[Log] Goodbye
Who: Derek, Donavon (NPC), E'sere, F'ron (NPC)
When: Day 10, Month 4, Turn 3, 7th Pass
Where: Derek's Cave, Western Islands
What: Derek sends E'sere and Donavon off on their way.
The Alley (Derek's Cave)
Actually a cave; how it came to be called 'the alley' is already lost to only ten turns of time. Here a roughly made table and chairs and a firepit look out from the small cave's mouth over the ocean crashing against jagged rocks below; this is the island's less pleasant shoreside, and it takes a little work to get up into this cave. Just as well - though the alley is supposedly open to everyone, few seem inclined to visit. Unpleasant things are known to occur in this space.
In the back of the cave Derek's personal effects, including a poor bed strewn with a ragtag fur stitched together from rabbit pelts, dominate a small private space. It would appear the man lives simply.
Contents: E'sere and Derek
Nighttime at the Alley is often lit by firelight; tonight is no exception. There are, in fact, almost no exceptions here at all that one could see from the beach or the cliff; there are no men lurking around the cavemouth, no councils of leadership casting flickering shadows out of the narrow cave. There is just this one thing - a deep shadow that could be, by a trick of the starlight, blue in hue, curled and enormous like an ocean-washed boulder of proportion to a glacial age. It rests dark and silent next to the Alley's entrance, dwarfing the rocks on which Derek is oft found perched and watching the sea.
Only a few yards off might a visitor note that a single eye blinks open, reflecting firelight in midnight facets, betraying the boulder for what it is: draconic sentry. And only closer still will the island king and another man be apparent, seated inside at the table with food on top and a heap of... things next to the bench. The man's a bluerider best-known for his hero-worship eyes for J'lor and quick turns in the sky: F'ron.
E'sere has always come on foot before, and Donavon as well, but tonight Morelenth fetches them both to Derek's cave, the bronze circling once over the area in the cool night air of the islands before he glides downward to land next to that older blue, a low rumble offered in unhappy greeting. Donavon slides down his side first, then E'sere more carefully. For the occasion, the pair have done their part to make themselves look once more mainland-respectable, in those clothes they brought with them, cleanshaven, hair in order, though Donavon looks much more uncomfortable in that attire than E'sere does. He lets the rider lead the path to the doorway, following on his heels, while E'sere offers a small smile to first Derek, then F'ron. "Good evening," he greets them politely.
F'ron rises from the bench, putting his back to the table in a quick jerk-turn. He turns his smile on E'sere first; the bronzerider's charisma has won him this smile before, but the bluerider's eyes take on a new sharpness in this environment, a chameleon to his associates. "We always knew you'd clean up nice," he provides as his own hello, irony thick but not unadmiring. Donavon just gets a look - oh, you. Eyes back to E'sere. Prettier. Better. Good.
Derek doesn't bother with getting up. For a moment it seems he might not even bother with turning around - he leans instead and closes rough fingers around the heap of a bag slumped next to the bench. While he tugs it up onto his lap, though, he swings his legs around and does like so get turned about. He looks up, evidently not needing his eyes on his fingers' work - they open the bag from drawstrings while he greets the envoys, grim. "Good enough. I hope you slept."
"I do try, thank you," E'sere tells F'ron easily, making a show of tugging at his collar to straighten it, smile broadening. The gesture, though, shows the new addition to his right hand: a layer of bandage wrapped loosely around its palm. He's quick to slide both hands into his pockets then, affecting a relaxed posture. Donavon offers his own greetings then, though he's watching Derek and that bag while E'sere deals with the niceties. "How are you, F'ron? And you, sir? We did, yes," E'sere answers Derek. "For a few hours, at least--enough that I don't expect the time difference to trouble us overmuch."
"Oh, I'm ready for a little trip, I'd say," F'ron replies, lifting his jacketed shoulders for a lengthy roll; he puts his hands behind his back and joins them there, becoming leaner and longer than he already is in his stretching. Despite the fire and the swelter in the cave, he doesn't sweat; the dry season has its blessings.
Derek nods once to E'sere, glancing down to filter through some sort of contents of the bag with deft, slow fingertips. "And you, Donavon?" He draws out, without looking up, a cord. It belonged once to E'sere, belonged once to his knot. Wound up with Morelenth's thread and the Wingleader's tassels it defined the man; but this cord alone defines anyone resident to High Reaches Weyr, should they have cause to dress up or go out. Derek coils it in one palm and keeps looking for another. Words wait on a lower lip barely visible, parted from the moustache above, held back for E'sere's companion's answer.
"'Bout the same, sir," answers Donavon, glancing briefly at F'ron, then back to Derek. He admits, "Getting anxious to get on the way." E'sere, the silent one now, studies F'ron a moment longer, then glances briefly to Derek, where his gaze then stops, abruptly, when he sees in the man's hand the remains of his knot. He frowns, tilts his chin slightly, and his relaxed posture becomes more obviously affected, but he doesn't say anything.
"Anxiety will serve you," Derek observes. F'ron's smile widens a little, his eyes narrowing countertime, sharpened and flickering with light garnered from the fire. "You'll be picked up just before dawn day after tomorrow. You have less than two days; make the most of them." The second cord of his seeking, the navy of High Reaches Hold, comes out into his other hand; he looks up then, holding out each in their own palms, presumably for the men before him to take. "You need to get to see the Lord, and ascertain our welcome. That's goal two. Finding out what he wants in trade and whether there's any - challenge - inherent to the environment is tertiary." The man's head lifts a little, turning slightly toward the fire as if to invite that heat to play over his features and throw them into angular light, unsteady. "Guess for me what the most important thing is."
E'sere eyes that knot a moment longer, then finally reaches for it, while Donavon steps forward to take the other. The rider toys with the cord a long moment, studying it, frowning, before he glances back up to Derek. "Yes, sir," he affirms to the first two directives; at the third, though, he hesitates, mind likely racing through every possible political maneuver he can think of for the right one for the occasion. It's Donavon, already moving to affix his knot back to his shoulder, who volunteers the simpler answer: "Don't get ourselves caught."
Derek's gaze slips over to Donavon for the second time; for the first time - not just tonight, but basically ever - his focus rests on the man for more than an empty, thoughtless split-second. It rests now with carefully considered weight, with heavy brows slightly drawn, silent until a peek of pink tongue betrays a slight smiling of lips and a preparation for words: "Yes, Donavon." The island king's head raises a little higher as his gaze goes over to E'sere; there's something that falls barely short of approval there, but only barely. Hands emptied, Derek puts the bag aside and rises. "Any questions?"
Sheepish, E'sere offers a tighter smile, glancing downward. "Donavon thinks of the obvious for me," he confesses, shaking his head, while Donavon just gives him a dubious sort of look and looks mildly uncomfortable at being hailed as such. E'sere doesn't heed that look, focusing instead on Derek again, with a brief nod. "No, sir," he affirms.
"Then you'll do the thinking," Derek decides, looking back at Donavon with another twitch of that smile. "And E'sere will do the talking. Somehow I suddenly think this isn't an uncommon arrangement." The island king tucks his hands into his pockets, then turns a little to slip off toward the entry - but not all the way to it, not into the frame of the narrow cavemouth, not, given the glance he affords the dragons outside, any too close to hulking blue or skeletal bronze shapes.
"We're dismissed," observes F'ron, cheerfully.
Donavon's smirk is telling, while E'sere opens his mouth, probably to protest, and just as quickly shuts it again, smiling slightly instead, admission enough of the truth in their leader's statement. "Good night, sir," he offers in parting, before, steeling his shoulders, he turns to slip out at F'ron's words. While Donavon heads to the blue, and waits there with F'ron, E'sere heads to Morelenth, pausing a moment to let the bronze brush at him with his nose. After rubbing a hand across the dragon's muzzle and murmuring a few words to him, E'sere turns, retreating back to F'ron and his blue, ready now for his mission. Morelenth watches with worry-yellow eyes.
Doremath does his best to reassure the Reachian bronze - first with a soft note of caretaking, an image of all three men well-kept beneath midnight wings, then another of them coming back all astride him, hale and hailed heroes of sorts, if sneaky ones. Then he unfurls those wings and crouches low, paw-forward, neck angled, all ready to be scaled thrice.
Though the bluerider follows the other men out, he is first up, evidently assuming their passengers can get up without assistance - safe enough to assume this of E'sere, at least. F'ron settles far forward, room at the base of his dragon's neck and high on his foreshoulders for the others to make their own. "It'll be nice to feel a little closer to home, don't you think?"
After F'ron is settled, E'sere mounts, settling into place astride Doremath as Donavon does so a few moments later. "Yes, sir," E'sere agrees. "I'm looking forward to a nice visit, and a few comforts of home, perhaps. Thank you for taking us, F'ron." He doesn't look back, and neither does Donavon, though Morelenth continues watching, backing away to give the older blue more room to take off, and rumbling once, a parting note.
Doremath does not sing back. He is well-suited to what he does: wait for his passengers to be settled, then leap into the sky, catching himself on belated but silent wingbeats, flight weaving by design. He risks no further remarks of the mind, and F'ron gives no warning; they slink higher and higher, stars beckoning, until the dead silence of between steals them.
They arrive in daylight over scarred, abandoned ranchland far from Nabol proper. It is not a long flight straight to Five Mines, though the blue alights in a field a mile from the road that reaches up into the mountain minehold. After that and their farewells, E'sere and Donavon are on their own.