Elsewhere
Location: Diya and Nenuith's Weyr
Time: Night on Day 14, Month 1, Turn 3
Players: Diya, J'lor, Nenuith, Vellath
Scene: Rumors abound. J'lor wants something more substantial.
Light glows from Diya's little niche in the mountains, bouncing off the sinuous form of Nenuith. The queen lies at rest in her garden, her nose resting against a light tangle of vines that have survived both her constant scrabbling claws and the constant rains which have washed off the less determined creepers. Within, Diya has stretched out along her mat bed, her back propped up along the wall and one long arm stretched behind her head. Her crooked legs balance a book, its covers and pages worn gray and thin from the constant rereading that exile has forced upon her. After chores, but before dinner, the goldrider has squeaked an hour out for her leisure, but the words on the page are so familiar to her that her eyes drift shut at intervals.
Nenuith's claws are not the only ones to scrabble on creepers just now. A blue pair descend and dig in as Vellath hunkers down and offers a low and warbly croon to the queen. Humans on this island may not believe in hierarchy, but apparently at least one of the dragons does. His rider slides down with a pat on his lifemate's shoulder and then J'lor, barefoot, moves to the opening that will lead into the weyr and the lounging goldrider. "Diya?" His voice, warm and rolling, carries easily. "Am I intruding?"
Nenuith lifts her head when Vellath's croon calls out to her. She has not her rider's concern with hierarchy, either, and accepts the greeting as her due, turning her neck in to nip daintily at a pale claw. That croon and the slap-slap of bare footsteps alerts Diya on her mat, and the goldrider pauses in her reading to glance up without changing posture. When she sees J'lor, and he sees her, a smile dawns upon her face. Diya unfolds herself with the nimble, long-legged grace of a spider, stretching her limbs out and then curling them back again as she moves to sit cross-legged. Also barefoot, she wraps a hand around a dark and dirty foot to pull it in under her leg. "Of course not, J'lor," she greets him, her rich alto voice matching his for warmth. "What brings you?"
"Well. It feels like some time since we've spoken. The weyrlings are, shall we say gently, time consuming." The bluerider slips inside and glances about for a place he might sit. "Nenuith is well?" Some old formalities linger, even in this brave new world.
Diya's smile turns wry and almost apologetic. The not-quite Weyrlingmaster's burden, the not-quite Weyrwoman's fault. Her hand goes out to sweep at the room, indicating the floor as her fingers splay elegantly outwards. "Nenuith is well, and finding she likes rain more than she predicted." Her deep blue eyes find his face again, her lips quirking back towards humor that admits the lack of seating in her little bubble weyr. "I wish I had more hospitality to offer you," she notes gently, foregoing the return formality about Vellath.
"Nonsense. You let me in. That seems hospitality enough." There is always the floor for sitting, and J'lor does so, settling cross-legged. His gaze again drifts towards the ledge and the dragons settled there. Towards the bigger more golden one, really. "I don't suppose she's..." he frowns faintly and clears his throat before forging on rather bluntly, "The bronzes are saying a gold went up. At High Reaches."
The bigger more golden one has ceased her preening, content to stretch back out along her ledge and let her hide soak up humidity. Diya follows his look with a raised brow, that arch curiosity soon turned to a mouthed 'ah' of understanding when J'lor gets to the point. "I should have told you," she admits, turning back to him with a somber expression. She hikes up her leg, lest it have slipped out of its cross-legged set, and leans her weight faintly forward. "It's Roa." Blue eyes settle on brown, a poised smile ready to greet his response with comfort.
His own eyes, his own face, pause for a moment at that pair of words. When J'lor breathes out, it is perhaps one part frustration and one part relief. "She's..." But he's never been one for titles. "Who caught? Can Nenuith determine that much?" As if knowing the name of a gold rising a thousand miles away is not feat enough. "Do you think...I mean...would she help us? I suppose she might. Her actions suggest she might." His response, it seems, is a sort of excited panic.
Diya expected this, and thus her smile. She keeps her calm when panic settles in, following the flickering thread of J'lor's interrogation with first an easy nod - yes, she's /that/ - and then a raised brow. Not arch this time, she's amused and indulgent of the bluerider's demands. "Nenuith can not," she confesses, leaning back from her seat. The dirty foot slips out of place; well, screw it. She leans her shoulders against the cool stone wall of her cave. "She might." The answer is unhelpful and Diya knows it, but the smile she turns for herself this time is hardly apologetic.
"She might." J'lor, optimist that he is, latches onto that with a vehemence that is completely unwarranted. "She might," he repeats again. "And Issa said she was not coming here any longer." His lips twist as he looks downward to glare at the floor, instead of at the woman across from him. "The weyrlings aren't even flying yet, anyhow."
Ah, there's the arch. Diya turns her eyes down to the book still in her lap, the worn pages flipped open automatically to a place where the binding is weak and falling apart. "She might," the goldrider corrects, very gently and softly, and with the faint whuff of her book closing to cut off the subject and the endless repetition of those words. "Roa will hardly be situated now," she says, speaking to the faded title of her book. She smiles fondly, but it fades out as she slides the book aside and out of view. J'lor is her focus now. She stares at him with reflective kindness before speaking. "Time and power may change many things, J'lor."
"You think it will have changed her in a matter of months? If she held onto our ideals for so long before?" J'lor frowns faintly and shakes his head. "No, I cannot....she suggested Nabol. Why would she do so, if she didn't wish to aid us somehow? She sent Jensen and Ashwin here. She's...something about us has her focus. I believe that."
A very mobile smile has taken hold of Diya tonight, and right now its mood turns sad. "Do you know," Diya wonders, "that she held onto our ideals at all?" She lifts her hand from her lap, the fingers spread out like a net to catch his protests. They curl slowly around the invisible, unspoken things, and draw them to her stomach. "We had her focus." Emphasis on 'had.' "Now she has the weyr." This sentence needs no emphasis: the meaning is too clear. "I believe Roa means well," she goes on shortly, just to soothe him, "but there may be other calls upon her conscience now."
"Perhaps she has both," J'lor offers quietly. He falls into introspection for a long moment, his eyes studying Diya's well-worn book. Finally, softly, he says, "I know she held on. I wasn't sure for a long time, but I know it now."
Diya watches J'lor while J'lor watches her book. It is a relay of watchings that ends in Longmire's "Whispers of the Seamstress," a shallow romance unequal to the weighty moment it must bear now. The goldrider, no longer weyrwoman, accepts with a nod his assertion about that other goldrider, just now a Weyrwoman, but she doesn't speak.
When J'lor breaks the renewed quiet, the words he uses are very soft. "It feels, at times, as if all I ever do any longer is wait. I suppose I shall do some more of that, now."
Diya leans forward, her hand outstretched to touch the stone between them. She's too far away to touch his hand, but she offers the gesture long enough for him to see. She withdraws it to her book instead, taking the faded cover between her fingers and wearing at what remains of the embossed title. "Our time will come," she assures him, dragging at the faded gold of Longmire's name. And she adds, "Soon," with a sudden calm insistence that takes even her off guard.
"You don't agree with me. About her." The 'her' they have been discussing, perhaps. J'lor watches the hand brush stone and slip away and offers, for this gesture, a small and aching smile. "-How- then will our time come? What do we...I don't want people hurt. I don't want to arrive only to be sent back again. I don't know, anymore, how to make them see. No." J'lor holds up one hand to forestall any comment. "I do not think I ever really did know that."
"She is a stroke of luck, J'lor," Diya responds, not blind to the 'she' or 'her' in question. "Have you always planned on a goldriding daughter who became Weyrwoman of the Reaches? How long ago were you convinced you could depend on her for help?" She presses her long fingers onto Longmire's name and holds them there, covering the gold. When she shrugs, her fingers do not lift. "Our time will come because it must. With Roa's help or not, it must." Her deep blue eyes turn into the dark night, finding the huge, pale shadow that is Nenuith. "There will be other clutches," she says.
"We cannot afford another clutch here, Diya. We could barely afford this one. Not," J'lor looks up and over rather suddenly, "that I am not glad for the hatchlings. Of course I am. Only, I cannot fathom how we could manage to do it again. Not here. There is no time for other clutches. We must, in fact, be elsewhere -before- another clutch." He pauses a moment to draw in a slow breath before adding, "I knew after I spoke with the guards."
Diya's eyes turn back, solemn with an understanding they now share. Elsewhere. "I am sorry to have placed such a burden on you," she tells him quietly. "Not sorry, I think, to have forced such a choice." She looks back to her gold, whose awareness of the attention on her makes her croon and stretch her wings. Vellath will find himself in the shadow of those wings, moonlight projecting the lace pattern over his hide.
"But what choice? What do we...how do we...I'm supposed to know these things." The bluerider runs a hand over his bound hair as, on the ledge, the shadows falling over Vellath cause him to stir. "We have a true need to leave, and the only option I can see you say likely is not there. I am glad you are here, Diya. I only wish things were clearer." His attention drifts to Vellath and J'lor smirks briefly. "He reminds me we have drills in the morning."
"I say be careful of her," Diya corrects, placing her hands on her knees. She looks as though she might push up, to see him off, but that formality doesn't exist here. "You know what they say about all your eggs in one basket," she jokes without any humor in her voice or her shallow smile. A nod will see him out, and Nenuith outside stirs and draws her wings back to her sides, allowing Vellath the airspace he will need to leave.
"They say it causes a bit of a scramble to find candidates when the humming starts," J'lor offers. But the words come with a wink as the middle-aged rider uncurls with faintly popping knees. "Rest well, Diya. When you get there. We should talk more often, I think."
Diya's rich wave of laughter shakes off the lingering sobriety about the room, fateful discussions and news from the North brushed off by the bluerider's wink. "I think so," she agrees once her laughter's settled to a faint glimmer of mirth in her eyes and on her mouth. "Good night, J'lor." True to expectations, she does not rise to escort him to the door, but she does turn her head after him so that glimmer follows his way.
Time: Night on Day 14, Month 1, Turn 3
Players: Diya, J'lor, Nenuith, Vellath
Scene: Rumors abound. J'lor wants something more substantial.
Light glows from Diya's little niche in the mountains, bouncing off the sinuous form of Nenuith. The queen lies at rest in her garden, her nose resting against a light tangle of vines that have survived both her constant scrabbling claws and the constant rains which have washed off the less determined creepers. Within, Diya has stretched out along her mat bed, her back propped up along the wall and one long arm stretched behind her head. Her crooked legs balance a book, its covers and pages worn gray and thin from the constant rereading that exile has forced upon her. After chores, but before dinner, the goldrider has squeaked an hour out for her leisure, but the words on the page are so familiar to her that her eyes drift shut at intervals.
Nenuith's claws are not the only ones to scrabble on creepers just now. A blue pair descend and dig in as Vellath hunkers down and offers a low and warbly croon to the queen. Humans on this island may not believe in hierarchy, but apparently at least one of the dragons does. His rider slides down with a pat on his lifemate's shoulder and then J'lor, barefoot, moves to the opening that will lead into the weyr and the lounging goldrider. "Diya?" His voice, warm and rolling, carries easily. "Am I intruding?"
Nenuith lifts her head when Vellath's croon calls out to her. She has not her rider's concern with hierarchy, either, and accepts the greeting as her due, turning her neck in to nip daintily at a pale claw. That croon and the slap-slap of bare footsteps alerts Diya on her mat, and the goldrider pauses in her reading to glance up without changing posture. When she sees J'lor, and he sees her, a smile dawns upon her face. Diya unfolds herself with the nimble, long-legged grace of a spider, stretching her limbs out and then curling them back again as she moves to sit cross-legged. Also barefoot, she wraps a hand around a dark and dirty foot to pull it in under her leg. "Of course not, J'lor," she greets him, her rich alto voice matching his for warmth. "What brings you?"
"Well. It feels like some time since we've spoken. The weyrlings are, shall we say gently, time consuming." The bluerider slips inside and glances about for a place he might sit. "Nenuith is well?" Some old formalities linger, even in this brave new world.
Diya's smile turns wry and almost apologetic. The not-quite Weyrlingmaster's burden, the not-quite Weyrwoman's fault. Her hand goes out to sweep at the room, indicating the floor as her fingers splay elegantly outwards. "Nenuith is well, and finding she likes rain more than she predicted." Her deep blue eyes find his face again, her lips quirking back towards humor that admits the lack of seating in her little bubble weyr. "I wish I had more hospitality to offer you," she notes gently, foregoing the return formality about Vellath.
"Nonsense. You let me in. That seems hospitality enough." There is always the floor for sitting, and J'lor does so, settling cross-legged. His gaze again drifts towards the ledge and the dragons settled there. Towards the bigger more golden one, really. "I don't suppose she's..." he frowns faintly and clears his throat before forging on rather bluntly, "The bronzes are saying a gold went up. At High Reaches."
The bigger more golden one has ceased her preening, content to stretch back out along her ledge and let her hide soak up humidity. Diya follows his look with a raised brow, that arch curiosity soon turned to a mouthed 'ah' of understanding when J'lor gets to the point. "I should have told you," she admits, turning back to him with a somber expression. She hikes up her leg, lest it have slipped out of its cross-legged set, and leans her weight faintly forward. "It's Roa." Blue eyes settle on brown, a poised smile ready to greet his response with comfort.
His own eyes, his own face, pause for a moment at that pair of words. When J'lor breathes out, it is perhaps one part frustration and one part relief. "She's..." But he's never been one for titles. "Who caught? Can Nenuith determine that much?" As if knowing the name of a gold rising a thousand miles away is not feat enough. "Do you think...I mean...would she help us? I suppose she might. Her actions suggest she might." His response, it seems, is a sort of excited panic.
Diya expected this, and thus her smile. She keeps her calm when panic settles in, following the flickering thread of J'lor's interrogation with first an easy nod - yes, she's /that/ - and then a raised brow. Not arch this time, she's amused and indulgent of the bluerider's demands. "Nenuith can not," she confesses, leaning back from her seat. The dirty foot slips out of place; well, screw it. She leans her shoulders against the cool stone wall of her cave. "She might." The answer is unhelpful and Diya knows it, but the smile she turns for herself this time is hardly apologetic.
"She might." J'lor, optimist that he is, latches onto that with a vehemence that is completely unwarranted. "She might," he repeats again. "And Issa said she was not coming here any longer." His lips twist as he looks downward to glare at the floor, instead of at the woman across from him. "The weyrlings aren't even flying yet, anyhow."
Ah, there's the arch. Diya turns her eyes down to the book still in her lap, the worn pages flipped open automatically to a place where the binding is weak and falling apart. "She might," the goldrider corrects, very gently and softly, and with the faint whuff of her book closing to cut off the subject and the endless repetition of those words. "Roa will hardly be situated now," she says, speaking to the faded title of her book. She smiles fondly, but it fades out as she slides the book aside and out of view. J'lor is her focus now. She stares at him with reflective kindness before speaking. "Time and power may change many things, J'lor."
"You think it will have changed her in a matter of months? If she held onto our ideals for so long before?" J'lor frowns faintly and shakes his head. "No, I cannot....she suggested Nabol. Why would she do so, if she didn't wish to aid us somehow? She sent Jensen and Ashwin here. She's...something about us has her focus. I believe that."
A very mobile smile has taken hold of Diya tonight, and right now its mood turns sad. "Do you know," Diya wonders, "that she held onto our ideals at all?" She lifts her hand from her lap, the fingers spread out like a net to catch his protests. They curl slowly around the invisible, unspoken things, and draw them to her stomach. "We had her focus." Emphasis on 'had.' "Now she has the weyr." This sentence needs no emphasis: the meaning is too clear. "I believe Roa means well," she goes on shortly, just to soothe him, "but there may be other calls upon her conscience now."
"Perhaps she has both," J'lor offers quietly. He falls into introspection for a long moment, his eyes studying Diya's well-worn book. Finally, softly, he says, "I know she held on. I wasn't sure for a long time, but I know it now."
Diya watches J'lor while J'lor watches her book. It is a relay of watchings that ends in Longmire's "Whispers of the Seamstress," a shallow romance unequal to the weighty moment it must bear now. The goldrider, no longer weyrwoman, accepts with a nod his assertion about that other goldrider, just now a Weyrwoman, but she doesn't speak.
When J'lor breaks the renewed quiet, the words he uses are very soft. "It feels, at times, as if all I ever do any longer is wait. I suppose I shall do some more of that, now."
Diya leans forward, her hand outstretched to touch the stone between them. She's too far away to touch his hand, but she offers the gesture long enough for him to see. She withdraws it to her book instead, taking the faded cover between her fingers and wearing at what remains of the embossed title. "Our time will come," she assures him, dragging at the faded gold of Longmire's name. And she adds, "Soon," with a sudden calm insistence that takes even her off guard.
"You don't agree with me. About her." The 'her' they have been discussing, perhaps. J'lor watches the hand brush stone and slip away and offers, for this gesture, a small and aching smile. "-How- then will our time come? What do we...I don't want people hurt. I don't want to arrive only to be sent back again. I don't know, anymore, how to make them see. No." J'lor holds up one hand to forestall any comment. "I do not think I ever really did know that."
"She is a stroke of luck, J'lor," Diya responds, not blind to the 'she' or 'her' in question. "Have you always planned on a goldriding daughter who became Weyrwoman of the Reaches? How long ago were you convinced you could depend on her for help?" She presses her long fingers onto Longmire's name and holds them there, covering the gold. When she shrugs, her fingers do not lift. "Our time will come because it must. With Roa's help or not, it must." Her deep blue eyes turn into the dark night, finding the huge, pale shadow that is Nenuith. "There will be other clutches," she says.
"We cannot afford another clutch here, Diya. We could barely afford this one. Not," J'lor looks up and over rather suddenly, "that I am not glad for the hatchlings. Of course I am. Only, I cannot fathom how we could manage to do it again. Not here. There is no time for other clutches. We must, in fact, be elsewhere -before- another clutch." He pauses a moment to draw in a slow breath before adding, "I knew after I spoke with the guards."
Diya's eyes turn back, solemn with an understanding they now share. Elsewhere. "I am sorry to have placed such a burden on you," she tells him quietly. "Not sorry, I think, to have forced such a choice." She looks back to her gold, whose awareness of the attention on her makes her croon and stretch her wings. Vellath will find himself in the shadow of those wings, moonlight projecting the lace pattern over his hide.
"But what choice? What do we...how do we...I'm supposed to know these things." The bluerider runs a hand over his bound hair as, on the ledge, the shadows falling over Vellath cause him to stir. "We have a true need to leave, and the only option I can see you say likely is not there. I am glad you are here, Diya. I only wish things were clearer." His attention drifts to Vellath and J'lor smirks briefly. "He reminds me we have drills in the morning."
"I say be careful of her," Diya corrects, placing her hands on her knees. She looks as though she might push up, to see him off, but that formality doesn't exist here. "You know what they say about all your eggs in one basket," she jokes without any humor in her voice or her shallow smile. A nod will see him out, and Nenuith outside stirs and draws her wings back to her sides, allowing Vellath the airspace he will need to leave.
"They say it causes a bit of a scramble to find candidates when the humming starts," J'lor offers. But the words come with a wink as the middle-aged rider uncurls with faintly popping knees. "Rest well, Diya. When you get there. We should talk more often, I think."
Diya's rich wave of laughter shakes off the lingering sobriety about the room, fateful discussions and news from the North brushed off by the bluerider's wink. "I think so," she agrees once her laughter's settled to a faint glimmer of mirth in her eyes and on her mouth. "Good night, J'lor." True to expectations, she does not rise to escort him to the door, but she does turn her head after him so that glimmer follows his way.