues Morelenth to take them home.
Adopting a very serious attitude, Aivey nods and says, "I wouldn't dare dream of it, E'sere." Over enunciated, Aivey stills into silence for the flight; arms, back and whole body tensing as a large breath is held in anticipation of the launch from the ground and into the air.
E'sere casts a look as best he can over his shoulder at Aivey. Morelenth lands shortly, letting E'sere dismount and offer his hand to Aivey again. "So we're okay now?" he asks, serious himself now. "You're okay?" Pause. Wincing: "You don't think Zoma will go spreading stories to your father, do you?"
"No," Releasing her breath and serious enough herself, Aivey shakes her head. "But it's nothing you can fix today, here and now." She accepts the hand down and then draws back in for that prematurely aborted hug. It's there that she stiffens again, more for the question then anything else. "She's crazy. I doubt he'll believe anything she tells him. There's nothing to worry about."
"That's a relief," says E'sere. "She's... something. To say the least. I think your father is smarter than to listen to her." He's silent a moment, hugging Aivey up in return. Then: "What would it take," he asks, "to fix it?"
"My father is smart," Aivey confirms with a small smile that slowly disappears as she shakes her head, "I won't ask because you won't promise me what it'll take to fix it. I don't even want to think about it because then I'm just going to get mad and probably try to hit you again-" Her eyes switch to the side of his face she'd slapped him on, and she raises a hand to trace what distinction she can pick out, "Shouldn't I be asking /you/ if you're alright?"
"You slapped me," E'sere observes again, as though for the first time--his voice is bemused again, to match his smirk. "What brought /that/ on?"
"Do you really want to run the risk of getting slapped again?" Aivey counters to his bemusement, "You called me jealous, remember? I told you I'm not. I'm just... invested in you, is all, and I can't have everyone else thinking you're fair game. You're not." Pointed, those last two words, and sealed with an attempted kiss.
"You're jealous," E'sere insists. "It's cute." Always amenable to kissing, he indulges Aivey with one now, mouth tilting into another easy smirk when he leans back. "You really won't tell me?" he asks again. "Not even for reference?"
"I am not cute. Or jealous," Aivey counters with a light jab of her finger just below his lowest rib. Then, after a considerable pause, "Why would it be so difficult to come to me if he wins a flight. The greenrider can always find someone else if she wants sex that badly... another rider who lost. They always came down to the caverns looking for someone to comfort them. Why can't you pick who you get?"
E'sere's smirk fades, growing into a wry smile as he releases one hand to rake through his hair. "Because... It's not the same," E'sere notes. "It is just sex, but at the same time it's /just/ /sex/," he stresses the difference. "It doesn't mean anything to me--and the reason it means so little is because it's not me. I don't think you really understand what winning a flight is like. You... lose yourself, in it. If Morelenth wins, I don't care if it's you, or some other woman I may not even know, or even a man--it doesn't matter. And if you get hurt in the process, well. Wouldn't make any difference to me just then." He frowns, shakes his head. "I'm not putting you into the middle of that. If you get upset at me because of that, I'm still not going to put you into that situation."
"I'm not a rider... I won't ever understand but I'm not afraid of getting hurt. I've been hurt worse - you try getting stabbed twice or getting... I'm not afraid," Aivey re-emphasizes while tugging on his lapel. That he admits there's little to no difference between the rider paired to the green being male or female gains only a small frown and narrowing of her eyes; whether it's made easier to take because of the earlier admission of it not being him is hard to say. Aivey releases her hold on his shirt and draws away, toward the makeshift fire pit.
"I know you're not afraid," E'sere says, shaking his head still. "And I'm sorry. But I'm not going to do it, still. If you're going to be with a rider, this is something you're going to have to accept--not like, necessarily, but accept." He watches as she steps away, himself staying where he is as he turns to look.
Aivey begins the process of building up a fire while listening to his reply. The end brings a pause in which she looks over her shoulder to him, "And if you lose, what then?"
While Aivey starts the fire, E'sere moves again, heading over to join her there. "If I lose," he tells her, offering a half-smile, "then I'm yours."
"You make it sound like I'm fortunate for that," Aivey counters, almost pointedly ignoring the half-smile as she turns back around to the fire. As she starts the actual fire, she asks, "Wouldn't it still be the same? How you act if you've lost?"
"You were around the Weyr long enough to see," E'sere notes, seating himself alongside her. His eyes remain on her, not the fire. "You know what the losers look like. They're not the same--they're wound up, yes, perhaps not thinking with the exact organ they should be, but they /can/ control themselves. General principle when you lose is go find yourself a nice girl--there's always one hanging around in a Weyr-- or get drunk if you can't grab one of them. Or jump in the lake, or just suffer through it. It's not the same overwhelming, can't-help-yourself emotion as winning."
"I never knew any of the guys who came looking. It seemed all the same to me." Pulling her hands back from the fire as it becomes self-sufficient, Aivey settles them atop her knees. She's still not pleased about the whole notion, as much is apparent, "-whatever, I guess." Stiffly shrugging a shoulder, Aivey at last turns to look at him - saying nothing, just looking.
"Aivey," E'sere begins. He falls silent again though, just shaking his head a moment. He glances to the fire when she finally looks at him. "I am sorry, but there's nothing I can do about it," he finally says, simply. "I'd rather you were mad at me about it, than I had put you in the middle of it."
"It's fine," Stiffly again because Aivey can't /not/ be upset, and doesn't feel compelled to pretend she's not. "I didn't want to talk about it and I still don't, so let's talk about something else." Glancing around to try and find the next likely target, Aivey points vaguely toward the opposite side of the fire, "The chair would look good there. Maybe a couple of them."
"I'm relatively certain," E'sere notes, looking back to Aivey and not where she points, "that no matter where we put it, it will look fine. It will not clash with the rest of the decor."
"You mean the bare walls?" Aivey counters, once more not looking at him, "Yeah, I think we're pretty safe on that count, yeah." Easing out of her crouch, Aivey says, "Did you talk to T'gar or do I need to pull some strings?"
"I talked to him," E'sere notes, eyes following Aivey upward. "We're getting a chair, though he says it will take a while, maybe even a couple of weeks. I asked about a bed, but he's never made one before. But he says he'll think about it, see if he can come up with a good way to do it."
"I was thinking about that. A way to make one... it'd be nothing like what you had back at the Weyr but it's better then that-" That being the current bed which is indicated with a jerk of her head in it's general direction, "I'll talk to Nera too, or someone. See if we can't get it sooner." Aivey, content enough with shop talk for the moment, reaches up to pull the handkerchief off her head and to set it somewhere safe before returning to the fire and E'sere, "You're heading back out today or no?"
"Just about anything would be better than that," admits E'sere, without having to look. "You can look into it." A pause. Without much enthusiasm, he notes, "It's early enough I might ought to go work a little more."
"Well, have fun then if you do go back out. I think I'm going to make up for lost sleep," Though Aivey doesn't yet move, she does look toward him, "Tell Morelenth to stick around on the ground tomorrow, though, because if I can get a chair he'll have to lug it back up here."
"All right," E'sere says, nodding once as he gets to his feet. "I'll bring you some dinner up, when I get back. And he will--he usually does, these days, unless you're already home."
Surprisingly, Aivey contains her surprise that he's actually leaving. After a moment, she nods and turns back to looking at the fire, "Sounds good." A pause, "I'll wait up, then."
"Sleep, if you can," E'sere notes. "We can heat dinner back up, if we need to." He lingers a moment longer, watching her, then flees out to Morelenth.
Aivey offers a non-committal noise, waiting until he's actually gone to look toward the ledge. Frowning and shaking her head, Aivey eases out of her crouch a second time, crosses the weyr and sinks down onto the bed.