[Maitrey] Maitrey's lack of paper is not Hattie's fault.
RL Date: 9/1/09
IC Date: 8/20/20 --So people don't start expecting things, I /did/ steal this log from Hattie.
It's rather a rare sight to find Hattie in the commons at any given time unless she's just wandering through or appears to have some kind of work to occupy her. Mid-morning on what could be assumed to be her rest day from her casual attire - a simple summer dress and sandals - and the fact that the book in her grip looks to be fiction, she's to be found lounging across a comfy chair with her legs dangling over one armrest. To anyone ambling by, she could really just be sitting there reading, though upon any closer inspection, her eyes don't follow the lines of text.
Coming out of his room, originally intent on just-passing-through by the breezy way he walks and the fact that he's not exceptionally laden-- sketchbook, pencil, his small satchel-- Maitrey makes it halfway across the common room, giving it no more than the cursory glance that expects the usual suspects to be around and about at this time of day. But! His steps brake, back-track for two or three until he's back where he can see the person that belongs to those dangling legs. "You are not," he begins importantly, "a knitting old auntie." Brows climb questioningly; is she?
With a quick glance to the two women muttering over in one corner, Hattie returns her gaze to the pages of the book before she looks up and directly at Maitrey. "I should hope not," she replies, making a show of looking herself over. "But I hope you'd let me know if such a change were to occur without my knowing?" Others bearing the same knot as she might make some effort to rearrange themselves around now, but this weyrwoman doesn't and merely wiggles her toes.
"It would take a man much braver than I am to tell a goldrider that she's getting old." Maitrey starts a step after that, stops once more and holds up his forefinger-- a moment, please. "To tell /any/ woman that she's getting old. But I think you have some years yet ahead of you before you start to get long in the tooth." Once more, he makes like his steps will resume and, once more, they do not. "You're reading, and I'm loathe to break someone away from such a glorious way to pass the time, but can I sit? If I promise not to ask about mystery paper."
"At twenty-two, I'd hardly believe you anyway, much less bother to go to the trouble of being insulted or getting angry," Hattie assures, ankles now following the example set by her toes and sending her feet dancing left, then right and back again. Her eyes wander back down to text when it seems he might walk on; snap back up readily enough when he doesn't. "You can sit. The book will still be here later." She even closes it. How polite. "And you can ask away about mystery paper, I just can't promise to have anything resembling a decent answer."
There's a touch, just a touch, of slyness behind Maitrey's grin when he answers Hattie's first comment; "That's very /mature/ of you, Hattie." Feel free to replace 'mature' with 'old-auntie-like' in that sentence, based on the stress of it and the twinge of his smirk. On the heels of that, with a glance at Hattie's heels in the process, he draws a chair over just slightly, arranged so he'll be able to see her and not just the bottoms of her feet now that he's taken a seat, pad on his lap. "Which might make it seem like I'm just berating a poor woman who has no information to give me. We could talk about..." Grasping. "...the weather, perhaps, instead." Yes, he chuckles a little.
Hattie makes no reply immediately, nothing verbal and simply sends mock-daggers in the apprentice's direction as he goes about moving that chair. "Watch it, you, or I might have to summon some semblance of irritation from somewhere," she threatens. Which is entirely not threatening whatsoever, especially when her lips quirk into a grin. "Oh yes, the weather. Has it changed at all in the past hour or can I safely assume it's the same sunshine as before?" Asked so seriously that the question can't stand just like the threat. "But what do you want that paper for anyway? You mentioned a weyrling?"
Natural grace and long years of practice allow Maitrey to look frightened by Hattie's threats, eyes widening, lips parting a touch, a very serious nod issued as if he's quite accepting of the chastise. She put away the book, polite, so the sketch pad just sits on his lap, unopened, while he makes a face about the weather. "Ah, yes, the weyrling. There's an actual subject, thank you." He takes a breath, exhales it as a sigh; "The girl's parents apparently disapprove of their daughter as a rider, so she thought it might smooth things over if they could /see/ that dragons are not fierce beasts, and that riders are not the horrible men and women we're lead to believe. So-- a painting of her and her dragonet."
Brows dip a little and Hattie looks rather troubled for a moment, though she manages not to grimace. "I understand what she's trying to do, but isn't there the possibility that giving her parents a painting will just serve as a reminder of everything they disapprove of?" She shakes her head and waves one hand dismissively. "I don't mean to belittle the idea or imply any of it's wrong, but..." Brown eyes tip upwards to touch the ceiling for less than a second, just as she murmurs, "Not that her parents /should/ disapprove in the first place."
"I think the idea," begins Maitrey, not something he entered into lightly judging by the seriousness of the time (opposed to the usual half-glib quality behind his words), "is to send them something that shows their daughter paired with something other than a beast that's going to turn her into a she-devil. He's still small, her dragon, with her there oiling him to give it a sense of scale." There's a pause, his fingers ruffling the closed lid of the sketchbook before it tips back, spread open across his thighs. "I'll show you the sketch if you'll give an honest opinion? I'm paid to paint it either way, but I doubt the girl's thought it through with the same... perspective as yours."
If she's going to be serious about the whole affair, then she's not going to longue there in her chair looking any kind of lazy. Careful to keep her skirts arranged so that there're no mishaps when she draws her legs back and swings them back to the floor, Hattie settles again and sets her book down on one armrest. "I know," she says quietly. "I just... don't like to think that there are people out there who see dragons... Impression... like that." A few blinks follow and she summons the usual sharpness back to her eyes and the certainty to her voice. "Let's have a look then."
Not that Maitrey would, uhmn, notice any skirt mishaps. Certainly wouldn't commit them to photographic memory for later reproduction. Alas, none occur-- and he's too busy flipping pages in the sketchbook to find the one in particular to have noticed if one did. "If it helps, from talking to her, I have a feeling it has more to do with /riders/ than dragons, as if each and every last one of you is debauched and sinful." He issues an apologetic look to have to say it, even while he turns the pages so they face Hattie over the arm of his chair, the image much like he described: no colors, just the idea, the small dragon with one wing draped elegantly, the girl tending to his hide, a real frozen-moment that illustrates the fact that even dragons are born as babies.
The goldrider's lips twitch into a smile right after the apologetic look registers, ill-timing prompting Hattie to say, "You know, /that/ I can deal with. Odd as it sounds." No further elaboration spills from her and she leans a touch in her seat to pay proper attention to the sketch, eyeing it more thoughtfully than one might expect of a woman generally known to be obviously dismissive of anything or anyone she chooses. "You're good," she remarks, sharp and sudden, like most of her rare compliments turn out. "I'd like to say I don't see how they could be displeased with the image, but then their disapproving in their first place..." She looks up and now the grimace presents itself. "I /am/ sorry you don't have the paper for it."
/That/ she can deal with. "I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that, Hattie. Either you're comfortable with people thinking you're debauched when you're not or..." Maitrey fails to supply the 'or,' instead answers the rare compliment with slight dimples, rehearsed, demure flattery-- he's had compliments enough by now that he doesn't dissolve into embarrassment, good for him. "Unless it's your fault the paper hasn't arrived, please don't apologize. We'll still finish it, it just won't be as large as she wanted it. I gather the girl's family has some money, and she was worried they would think the debauched weyrfolk have also left her destitute." With a look from page to person; "I gather you're family's well-to-do, would they look down on something of lesser scale?"
Hattie eases one shoulder up into a shrug. "Or?" she prompts, clearly not expecting an answer from how she smirks. "I'm more comfortable with opinions formed about people who can fight back, than dragons who cannot argue their case against being beasts. Who shouldn't have to." She settles back into her seat and crosses her legs at the ankle. "It's not my fault as far as I'm aware, no. Still, it'd seem that that isn't preventing me from wishing something could be done. But I hardly think a werywoman throwing her thirty-second into the mix would leave a very good impression of Fort." Another glance angles towards the sketch, without the lean this time. "Mine wouldn't be concerned with the scale, no. Not those who mattered. And I think we have to assume that, in the end, these parents must love their daughter."
'Or' is just going to stay safely in Maitrey's imagination, thank you. Along with a lot of other things. He answers it only as far as quirk at the edge of his lips, followed by a truer smile with a laugh to keep it company. "It would at least illustrate the willingness to get involved? As such, it might be viewed by some as a... positive light cast on the whole of the Weyr-- a goldrider taking steps to help resolve the situation." His hand waves vaguely, indicative of all the rest of the glowing things people might say. But probably won't. "I hope they do," he commits at the end, puts the sketch back on his lap with a new frown at it. "She's a good girl, in my opinion. It seems the Weyr is just suffering one blow after another."
Slouching a little, Hattie seems to be headed in the direction of more lounging now that she's studied the sketch, despite the conversation being hardly light of topic. She sighs."It could also be seen as treading where I'm not required, and whilst there are many, many things I'm willing to go blundering into, I think this shouldn't be one of them. Not now, anyway." She smiles sharp-edged as if with intent to prove that her next utterance is indeed true. "Cirse's voice would be better than mine in this situation anyway, my overstepping the mark or not." Her other shoulder flexes to shrug next and she stares at her sandals. "I just hope the rest of this chunk of the tithe turns up."
Given to gravity only by training, not something his voice finds natively, Maitrey asks the very natural question to her final remarks; "And if it doesn't?" One long index finger sweeps along the outline of that sketched dragon's wing, lands just shy of the pencil-girl's feet, and then his eyes turn back to Hattie again, brows lifted uncertainly. "I suppose that sounds a little fatalistic, on second thought, but if there's some perceived slight on the Weyr's part, surely the quickest road to retribution follows the tithe trains."
Her sandals must have some interesting detail on them that only Hattie can see, for she angles one foot this way and that to get a closer look at the left one. "And if it doesn't, then... something will have to be done." Her voice might sound a bit strained through those words, but then, it could be perceived as just how she is about this sort of thing. "It being my former home and my younger brother sending us incomplete tithes, maybe that's something I ought to stay out of, too. They'd hardly see me as able to be objective about the whole thing." Hardly diplomatic, she adds, "Though without this knot, I'd gladly smack my brother upside the head. And he knows it."
While Hattie watches her foot, Maitrey continues to watch her eyes in an unbroken attention. He can handle not being as fascinating as a sandal; it's probably happened to him before; but /his/ attention stays fixed. "Maybe that's something you ought to stay out of," he echoes, harder pressure on the /maybe/ than her own utterance. "Or maybe you're uniquely poised to have an effect on the situation. He's your brother--" News, maybe? "--and this is your Weyr. Of all people, you stand between the slighter and the slighted." His smile flickers, brief, merry; "Or this is too big a subject for an apprentice and you should take what steps you and your betters guide you toward."
"He's my brother and this is not... /my/ Weyr," Hattie replies, just a little hesitantly. "I'm its. I mean, I'm the Weyr's. Not... like that. But you know what I mean?" She peers over at Maitrey with a searching gaze to see perhaps if any of that has actually made any sense outside her own mind. "And I'm biased even before that; not even in the way people might assume. I don't think I'm the one who could get any kind of clean victory out of this." Another sigh precedes her stretching and reaching to curl fingers back around her book. "Or perhaps this is too big a subject until there's more to go on." The goldrider uncrosses her ankles and gets to her feet in one smooth motion. "I'm going to see if there's any early lunch about." She takes one half-step away and hesitates. "You want to...?" Hattie asks, nodding in the direction of the living cavern.
It doesn't. Make much sense. Not if the surprised, speculative way Maitrey raises his brows is any indicator. The short, "Ahh," that follows also fails to understand, but he doesn't specifically argue the issue with her. Her offer meets with a wave from the backs of his fingers; "Go, enjoy. I'm actually supposed to be doing more than keeping up conversations with attractive women, and certainly more than poking around for an early lunch. However it turns out, thank you for your insights, Hattie." He ducks his head, another instance of physical gratitude to back up the vocal version.
IC Date: 8/20/20 --So people don't start expecting things, I /did/ steal this log from Hattie.
It's rather a rare sight to find Hattie in the commons at any given time unless she's just wandering through or appears to have some kind of work to occupy her. Mid-morning on what could be assumed to be her rest day from her casual attire - a simple summer dress and sandals - and the fact that the book in her grip looks to be fiction, she's to be found lounging across a comfy chair with her legs dangling over one armrest. To anyone ambling by, she could really just be sitting there reading, though upon any closer inspection, her eyes don't follow the lines of text.
Coming out of his room, originally intent on just-passing-through by the breezy way he walks and the fact that he's not exceptionally laden-- sketchbook, pencil, his small satchel-- Maitrey makes it halfway across the common room, giving it no more than the cursory glance that expects the usual suspects to be around and about at this time of day. But! His steps brake, back-track for two or three until he's back where he can see the person that belongs to those dangling legs. "You are not," he begins importantly, "a knitting old auntie." Brows climb questioningly; is she?
With a quick glance to the two women muttering over in one corner, Hattie returns her gaze to the pages of the book before she looks up and directly at Maitrey. "I should hope not," she replies, making a show of looking herself over. "But I hope you'd let me know if such a change were to occur without my knowing?" Others bearing the same knot as she might make some effort to rearrange themselves around now, but this weyrwoman doesn't and merely wiggles her toes.
"It would take a man much braver than I am to tell a goldrider that she's getting old." Maitrey starts a step after that, stops once more and holds up his forefinger-- a moment, please. "To tell /any/ woman that she's getting old. But I think you have some years yet ahead of you before you start to get long in the tooth." Once more, he makes like his steps will resume and, once more, they do not. "You're reading, and I'm loathe to break someone away from such a glorious way to pass the time, but can I sit? If I promise not to ask about mystery paper."
"At twenty-two, I'd hardly believe you anyway, much less bother to go to the trouble of being insulted or getting angry," Hattie assures, ankles now following the example set by her toes and sending her feet dancing left, then right and back again. Her eyes wander back down to text when it seems he might walk on; snap back up readily enough when he doesn't. "You can sit. The book will still be here later." She even closes it. How polite. "And you can ask away about mystery paper, I just can't promise to have anything resembling a decent answer."
There's a touch, just a touch, of slyness behind Maitrey's grin when he answers Hattie's first comment; "That's very /mature/ of you, Hattie." Feel free to replace 'mature' with 'old-auntie-like' in that sentence, based on the stress of it and the twinge of his smirk. On the heels of that, with a glance at Hattie's heels in the process, he draws a chair over just slightly, arranged so he'll be able to see her and not just the bottoms of her feet now that he's taken a seat, pad on his lap. "Which might make it seem like I'm just berating a poor woman who has no information to give me. We could talk about..." Grasping. "...the weather, perhaps, instead." Yes, he chuckles a little.
Hattie makes no reply immediately, nothing verbal and simply sends mock-daggers in the apprentice's direction as he goes about moving that chair. "Watch it, you, or I might have to summon some semblance of irritation from somewhere," she threatens. Which is entirely not threatening whatsoever, especially when her lips quirk into a grin. "Oh yes, the weather. Has it changed at all in the past hour or can I safely assume it's the same sunshine as before?" Asked so seriously that the question can't stand just like the threat. "But what do you want that paper for anyway? You mentioned a weyrling?"
Natural grace and long years of practice allow Maitrey to look frightened by Hattie's threats, eyes widening, lips parting a touch, a very serious nod issued as if he's quite accepting of the chastise. She put away the book, polite, so the sketch pad just sits on his lap, unopened, while he makes a face about the weather. "Ah, yes, the weyrling. There's an actual subject, thank you." He takes a breath, exhales it as a sigh; "The girl's parents apparently disapprove of their daughter as a rider, so she thought it might smooth things over if they could /see/ that dragons are not fierce beasts, and that riders are not the horrible men and women we're lead to believe. So-- a painting of her and her dragonet."
Brows dip a little and Hattie looks rather troubled for a moment, though she manages not to grimace. "I understand what she's trying to do, but isn't there the possibility that giving her parents a painting will just serve as a reminder of everything they disapprove of?" She shakes her head and waves one hand dismissively. "I don't mean to belittle the idea or imply any of it's wrong, but..." Brown eyes tip upwards to touch the ceiling for less than a second, just as she murmurs, "Not that her parents /should/ disapprove in the first place."
"I think the idea," begins Maitrey, not something he entered into lightly judging by the seriousness of the time (opposed to the usual half-glib quality behind his words), "is to send them something that shows their daughter paired with something other than a beast that's going to turn her into a she-devil. He's still small, her dragon, with her there oiling him to give it a sense of scale." There's a pause, his fingers ruffling the closed lid of the sketchbook before it tips back, spread open across his thighs. "I'll show you the sketch if you'll give an honest opinion? I'm paid to paint it either way, but I doubt the girl's thought it through with the same... perspective as yours."
If she's going to be serious about the whole affair, then she's not going to longue there in her chair looking any kind of lazy. Careful to keep her skirts arranged so that there're no mishaps when she draws her legs back and swings them back to the floor, Hattie settles again and sets her book down on one armrest. "I know," she says quietly. "I just... don't like to think that there are people out there who see dragons... Impression... like that." A few blinks follow and she summons the usual sharpness back to her eyes and the certainty to her voice. "Let's have a look then."
Not that Maitrey would, uhmn, notice any skirt mishaps. Certainly wouldn't commit them to photographic memory for later reproduction. Alas, none occur-- and he's too busy flipping pages in the sketchbook to find the one in particular to have noticed if one did. "If it helps, from talking to her, I have a feeling it has more to do with /riders/ than dragons, as if each and every last one of you is debauched and sinful." He issues an apologetic look to have to say it, even while he turns the pages so they face Hattie over the arm of his chair, the image much like he described: no colors, just the idea, the small dragon with one wing draped elegantly, the girl tending to his hide, a real frozen-moment that illustrates the fact that even dragons are born as babies.
The goldrider's lips twitch into a smile right after the apologetic look registers, ill-timing prompting Hattie to say, "You know, /that/ I can deal with. Odd as it sounds." No further elaboration spills from her and she leans a touch in her seat to pay proper attention to the sketch, eyeing it more thoughtfully than one might expect of a woman generally known to be obviously dismissive of anything or anyone she chooses. "You're good," she remarks, sharp and sudden, like most of her rare compliments turn out. "I'd like to say I don't see how they could be displeased with the image, but then their disapproving in their first place..." She looks up and now the grimace presents itself. "I /am/ sorry you don't have the paper for it."
/That/ she can deal with. "I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that, Hattie. Either you're comfortable with people thinking you're debauched when you're not or..." Maitrey fails to supply the 'or,' instead answers the rare compliment with slight dimples, rehearsed, demure flattery-- he's had compliments enough by now that he doesn't dissolve into embarrassment, good for him. "Unless it's your fault the paper hasn't arrived, please don't apologize. We'll still finish it, it just won't be as large as she wanted it. I gather the girl's family has some money, and she was worried they would think the debauched weyrfolk have also left her destitute." With a look from page to person; "I gather you're family's well-to-do, would they look down on something of lesser scale?"
Hattie eases one shoulder up into a shrug. "Or?" she prompts, clearly not expecting an answer from how she smirks. "I'm more comfortable with opinions formed about people who can fight back, than dragons who cannot argue their case against being beasts. Who shouldn't have to." She settles back into her seat and crosses her legs at the ankle. "It's not my fault as far as I'm aware, no. Still, it'd seem that that isn't preventing me from wishing something could be done. But I hardly think a werywoman throwing her thirty-second into the mix would leave a very good impression of Fort." Another glance angles towards the sketch, without the lean this time. "Mine wouldn't be concerned with the scale, no. Not those who mattered. And I think we have to assume that, in the end, these parents must love their daughter."
'Or' is just going to stay safely in Maitrey's imagination, thank you. Along with a lot of other things. He answers it only as far as quirk at the edge of his lips, followed by a truer smile with a laugh to keep it company. "It would at least illustrate the willingness to get involved? As such, it might be viewed by some as a... positive light cast on the whole of the Weyr-- a goldrider taking steps to help resolve the situation." His hand waves vaguely, indicative of all the rest of the glowing things people might say. But probably won't. "I hope they do," he commits at the end, puts the sketch back on his lap with a new frown at it. "She's a good girl, in my opinion. It seems the Weyr is just suffering one blow after another."
Slouching a little, Hattie seems to be headed in the direction of more lounging now that she's studied the sketch, despite the conversation being hardly light of topic. She sighs."It could also be seen as treading where I'm not required, and whilst there are many, many things I'm willing to go blundering into, I think this shouldn't be one of them. Not now, anyway." She smiles sharp-edged as if with intent to prove that her next utterance is indeed true. "Cirse's voice would be better than mine in this situation anyway, my overstepping the mark or not." Her other shoulder flexes to shrug next and she stares at her sandals. "I just hope the rest of this chunk of the tithe turns up."
Given to gravity only by training, not something his voice finds natively, Maitrey asks the very natural question to her final remarks; "And if it doesn't?" One long index finger sweeps along the outline of that sketched dragon's wing, lands just shy of the pencil-girl's feet, and then his eyes turn back to Hattie again, brows lifted uncertainly. "I suppose that sounds a little fatalistic, on second thought, but if there's some perceived slight on the Weyr's part, surely the quickest road to retribution follows the tithe trains."
Her sandals must have some interesting detail on them that only Hattie can see, for she angles one foot this way and that to get a closer look at the left one. "And if it doesn't, then... something will have to be done." Her voice might sound a bit strained through those words, but then, it could be perceived as just how she is about this sort of thing. "It being my former home and my younger brother sending us incomplete tithes, maybe that's something I ought to stay out of, too. They'd hardly see me as able to be objective about the whole thing." Hardly diplomatic, she adds, "Though without this knot, I'd gladly smack my brother upside the head. And he knows it."
While Hattie watches her foot, Maitrey continues to watch her eyes in an unbroken attention. He can handle not being as fascinating as a sandal; it's probably happened to him before; but /his/ attention stays fixed. "Maybe that's something you ought to stay out of," he echoes, harder pressure on the /maybe/ than her own utterance. "Or maybe you're uniquely poised to have an effect on the situation. He's your brother--" News, maybe? "--and this is your Weyr. Of all people, you stand between the slighter and the slighted." His smile flickers, brief, merry; "Or this is too big a subject for an apprentice and you should take what steps you and your betters guide you toward."
"He's my brother and this is not... /my/ Weyr," Hattie replies, just a little hesitantly. "I'm its. I mean, I'm the Weyr's. Not... like that. But you know what I mean?" She peers over at Maitrey with a searching gaze to see perhaps if any of that has actually made any sense outside her own mind. "And I'm biased even before that; not even in the way people might assume. I don't think I'm the one who could get any kind of clean victory out of this." Another sigh precedes her stretching and reaching to curl fingers back around her book. "Or perhaps this is too big a subject until there's more to go on." The goldrider uncrosses her ankles and gets to her feet in one smooth motion. "I'm going to see if there's any early lunch about." She takes one half-step away and hesitates. "You want to...?" Hattie asks, nodding in the direction of the living cavern.
It doesn't. Make much sense. Not if the surprised, speculative way Maitrey raises his brows is any indicator. The short, "Ahh," that follows also fails to understand, but he doesn't specifically argue the issue with her. Her offer meets with a wave from the backs of his fingers; "Go, enjoy. I'm actually supposed to be doing more than keeping up conversations with attractive women, and certainly more than poking around for an early lunch. However it turns out, thank you for your insights, Hattie." He ducks his head, another instance of physical gratitude to back up the vocal version.