[Log] An Evening with Mr. Adaptive
Who: Tiriana, W'chek
When: Day 17, Month 12, Turn 19
Where: Living Cavern, High Reaches Weyr
What: Tiriana and W'chek have dinner. It goes swimmingly.
Living Cavern, High Reaches Weyr
Stalactites hang high above this enormous cavern like a jagged chandelier or an inversion of the Spires themselves, but shadows cling to them instead of light. Below lie great tables arranged in rows, each large enough to serve a fighting wing, while in the nooks and alcoves around the cavern's edge sit more sensibly-sized tables, from six- and eight-seaters down to intimate spots for just a couple of diners. The only really open space is around the kitchen entrance, smelling of food and rarely quiet, and by the nearby serving tables with their long buffet of the day's offerings.
Tapestries on the smooth walls -- some faded and others newly woven -- only slightly mute the sea of sound when a meal is in full swing, but they add cheerfulness augmented by the glowlight from wall sconces and the centerpieces of each table. Still, shadows always creep along the ceiling and into the mouths of the exits -- the myriad small hallways at one end of the cavern and, at the other, the twisting tunnel to the bowl near an array of coathooks and and hatracks -- and late at night, when the glows are allowed to dim, the chamber can seem very dark indeed.
Obvious exits:
Inner Caverns Kitchen Bowl
It's not snowing, which is something; but it's pouring buckets, and that's not so good. The Weyr's activities have retreated inside for the day, and the fires are popular spots. Tiriana sits at a table close to one of them, the day's work set to one side of her while she eats dinner and thumbs through the stacks, leaving greasy thumbprints everywhere.
There's supposed to be group bonding over dinner. Supposedly. That, of course, ignores the significant impulse any sane person would have to stay warm and dry instead of venturing out into this weather. A hot meal can only go so far. Unfortunately, W'chek wasn't bright enough to spirit away leftovers at lunch to avoid having to come back out for the evening meal, and so he's left stumbling in from the driving rain, soaked and teeth chattering and peeling off wet layers of coat and hat and such as soon as he gets in. They get tossed over the back of a chair near those flames where they have some hope of drying again without heed to who might be sitting near there, and the weyrling rubs at his face with both hands while he crosses over to get food. When he returns with a plate, he has eyes only for the warmth.
The arrival of a new and soaking wet person earns a long look from Tiriana, who watches the weyrling's progress in lieu of either work or dinner. "Weyrling," she greets, after he's got his own food and returned to near her. "W'chek. Have a seat." Not much of a request, either.
Terrific. Cold, wet, and now persecuted. W'chek stands there with his plate for a minute, looking like he's just trying so hard to get half-frozen brain to respond, to come up with some very good reason why he can't, but it's just not going to work. "Weyrwoman," he offers reluctantly, as he pulls out a chair across from her and puts himself into it. At least a table's width worth of protection. It's something. "Um." Food untouched, still, like he might need to bolt at any moment.
Persecuted? Well, not yet, anyway. Maybe. Tiriana eyes the bronze weyrling up and down as he comes over to join her, and judging by her frown, he's found somewhat wanting. "Um," she mocks. "You could at least start with, you know. The usual pleasantries." Which she does not expand on for him, perhaps not knowing them herself. "So you're one of our brilliant up-and-coming bronzeriders now. Right."
"Nice day, isn't it?" obliges W'chek after a moment just sort of staring at her. "Lovely weather we're having." He finally manages to stab a piece of potato with far more vehemence than is totally called for when dealing with root vegetables. "Didn't ask to be. You know. Some dragons just have exceptionally poor taste, evidently." He's had precisely enough time to go from 'cold and wet' to 'uncomfortable and clammy', which evidently does not improve him any.
"Nice day. You really suck at this, kid." It's bad when even Tiriana is criticizing your pleasantry skills, but there you have it. She half-turns in her chair to watch him while she picks up her fork again and returns to eating. "Evidently," she agrees with his latter, though. "You, bronze. That other one, bronze. Half the others, too, but they're more run-of-the-mill bad, and not special-bad like you. It's Cadejoth's fault, you know," and she's very firm on this point.
"Mm-hmm." W'chek spends most of that spiel focused on his food, although he doesn't seem particularly intent on eating most of it, just pushing it around his plate in a way that could possibly simulate the consumption of food. "All his fault," he agrees. "And I am doubtless the worst of a bad lot." The tone impossible to distinguish--if he's being sarcastic, it's not coming through in his voice. "Cannot possibly live up to the sterling example set around here by better men than I."
Tiriana's eyes narrow at W'chek's words, even if she can't be certain he's mocking her. "Doubtless," she agrees, a little snide. "You know, some of them aren't bad. Some of the rest of them--in a few years, maybe." But there's a pause, and she settles back, if slowly. "How are your lessons?"
He acquiesces immediately: "Of course," said softly, eyes still on the plate, grinding one piece of potato into paste. W'chek seems intent not on looking back at her, so that much be one interesting potato. "They... are. Mostly." Although how a lesson could be something other than existing is, well, probably a question for a philosopher, not a weyrling. "You ask questions you don't really want to know the answers to."
"They are. They are what?" Tiriana prompts, with a shake of her head. And then there's another frown and a long pause at the weyrling's latter remarks. "Why wouldn't I want to know how my weyrlings are doing? Future of the Weyr and all. Are there other, more interesting questions I should be asking?"
No answer on the first count, but W'chek's face twists a little as she goes on. "Didn't say you had no reason to want to know. But you don't." The potato is now completely unrecognizeable as such, so he moves on to a bit of cooked carrot to render it similarly meaningless. "If you did, you might ask, 'How are you, W'chek?' first, maybe. And then I would say, 'I am fine, thank you,' except that I am emphatically not fine. But I would be polite and say it anyway. I think."
Well. He has her there. But he's also provided her some of those more interesting questions, in the form of: "Why aren't you fine?"
A tap of fork tines on plate. Then W'chek scoops up a forkful of potato-paste and mashed carrot and holds it up like it totally explains everything. "I'm wasting food. Did you notice that? Would you notice that, or care?" It's not an answer. He does, however, actually bother to eat the goo he's created, however appetizing it isn't. After he swallows, he adds another question, less hypothetical-sounding: "What happened a month ago?" Even though there's a pretty obvious answer to that one.
"I figured you just didn't want to talk to me," Tiriana says, as though this happens a lot. Maybe it does. "Why, are you not fine because you've turned into one of those idiot girls that's always complaining how fat they are?" Her head tilts, she looks him over, and then--then she freezes. Very slowly, "What do you mean."
"One month," W'chek clarifies, still holding up the now-empty fork. "Come on. You're an important woman. You stay informed about all these current events. Right?"
"Yes," Tiriana says, and now testiness creeps once more into her voice, her mouth setting unpleasantly. "I have a lot of things to do and remember. So why don't you quit trying to be coy and spit it out already."
Eyes once again drop back to the plate and W'chek lets out a breath that is almost a sigh, but not quite. "Not being coy," he says. "Proving a point." He manages to eat a carrot without destroying it first. He does not, however, actually go so far as to specify what the point in question is, however efficiently he manages to clean his plate after that, down to scraping of fork on porcelain to get the last of the potato-paste.
"And what point's /that/?" Tiriana will ask the question for him.
That doesn't get an answer right away. Not until there's nothing resembling so much as a scrap of food left on W'chek's plate. Then: "It's mostly sheep where I come from. Lovely place. Spend the winters all tucked up warm around the fire. Family. You remember all those people, Hatching-night? Guessing not. A month ago, you know. Annoyed the hell out of me, at the time. Came all the way up here, nearly everybody as was up to the trip. Pretty impressive."
There's a long, long silence on Tiriana's part for that; she remembers, that much is on her face. So is the trepidation about just where this conversation is going now. Her prompt now is rather quiet, lacking in that irritation from moments earlier. "And?"
"And." Repeated, and there's bitterness there now. W'chek--well, an apostrophe in his name doesn't make him less of those people than he ever was. He's more of those people than of the Weyr, even now. So it doesn't matter who he's talking to, he can be bitter. "Guess what they got back to. Or didn't, as the case might be." No food to poke at now on his plate, he has to be content with drumming a stannic rhythm on the edge of it with his fork. "Didn't know how bad it was until this morning. First letter back in a month."
"They--" And Tiriana is looking a little pale now, unhappy. "That wasn't--I mean, they didn't /say/--" And she's looking at him, rather wide-eyed, for confirmation of whatever it is that /she's/ not saying this time.
"Of course not," W'chek returns quietly, bitterness stripped now, any feeling at all stripped out of it. The drumming of the fork has ceased. "Because those are the questions you don't ask because you don't really want to know. As opposed to the questions you do ask because you think you're supposed to." He looks up, at last. Pregnant pause like he's meaning to ask something but really not sure if he's actually prepared to know the answer, himself. "Lot of mouths to feed, even sheep aside. Man shouldn't have to choose between feeding his family and keeping his livelihood. If the Weyr could see clear to offering hospitality to some of the women and children... maybe wouldn't have to come to that."
"I figure a woman would tell me, if I lived with her son after I brought the other fucking one back to her," Tiriana snaps in answer to the first, her expression tightening again. "And now you want a favor out of me? Fine. Bring them. Bring the whole damn family to stay until spring. Shall I send riders after them now or can you arrange that yourself?"
If there ought to be a correction there? W'chek isn't going to make it. Because he just got his concession, and if she's going to start snapping, he's just going to shake his head placidly. "Still sheep to tend, after all. Think they might get eaten, up here. Zhikath would certainly find them tempting. No, just a few as can't help but still make mouths to feed." There's something there on his face that is almost a smile, a Mona Lisa sort of expression. "Figure they'll likely prefer to make their own arrangements. Go too far, they won't accept help. Have to offer just enough, no more. Thank you, Weyrwoman."
"Fine," and Tiriana waves a hand, a make-it-so gesture. She sets to gathering up all her things in the meantime. "Let me know, who comes, what they can do to help out here. And I can give them a proper Weyr welcome, yeah?"
"I'm not sure they'd appreciate a... proper Weyr welcome," says W'chek after a moment of thought. "Might be best to give them space. At first. I'm sure they'll learn to like it here." He says it airily enough. Because he certainly has. Mr. Adaptive, W'chek. Right? He stands and picks up his plate, but even manages to be polite enough to excuse himself before he goes: "By your leave?"
"Go," says Tiriana, with a nod toward the doors; he can head out into that mess if he likes. As for her, she'll finish up getting her things together, and then disappear further into the Weyr's caverns.
When: Day 17, Month 12, Turn 19
Where: Living Cavern, High Reaches Weyr
What: Tiriana and W'chek have dinner. It goes swimmingly.
Living Cavern, High Reaches Weyr
Stalactites hang high above this enormous cavern like a jagged chandelier or an inversion of the Spires themselves, but shadows cling to them instead of light. Below lie great tables arranged in rows, each large enough to serve a fighting wing, while in the nooks and alcoves around the cavern's edge sit more sensibly-sized tables, from six- and eight-seaters down to intimate spots for just a couple of diners. The only really open space is around the kitchen entrance, smelling of food and rarely quiet, and by the nearby serving tables with their long buffet of the day's offerings.
Tapestries on the smooth walls -- some faded and others newly woven -- only slightly mute the sea of sound when a meal is in full swing, but they add cheerfulness augmented by the glowlight from wall sconces and the centerpieces of each table. Still, shadows always creep along the ceiling and into the mouths of the exits -- the myriad small hallways at one end of the cavern and, at the other, the twisting tunnel to the bowl near an array of coathooks and and hatracks -- and late at night, when the glows are allowed to dim, the chamber can seem very dark indeed.
Obvious exits:
Inner Caverns Kitchen Bowl
It's not snowing, which is something; but it's pouring buckets, and that's not so good. The Weyr's activities have retreated inside for the day, and the fires are popular spots. Tiriana sits at a table close to one of them, the day's work set to one side of her while she eats dinner and thumbs through the stacks, leaving greasy thumbprints everywhere.
There's supposed to be group bonding over dinner. Supposedly. That, of course, ignores the significant impulse any sane person would have to stay warm and dry instead of venturing out into this weather. A hot meal can only go so far. Unfortunately, W'chek wasn't bright enough to spirit away leftovers at lunch to avoid having to come back out for the evening meal, and so he's left stumbling in from the driving rain, soaked and teeth chattering and peeling off wet layers of coat and hat and such as soon as he gets in. They get tossed over the back of a chair near those flames where they have some hope of drying again without heed to who might be sitting near there, and the weyrling rubs at his face with both hands while he crosses over to get food. When he returns with a plate, he has eyes only for the warmth.
The arrival of a new and soaking wet person earns a long look from Tiriana, who watches the weyrling's progress in lieu of either work or dinner. "Weyrling," she greets, after he's got his own food and returned to near her. "W'chek. Have a seat." Not much of a request, either.
Terrific. Cold, wet, and now persecuted. W'chek stands there with his plate for a minute, looking like he's just trying so hard to get half-frozen brain to respond, to come up with some very good reason why he can't, but it's just not going to work. "Weyrwoman," he offers reluctantly, as he pulls out a chair across from her and puts himself into it. At least a table's width worth of protection. It's something. "Um." Food untouched, still, like he might need to bolt at any moment.
Persecuted? Well, not yet, anyway. Maybe. Tiriana eyes the bronze weyrling up and down as he comes over to join her, and judging by her frown, he's found somewhat wanting. "Um," she mocks. "You could at least start with, you know. The usual pleasantries." Which she does not expand on for him, perhaps not knowing them herself. "So you're one of our brilliant up-and-coming bronzeriders now. Right."
"Nice day, isn't it?" obliges W'chek after a moment just sort of staring at her. "Lovely weather we're having." He finally manages to stab a piece of potato with far more vehemence than is totally called for when dealing with root vegetables. "Didn't ask to be. You know. Some dragons just have exceptionally poor taste, evidently." He's had precisely enough time to go from 'cold and wet' to 'uncomfortable and clammy', which evidently does not improve him any.
"Nice day. You really suck at this, kid." It's bad when even Tiriana is criticizing your pleasantry skills, but there you have it. She half-turns in her chair to watch him while she picks up her fork again and returns to eating. "Evidently," she agrees with his latter, though. "You, bronze. That other one, bronze. Half the others, too, but they're more run-of-the-mill bad, and not special-bad like you. It's Cadejoth's fault, you know," and she's very firm on this point.
"Mm-hmm." W'chek spends most of that spiel focused on his food, although he doesn't seem particularly intent on eating most of it, just pushing it around his plate in a way that could possibly simulate the consumption of food. "All his fault," he agrees. "And I am doubtless the worst of a bad lot." The tone impossible to distinguish--if he's being sarcastic, it's not coming through in his voice. "Cannot possibly live up to the sterling example set around here by better men than I."
Tiriana's eyes narrow at W'chek's words, even if she can't be certain he's mocking her. "Doubtless," she agrees, a little snide. "You know, some of them aren't bad. Some of the rest of them--in a few years, maybe." But there's a pause, and she settles back, if slowly. "How are your lessons?"
He acquiesces immediately: "Of course," said softly, eyes still on the plate, grinding one piece of potato into paste. W'chek seems intent not on looking back at her, so that much be one interesting potato. "They... are. Mostly." Although how a lesson could be something other than existing is, well, probably a question for a philosopher, not a weyrling. "You ask questions you don't really want to know the answers to."
"They are. They are what?" Tiriana prompts, with a shake of her head. And then there's another frown and a long pause at the weyrling's latter remarks. "Why wouldn't I want to know how my weyrlings are doing? Future of the Weyr and all. Are there other, more interesting questions I should be asking?"
No answer on the first count, but W'chek's face twists a little as she goes on. "Didn't say you had no reason to want to know. But you don't." The potato is now completely unrecognizeable as such, so he moves on to a bit of cooked carrot to render it similarly meaningless. "If you did, you might ask, 'How are you, W'chek?' first, maybe. And then I would say, 'I am fine, thank you,' except that I am emphatically not fine. But I would be polite and say it anyway. I think."
Well. He has her there. But he's also provided her some of those more interesting questions, in the form of: "Why aren't you fine?"
A tap of fork tines on plate. Then W'chek scoops up a forkful of potato-paste and mashed carrot and holds it up like it totally explains everything. "I'm wasting food. Did you notice that? Would you notice that, or care?" It's not an answer. He does, however, actually bother to eat the goo he's created, however appetizing it isn't. After he swallows, he adds another question, less hypothetical-sounding: "What happened a month ago?" Even though there's a pretty obvious answer to that one.
"I figured you just didn't want to talk to me," Tiriana says, as though this happens a lot. Maybe it does. "Why, are you not fine because you've turned into one of those idiot girls that's always complaining how fat they are?" Her head tilts, she looks him over, and then--then she freezes. Very slowly, "What do you mean."
"One month," W'chek clarifies, still holding up the now-empty fork. "Come on. You're an important woman. You stay informed about all these current events. Right?"
"Yes," Tiriana says, and now testiness creeps once more into her voice, her mouth setting unpleasantly. "I have a lot of things to do and remember. So why don't you quit trying to be coy and spit it out already."
Eyes once again drop back to the plate and W'chek lets out a breath that is almost a sigh, but not quite. "Not being coy," he says. "Proving a point." He manages to eat a carrot without destroying it first. He does not, however, actually go so far as to specify what the point in question is, however efficiently he manages to clean his plate after that, down to scraping of fork on porcelain to get the last of the potato-paste.
"And what point's /that/?" Tiriana will ask the question for him.
That doesn't get an answer right away. Not until there's nothing resembling so much as a scrap of food left on W'chek's plate. Then: "It's mostly sheep where I come from. Lovely place. Spend the winters all tucked up warm around the fire. Family. You remember all those people, Hatching-night? Guessing not. A month ago, you know. Annoyed the hell out of me, at the time. Came all the way up here, nearly everybody as was up to the trip. Pretty impressive."
There's a long, long silence on Tiriana's part for that; she remembers, that much is on her face. So is the trepidation about just where this conversation is going now. Her prompt now is rather quiet, lacking in that irritation from moments earlier. "And?"
"And." Repeated, and there's bitterness there now. W'chek--well, an apostrophe in his name doesn't make him less of those people than he ever was. He's more of those people than of the Weyr, even now. So it doesn't matter who he's talking to, he can be bitter. "Guess what they got back to. Or didn't, as the case might be." No food to poke at now on his plate, he has to be content with drumming a stannic rhythm on the edge of it with his fork. "Didn't know how bad it was until this morning. First letter back in a month."
"They--" And Tiriana is looking a little pale now, unhappy. "That wasn't--I mean, they didn't /say/--" And she's looking at him, rather wide-eyed, for confirmation of whatever it is that /she's/ not saying this time.
"Of course not," W'chek returns quietly, bitterness stripped now, any feeling at all stripped out of it. The drumming of the fork has ceased. "Because those are the questions you don't ask because you don't really want to know. As opposed to the questions you do ask because you think you're supposed to." He looks up, at last. Pregnant pause like he's meaning to ask something but really not sure if he's actually prepared to know the answer, himself. "Lot of mouths to feed, even sheep aside. Man shouldn't have to choose between feeding his family and keeping his livelihood. If the Weyr could see clear to offering hospitality to some of the women and children... maybe wouldn't have to come to that."
"I figure a woman would tell me, if I lived with her son after I brought the other fucking one back to her," Tiriana snaps in answer to the first, her expression tightening again. "And now you want a favor out of me? Fine. Bring them. Bring the whole damn family to stay until spring. Shall I send riders after them now or can you arrange that yourself?"
If there ought to be a correction there? W'chek isn't going to make it. Because he just got his concession, and if she's going to start snapping, he's just going to shake his head placidly. "Still sheep to tend, after all. Think they might get eaten, up here. Zhikath would certainly find them tempting. No, just a few as can't help but still make mouths to feed." There's something there on his face that is almost a smile, a Mona Lisa sort of expression. "Figure they'll likely prefer to make their own arrangements. Go too far, they won't accept help. Have to offer just enough, no more. Thank you, Weyrwoman."
"Fine," and Tiriana waves a hand, a make-it-so gesture. She sets to gathering up all her things in the meantime. "Let me know, who comes, what they can do to help out here. And I can give them a proper Weyr welcome, yeah?"
"I'm not sure they'd appreciate a... proper Weyr welcome," says W'chek after a moment of thought. "Might be best to give them space. At first. I'm sure they'll learn to like it here." He says it airily enough. Because he certainly has. Mr. Adaptive, W'chek. Right? He stands and picks up his plate, but even manages to be polite enough to excuse himself before he goes: "By your leave?"
"Go," says Tiriana, with a nod toward the doors; he can head out into that mess if he likes. As for her, she'll finish up getting her things together, and then disappear further into the Weyr's caverns.