Report
Derek's 'volunteer,' the trader Drosel, returns from his trip to the mainland. Derek, finally, tells J'lor the score on Five Mines Hold.
On a Western Island, Dragonweyr Cliffs
The high cliff on the island's northeast side is pocked with small caverns fitted as dragon weyrs. Most are near the ground, ancient offshoots of the massive main cavern at the cliff's base. The scent and sound of the ocean are constant companions here and the view dizzying-- sky and sea and tropical forest blend into a beautiful tapestry just beyond the ledges of the dragonweyrs.
The dry season's sky stretches endless blue, but there are days where the winds do not blow and there is a heavy stillness in the air. The heat can become oppressive, small insects quiet their usual noise, and even the plants seem to wilt in the heat.
Derek has not summoned the island's most politic and prominent bluerider. He has not said a word to the man beyond hellos and how's-the-fishing and new-riders-doing-all-right and the like in a sevenday and some; it could not be said that this has been a period in which Derek keeps solely to himself, but he's been less social than he usually is, and that's a narrow margin indeed.
That he waits out in the open, or relatively out in the open, therefore might not be the best of signs. He waits - it's so obvious that he's waiting - on a rock beneath the cliff-face, some distance from the main cavern, by happenstance directly below and before the high entrance to Vellath's weyr above.
He looks up from time to time, when shadows pass over: dragons, leaving or entering weyrs. He's watching for just one. The rest of the time his gaze scopes the beach, and sometimes the sea, though it would be unlikely for J'lor to come walking across the waves.
The politic and prominent bluerider too has been a bit more introverted than typical. He has spent his spare moments in his weyr, writing or thinking or doing whatever it is that J'lor does when he goes off and secludes himself. He has not shirked his duties, he has not forgotten about the weyrlings. He has only declined company beyond that which is necessary...a very unusual thing for J'lor.
There will be no dragon shadow to announce him. Vellath is in the clearing with the weyrlings, and J'lor is left to climb down the narrow and winding pathway that allows one to get from his weyr to the ground without the aid of wings. When one's lifemate is as mercurial as Vellath, such small details are necessities.
Whatever thoughts the weyrlingmaster has wrapped himself up in, they snap and shatter when he sees who sits alongside his path. He pauses for one of those small bolstering gulps of air that he so often takes before speaking with this man, and then he saunters over to Derek. "Afternoon."
"J'lor." Derek sounds genuinely pleased to have the man approach at last, and turns about on his rock to get a better look on him. Of course the island's leader does not smile; probably, that's just as well. He does take a long look, thoughtful, obliging the bluerider to experience a silent time of scrutiny before the mustachioed man decides he's fit for more conversation than a greeting alone. "How's the day treating you?"
It is currently early in the first dry season. The dry season's sky stretches endless blue, but there are days where the winds do not blow and there is a heavy stillness in the air. The heat can become oppressive, small insects quiet their usual noise, and even the plants seem to wilt in the heat.
"Well enough," the bluerider offers neutrally. "Still enjoying the respite from the rain. You?" He shifts his weight, just a little bit from one bare foot to the other.
"Very well." Derek turns his head, providing the rider his profile as his gaze goes grey and distant, out to sea. But a twitch squirms beneath the visible corner of his mustache, and in a moment he stretches his legs off the rock, then slips down onto bare feet. "Walk with me?"
The lowering and lifting of his chin is J'lor's only reply to Derek's request. His hands shove deep into his pockets, shoulders hunching a little bit, as he falls into step beside the other leader of the exiles.
Derek leads them off along the beach, open sand below, open sky above. His feet make soft whispers in the grains still damp from recent rain, toes curling with each step, but he's prone to looking off to the side and the ocean rather than at his feet. In a little while he begins, voice as sandy and soft as those footsteps. "How's S'val."
J'lor blinks and glances quickly over at Derek before returning his gaze out and ahead. "He's still sick. It just seems a bad case of a fever...we've all had them...but it's taking a while for it to run its course. The healer supposes that flying fall didn't help matters." His eyes dip downward. "He should have said something. I wouldn't have allowed him to fly, if I'd known."
"You don't think he picked it up on the mainland." The question's not rhetorical, but it lacks the lilt of query just the same. Derek's gaze does go down for a moment, heavy brows crouching low, and when he speaks again there's grit in it. "It's been turns since we were there. I hadn't even thought to worry." His jaw tenses, a soft grinding sound coming out of the long-ago ill-healed joint. "Drosel's not had any signs of it, has he?"
"You've spent more time with Drosel than I have in the two sevens since he came back," J'lor notes mildly, "Did he seem sick? I don't suppose he got it from the mainland. We all get fevers from time to time."
"He had sneezes when he came back. I assumed it was from the dust, or from cold." Derek's shoulders lift and fall tightly, slightly, a gesture he's never seemed comfortable with and yet persists in doing. His gaze is fixed on the sand before them, and as one is wont to do when looking down and walking parallel to the sea, the path he leads tends toward the horizon, taking them into damper sand. "He seems to be over it now." He thins his lips, so they disappear almost entirely beneath the mustache, and adds, as if it's a brand new thought, "I think it was sort of good for him to go."
The bluerider walks along in silence. Listing towards the water seems no matter to him, his bare feet have tromped though far worse than damp sand on a warm, dry day. "I have been waiting for two sevens to hear about his trip, you know. What did he learn?"
"I know," replies Derek, simply, and then there's all this silence broken only by the roar and sigh of the tide and the soft squelchy steps of two men walking. Certainly J'lor would know, however, that this silence holds promise; Derek's brows crouch even lower, his eyes steely and small, his mouth occasionally revealed by the tiniest parting of lips by flash of pink tongue. Words escape him for a while. He thinks. It's harder, perhaps, than it was more than a decade ago. Some things are.
The bluerider is...well, one cannot really say that he is patient, but ten turns have taught him to be wary. A pensive Derek is best left to his own devices until he wishes to share. So J'lor walks with him, waits, and occasionally tilts his head so he can watch the trail of footprints they make disappear when the waves touch and take them.
"They're hard up," Derek says in a while, after a small, abbreviated sigh. "Odern's practically opened the gates - figuratively - to anything on legs. Like us, but bigger." Steely eyes narrow, then the island leader turns his head so he's looking, for the first time since their greetings, at J'lor directly. His pace slows. "He's got some of his people coming there - mostly those, Drosel thinks, that lost everything when coverage was denied. The appearance is that they're loyal to the old Lord - to Odern - but it sounds like opportunism to me. Socially - " Derek's mouth twitches, his mustache curls. Maybe there's some irony in him saying this. "It's a time bomb."
At the mention of open doors and things with legs, J'lor's brows draw down and he frowns. But, he waits until Derek finishes speaking, his own pace halting when the mustached man does, before he replies. "They're making the same mistakes we made," the bluerider murmurs. "It's never going to get off the ground. What do you think about this Odern? What's he want?"
"They're taking the same risks," Derek corrects, voice soft and gentle, turning toward the rider. "Some of those people aren't bad; some of them are just desperate. What should they do: turn them all away on a paranoid hunch?" What he makes of Odern will, evidently, have to wait; his gaze pries at J'lor's, an answer expected.
"Not all of the hunches will be paranoid, as well you know," J'lor returns with a small sigh. "Although, I suppose if they are taking anybody on legs, then he might considering allowing some of those with wings?" He cants his head to the side, watching Derek thoughtfully and lifting a single brow.
Derek agrees about the hunches with a little more rue in his smile - almost expressiveness, J'lor rates so highly - and turning away, considering the forward path they'd been walking before. "I think some wings would be a real help to him. Security. And I think he feels the same way. It's Nabol all over again, if you ask me, only - with open doors." He allows a little pause to form there while he looks down at toes squirming into the sand, then takes a couple of slow steps to restart their walking when he speaks again. "And mine shafts. Maybe four dozen holes, Drosel thinks, up the walls of the mountains."
The hands in his pockets shove deeper and J'lor twists the heel of one foot, tipping it forward and starting to bury his toes in the sand. "It can't just be our decision. We'll call a community meeting, discuss it, decide together. It's still some months before the weyrlings can between."
"They're desperate to go home," Derek notes, but does not take any more steps away from the foot-twisting rider. He turns around instead, his hands falling to his hips, and regards J'lor with that grey, thoughtful stare, unemotional. "Do you think we can manage that discussion without there being - I don't know. Tension. What if there's a vocal minority? It's the most sensitive subject these people know."
"Some are desperate to go home," is the quiet correctly as J'lor's foot tunnels deeper into the sand. "Some think it's better here. /I/ think if there is going to be tension, better it is seen and known here than at Five Mines. We're..." he squares his jaw and lifts his gaze, meets Derek's head on. "You said once that you agreed with what we strove to do. This is a decision that affects us all. It must be made by all of us. That's the whole point. That's why we're /here/."
"Then we're already doomed," replies Derek, in a whisper, unmoving but for his slow, strained breaths. "Some of them will want to go more than anything they've ever wanted. Some of them, if you're right, would rather stay here for life. Do you think either side will be pleased if the other has a louder voice?"
"I should imagine not. But I think we can make sure each group has a chance to speak and the other is asked to listen. This isn't about 'pleased'. It's about doing this properly." J'lor sighs, studying his buried foot. "You know what we risk if we go. We do it united or not at all."
"J'lor." Very soft. Pleading. "I'm not sure I can control a complete division among these people. Tell me you have a plan to get them from screaming at each other to being willing to choose one way."
J'lor's mouth opens, then closes, then opens again as his dark eyebrows arch upwards. "Yes. I...think I do have a plan. Give me a few days, then we'll call the meeting and I'll speak. You as well. And Nera, if she's willing. I can make this work. I can make them hear me."
"Of course us," says Derek in something almost like a derisive snort - but there's relief enough in his tone to soften that, and a smile afterward, one that even lifts a little of the cloud cover from his eyes and lets them echo clear blue sky back at J'lor's twilit gaze. "You're the great speaker, J'lor, but it can't hurt for us to present as a united front." Derek winks. It's so quickly done it might be considered an hallucination. He turns around after that, ready to walk again. "Let me tell you the rest about Five Mines. I'd like to send another envoy in not too long, whether we decide to go or not - just to keep things friendly. May as well find out whatever else you might need to know along the way."
Maybe it's the show of faith or the compliment that has J'lor drawing in a deep breath and just ever so slightly puffing out his chest. The wink, however, if it actually existed, expels that air ns a sudden puff that's nearly a laugh, save that the force of his breath turns it into an 'unh'. "I've never been opposed to friendly," the bluerider notes, almost amicably. "Tell me everything." As if he has the right to nearly order. "What is it the guards used to say?" This laugh does a bit better. "Report?" The lull of the waves and the whisper of the sand play beneath the words that will follow next. Some, warm and rolling. Some barely spoken above a whisper.
On a Western Island, Dragonweyr Cliffs
The high cliff on the island's northeast side is pocked with small caverns fitted as dragon weyrs. Most are near the ground, ancient offshoots of the massive main cavern at the cliff's base. The scent and sound of the ocean are constant companions here and the view dizzying-- sky and sea and tropical forest blend into a beautiful tapestry just beyond the ledges of the dragonweyrs.
The dry season's sky stretches endless blue, but there are days where the winds do not blow and there is a heavy stillness in the air. The heat can become oppressive, small insects quiet their usual noise, and even the plants seem to wilt in the heat.
Derek has not summoned the island's most politic and prominent bluerider. He has not said a word to the man beyond hellos and how's-the-fishing and new-riders-doing-all-right and the like in a sevenday and some; it could not be said that this has been a period in which Derek keeps solely to himself, but he's been less social than he usually is, and that's a narrow margin indeed.
That he waits out in the open, or relatively out in the open, therefore might not be the best of signs. He waits - it's so obvious that he's waiting - on a rock beneath the cliff-face, some distance from the main cavern, by happenstance directly below and before the high entrance to Vellath's weyr above.
He looks up from time to time, when shadows pass over: dragons, leaving or entering weyrs. He's watching for just one. The rest of the time his gaze scopes the beach, and sometimes the sea, though it would be unlikely for J'lor to come walking across the waves.
The politic and prominent bluerider too has been a bit more introverted than typical. He has spent his spare moments in his weyr, writing or thinking or doing whatever it is that J'lor does when he goes off and secludes himself. He has not shirked his duties, he has not forgotten about the weyrlings. He has only declined company beyond that which is necessary...a very unusual thing for J'lor.
There will be no dragon shadow to announce him. Vellath is in the clearing with the weyrlings, and J'lor is left to climb down the narrow and winding pathway that allows one to get from his weyr to the ground without the aid of wings. When one's lifemate is as mercurial as Vellath, such small details are necessities.
Whatever thoughts the weyrlingmaster has wrapped himself up in, they snap and shatter when he sees who sits alongside his path. He pauses for one of those small bolstering gulps of air that he so often takes before speaking with this man, and then he saunters over to Derek. "Afternoon."
"J'lor." Derek sounds genuinely pleased to have the man approach at last, and turns about on his rock to get a better look on him. Of course the island's leader does not smile; probably, that's just as well. He does take a long look, thoughtful, obliging the bluerider to experience a silent time of scrutiny before the mustachioed man decides he's fit for more conversation than a greeting alone. "How's the day treating you?"
It is currently early in the first dry season. The dry season's sky stretches endless blue, but there are days where the winds do not blow and there is a heavy stillness in the air. The heat can become oppressive, small insects quiet their usual noise, and even the plants seem to wilt in the heat.
"Well enough," the bluerider offers neutrally. "Still enjoying the respite from the rain. You?" He shifts his weight, just a little bit from one bare foot to the other.
"Very well." Derek turns his head, providing the rider his profile as his gaze goes grey and distant, out to sea. But a twitch squirms beneath the visible corner of his mustache, and in a moment he stretches his legs off the rock, then slips down onto bare feet. "Walk with me?"
The lowering and lifting of his chin is J'lor's only reply to Derek's request. His hands shove deep into his pockets, shoulders hunching a little bit, as he falls into step beside the other leader of the exiles.
Derek leads them off along the beach, open sand below, open sky above. His feet make soft whispers in the grains still damp from recent rain, toes curling with each step, but he's prone to looking off to the side and the ocean rather than at his feet. In a little while he begins, voice as sandy and soft as those footsteps. "How's S'val."
J'lor blinks and glances quickly over at Derek before returning his gaze out and ahead. "He's still sick. It just seems a bad case of a fever...we've all had them...but it's taking a while for it to run its course. The healer supposes that flying fall didn't help matters." His eyes dip downward. "He should have said something. I wouldn't have allowed him to fly, if I'd known."
"You don't think he picked it up on the mainland." The question's not rhetorical, but it lacks the lilt of query just the same. Derek's gaze does go down for a moment, heavy brows crouching low, and when he speaks again there's grit in it. "It's been turns since we were there. I hadn't even thought to worry." His jaw tenses, a soft grinding sound coming out of the long-ago ill-healed joint. "Drosel's not had any signs of it, has he?"
"You've spent more time with Drosel than I have in the two sevens since he came back," J'lor notes mildly, "Did he seem sick? I don't suppose he got it from the mainland. We all get fevers from time to time."
"He had sneezes when he came back. I assumed it was from the dust, or from cold." Derek's shoulders lift and fall tightly, slightly, a gesture he's never seemed comfortable with and yet persists in doing. His gaze is fixed on the sand before them, and as one is wont to do when looking down and walking parallel to the sea, the path he leads tends toward the horizon, taking them into damper sand. "He seems to be over it now." He thins his lips, so they disappear almost entirely beneath the mustache, and adds, as if it's a brand new thought, "I think it was sort of good for him to go."
The bluerider walks along in silence. Listing towards the water seems no matter to him, his bare feet have tromped though far worse than damp sand on a warm, dry day. "I have been waiting for two sevens to hear about his trip, you know. What did he learn?"
"I know," replies Derek, simply, and then there's all this silence broken only by the roar and sigh of the tide and the soft squelchy steps of two men walking. Certainly J'lor would know, however, that this silence holds promise; Derek's brows crouch even lower, his eyes steely and small, his mouth occasionally revealed by the tiniest parting of lips by flash of pink tongue. Words escape him for a while. He thinks. It's harder, perhaps, than it was more than a decade ago. Some things are.
The bluerider is...well, one cannot really say that he is patient, but ten turns have taught him to be wary. A pensive Derek is best left to his own devices until he wishes to share. So J'lor walks with him, waits, and occasionally tilts his head so he can watch the trail of footprints they make disappear when the waves touch and take them.
"They're hard up," Derek says in a while, after a small, abbreviated sigh. "Odern's practically opened the gates - figuratively - to anything on legs. Like us, but bigger." Steely eyes narrow, then the island leader turns his head so he's looking, for the first time since their greetings, at J'lor directly. His pace slows. "He's got some of his people coming there - mostly those, Drosel thinks, that lost everything when coverage was denied. The appearance is that they're loyal to the old Lord - to Odern - but it sounds like opportunism to me. Socially - " Derek's mouth twitches, his mustache curls. Maybe there's some irony in him saying this. "It's a time bomb."
At the mention of open doors and things with legs, J'lor's brows draw down and he frowns. But, he waits until Derek finishes speaking, his own pace halting when the mustached man does, before he replies. "They're making the same mistakes we made," the bluerider murmurs. "It's never going to get off the ground. What do you think about this Odern? What's he want?"
"They're taking the same risks," Derek corrects, voice soft and gentle, turning toward the rider. "Some of those people aren't bad; some of them are just desperate. What should they do: turn them all away on a paranoid hunch?" What he makes of Odern will, evidently, have to wait; his gaze pries at J'lor's, an answer expected.
"Not all of the hunches will be paranoid, as well you know," J'lor returns with a small sigh. "Although, I suppose if they are taking anybody on legs, then he might considering allowing some of those with wings?" He cants his head to the side, watching Derek thoughtfully and lifting a single brow.
Derek agrees about the hunches with a little more rue in his smile - almost expressiveness, J'lor rates so highly - and turning away, considering the forward path they'd been walking before. "I think some wings would be a real help to him. Security. And I think he feels the same way. It's Nabol all over again, if you ask me, only - with open doors." He allows a little pause to form there while he looks down at toes squirming into the sand, then takes a couple of slow steps to restart their walking when he speaks again. "And mine shafts. Maybe four dozen holes, Drosel thinks, up the walls of the mountains."
The hands in his pockets shove deeper and J'lor twists the heel of one foot, tipping it forward and starting to bury his toes in the sand. "It can't just be our decision. We'll call a community meeting, discuss it, decide together. It's still some months before the weyrlings can between."
"They're desperate to go home," Derek notes, but does not take any more steps away from the foot-twisting rider. He turns around instead, his hands falling to his hips, and regards J'lor with that grey, thoughtful stare, unemotional. "Do you think we can manage that discussion without there being - I don't know. Tension. What if there's a vocal minority? It's the most sensitive subject these people know."
"Some are desperate to go home," is the quiet correctly as J'lor's foot tunnels deeper into the sand. "Some think it's better here. /I/ think if there is going to be tension, better it is seen and known here than at Five Mines. We're..." he squares his jaw and lifts his gaze, meets Derek's head on. "You said once that you agreed with what we strove to do. This is a decision that affects us all. It must be made by all of us. That's the whole point. That's why we're /here/."
"Then we're already doomed," replies Derek, in a whisper, unmoving but for his slow, strained breaths. "Some of them will want to go more than anything they've ever wanted. Some of them, if you're right, would rather stay here for life. Do you think either side will be pleased if the other has a louder voice?"
"I should imagine not. But I think we can make sure each group has a chance to speak and the other is asked to listen. This isn't about 'pleased'. It's about doing this properly." J'lor sighs, studying his buried foot. "You know what we risk if we go. We do it united or not at all."
"J'lor." Very soft. Pleading. "I'm not sure I can control a complete division among these people. Tell me you have a plan to get them from screaming at each other to being willing to choose one way."
J'lor's mouth opens, then closes, then opens again as his dark eyebrows arch upwards. "Yes. I...think I do have a plan. Give me a few days, then we'll call the meeting and I'll speak. You as well. And Nera, if she's willing. I can make this work. I can make them hear me."
"Of course us," says Derek in something almost like a derisive snort - but there's relief enough in his tone to soften that, and a smile afterward, one that even lifts a little of the cloud cover from his eyes and lets them echo clear blue sky back at J'lor's twilit gaze. "You're the great speaker, J'lor, but it can't hurt for us to present as a united front." Derek winks. It's so quickly done it might be considered an hallucination. He turns around after that, ready to walk again. "Let me tell you the rest about Five Mines. I'd like to send another envoy in not too long, whether we decide to go or not - just to keep things friendly. May as well find out whatever else you might need to know along the way."
Maybe it's the show of faith or the compliment that has J'lor drawing in a deep breath and just ever so slightly puffing out his chest. The wink, however, if it actually existed, expels that air ns a sudden puff that's nearly a laugh, save that the force of his breath turns it into an 'unh'. "I've never been opposed to friendly," the bluerider notes, almost amicably. "Tell me everything." As if he has the right to nearly order. "What is it the guards used to say?" This laugh does a bit better. "Report?" The lull of the waves and the whisper of the sand play beneath the words that will follow next. Some, warm and rolling. Some barely spoken above a whisper.