Log: Questions and Answers
Who: Giremi, Yronica
When: day 6, month 3, turn 15 of the 10th Interval
Where: Records Room, Telgar Weyr
What: Remi works while Yronica pries.
Records Room, Telgar Weyr(#403RIJs)
Sounds echo off the cool stone walls of the records room, and bounce hollowly off the uncarpeted floor. Though perfectly neat and dust free, this room seems to maintain an aura of unease, though that may be the weight of the ancient records that are contained within, and the heavy decisions that have been formed here. A large, stained wood table with seats stretched along one side stands on a raised area to the north, up a single step from the rest of the room. The east and west walls are covered, ceiling to floor, with book shelves and scroll shelves containing records dating back nearly to the First Interval. The most stunning feature is the broad sheet of clear muscovite that stretches across the ceiling like a giant skylight.
The scratch of a pen characterizes Giremi's occupation today, glasses perched atop his nose as he steadily recopies from an old hide onto a new one. The harper pauses now and then to re-read what he's copied and check it against the original before continuing on. He's sat at a table mid-way down the room, at one of the table's sides where he can see both ends of the room when he looks up. Otherwise the space is quiet, no one doing extra study this afternoon.
An abandoned records room is Yronica's favorite kind. Her beads announce her, their clackery softspoken but hard to miss in such quietude; but she only peeks in, one hand up on the wall by the bowlward entrance, leaning in to have a quick look around. She smiles to find the place almost empty; she absolutely beams to discover the identity of the occupant who makes it 'almost.' For Giremi she does not skip, does not bound; she moves with almost cautious grace, as though his work is too precious to be interrupted except in the calmest, most proper fashion. She even stops to trade out the volume she had with her (a supply record-book) for another one (also a supply record-book, albeit less recent) before wandering by the harper's table. "Sir," she says, cheery, almost fond.
The clacking beads alert Giremi to the presence of company, but he knows this sound and so there's only the briefest lift of his eyes to mark Yronica's inbound path. Once she's traded off volumes and come up to him, then he puts his pen down on the holder, straightens his shoulders and smiles warmly at his assistant. "Good day, Yronica. I've been working on those re-copies you highlighted for me today, have you come to tell me change priorities?" There's a little hint of teasing in his voice and his smile widens a fraction.
"Not yet." There's something of a tease in her reply, too, and Yronica takes the harper's tone as invitation enough to pick out a seat at his table, pull it back, and settle into it. "I'm going to be able to do that for you soon," she notes, equal parts rueful and determined, with a nod to the recopying he's doing. She sets the book onto the table before herself and tucks her chair in, the only thing missing from her settling-in a contented little clucking. "And then we'll fix your schedule up right."
"Ahh, well. I can't say that I've any complaints whatsoever about how that schedule's been shaping up." Giremi's fingers lace together loosely above those copies and his thumb stretches out towards the bridge of his nose to push his glasses up as they slip a little. "In fact overall you're doing quite well." Pause. "How've you been doing with some of the instrument practice?"
"I can," huffs Yronica, straightening her spine, looking for a moment down her nose with steady disapproval at the task to which Giremi's hands are - or were - currently set. But that look can't last on her face for long; her features aren't made for it, and the emotion that drives it isn't related to the man himself, and he's asking her something to boot. Her own determinations are set aside and she takes on a posture inspired by his, folding her hands atop the book she'd brought to the table. "Depends on the instrument," she replies readily, "gitar is much better than I remember it. I think my hands grew." Her eyes twinkle a bit; even from her, this statement is hard to make with a straight face.
"Can you?" Giremi queries, brows raised then frees his hands from each other to just push his glasses right up on top of his head so he doesn't have to look at her over the upper rims. "Ohh so that's what's making it easier? Longer fingers?" The harper chuckles softly and rubs his fingers over the red spots where his spectacles were just resting. "So gitar is progressing. Pipes I heard the other night and I think more scales are in order."
The maneuvering of the glasses draws twitches of humor into the corners of Yronica's smile, but he might be used to that reaction from her by now; it is nearly affectionate, anyway. "I think so," she agrees, about her fingers, stretching one hand's worth of them up from the other in an unobtrusive demonstration. But he has to go and bring up pipes and the humor sneaks back out of her smile, replaced by a little wrinkling of her nose. "You should wait to listen until it's not awful," she protests, but looks down at her hands and adds, "It's hard to keep the fingerings in my head and keep my breath right at the same time. You want me to repeat the scales I have?" Because the alternative means more fingerings, and she knows it. Complaints about his schedule are secondary, at least faced with -this.-
His own very long-fingered hand extends towards one of those hands, brows lifted for permission before Giremi's thumb and index close lightly around her wrist. "So, concentrate on one or the other first and then put them back together. You can practice fingering without blowing any time." The harper turns her hand over gently, brings his other hand over and traces out her fingers, palm to tips with his. "They're long enough you shouldn't have any trouble with the standard fingerings, but if it's still a problem in a seven or so, you can try some of the alternates. It's good to know them anyway." He looks down at her hand for a moment longer then smiles and withdraws both of his own. "Yes, use the scales you have, no sense reinventing the wheel just now." He drops his glasses back down over his eyes and picks his pen back up, dipping it in the ink and starts copying once more.
Her wrist is taken; she offers it as soon as it might seem that he wants it, and watches his face and his hand on hers alternatingly as he pronounces her fingers fit for the pipes. "Oh," Yronica says, a bit belatedly, and withdraws her hand, fits it in the air beneath the other, and puts down apart from the others the fingertips that close an A. They shift to a B-flat, then a C, then fold quickly and land silently atop her book once more. "Right," she says, a little quietly, the roses in her full cheeks hopefully lost on the harper as he tends once more to his copying. "I hadn't thought of that." Obviously. Commence awkward (on her part) quiet while she watches the tip of his pen move.
The peek of clear blue eyes over spectacle rims reoccurs for that little 'Oh' and it's likely he marks the roses in her cheeks because his voice is kind when he speaks. "You're still learning Yronica. That's part of the point of this exchange of our, isn't it?" Giremi drops his gaze back to the hide, keeping the pen moving smoothly across its surface. "Hm. Actually, could you help me for a moment? There's a badly damaged patch here and I'm having a little trouble making out this word. You've better eyes than I."
"Yes." Yes, it's the point. She might as well append 'sir' after the answer. But his request brings her swiftly to her feet, eager to please after her failing whether real or imagined, and round the table she comes to take up a post at his shoulder. "Where? Oh - " Yronica blinks, perches the fingertips of her left hand on the table and bends a little to be closer, to make sure. Her lips move first in silence, but only once and what she speaks when she speaks aloud matches what she mouthed. "'In actuality.' I think there's a space, it's just hard to tell because the letters outside it are so faint. Unless there's a word that's like 'in actuality' with something in the blank spot." She turns her eyes to the side, sees Giremi, realizes her closeness, straightens and puts her hands behind her back. "Is 'ineffectuality' a word or is that just me sticking suffixes on it wrong?"
The hide is tilted slightly her way so she can see better, and Giremi sits back in his chair while she bends, reads. "Ineffectual is a word, but I've never seen 'ineffectuality' used before. Not that that's saying much given the ... creative use of vocabulary throughout this hide." A little hint of humor curls up the corners of Remi's mouth and he looks down at the hide again. "Might have to leave a space for this one and come back to it, try to do a little work on the original to bring the text up more." His lips purse lightly, seemingly oblivious to that momentary closeness and Yronica's reassertion of space.
"What kind of work? How do you bring the text up?" A pause. "Does 'in actuality' not fit?" Yronica bends again, her beads swinging a little forward as she does so until an absent-minded hand comes up to catch them and hold them out of her line of sight, to see the words either side of the damaged patch, brows drawn. "What -is- it, anyway," she asks before she even realizes what she's asking, but as soon as she hears the words she does realize, and straightens again, this time starting for the other side of the table where she's safer from her own nosiness. "I mean, how'd it get damaged, you think."
"Since this is an oiled hide, some of the oil could be lifted, very carefully and heat applied to bring out the impression of the ink," Giremi explains, still scrutinizing the text. "No it does fit, I'm just not sure, you know?" His eyes lift back up to the young woman at his side, watch her step away. "Klah looks like. Hot klah that went down through the oiling." He makes a little face and stares at the damaged spot for a little longer and reads out the rest of the sentence. "In actuality fits the meaning from the rest of the context better, even with this author's strange syntax."
"Well, if 'ineffectuality' isn't a word then I would hope it wasn't the more likely choice," Yronica laughs, a little more airily than is really necessary even if she's being self-dismissive. She settles again into her chair, putting an elbow on the table's edge and folding down her arm so her hand can platform the other elbow and her other hand can prop her chin. "Someone should have dabbed it faster, or else the oil's pretty old. Will you teach me how to lift it and heat it and that, or let me watch when you do it?"
"No, it's not that it's not a word, just that it's not used as much as the other form. Especially not in this type of Record." Giremi's fingers tap lightly on the hide. "But like I said, whomever wrote this seems to have a very creative command of language." That said, he continues his copying and nods. "Certainly, it's all part and parcel of the training you signed up for." The harper pauses and lifts his eyes over to the young woman. "Are you especially interested in the Records portion of harpering?"
"Sort of. They contain information." There's no guard needed on that; Yronica offers it with a shrug that's somewhat hindered by her leaning-forward, arms-on-table arrangement. "Sometimes that's extremely interesting and sometimes it's unbearably dull, but I get that it's all important. The better I get at reading them, the more interesting they seem to be. I can find the things I want to know. Or do you mean -keeping- them?" Now she straightens, putting down the chinprop hand atop the other arm, her expression slipping from surprised to bemused, presumed understanding with a grin. "I think it'd have to depend on what records - and what's happening at the time."
"So it's more the contents that interest you more than the techniques for making them," Giremi sums up, though there's a questioning lilt to his voice, eyes still turned towards her, pen held carefully off to the side so it doesn't drip on the hide. "Some archivists really do just like to work with actual hide and paper and ink and have glue on their fingers all the time," notes the harper with a little smile. "I actually find most writing to be very relaxing." His eyes drop to the surface of the hide and there's a little hint of pink in his ears as he resumes writing, realizes the nib's gone dry and he needs to re-dip it.
"Yes," confirms Yronica, but she smiles for the hide and paper and ink and glue remark; not until the harper's pen's being redipped does she speak to all of that, though, and if she notices the pink in his ears it's not apparent in what she chooses to say. "I do sort of enjoy it. The glue, and so forth. But I think that's mostly because it - keeps my hands busy while I'm talking." Her hands, not busy while she's talking at the moment, are thumbing the edges of the pages of the book now beneath them. "And it makes people ask questions," she adds, way too much mischief in the afterthought's museful tone.
"Do you like stories then?" Giremi keeps the questions coming even as he continues to copy, his handwriting, well-known by now, crisp, flowing, easy to read. The pen stops in reaction to remarks on keeping her hands busy and questions being asked and the harper looks up, gauging her expression. His face is still for a moment, then he laughs lightly. "Does that mean I should stop?"
"I like knowing what's happening. Or what happened. I don't mind the other kind of stories, though, either." Yronica flicks up a grin across the table; maybe it's a little bit smirky, maybe just made so by her rearranging her arms in their previous configuration so she can balance her chin in her palm again. "No, don't stop. I'm your assistant, anyway, what about me shouldn't you know if you wish to know it? - But maybe I could ask you something, while we're at it." Beat. Beam. "If it's not too great an interruption."
"Hm. If you like knowing what's happening," a little smile curves across Giremi's face, "then we need to work on your drum code." He winks then, an answer perhaps to that smirk and he shrugs lightly. "Only if you want to answer, Yronica. You're not bound to." His brows lift questioningly and a slight nod follows. "Certainly, you may always ask. I just don't promise to answer everything."
Yronica's smirk turns mischevious again, her posture perks and her chin comes out of her hand, but there's nothing for her to say to the notion that she should work on drum code except an exceedingly pleased, "Yes, sir." Beat. Well, he said she could ask: "T'rev brought you to Reaches, around the time Teonath flew? He said 'the harper,' so - " So she's assuming, see, shrug, grin, all guileless curiousity.
"For turnover, yes. I usually go to visit my family every turn for a little while in the afternoon before coming back here to entertain." Giremi seems a little perplexed by the seemingly random question. "It was rather an intense flight," he muses thoughtfully, pen held away from copy again, "I'm afraid our hot-blooded young friend forgot me in the fray." The harper sniffs once and shrugs. "He apologized and I got home in one piece anyway though things were a little ... chaotic for a bit." Ramble, ramble.
"Intense," echoes Yronica, but she's purely doing that for effect, and watching him to see what effect it has, and generally being a nuisance in her smiling, gleefully innocent way. "Yes. He mentioned that he was involved in a scuffle, never mind the flight itself," she goes on, unpropping her chin and straightening her back so that the propriety of her posture lends itself to that of her words. "Did you see R'uen or A'zan by chance? I'm still wondering how exactly they all three got there. For Turn's End, too, of all things. You have family, but I don't know that -they- do." Curious girl asking curious questions, nothing more. Beam.
"Of course. Gold flights can be like that." Giremi sets his pen down careully and takes off his glasses, pulls his hanky from his pocket and starts cleaning the lenses assiduously. His throat didn't just move convulsively. "Thankfully, most people aren't out and about seeking out company in the Records Room." Which is apparently, where he did spend the bulk of the flight himself. "R'uen and A'zan? No. Though I did hear rumor that there'd been multiple Telgar riders at the flight afterwards and then more confirmation after I got here." Beat. "Why do you ask Yronica? It's not as if there hasn't continued to be regular traffic between the Weyrs. I go over to the Reaches relatively frequently myself with whatever rider I can muster a ride from." His head tilts to the side now, fixing Yronica with a questioning look of his own though the beam earns an answering small smile from the harper.
Is there a beat after Giremi's finished saying 'Records Room' where Yronica watches his throat just in case there's another convulsion there? Maybe she's just attentive to him; she must to some degree understand that being stared at won't make him -more- comfortable, because she glances down at her hands, folding them once more upon the book she brought down from the shelf. Her tongue peeks between her lips but if she's a little extra thoughtful-seeming, maybe it's just because she now has to make excuse for her prying. "Well, I wouldn't bet that A'zan's been particularly regular traffic," she offers with a wry twist to smile and tone both, looking up. "Do you think it means anything when a senior lets bronzes from just anywhere into her flights?"
There's no further movement to be detected, but Remi's about done cleaning off his glasses and when he's done he sets them down carefully atop his copied hide and his fingers lace together, hanging loosely between his hands. "I don't know, Yronica. In the end, flights are a matter of instinct, as far as I'm aware. Females rise, males chase."
The wild-haired girl regards the harper for a long moment, her smile forgotten on her mouth, then shakes her head and looks down at her hands again. Until, anyway, one of them lifts and goes to push back her hair, a gesture that might seem even a little shy, at least for a moment. "I don't mean to pry," Yronica says, which is obviously a ridiculous statement at best. "Tell me - about what you're working on. If you can. Is it something I could copy for you, when my hand's good enough?"
Blue eyes track the movement of that hand and then drop down to where the words on the page are magnified through the lenses of his glasses as they lie there atop the sheet. "You could, if you'd like to try. Perhaps I could split the stack in two and we can meet in the middle?" Both of Giremi's brows lift upward, underscoring the suggestion. "It's a treatise on Weyrleadership, nothing confidential."
But something of interest, because Yronica's smile, forgotten, finally slips away to whatever corner it waits in during the rare moments she doesn't need it, and her brows raise up just the same as the harper's did. "Give me the smaller part," she says after a long silence, only upon realizing that there's been a long silence and that she might have been intended to say something in it. "I'll go slower than you." She must get some actual pleasure out of being able to help with his work in her ways; she shoves her book over and puts out her hands to welcome whatever of the treatise he'll share, and the smile leaps back into being with full cheeks and bright eyes.
Giremi shifts his glasses over a little and slides long fingers between the sheets of hide and splits off about fifteen pages, sliding this stack over to Yronica. Next follows a matching stack of clean sheets for her to copy onto, which cuts his work by about a quarter. "All right then. It's not a race, though speed is good, it's about getting a quality copy in as short amount of time as possible." His smile, a much rarer bird than hers makes an appearance, full instead of small and reaching into his eyes.
"I think I'll focus on the quality and if it's not fast enough, you'll just have to take some back." She never promised, did she, not to sass him? But her sass gentles a little, the saucy expression on her face softening to see the harper's smile. For a moment Yronica just appreciates it, smiling back, almost as if she's proud of him for having shown it. Then she licks her lips and looks down at the hides that are now her work, setting aside fourteen of each out of harm's way. She leans back and tightens up her sleeves with a little roll of fabric, one side and then the other, and then from somewhere in her excess of clothing she draws out a pen of her own. "Just because it'd be even slower if anything had to be redone." A nod tipped toward his ink, permission requested to dip from it.
Giremi doesn't seem to mind the sass. In fact, he grins. "That's all right, you're still practicing and it's definitely /quality/ that's more important here, especially since the original hide is in such poor condition. Really in the end, this isn't so much a copy job as a restoration." One long arm snakes out to slide the bottle more to the midpoint between them and he nods slightly: permission granted. He waits until she's dipper her pen in, to refresh his own, putting his glasses back on in the meantime and finds the spot where he left off.
"Got it." Yronica dips her pen from his ink, withdrawing it carefully, having learned before her letters were really much good how not to make drips. It takes her a long moment to decide where to begin the first line, how much margin to leave, how to be sure that the page she's writing from will fit on the page she's writing -on- despite what difference is permitted between the original scribe's hand and hers; but in her time she decides, puts the nib down, and begins. After a line or two she's even somewhat relaxed in her work, enough so that every time she must refresh her pen she steals a look at Giremi, and sometimes when she looks at him she smiles a small, privately pleased smile.
Giremi nods confirmation as Yronica gets started and discreetly he slides one of his pages over to help her out with the whole issue of placement on the page. A cursory glance might confirm it: all of his are precisely identical insofar as margins and the like are concerned and a loose count of words per line and so on. If Remi is good at anything, it's copying and he does seem quite relaxed with this work. Silence stretches out between them of the companionable sort, the journeyman perhaps not seeing a need for further conversation, though the scratch of dual pen nibs forms a certain talk of its own as harper and assistant work their way through the pages until it's time to depart.
When: day 6, month 3, turn 15 of the 10th Interval
Where: Records Room, Telgar Weyr
What: Remi works while Yronica pries.
Records Room, Telgar Weyr(#403RIJs)
Sounds echo off the cool stone walls of the records room, and bounce hollowly off the uncarpeted floor. Though perfectly neat and dust free, this room seems to maintain an aura of unease, though that may be the weight of the ancient records that are contained within, and the heavy decisions that have been formed here. A large, stained wood table with seats stretched along one side stands on a raised area to the north, up a single step from the rest of the room. The east and west walls are covered, ceiling to floor, with book shelves and scroll shelves containing records dating back nearly to the First Interval. The most stunning feature is the broad sheet of clear muscovite that stretches across the ceiling like a giant skylight.
The scratch of a pen characterizes Giremi's occupation today, glasses perched atop his nose as he steadily recopies from an old hide onto a new one. The harper pauses now and then to re-read what he's copied and check it against the original before continuing on. He's sat at a table mid-way down the room, at one of the table's sides where he can see both ends of the room when he looks up. Otherwise the space is quiet, no one doing extra study this afternoon.
An abandoned records room is Yronica's favorite kind. Her beads announce her, their clackery softspoken but hard to miss in such quietude; but she only peeks in, one hand up on the wall by the bowlward entrance, leaning in to have a quick look around. She smiles to find the place almost empty; she absolutely beams to discover the identity of the occupant who makes it 'almost.' For Giremi she does not skip, does not bound; she moves with almost cautious grace, as though his work is too precious to be interrupted except in the calmest, most proper fashion. She even stops to trade out the volume she had with her (a supply record-book) for another one (also a supply record-book, albeit less recent) before wandering by the harper's table. "Sir," she says, cheery, almost fond.
The clacking beads alert Giremi to the presence of company, but he knows this sound and so there's only the briefest lift of his eyes to mark Yronica's inbound path. Once she's traded off volumes and come up to him, then he puts his pen down on the holder, straightens his shoulders and smiles warmly at his assistant. "Good day, Yronica. I've been working on those re-copies you highlighted for me today, have you come to tell me change priorities?" There's a little hint of teasing in his voice and his smile widens a fraction.
"Not yet." There's something of a tease in her reply, too, and Yronica takes the harper's tone as invitation enough to pick out a seat at his table, pull it back, and settle into it. "I'm going to be able to do that for you soon," she notes, equal parts rueful and determined, with a nod to the recopying he's doing. She sets the book onto the table before herself and tucks her chair in, the only thing missing from her settling-in a contented little clucking. "And then we'll fix your schedule up right."
"Ahh, well. I can't say that I've any complaints whatsoever about how that schedule's been shaping up." Giremi's fingers lace together loosely above those copies and his thumb stretches out towards the bridge of his nose to push his glasses up as they slip a little. "In fact overall you're doing quite well." Pause. "How've you been doing with some of the instrument practice?"
"I can," huffs Yronica, straightening her spine, looking for a moment down her nose with steady disapproval at the task to which Giremi's hands are - or were - currently set. But that look can't last on her face for long; her features aren't made for it, and the emotion that drives it isn't related to the man himself, and he's asking her something to boot. Her own determinations are set aside and she takes on a posture inspired by his, folding her hands atop the book she'd brought to the table. "Depends on the instrument," she replies readily, "gitar is much better than I remember it. I think my hands grew." Her eyes twinkle a bit; even from her, this statement is hard to make with a straight face.
"Can you?" Giremi queries, brows raised then frees his hands from each other to just push his glasses right up on top of his head so he doesn't have to look at her over the upper rims. "Ohh so that's what's making it easier? Longer fingers?" The harper chuckles softly and rubs his fingers over the red spots where his spectacles were just resting. "So gitar is progressing. Pipes I heard the other night and I think more scales are in order."
The maneuvering of the glasses draws twitches of humor into the corners of Yronica's smile, but he might be used to that reaction from her by now; it is nearly affectionate, anyway. "I think so," she agrees, about her fingers, stretching one hand's worth of them up from the other in an unobtrusive demonstration. But he has to go and bring up pipes and the humor sneaks back out of her smile, replaced by a little wrinkling of her nose. "You should wait to listen until it's not awful," she protests, but looks down at her hands and adds, "It's hard to keep the fingerings in my head and keep my breath right at the same time. You want me to repeat the scales I have?" Because the alternative means more fingerings, and she knows it. Complaints about his schedule are secondary, at least faced with -this.-
His own very long-fingered hand extends towards one of those hands, brows lifted for permission before Giremi's thumb and index close lightly around her wrist. "So, concentrate on one or the other first and then put them back together. You can practice fingering without blowing any time." The harper turns her hand over gently, brings his other hand over and traces out her fingers, palm to tips with his. "They're long enough you shouldn't have any trouble with the standard fingerings, but if it's still a problem in a seven or so, you can try some of the alternates. It's good to know them anyway." He looks down at her hand for a moment longer then smiles and withdraws both of his own. "Yes, use the scales you have, no sense reinventing the wheel just now." He drops his glasses back down over his eyes and picks his pen back up, dipping it in the ink and starts copying once more.
Her wrist is taken; she offers it as soon as it might seem that he wants it, and watches his face and his hand on hers alternatingly as he pronounces her fingers fit for the pipes. "Oh," Yronica says, a bit belatedly, and withdraws her hand, fits it in the air beneath the other, and puts down apart from the others the fingertips that close an A. They shift to a B-flat, then a C, then fold quickly and land silently atop her book once more. "Right," she says, a little quietly, the roses in her full cheeks hopefully lost on the harper as he tends once more to his copying. "I hadn't thought of that." Obviously. Commence awkward (on her part) quiet while she watches the tip of his pen move.
The peek of clear blue eyes over spectacle rims reoccurs for that little 'Oh' and it's likely he marks the roses in her cheeks because his voice is kind when he speaks. "You're still learning Yronica. That's part of the point of this exchange of our, isn't it?" Giremi drops his gaze back to the hide, keeping the pen moving smoothly across its surface. "Hm. Actually, could you help me for a moment? There's a badly damaged patch here and I'm having a little trouble making out this word. You've better eyes than I."
"Yes." Yes, it's the point. She might as well append 'sir' after the answer. But his request brings her swiftly to her feet, eager to please after her failing whether real or imagined, and round the table she comes to take up a post at his shoulder. "Where? Oh - " Yronica blinks, perches the fingertips of her left hand on the table and bends a little to be closer, to make sure. Her lips move first in silence, but only once and what she speaks when she speaks aloud matches what she mouthed. "'In actuality.' I think there's a space, it's just hard to tell because the letters outside it are so faint. Unless there's a word that's like 'in actuality' with something in the blank spot." She turns her eyes to the side, sees Giremi, realizes her closeness, straightens and puts her hands behind her back. "Is 'ineffectuality' a word or is that just me sticking suffixes on it wrong?"
The hide is tilted slightly her way so she can see better, and Giremi sits back in his chair while she bends, reads. "Ineffectual is a word, but I've never seen 'ineffectuality' used before. Not that that's saying much given the ... creative use of vocabulary throughout this hide." A little hint of humor curls up the corners of Remi's mouth and he looks down at the hide again. "Might have to leave a space for this one and come back to it, try to do a little work on the original to bring the text up more." His lips purse lightly, seemingly oblivious to that momentary closeness and Yronica's reassertion of space.
"What kind of work? How do you bring the text up?" A pause. "Does 'in actuality' not fit?" Yronica bends again, her beads swinging a little forward as she does so until an absent-minded hand comes up to catch them and hold them out of her line of sight, to see the words either side of the damaged patch, brows drawn. "What -is- it, anyway," she asks before she even realizes what she's asking, but as soon as she hears the words she does realize, and straightens again, this time starting for the other side of the table where she's safer from her own nosiness. "I mean, how'd it get damaged, you think."
"Since this is an oiled hide, some of the oil could be lifted, very carefully and heat applied to bring out the impression of the ink," Giremi explains, still scrutinizing the text. "No it does fit, I'm just not sure, you know?" His eyes lift back up to the young woman at his side, watch her step away. "Klah looks like. Hot klah that went down through the oiling." He makes a little face and stares at the damaged spot for a little longer and reads out the rest of the sentence. "In actuality fits the meaning from the rest of the context better, even with this author's strange syntax."
"Well, if 'ineffectuality' isn't a word then I would hope it wasn't the more likely choice," Yronica laughs, a little more airily than is really necessary even if she's being self-dismissive. She settles again into her chair, putting an elbow on the table's edge and folding down her arm so her hand can platform the other elbow and her other hand can prop her chin. "Someone should have dabbed it faster, or else the oil's pretty old. Will you teach me how to lift it and heat it and that, or let me watch when you do it?"
"No, it's not that it's not a word, just that it's not used as much as the other form. Especially not in this type of Record." Giremi's fingers tap lightly on the hide. "But like I said, whomever wrote this seems to have a very creative command of language." That said, he continues his copying and nods. "Certainly, it's all part and parcel of the training you signed up for." The harper pauses and lifts his eyes over to the young woman. "Are you especially interested in the Records portion of harpering?"
"Sort of. They contain information." There's no guard needed on that; Yronica offers it with a shrug that's somewhat hindered by her leaning-forward, arms-on-table arrangement. "Sometimes that's extremely interesting and sometimes it's unbearably dull, but I get that it's all important. The better I get at reading them, the more interesting they seem to be. I can find the things I want to know. Or do you mean -keeping- them?" Now she straightens, putting down the chinprop hand atop the other arm, her expression slipping from surprised to bemused, presumed understanding with a grin. "I think it'd have to depend on what records - and what's happening at the time."
"So it's more the contents that interest you more than the techniques for making them," Giremi sums up, though there's a questioning lilt to his voice, eyes still turned towards her, pen held carefully off to the side so it doesn't drip on the hide. "Some archivists really do just like to work with actual hide and paper and ink and have glue on their fingers all the time," notes the harper with a little smile. "I actually find most writing to be very relaxing." His eyes drop to the surface of the hide and there's a little hint of pink in his ears as he resumes writing, realizes the nib's gone dry and he needs to re-dip it.
"Yes," confirms Yronica, but she smiles for the hide and paper and ink and glue remark; not until the harper's pen's being redipped does she speak to all of that, though, and if she notices the pink in his ears it's not apparent in what she chooses to say. "I do sort of enjoy it. The glue, and so forth. But I think that's mostly because it - keeps my hands busy while I'm talking." Her hands, not busy while she's talking at the moment, are thumbing the edges of the pages of the book now beneath them. "And it makes people ask questions," she adds, way too much mischief in the afterthought's museful tone.
"Do you like stories then?" Giremi keeps the questions coming even as he continues to copy, his handwriting, well-known by now, crisp, flowing, easy to read. The pen stops in reaction to remarks on keeping her hands busy and questions being asked and the harper looks up, gauging her expression. His face is still for a moment, then he laughs lightly. "Does that mean I should stop?"
"I like knowing what's happening. Or what happened. I don't mind the other kind of stories, though, either." Yronica flicks up a grin across the table; maybe it's a little bit smirky, maybe just made so by her rearranging her arms in their previous configuration so she can balance her chin in her palm again. "No, don't stop. I'm your assistant, anyway, what about me shouldn't you know if you wish to know it? - But maybe I could ask you something, while we're at it." Beat. Beam. "If it's not too great an interruption."
"Hm. If you like knowing what's happening," a little smile curves across Giremi's face, "then we need to work on your drum code." He winks then, an answer perhaps to that smirk and he shrugs lightly. "Only if you want to answer, Yronica. You're not bound to." His brows lift questioningly and a slight nod follows. "Certainly, you may always ask. I just don't promise to answer everything."
Yronica's smirk turns mischevious again, her posture perks and her chin comes out of her hand, but there's nothing for her to say to the notion that she should work on drum code except an exceedingly pleased, "Yes, sir." Beat. Well, he said she could ask: "T'rev brought you to Reaches, around the time Teonath flew? He said 'the harper,' so - " So she's assuming, see, shrug, grin, all guileless curiousity.
"For turnover, yes. I usually go to visit my family every turn for a little while in the afternoon before coming back here to entertain." Giremi seems a little perplexed by the seemingly random question. "It was rather an intense flight," he muses thoughtfully, pen held away from copy again, "I'm afraid our hot-blooded young friend forgot me in the fray." The harper sniffs once and shrugs. "He apologized and I got home in one piece anyway though things were a little ... chaotic for a bit." Ramble, ramble.
"Intense," echoes Yronica, but she's purely doing that for effect, and watching him to see what effect it has, and generally being a nuisance in her smiling, gleefully innocent way. "Yes. He mentioned that he was involved in a scuffle, never mind the flight itself," she goes on, unpropping her chin and straightening her back so that the propriety of her posture lends itself to that of her words. "Did you see R'uen or A'zan by chance? I'm still wondering how exactly they all three got there. For Turn's End, too, of all things. You have family, but I don't know that -they- do." Curious girl asking curious questions, nothing more. Beam.
"Of course. Gold flights can be like that." Giremi sets his pen down careully and takes off his glasses, pulls his hanky from his pocket and starts cleaning the lenses assiduously. His throat didn't just move convulsively. "Thankfully, most people aren't out and about seeking out company in the Records Room." Which is apparently, where he did spend the bulk of the flight himself. "R'uen and A'zan? No. Though I did hear rumor that there'd been multiple Telgar riders at the flight afterwards and then more confirmation after I got here." Beat. "Why do you ask Yronica? It's not as if there hasn't continued to be regular traffic between the Weyrs. I go over to the Reaches relatively frequently myself with whatever rider I can muster a ride from." His head tilts to the side now, fixing Yronica with a questioning look of his own though the beam earns an answering small smile from the harper.
Is there a beat after Giremi's finished saying 'Records Room' where Yronica watches his throat just in case there's another convulsion there? Maybe she's just attentive to him; she must to some degree understand that being stared at won't make him -more- comfortable, because she glances down at her hands, folding them once more upon the book she brought down from the shelf. Her tongue peeks between her lips but if she's a little extra thoughtful-seeming, maybe it's just because she now has to make excuse for her prying. "Well, I wouldn't bet that A'zan's been particularly regular traffic," she offers with a wry twist to smile and tone both, looking up. "Do you think it means anything when a senior lets bronzes from just anywhere into her flights?"
There's no further movement to be detected, but Remi's about done cleaning off his glasses and when he's done he sets them down carefully atop his copied hide and his fingers lace together, hanging loosely between his hands. "I don't know, Yronica. In the end, flights are a matter of instinct, as far as I'm aware. Females rise, males chase."
The wild-haired girl regards the harper for a long moment, her smile forgotten on her mouth, then shakes her head and looks down at her hands again. Until, anyway, one of them lifts and goes to push back her hair, a gesture that might seem even a little shy, at least for a moment. "I don't mean to pry," Yronica says, which is obviously a ridiculous statement at best. "Tell me - about what you're working on. If you can. Is it something I could copy for you, when my hand's good enough?"
Blue eyes track the movement of that hand and then drop down to where the words on the page are magnified through the lenses of his glasses as they lie there atop the sheet. "You could, if you'd like to try. Perhaps I could split the stack in two and we can meet in the middle?" Both of Giremi's brows lift upward, underscoring the suggestion. "It's a treatise on Weyrleadership, nothing confidential."
But something of interest, because Yronica's smile, forgotten, finally slips away to whatever corner it waits in during the rare moments she doesn't need it, and her brows raise up just the same as the harper's did. "Give me the smaller part," she says after a long silence, only upon realizing that there's been a long silence and that she might have been intended to say something in it. "I'll go slower than you." She must get some actual pleasure out of being able to help with his work in her ways; she shoves her book over and puts out her hands to welcome whatever of the treatise he'll share, and the smile leaps back into being with full cheeks and bright eyes.
Giremi shifts his glasses over a little and slides long fingers between the sheets of hide and splits off about fifteen pages, sliding this stack over to Yronica. Next follows a matching stack of clean sheets for her to copy onto, which cuts his work by about a quarter. "All right then. It's not a race, though speed is good, it's about getting a quality copy in as short amount of time as possible." His smile, a much rarer bird than hers makes an appearance, full instead of small and reaching into his eyes.
"I think I'll focus on the quality and if it's not fast enough, you'll just have to take some back." She never promised, did she, not to sass him? But her sass gentles a little, the saucy expression on her face softening to see the harper's smile. For a moment Yronica just appreciates it, smiling back, almost as if she's proud of him for having shown it. Then she licks her lips and looks down at the hides that are now her work, setting aside fourteen of each out of harm's way. She leans back and tightens up her sleeves with a little roll of fabric, one side and then the other, and then from somewhere in her excess of clothing she draws out a pen of her own. "Just because it'd be even slower if anything had to be redone." A nod tipped toward his ink, permission requested to dip from it.
Giremi doesn't seem to mind the sass. In fact, he grins. "That's all right, you're still practicing and it's definitely /quality/ that's more important here, especially since the original hide is in such poor condition. Really in the end, this isn't so much a copy job as a restoration." One long arm snakes out to slide the bottle more to the midpoint between them and he nods slightly: permission granted. He waits until she's dipper her pen in, to refresh his own, putting his glasses back on in the meantime and finds the spot where he left off.
"Got it." Yronica dips her pen from his ink, withdrawing it carefully, having learned before her letters were really much good how not to make drips. It takes her a long moment to decide where to begin the first line, how much margin to leave, how to be sure that the page she's writing from will fit on the page she's writing -on- despite what difference is permitted between the original scribe's hand and hers; but in her time she decides, puts the nib down, and begins. After a line or two she's even somewhat relaxed in her work, enough so that every time she must refresh her pen she steals a look at Giremi, and sometimes when she looks at him she smiles a small, privately pleased smile.
Giremi nods confirmation as Yronica gets started and discreetly he slides one of his pages over to help her out with the whole issue of placement on the page. A cursory glance might confirm it: all of his are precisely identical insofar as margins and the like are concerned and a loose count of words per line and so on. If Remi is good at anything, it's copying and he does seem quite relaxed with this work. Silence stretches out between them of the companionable sort, the journeyman perhaps not seeing a need for further conversation, though the scratch of dual pen nibs forms a certain talk of its own as harper and assistant work their way through the pages until it's time to depart.