Phara: One of those girls who think it would be fun for a change and find out that it isn't?
RL Date: 1/31/09
IC Date: 11/25/18 --Or thereabouts. N'thei's 29th~!
Eastern Bowl, High Reaches Weyr(#343RJs)
Ringed by rough granite walls to all sides but one, this end of the huge bowl narrows from the even broader plain to the west, continuing the ever so slight downward slope toward the blue and green of the Weyr's lake and surrounding foliage. More open to sun and wind than the western bowl, but less frequented when there aren't weyrlings in residence, the bowl's grassy tufts keep the topsoil in place and thicken into a bloodstained meadow within the feeding pens that adjoin the lake.
At the base of the surrounding cliffs lie entrances to several caverns, including the dragon infirmary and the weyrling barracks: the former to the northwest near where the spires begin, the latter opposite to the southwest. Both archways are large and dark enough for any dragon to pass through, but it's the infirmary's that is haunted by faint smells of redwort and numbweed, as though over generations they have seeped into the very stone.
The tail-end of autumn nestles cozily around the Reaches, turning early-afternoon cool and shadowy and quiet. The first promise of ice-and-snow blow on those daytime breezes, and the bowl is largely vacant where people curl up in front of fireplaces and hunch over bowls of stew to bemoan the signs of winter's arrival. Over yonder, in the feeding grounds, a lone-and-dusty bronze takes advantage of the emptiness of the day to terrorize the herds, his glee evident where he chases them about for no other reason than to watch them stampede. There, against the fence, his foot on the bottom rail and his elbows slung over the top, N'thei's found a place where he can be all-by-himself for a little while, doing nothing more than watching Wyaeth.
Phara is just crossing the bowl out of the living cavern, her magenta scarf distinct against her dark hair and beige riding jacket. Bennath is waiting patiently, watching Wyaeth in a nonchalant way. As Phara nears him, he shares his view with her and her head turns, eyebrow lifting. She isn't familliar with the bronze precisely, but the man leaning against the railing - him she knows. A crooked grin widens her mouth and she sways to alter her course towards him.
From the corner of his eye, N'thei glimpses red. He cocks his head just enough to ascertain a few facts about the red-- enough to know who it doesn't belong to-- then turns his attention back to Wyaeth in time to watch him settle down to eat rather than just terrorize. His posture unchanged, he slides one more glance sideways toward Phara's approach and, once she's in earshot, offers up a bland fact as greeting; "You don't live here."
Phara slides up beside him, an arm's lenghth away, her gloved fingers wrapping around the top of the rail. She looks into the feeding ground, her lips still curved up. "I don't," she agrees, light brown eyes straying to look at him in her peripheral. "But you do."
"So they tell me." N'thei spares a glance around the immediate vicinity; whoever the 'they' are in that sentence, they're not around at the moment, which fact makes his eyebrows twitch upward and his forehead smooth, sudden relief. The gorefest in the feeding grounds continues with Wyaeth utterly unconcerned with who watches or how much of a bloody mess he makes. There's a long quiet from the man, filled mostly by the sounds of bones being crunched and the sloppy-wet munching of entrails, before; "We don't like visitors." Speaks for the masses, he does.
Now she looks, her head turning slowly. She leans in, bridging the distance between them in subtle way. "/You/ don't like visitors," Phara corrects, voice trembling in amusement. "I know for a fact there's plenty of folks here who enjoy visitors." She straightens up, commenting, "Enthusiastic, isn't he?"
N'thei's hands, thus far laced loosely in front of him, dangling over the railing, unclasp and open to indicate the emptiness of the surroundings, hardly a soul about in either the feeding grounds or the bowl. "Show me one." Of those people who like visitors. Fictional as leprechauns so far as he's concerned. The matter of Wyaeth's enthusiasm speaks for itself-- crunch-- and the man's fingers re-thread loosely while dull gray eyes reattach to the bronze's doings.
Phara lifts her eyebrows, looking around. "Ahh," she breaths and chuckles. "I see your point." She considers for a moment and shrugs. "I'd show you, but I don't think any of them would like you in their weyr." She turns around, pulls herself up to sit on the railing. "You never told me your name."
Told-you-so says the look essayed from N'thei's bland expression to Phara's inability to produce anyone who actually /likes/ visitors. That there may be hundreds of such people at the Reaches is presently irrelevant; /none/ of them are right here. He sidles down a step when she takes to climbing on the rails, leaves an extra bit of space between where he leans and she sits-- ostensibly so he doesn't get kicked accidentally on the way up, but really so that (if she falls) he can't be expected to lend a hand from so far away. Resettled, "You know who I am." Without the name.
Phara shrugs limply and catches her lower lip in her teeth, holding onto a grin. "I do," she says slowly. "But it's ever so rude not to introduce yourself." She clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and adds, "Ever more rude to forget the person you're talking to."
"Rude like joining a card game you're not invited to, suppose." Some people can do coy smiles-- Phara apparently can pull off grins, for example-- but when N'thei tries on a light little smirk, it just comes across like he's a hair's breadth from scowling and punching something. Which he very well may be.
Phara just shrugs, winks at him. "Never claimed not to be rude. Neither did you, though." She isn't afraid of that rough smirk, she doesn't even look away. "Want your marks back? You'll have to earn 'em."
Never claimed not to be, true, but "Only one of us seems worried about it." N'thei's shrug answers for his measure of concern over propriety. As does the whole lack of a warm-welcome for a visitor. Then, rolling his eyes up so they light on Phara once more, he asks in that demanding way of his, "Do you think I want my marks back."
Phara considers, extending her hand across the rail, her glove sliding against the surface. Once again, subtly invading his personal space. "Not sure what to think about you. But I did win them fair..ish."
What to think about N'thei? Here's a bit for starters-- "Would take that hand back if I were you."
Phara glances at her hand and then at him. Dark eyebrows lift. "If I don't?" she wonders, all curiosity. Her hand only slides back a fraction of an inch, thumb tapping where it rests on the vertical plane of the rail. Unconcerned, too casual.
"If you don't." And N'thei sounds doubtful that she'd press the issue, so doubtful. "Then I'm liable to get irritated by your continued coyness, grab it, yank you bodily off the fence, march you unceremoniously back to wherever you're dragon is, and tell you to get the fuck out of High Reaches and don't come back." So he looks down at her fractionally retreated hand and concludes, "Since you asked."
"Not very gentlemanly. Don't you /like/ coy women, Weyrleader?" Phara, still all curiousity. She taunts him, siddling away from him, but her hand remains extended towards him at the same distance from her body. Just six inches away. Does he care what part of her moves to get her hand out of his space? She doesn't seem to think so.
Hands can hold, clasp gently, join... or they can latch, clamp firmly, imprison. N'thei's are of the variety inclined toward the latter, and the fingers that seek toward Phara's wrist are cold-hard evidence of such. Doesn't he like coy women? "No." He did mean the warning as truth, intent on setting actions to the promise of his words.
Phara sees his intent and reverses her hold on the fence, swinging down and lifting a single finger at him. It dances back and forth in admonishment as she backs out of his reach. "Then the opposite would be bold." She considers for a moment. "Or is that why you play alone?" A dark laugh bubbles from her throat. "Into self-love or no love at all?"
Stern; "Not your business." The matter of N'thei's love-life, or the lack of it, cannot be discerned by the man's reactions to the taunt. There's a reason he plays poker; when he doesn't want someone to know what he's thinking, they're not going to find it out, and the blank look Phara receives proves it-- right up until he narrows his eyes at that finger. "Don't think to play with me, darling." While he pushes himself up from the long lean against the fence, the hand that failed to catch the bluerider now straightening a long-bent spine.
Phara sighs, pouts mockingly. "But it's fun. Loosen up a little." She stops backing up when the threat of him deminishes. "I bother you?" she guesses.
"Don't flatter yourself." By which N'thei means, "Everyone bothers me." He gives the finger a last, put-that-thing-away glance.
That grin is quick to return. Phara's hands are tucked behind her back. She cranes her neck to look up at him. "Why?"
N'thei can only open his hand, the one on which he's not presently leaning, toward Phara as exempli gratia in response; there she stands, hands folded, grinning, uninvited, threatened, persistent. That's why.
Phara shrugs lopsidedly at him. Without changing her stance, she takes a handful of steps forward, eyes carefully trained on his face. "You want me to leave?" With no hint that she intends to.
The menace of a briefly tightened jaw, the tic of it visible at the corner of N'thei's mouth, warns against the encroachment of his personal space. "Why do people ask questions when they don't really care what the answer is, I wonder." Not for the first time.
"Trying to figure you out," Phara admits quite candidly. "Want to understand what it is you don't like about me, or if that isn't it at all. I would assume you could walk away. He doesn't need you right now," her head tosses towards Wyaeth. She leans against the rail again, nonthreatening, just... close. "Which makes me think you're as much of a masochist as a sadist... or you're not as bothered as you want me to think." Her eyes narrow, her gaze growing intense on his face. Her voice lowers til it is very soft, hard to hear. "Do you always fight the urge to hurt people, or is it just outsiders?"
N'thei, to the first, with the calm confidence of having had this conversation before; "You won't." As to the reason he's still here-- "This is my Weyr, darling, and I've few enough moments of peace that one little girl feeling brave will not chase me off. And I don't usually fight the urge at all, but I don't really want to compound K'del's indiscretion at Fort by smacking a visiting bluerider. Though it's starting to look tempting."
"I might," Phara counters. "I can be very persistant." Obviously. She doesn't take his threat seriously. Or maybe she does, because there's an undercurrent of weird excitement when she murmurs, "I wouldn't tell."
Fingers to forehead, once more turned to lean against the railing with both elbows instead of just the one, N'thei remarks with a glance over one shoulder, "Now who's the masochist."
Phara studies him, the corner of her mouth angled up. "I never claimed otherwise. Do you think I'd have come over, if I wasn't? Who'd be attracted to such a blatant sadist."
"Generally speaking, girls who think it might be fun for a change and find out that it's not." Which is about what N'thei thinks of Phara, judging the bored-of-it tone and the lack of further interest in so much as glancing her way. Wyaeth's long since stopped murdering and eating things, now just sitting there, establishing a possessive aura that extends to the entirety of the feeding grounds, so-- she was absolutely right; there's really no reason for him to still be here.
Phara shrugs her shoulders but her smile fades. "Still here. So I must still think it's fun." She exhales, her eyes close. "But you don't." Another assumption. She pushes back, arms extended though still holding the rail. This flicker of uncertainty is just that, a flicker, and then her spunk returns. "If you think I don't know what I'm doing, you're wrong. But go ahead, tell me to leave, if it's what you want."
A sound like a laugh-- short, mostly breath-- leaves N'thei, issued toward the feeding grounds. "Go away. Not going to beat you, not going to fuck you, don't like small talk, so that sort of runs us out of things to do." Except stand there and stare at nothing, which seems to be his version of quality-time.
Phara presses her lips together, her cheeks getting red. "Who says either of those were my goal?" Her eyes get a little hard now as she looks up, her chin lifting defiantly. "I can still think of plenty to do." And one, then two deliberate steps are taken. If she's pushing her luck, it's only her style.
It has been termed the dead-fish look, the dull grayness in his eyes, the utterly unroused expression. "I can't." With Phara coming closer, N'thei pushes upright on the fence again. That change presents again, the one that signifies an imminent departure, something about the way his shoulders list in the direction his feet are soon to follow.
The look of Phara's face is strangely sincere. Her hand extends like she's going to touch him, except she doesn't. Instead, her hand hangs in the air, and something bright flutters between her fingers. A piece of ribbon. How it got there so suddenly is her own secret. She lets it hang between them, as close as she's going to get. Sure, she's crazy. Not /that/ crazy. "Take it. Keep it, give it to somebody else, let it go. Do what you will with it."
N'thei takes it because it's there, because it's easier to take it than to argue about it. What becomes of the ribbon, an incongruous thing in his not-dainty fingers, may never be known. While Wyaeth takes one leap upward and wheels around to land on the star stones, where he extends that possessiveness over the entirety of the Weyr instead of just the feeding grounds, his rider only starts an unhurried stroll across the bowl toward the Weyrleader Complex. --Which really is an aptly named area.
IC Date: 11/25/18 --Or thereabouts. N'thei's 29th~!
Eastern Bowl, High Reaches Weyr(#343RJs)
Ringed by rough granite walls to all sides but one, this end of the huge bowl narrows from the even broader plain to the west, continuing the ever so slight downward slope toward the blue and green of the Weyr's lake and surrounding foliage. More open to sun and wind than the western bowl, but less frequented when there aren't weyrlings in residence, the bowl's grassy tufts keep the topsoil in place and thicken into a bloodstained meadow within the feeding pens that adjoin the lake.
At the base of the surrounding cliffs lie entrances to several caverns, including the dragon infirmary and the weyrling barracks: the former to the northwest near where the spires begin, the latter opposite to the southwest. Both archways are large and dark enough for any dragon to pass through, but it's the infirmary's that is haunted by faint smells of redwort and numbweed, as though over generations they have seeped into the very stone.
The tail-end of autumn nestles cozily around the Reaches, turning early-afternoon cool and shadowy and quiet. The first promise of ice-and-snow blow on those daytime breezes, and the bowl is largely vacant where people curl up in front of fireplaces and hunch over bowls of stew to bemoan the signs of winter's arrival. Over yonder, in the feeding grounds, a lone-and-dusty bronze takes advantage of the emptiness of the day to terrorize the herds, his glee evident where he chases them about for no other reason than to watch them stampede. There, against the fence, his foot on the bottom rail and his elbows slung over the top, N'thei's found a place where he can be all-by-himself for a little while, doing nothing more than watching Wyaeth.
Phara is just crossing the bowl out of the living cavern, her magenta scarf distinct against her dark hair and beige riding jacket. Bennath is waiting patiently, watching Wyaeth in a nonchalant way. As Phara nears him, he shares his view with her and her head turns, eyebrow lifting. She isn't familliar with the bronze precisely, but the man leaning against the railing - him she knows. A crooked grin widens her mouth and she sways to alter her course towards him.
From the corner of his eye, N'thei glimpses red. He cocks his head just enough to ascertain a few facts about the red-- enough to know who it doesn't belong to-- then turns his attention back to Wyaeth in time to watch him settle down to eat rather than just terrorize. His posture unchanged, he slides one more glance sideways toward Phara's approach and, once she's in earshot, offers up a bland fact as greeting; "You don't live here."
Phara slides up beside him, an arm's lenghth away, her gloved fingers wrapping around the top of the rail. She looks into the feeding ground, her lips still curved up. "I don't," she agrees, light brown eyes straying to look at him in her peripheral. "But you do."
"So they tell me." N'thei spares a glance around the immediate vicinity; whoever the 'they' are in that sentence, they're not around at the moment, which fact makes his eyebrows twitch upward and his forehead smooth, sudden relief. The gorefest in the feeding grounds continues with Wyaeth utterly unconcerned with who watches or how much of a bloody mess he makes. There's a long quiet from the man, filled mostly by the sounds of bones being crunched and the sloppy-wet munching of entrails, before; "We don't like visitors." Speaks for the masses, he does.
Now she looks, her head turning slowly. She leans in, bridging the distance between them in subtle way. "/You/ don't like visitors," Phara corrects, voice trembling in amusement. "I know for a fact there's plenty of folks here who enjoy visitors." She straightens up, commenting, "Enthusiastic, isn't he?"
N'thei's hands, thus far laced loosely in front of him, dangling over the railing, unclasp and open to indicate the emptiness of the surroundings, hardly a soul about in either the feeding grounds or the bowl. "Show me one." Of those people who like visitors. Fictional as leprechauns so far as he's concerned. The matter of Wyaeth's enthusiasm speaks for itself-- crunch-- and the man's fingers re-thread loosely while dull gray eyes reattach to the bronze's doings.
Phara lifts her eyebrows, looking around. "Ahh," she breaths and chuckles. "I see your point." She considers for a moment and shrugs. "I'd show you, but I don't think any of them would like you in their weyr." She turns around, pulls herself up to sit on the railing. "You never told me your name."
Told-you-so says the look essayed from N'thei's bland expression to Phara's inability to produce anyone who actually /likes/ visitors. That there may be hundreds of such people at the Reaches is presently irrelevant; /none/ of them are right here. He sidles down a step when she takes to climbing on the rails, leaves an extra bit of space between where he leans and she sits-- ostensibly so he doesn't get kicked accidentally on the way up, but really so that (if she falls) he can't be expected to lend a hand from so far away. Resettled, "You know who I am." Without the name.
Phara shrugs limply and catches her lower lip in her teeth, holding onto a grin. "I do," she says slowly. "But it's ever so rude not to introduce yourself." She clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and adds, "Ever more rude to forget the person you're talking to."
"Rude like joining a card game you're not invited to, suppose." Some people can do coy smiles-- Phara apparently can pull off grins, for example-- but when N'thei tries on a light little smirk, it just comes across like he's a hair's breadth from scowling and punching something. Which he very well may be.
Phara just shrugs, winks at him. "Never claimed not to be rude. Neither did you, though." She isn't afraid of that rough smirk, she doesn't even look away. "Want your marks back? You'll have to earn 'em."
Never claimed not to be, true, but "Only one of us seems worried about it." N'thei's shrug answers for his measure of concern over propriety. As does the whole lack of a warm-welcome for a visitor. Then, rolling his eyes up so they light on Phara once more, he asks in that demanding way of his, "Do you think I want my marks back."
Phara considers, extending her hand across the rail, her glove sliding against the surface. Once again, subtly invading his personal space. "Not sure what to think about you. But I did win them fair..ish."
What to think about N'thei? Here's a bit for starters-- "Would take that hand back if I were you."
Phara glances at her hand and then at him. Dark eyebrows lift. "If I don't?" she wonders, all curiosity. Her hand only slides back a fraction of an inch, thumb tapping where it rests on the vertical plane of the rail. Unconcerned, too casual.
"If you don't." And N'thei sounds doubtful that she'd press the issue, so doubtful. "Then I'm liable to get irritated by your continued coyness, grab it, yank you bodily off the fence, march you unceremoniously back to wherever you're dragon is, and tell you to get the fuck out of High Reaches and don't come back." So he looks down at her fractionally retreated hand and concludes, "Since you asked."
"Not very gentlemanly. Don't you /like/ coy women, Weyrleader?" Phara, still all curiousity. She taunts him, siddling away from him, but her hand remains extended towards him at the same distance from her body. Just six inches away. Does he care what part of her moves to get her hand out of his space? She doesn't seem to think so.
Hands can hold, clasp gently, join... or they can latch, clamp firmly, imprison. N'thei's are of the variety inclined toward the latter, and the fingers that seek toward Phara's wrist are cold-hard evidence of such. Doesn't he like coy women? "No." He did mean the warning as truth, intent on setting actions to the promise of his words.
Phara sees his intent and reverses her hold on the fence, swinging down and lifting a single finger at him. It dances back and forth in admonishment as she backs out of his reach. "Then the opposite would be bold." She considers for a moment. "Or is that why you play alone?" A dark laugh bubbles from her throat. "Into self-love or no love at all?"
Stern; "Not your business." The matter of N'thei's love-life, or the lack of it, cannot be discerned by the man's reactions to the taunt. There's a reason he plays poker; when he doesn't want someone to know what he's thinking, they're not going to find it out, and the blank look Phara receives proves it-- right up until he narrows his eyes at that finger. "Don't think to play with me, darling." While he pushes himself up from the long lean against the fence, the hand that failed to catch the bluerider now straightening a long-bent spine.
Phara sighs, pouts mockingly. "But it's fun. Loosen up a little." She stops backing up when the threat of him deminishes. "I bother you?" she guesses.
"Don't flatter yourself." By which N'thei means, "Everyone bothers me." He gives the finger a last, put-that-thing-away glance.
That grin is quick to return. Phara's hands are tucked behind her back. She cranes her neck to look up at him. "Why?"
N'thei can only open his hand, the one on which he's not presently leaning, toward Phara as exempli gratia in response; there she stands, hands folded, grinning, uninvited, threatened, persistent. That's why.
Phara shrugs lopsidedly at him. Without changing her stance, she takes a handful of steps forward, eyes carefully trained on his face. "You want me to leave?" With no hint that she intends to.
The menace of a briefly tightened jaw, the tic of it visible at the corner of N'thei's mouth, warns against the encroachment of his personal space. "Why do people ask questions when they don't really care what the answer is, I wonder." Not for the first time.
"Trying to figure you out," Phara admits quite candidly. "Want to understand what it is you don't like about me, or if that isn't it at all. I would assume you could walk away. He doesn't need you right now," her head tosses towards Wyaeth. She leans against the rail again, nonthreatening, just... close. "Which makes me think you're as much of a masochist as a sadist... or you're not as bothered as you want me to think." Her eyes narrow, her gaze growing intense on his face. Her voice lowers til it is very soft, hard to hear. "Do you always fight the urge to hurt people, or is it just outsiders?"
N'thei, to the first, with the calm confidence of having had this conversation before; "You won't." As to the reason he's still here-- "This is my Weyr, darling, and I've few enough moments of peace that one little girl feeling brave will not chase me off. And I don't usually fight the urge at all, but I don't really want to compound K'del's indiscretion at Fort by smacking a visiting bluerider. Though it's starting to look tempting."
"I might," Phara counters. "I can be very persistant." Obviously. She doesn't take his threat seriously. Or maybe she does, because there's an undercurrent of weird excitement when she murmurs, "I wouldn't tell."
Fingers to forehead, once more turned to lean against the railing with both elbows instead of just the one, N'thei remarks with a glance over one shoulder, "Now who's the masochist."
Phara studies him, the corner of her mouth angled up. "I never claimed otherwise. Do you think I'd have come over, if I wasn't? Who'd be attracted to such a blatant sadist."
"Generally speaking, girls who think it might be fun for a change and find out that it's not." Which is about what N'thei thinks of Phara, judging the bored-of-it tone and the lack of further interest in so much as glancing her way. Wyaeth's long since stopped murdering and eating things, now just sitting there, establishing a possessive aura that extends to the entirety of the feeding grounds, so-- she was absolutely right; there's really no reason for him to still be here.
Phara shrugs her shoulders but her smile fades. "Still here. So I must still think it's fun." She exhales, her eyes close. "But you don't." Another assumption. She pushes back, arms extended though still holding the rail. This flicker of uncertainty is just that, a flicker, and then her spunk returns. "If you think I don't know what I'm doing, you're wrong. But go ahead, tell me to leave, if it's what you want."
A sound like a laugh-- short, mostly breath-- leaves N'thei, issued toward the feeding grounds. "Go away. Not going to beat you, not going to fuck you, don't like small talk, so that sort of runs us out of things to do." Except stand there and stare at nothing, which seems to be his version of quality-time.
Phara presses her lips together, her cheeks getting red. "Who says either of those were my goal?" Her eyes get a little hard now as she looks up, her chin lifting defiantly. "I can still think of plenty to do." And one, then two deliberate steps are taken. If she's pushing her luck, it's only her style.
It has been termed the dead-fish look, the dull grayness in his eyes, the utterly unroused expression. "I can't." With Phara coming closer, N'thei pushes upright on the fence again. That change presents again, the one that signifies an imminent departure, something about the way his shoulders list in the direction his feet are soon to follow.
The look of Phara's face is strangely sincere. Her hand extends like she's going to touch him, except she doesn't. Instead, her hand hangs in the air, and something bright flutters between her fingers. A piece of ribbon. How it got there so suddenly is her own secret. She lets it hang between them, as close as she's going to get. Sure, she's crazy. Not /that/ crazy. "Take it. Keep it, give it to somebody else, let it go. Do what you will with it."
N'thei takes it because it's there, because it's easier to take it than to argue about it. What becomes of the ribbon, an incongruous thing in his not-dainty fingers, may never be known. While Wyaeth takes one leap upward and wheels around to land on the star stones, where he extends that possessiveness over the entirety of the Weyr instead of just the feeding grounds, his rider only starts an unhurried stroll across the bowl toward the Weyrleader Complex. --Which really is an aptly named area.