Log: Talk with Tam
Who: Tam, Giremi
When:
Where:
What:
The Sandbar -- Ista Weyr
This dockside tavern stretches over the water, accessible from beach, docks or harbour itself. The light sound of slapping waves can be heard beneath the floorboards, and there are no walls, allowing tropical breezes to waft through and indulging patrons in panoramic ocean views. The carved wooden bar takes up the north endhttp://www.livejournal.com/update.bml
Post an Entry of the room, covered with a wood and reed roof that protects it from impromptu showers. The rest of the booths rest along the outside of the floor, all situated to be oceanside and set with brightly coloured cushions. The thatched wood roof continues along those booths leaving the center of the area open-air, though a metal canopy rests along the outside of one wall, ready to be drawn atop for rain or Threadfall. Further to the north and south the beach continues on for kilometers, black sand tinged a ruddy red with the blazing light of a fading sunset. Waves wash upon the beach with a steady roar, sending spray flying into the air at the furthest end of the beach to the south where a collection of rocks litter the shoreline.
Most of the time, the occupants of the Sandbar look like they belong. Today, one of the customers looks /painfully/ out of his element. One tall, very tall, redheaded harper, dressed 'down' for the occasion in shorts and short-sleeved shirt, though the shirt is buttoned all the way up to his adam's apple and he has socks on under his sandals. He's standing at the bar, looking down at the countertop like it's going to bite him and holding a handkerchief in one hand. "Flame it P'draig ... why do you always have to pick such /unsanitary/ places to meet up," he mutters with obvious discontent.
There is a small pale figure bobbing behind the bar and between the patrons. Her back and shoulders are red, as are her cheeks, but she seems unbothered as she flits amid customers. Slipping behind the bar, she's rinsing out glasses as the tall redhead mutters something crankily. "Unsanitary?" she scoffs, "Got more alcohol back here than you can shake a stick at. What could be cleaner? Brownrider leave you high and dry, tall stuff?"
"Yes. It's sticky," Giremi points out stuffily and points to a tiny spot on the bar's surface. "It's making my skin twitch." THen his nostrils pinch together a little at the remarks she tosses his way. "Perhaps using some of that alcohol /on/ the bar might help?" And he looks over at her pleadingly, clearly not planning to sit until the tiny speck is dealt with. "Tall stuff?" He blinks at her for a moment for the moniker and sighs. "Perhaps I'd best just head back to Telgar and P'draig can make up the fact that he owes me drinks another time. I did not come down here to be made fun of." Then he blinks at Tam for a moment or two. "As you should know. Tam." And he blinks at the girl some more. "What in Faranth's name are you doing here?"
There is a small snort for the speck of sticky. "I think, your skin is twitching, that it needs to relax." But a hand swipes out with a damp cloth to tidy up the dribble. The waitress smiles brightly as she's named, dimple flashing in her cheek. "Hullo, Giremi. Still hiding in the archives out wherever they posted you?"
Almost immediately some tension starts to bleed out of the harper as she cleans up and he finally sits down on a stool. Of course his hanky comes out to wipe up after that cloth and then he manages to smile back at her. "Yes actually," he replies quite seriously. "And that would be Telgar Weyr. But you didn't tell me what you're doing here and I asked first. Why in Faranth's name are you tending /bar/ at Ista Weyr?" And then he blinks. "Shells. P'draig said I'd be interested in the new barkeep here and I couldn't fathom why but ... now I understand." He smoothes down his shirt a little and fixes the pale-haired girl with a long look. "You've grown and you have a bad sunburn," he finally assesses. "Otherwise you'd look quite lovely and grown up."
"Well, obviously, I'm tending bar," Tam replies with a wink, fetching down a glass and filling it with ice. "Owe you a drink. What'll you have?" As for the why, she shrugs. "Eh, you know me. Always up to something. Folks decided they wanted me to be up to it somewhere else, so here I am. Sunburn'll get better in time, I figure. It's a good place. Suits me. For now."
"So .. you're not an apprentice anymore?" This seems to startle Giremi and his brows draw down in a deep frown. "Whiskey," he notes absently for the glass in her hand. "No ice. Keep it strong." Because apparently we have become a hard drinker in our time away from the Hall. "Yes, well if it doesn't peel all your skin off first. You should wear a hat and ... more clothes ..." he gestures vaguely at her outfit then looks around the bar. "The Sandbar? I suppose it isn't bad. The drinks are good. The food all right. It's just not entirely .... clean. Too much /sand/."
"Sand's clean," Tam argues lazily. The glass is replaced with a smaller one, though not so small that when she fills it halfway, that isn't a sizable amount of bourbon. "You should get out of the records room and worry less about getting dirty and what I'm wearin'." The drink is slid over and she rests her weight on her elbows for a moment.
"Sand, is the opposite of clean," insists Giremi sententiously. "What for?" he asks next and takes the glass, lifts it, has a nice sip, then slugs the rest and puts the glass back down again, sliding it across for a refill. "Not that what you're wearing doesn't look /nice/ but it's not protecting your skin."
"You worry to much about keeping safe, 'Remi. Always have. You get one more've these and then you have to change up." Tam fills his glass again and returns it to the harper. "Sand is not the opposite of clean. Soap-sand-. It just ain't... organized, and that's what drives you batty. Why what what? Come out of the archives? Because you smell musty."
The harper's fingers drum on the countertop and his jaw tightens a little. "I can't help the way I am. Things get under my skin. It's like having an itch you can't scratch." Giremi looks away suddenly, staring fixedly out at the water. "And no, it's not, it's not organized and there's /dirt/ in it, I swear." He turns back and takes the glass a little aggressively and tips it back. No precursor sip this time. "What's out here that's worth staying out for?" Bitter much? And he reaches into his pocket, fishes out a tidy marks purse, opens in and takes out a halfer. "Keep the whiskey coming. I'm paying customer."
"Nope," is Tam's easy reply. She takes his glass, replacing it with a clean one of comparable size. What she pours into it is the brown of whiskey but smells slightly different. Moreso when a dollop of something clear and minty is added atop it. This is slid back to Giremi. "Fuss, fuss, fuss. It's the world, Remi. Ain't got nothing to prove to you. What use is a harper that never looks past the ink at his fingertips, huh?"
Giremi stares at the drink. "What did you just put in my whiskey?" Blue eyes lift up to the girl, unblinking. "I like having ink on my fingers. It's honest work. And it washes off easily." Fuss fuss indeed. "I do my work, including playing for the masses. I've no desire to spend much more time than that with people these days." And he pushes the glass back towards her. "/Plain/ whiskey."
Tam pushes the drink back. "It's not whiskey, and I'm not serving you anything else til you drink it," she replies haughtily. "Being a harper's more than playing music. You -know- that. Wouldn't've walked the tables if you didn't. Boy..." she tsks, "you must've got burned bad."
The glass gets pushed back towards her. "I don't like the way it /smells/ Tam. Have a heart." And then his jaw tightens hard. "Yes I know that. I went on several diplomatic talks to the Reaches trying to help sort out the problems between that Weyr and Telgar. Believe me when I say that I am /no/ diplomat. There's also more than one kind of harper and shardit, I'm happy being the kind that I am." Her last sends his face blank and his lips press into a thin line. "Is that really, /any/ of your business?"
"Uh huh. It is. -Drink.-" The glass is again nudged towards Giremi. "You're spending more time whining than you did swallowing the other two. You don't like it, we'll do something else next round. And then fess up. Who burned you?"
The drink remains on the bar. "I'm not drinking that," Giremi says, jaw twitching again and his eyes look like they might bug out of his head. His fingers are drumming faster on the countertop and he swallows hard a couple of times. "You want a list of names, Tam? Is that it?"
"Suit yourself," the failed apprentice replies with a little shrug. She makes no move to pour any other drink, however. "I want your story," she says. "I want you to look like something other than miserable."
Giremi stares at Tam for a little while then clears his throat and asks very calmly and very quietly: "Did Paddy put you up to this? Is that why he's late? Because why would a kid I've barely seen for ... how many turns is it now? Four? Five? Whey would you care about any of this?"
"I put Paddy up to it, actually," Tam says, still grinning and as relaxed as Giremi is tense. "Still remember breaking your head a little that time you had to look after me. Figure, if I can fix it again now, maybe we can call in square. Anyhow, I like listening to people talk. So? Talk."
Giremi's jaw goes slack and he blinks at the diminutive barkeep for a blank moment or two. "You did. I -- " he stares some more. Then he sighs and his head bows, chin burrowing into his hands. "You really want to know all this? All of my shameful confessions of the past few turns?"
"I dunno," the diminutive bartender says softly, ducking her head down to get a better look at Giremi. The bartender's lowered head is just at the right ruffling height. So, of course, she ruffles it. "If you think it might help, then yeah."
"I don't know. It seems like I've hashed it out too much even." Quietly thoughtful, Giremi goes on. "It only hurts to think about it all too much." His head drops now leaving neither of them look at the other. Remi moves his hand after a moment though and runs it through his own hair.
"Maybe you're hashing out the wrong bits," Tam suggests, "if it all keeps happening."
Quiet reigns except for the clink of other glasses, the murmur of other conversations. Finally Giremi nods. "All right. Fine." He takes a deep breath and lets it out. "There was this girl ... " and he goes on to tell the tale of Tiriana. Tiriana who at thirteen-going-on-fourteen tried to get his twenty-year old self to kiss her, who derided him more than she ever praised him, but who rolled into the sack with him, each the first for the other. "And for a while there, things were good. Except I knew she didn't love me ... but I took it anyway, just to be with her." And then he dives on into trying to go back to friends and not lovers and then the trip to the Reaches, the diplomatic mission gone wrong and ultimately how much she hates him now. "And all because I kept foolishly trying to get her to grow up." Next he goes back a little to explain about Haisen and how it never went anywhere and then he brings it around to his most recent troubles and the girl he once again, loves, unrequited.
As the redheaded harper talks, Tam listens. Sometimes she wipes down the bar or slides down drinks, but mostly her eyes are on Giremi, and mostly she's sympathetic. There are moments where the girl snickers, a couple where she winces, but the responses are reined in. Mostly. At the end of it, she puffs out a small sigh. "Okay. Can I ask you something?"
Giremi holds his hand out palm upward at the end of all that in answer to her question. "Why not. I've just laid my entire dismal, embarrassing, romantic history out on the bar for your perusal. Why not another question?"
Settling her cheek in her palm, Tam appears rather unapologetic about the asking. "Who are you?" is the question, plunked down as lazily as an unwanted cocktail.
The question rocks Giremi's head back on his neck and he stares at the girl again. "Are you sure you're only ... however many turns it is you've got now?" he expostulates and then puts his elbows back down on the bar and his head in his hands. "I'm me. I'm a harper. I'm ... I'm a brother and ... and a son I -- " he sighs softly and his shoulders hunch. "I'm a fool."
"Near on seventeen, now," the girl announces with a proud tilt of her chin. All grown up. If only by her own standards. "Yeah," she murmurs, "that's what I thought. I think you keep falling on your face with girls cuz you don't know what you want, except that you want someone to show you."
"Sixteen ..." he trails off and then Giremi smiles a little at that proud chin-tilt. Then he blinks at her and his shoulders slump further, face all sad. "Yes, well I suppose there's something to be said for that with Haisen and Tiriana." At least he has the grace to be thoughtful about what she says. "THey're not like me, either one of them. They tackle life full on. I wanted to be like that once." His eyes stay fixed on the bar and his fingers thread restlessly through each other. "It was different with Vrys. We have a lot in common. I just liked spending time with her."
"Mmm," is Tam's disgruntled noise as her mighty 'almost seventeen' is reduced by a turn to a lowly 'sixteen'. "How do you know you love her?"
"Because my heart jumps out of my chest when she smiles at me. Because ... doing things for her makes me happy. Because being around her makes me feel like ... like I'm worth something." Giremi's eyes remain fixed on his own hands, the patterns his fingers are making as they slide restlessly past each other.
"Aww, Remi," the bartender sighs. "That's too much weight for any lover to carry. Anyhow, you gotta find what you're worth on your own. If you don't know, people look straight through you."
Giremi's cheeks pinken at her words and he looks back up at the pale, sunburnt girl. "She doesn't," he says softly. "She looks at me."
There's a small tilt of Tam's head and then a bit of a nod. "Seems like a start, then. Here's what I think you should do. Every day, you gotta do one thing, just one, you've never in your life done before. Doesn't have to be big, but it has to be new. Think you can?"
"Every /day/? That's ... that's a lot," Giremi looks overwhelmed and he clears his throat again. "She's teaching me to knit ... "
"Doesn't have to be big," Tam repeats. "Put your shoes on, wrong foot first, I don't care. Just one thing. You do lots of things everyday. We all do. C'mon, Harper, you got smarts. Put 'em to use, bet you can pull it off."
Giremi recoils at the very idea. "What? I'm not doing things wrong on purpose." He stares at the girl, flummoxed. "I'm learning to knit. That'll have to do." And apparently the harper can be stubborn too because there's an invisible sense of a line being drawn.
"You ever knit before today?" Tam asks, one brow lifting.
"No. I'm still learning how to cast on," says Giremi a little primly. "There's lots of parts to learn."
"It still don't count, and you're being contrary on purpose. One thing new. Every day. I meant it, tall stuff. You come in here wanting to swallow whiskey by the bucket, full of aches because you don't know what you're made of, you can't seem to find it, and the girl that might maybe help, she's not quite up for the chase?" Shaking her head, Tam purses her lips in a manner that's at odds with her young age. "One thing new. Every day. Only way to find yourself it to start looking."
Giremi sighs and shakes his head. "I can't do wrong things. I'll try to think of other things, but I can't do wrong things." And from the way beads of sweat are popping out on his forehead, she might grasp maybe how impossible that is for him. "Mistakes okay, but not on purpose and those you have to fix, practice 'til it's perfect." His hands they're doing that rubbing thing again. "But I'll try," he promises and then pushes off the stool. "Where the hell is P'draig ..." he looks out towards the darkening beach and he mutters something about his brother and screwing greenriders and catches sight of a rider with a Telgar knot. "I think I should get back and that fellow over there might be willing to take me."
"Wrong's open to interpretation. I'm not saying you gotta hurt anybody. But, nothing wrong with sand to plenty of folks. Nothing wrong with putting shoes one left foot first instead of right foot. Too many boxes. You got nowhere to go, you block so much off. One thing new." That drink is nudged towards him a final time. "Try. And visit again, okay? I'll be nicer next time. Probably."
It's too much and Giremi's eyes go vague and his hands start to shake. "Maybe," answers the harper, looking like he's having trouble breathing as he stands and moves away. And oh lucky him, he doesn't have to try to awkwardly convince that other rider to take him back to Telgar because a very /mussed/ and satisfied-looking P'draig has deigned to come down to rescue his brother, though he looks past Remi, perplexed for the tall harper's panicked looking state.
Briefly, Tam reaches out to curl her fingers around one of those trembling hands, offering it a squeeze. "I broke him," she informs the arrived brownrider. "But he's tougher than he thinks. Better get 'im home, though. Or somewhere without so much sand, at any rate."
Giremi startles a little at that squeeze but after a moment, he squeezes back, but pulls away, practically stumbling over to his brother. "Take me home, please Paddy." And there's enough little boy in his voice to knock both men back to P'draig being the taller one, long before Remi shot up and topped his brother by a mile. "Riiight ..." the brownrider says a little wide eyed and gently claps the tall harper on the shoulder. "Jekzith's coming, c'mon Remi." And he looks back over at Tam with a little shake of his head. "I'm coming back later, missy." A wag of his finger and both brothers step out across the beach towards incoming Jekzith.
It's Tam's turn to drum her fingers on the bar, though she watches the two siblings depart. When they're gone, she puffs out a small sigh, shakes her head, and drifts back out to check on the tables.
When:
Where:
What:
The Sandbar -- Ista Weyr
This dockside tavern stretches over the water, accessible from beach, docks or harbour itself. The light sound of slapping waves can be heard beneath the floorboards, and there are no walls, allowing tropical breezes to waft through and indulging patrons in panoramic ocean views. The carved wooden bar takes up the north endhttp://www.livejournal.com/update.bml
Post an Entry of the room, covered with a wood and reed roof that protects it from impromptu showers. The rest of the booths rest along the outside of the floor, all situated to be oceanside and set with brightly coloured cushions. The thatched wood roof continues along those booths leaving the center of the area open-air, though a metal canopy rests along the outside of one wall, ready to be drawn atop for rain or Threadfall. Further to the north and south the beach continues on for kilometers, black sand tinged a ruddy red with the blazing light of a fading sunset. Waves wash upon the beach with a steady roar, sending spray flying into the air at the furthest end of the beach to the south where a collection of rocks litter the shoreline.
Most of the time, the occupants of the Sandbar look like they belong. Today, one of the customers looks /painfully/ out of his element. One tall, very tall, redheaded harper, dressed 'down' for the occasion in shorts and short-sleeved shirt, though the shirt is buttoned all the way up to his adam's apple and he has socks on under his sandals. He's standing at the bar, looking down at the countertop like it's going to bite him and holding a handkerchief in one hand. "Flame it P'draig ... why do you always have to pick such /unsanitary/ places to meet up," he mutters with obvious discontent.
There is a small pale figure bobbing behind the bar and between the patrons. Her back and shoulders are red, as are her cheeks, but she seems unbothered as she flits amid customers. Slipping behind the bar, she's rinsing out glasses as the tall redhead mutters something crankily. "Unsanitary?" she scoffs, "Got more alcohol back here than you can shake a stick at. What could be cleaner? Brownrider leave you high and dry, tall stuff?"
"Yes. It's sticky," Giremi points out stuffily and points to a tiny spot on the bar's surface. "It's making my skin twitch." THen his nostrils pinch together a little at the remarks she tosses his way. "Perhaps using some of that alcohol /on/ the bar might help?" And he looks over at her pleadingly, clearly not planning to sit until the tiny speck is dealt with. "Tall stuff?" He blinks at her for a moment for the moniker and sighs. "Perhaps I'd best just head back to Telgar and P'draig can make up the fact that he owes me drinks another time. I did not come down here to be made fun of." Then he blinks at Tam for a moment or two. "As you should know. Tam." And he blinks at the girl some more. "What in Faranth's name are you doing here?"
There is a small snort for the speck of sticky. "I think, your skin is twitching, that it needs to relax." But a hand swipes out with a damp cloth to tidy up the dribble. The waitress smiles brightly as she's named, dimple flashing in her cheek. "Hullo, Giremi. Still hiding in the archives out wherever they posted you?"
Almost immediately some tension starts to bleed out of the harper as she cleans up and he finally sits down on a stool. Of course his hanky comes out to wipe up after that cloth and then he manages to smile back at her. "Yes actually," he replies quite seriously. "And that would be Telgar Weyr. But you didn't tell me what you're doing here and I asked first. Why in Faranth's name are you tending /bar/ at Ista Weyr?" And then he blinks. "Shells. P'draig said I'd be interested in the new barkeep here and I couldn't fathom why but ... now I understand." He smoothes down his shirt a little and fixes the pale-haired girl with a long look. "You've grown and you have a bad sunburn," he finally assesses. "Otherwise you'd look quite lovely and grown up."
"Well, obviously, I'm tending bar," Tam replies with a wink, fetching down a glass and filling it with ice. "Owe you a drink. What'll you have?" As for the why, she shrugs. "Eh, you know me. Always up to something. Folks decided they wanted me to be up to it somewhere else, so here I am. Sunburn'll get better in time, I figure. It's a good place. Suits me. For now."
"So .. you're not an apprentice anymore?" This seems to startle Giremi and his brows draw down in a deep frown. "Whiskey," he notes absently for the glass in her hand. "No ice. Keep it strong." Because apparently we have become a hard drinker in our time away from the Hall. "Yes, well if it doesn't peel all your skin off first. You should wear a hat and ... more clothes ..." he gestures vaguely at her outfit then looks around the bar. "The Sandbar? I suppose it isn't bad. The drinks are good. The food all right. It's just not entirely .... clean. Too much /sand/."
"Sand's clean," Tam argues lazily. The glass is replaced with a smaller one, though not so small that when she fills it halfway, that isn't a sizable amount of bourbon. "You should get out of the records room and worry less about getting dirty and what I'm wearin'." The drink is slid over and she rests her weight on her elbows for a moment.
"Sand, is the opposite of clean," insists Giremi sententiously. "What for?" he asks next and takes the glass, lifts it, has a nice sip, then slugs the rest and puts the glass back down again, sliding it across for a refill. "Not that what you're wearing doesn't look /nice/ but it's not protecting your skin."
"You worry to much about keeping safe, 'Remi. Always have. You get one more've these and then you have to change up." Tam fills his glass again and returns it to the harper. "Sand is not the opposite of clean. Soap-sand-. It just ain't... organized, and that's what drives you batty. Why what what? Come out of the archives? Because you smell musty."
The harper's fingers drum on the countertop and his jaw tightens a little. "I can't help the way I am. Things get under my skin. It's like having an itch you can't scratch." Giremi looks away suddenly, staring fixedly out at the water. "And no, it's not, it's not organized and there's /dirt/ in it, I swear." He turns back and takes the glass a little aggressively and tips it back. No precursor sip this time. "What's out here that's worth staying out for?" Bitter much? And he reaches into his pocket, fishes out a tidy marks purse, opens in and takes out a halfer. "Keep the whiskey coming. I'm paying customer."
"Nope," is Tam's easy reply. She takes his glass, replacing it with a clean one of comparable size. What she pours into it is the brown of whiskey but smells slightly different. Moreso when a dollop of something clear and minty is added atop it. This is slid back to Giremi. "Fuss, fuss, fuss. It's the world, Remi. Ain't got nothing to prove to you. What use is a harper that never looks past the ink at his fingertips, huh?"
Giremi stares at the drink. "What did you just put in my whiskey?" Blue eyes lift up to the girl, unblinking. "I like having ink on my fingers. It's honest work. And it washes off easily." Fuss fuss indeed. "I do my work, including playing for the masses. I've no desire to spend much more time than that with people these days." And he pushes the glass back towards her. "/Plain/ whiskey."
Tam pushes the drink back. "It's not whiskey, and I'm not serving you anything else til you drink it," she replies haughtily. "Being a harper's more than playing music. You -know- that. Wouldn't've walked the tables if you didn't. Boy..." she tsks, "you must've got burned bad."
The glass gets pushed back towards her. "I don't like the way it /smells/ Tam. Have a heart." And then his jaw tightens hard. "Yes I know that. I went on several diplomatic talks to the Reaches trying to help sort out the problems between that Weyr and Telgar. Believe me when I say that I am /no/ diplomat. There's also more than one kind of harper and shardit, I'm happy being the kind that I am." Her last sends his face blank and his lips press into a thin line. "Is that really, /any/ of your business?"
"Uh huh. It is. -Drink.-" The glass is again nudged towards Giremi. "You're spending more time whining than you did swallowing the other two. You don't like it, we'll do something else next round. And then fess up. Who burned you?"
The drink remains on the bar. "I'm not drinking that," Giremi says, jaw twitching again and his eyes look like they might bug out of his head. His fingers are drumming faster on the countertop and he swallows hard a couple of times. "You want a list of names, Tam? Is that it?"
"Suit yourself," the failed apprentice replies with a little shrug. She makes no move to pour any other drink, however. "I want your story," she says. "I want you to look like something other than miserable."
Giremi stares at Tam for a little while then clears his throat and asks very calmly and very quietly: "Did Paddy put you up to this? Is that why he's late? Because why would a kid I've barely seen for ... how many turns is it now? Four? Five? Whey would you care about any of this?"
"I put Paddy up to it, actually," Tam says, still grinning and as relaxed as Giremi is tense. "Still remember breaking your head a little that time you had to look after me. Figure, if I can fix it again now, maybe we can call in square. Anyhow, I like listening to people talk. So? Talk."
Giremi's jaw goes slack and he blinks at the diminutive barkeep for a blank moment or two. "You did. I -- " he stares some more. Then he sighs and his head bows, chin burrowing into his hands. "You really want to know all this? All of my shameful confessions of the past few turns?"
"I dunno," the diminutive bartender says softly, ducking her head down to get a better look at Giremi. The bartender's lowered head is just at the right ruffling height. So, of course, she ruffles it. "If you think it might help, then yeah."
"I don't know. It seems like I've hashed it out too much even." Quietly thoughtful, Giremi goes on. "It only hurts to think about it all too much." His head drops now leaving neither of them look at the other. Remi moves his hand after a moment though and runs it through his own hair.
"Maybe you're hashing out the wrong bits," Tam suggests, "if it all keeps happening."
Quiet reigns except for the clink of other glasses, the murmur of other conversations. Finally Giremi nods. "All right. Fine." He takes a deep breath and lets it out. "There was this girl ... " and he goes on to tell the tale of Tiriana. Tiriana who at thirteen-going-on-fourteen tried to get his twenty-year old self to kiss her, who derided him more than she ever praised him, but who rolled into the sack with him, each the first for the other. "And for a while there, things were good. Except I knew she didn't love me ... but I took it anyway, just to be with her." And then he dives on into trying to go back to friends and not lovers and then the trip to the Reaches, the diplomatic mission gone wrong and ultimately how much she hates him now. "And all because I kept foolishly trying to get her to grow up." Next he goes back a little to explain about Haisen and how it never went anywhere and then he brings it around to his most recent troubles and the girl he once again, loves, unrequited.
As the redheaded harper talks, Tam listens. Sometimes she wipes down the bar or slides down drinks, but mostly her eyes are on Giremi, and mostly she's sympathetic. There are moments where the girl snickers, a couple where she winces, but the responses are reined in. Mostly. At the end of it, she puffs out a small sigh. "Okay. Can I ask you something?"
Giremi holds his hand out palm upward at the end of all that in answer to her question. "Why not. I've just laid my entire dismal, embarrassing, romantic history out on the bar for your perusal. Why not another question?"
Settling her cheek in her palm, Tam appears rather unapologetic about the asking. "Who are you?" is the question, plunked down as lazily as an unwanted cocktail.
The question rocks Giremi's head back on his neck and he stares at the girl again. "Are you sure you're only ... however many turns it is you've got now?" he expostulates and then puts his elbows back down on the bar and his head in his hands. "I'm me. I'm a harper. I'm ... I'm a brother and ... and a son I -- " he sighs softly and his shoulders hunch. "I'm a fool."
"Near on seventeen, now," the girl announces with a proud tilt of her chin. All grown up. If only by her own standards. "Yeah," she murmurs, "that's what I thought. I think you keep falling on your face with girls cuz you don't know what you want, except that you want someone to show you."
"Sixteen ..." he trails off and then Giremi smiles a little at that proud chin-tilt. Then he blinks at her and his shoulders slump further, face all sad. "Yes, well I suppose there's something to be said for that with Haisen and Tiriana." At least he has the grace to be thoughtful about what she says. "THey're not like me, either one of them. They tackle life full on. I wanted to be like that once." His eyes stay fixed on the bar and his fingers thread restlessly through each other. "It was different with Vrys. We have a lot in common. I just liked spending time with her."
"Mmm," is Tam's disgruntled noise as her mighty 'almost seventeen' is reduced by a turn to a lowly 'sixteen'. "How do you know you love her?"
"Because my heart jumps out of my chest when she smiles at me. Because ... doing things for her makes me happy. Because being around her makes me feel like ... like I'm worth something." Giremi's eyes remain fixed on his own hands, the patterns his fingers are making as they slide restlessly past each other.
"Aww, Remi," the bartender sighs. "That's too much weight for any lover to carry. Anyhow, you gotta find what you're worth on your own. If you don't know, people look straight through you."
Giremi's cheeks pinken at her words and he looks back up at the pale, sunburnt girl. "She doesn't," he says softly. "She looks at me."
There's a small tilt of Tam's head and then a bit of a nod. "Seems like a start, then. Here's what I think you should do. Every day, you gotta do one thing, just one, you've never in your life done before. Doesn't have to be big, but it has to be new. Think you can?"
"Every /day/? That's ... that's a lot," Giremi looks overwhelmed and he clears his throat again. "She's teaching me to knit ... "
"Doesn't have to be big," Tam repeats. "Put your shoes on, wrong foot first, I don't care. Just one thing. You do lots of things everyday. We all do. C'mon, Harper, you got smarts. Put 'em to use, bet you can pull it off."
Giremi recoils at the very idea. "What? I'm not doing things wrong on purpose." He stares at the girl, flummoxed. "I'm learning to knit. That'll have to do." And apparently the harper can be stubborn too because there's an invisible sense of a line being drawn.
"You ever knit before today?" Tam asks, one brow lifting.
"No. I'm still learning how to cast on," says Giremi a little primly. "There's lots of parts to learn."
"It still don't count, and you're being contrary on purpose. One thing new. Every day. I meant it, tall stuff. You come in here wanting to swallow whiskey by the bucket, full of aches because you don't know what you're made of, you can't seem to find it, and the girl that might maybe help, she's not quite up for the chase?" Shaking her head, Tam purses her lips in a manner that's at odds with her young age. "One thing new. Every day. Only way to find yourself it to start looking."
Giremi sighs and shakes his head. "I can't do wrong things. I'll try to think of other things, but I can't do wrong things." And from the way beads of sweat are popping out on his forehead, she might grasp maybe how impossible that is for him. "Mistakes okay, but not on purpose and those you have to fix, practice 'til it's perfect." His hands they're doing that rubbing thing again. "But I'll try," he promises and then pushes off the stool. "Where the hell is P'draig ..." he looks out towards the darkening beach and he mutters something about his brother and screwing greenriders and catches sight of a rider with a Telgar knot. "I think I should get back and that fellow over there might be willing to take me."
"Wrong's open to interpretation. I'm not saying you gotta hurt anybody. But, nothing wrong with sand to plenty of folks. Nothing wrong with putting shoes one left foot first instead of right foot. Too many boxes. You got nowhere to go, you block so much off. One thing new." That drink is nudged towards him a final time. "Try. And visit again, okay? I'll be nicer next time. Probably."
It's too much and Giremi's eyes go vague and his hands start to shake. "Maybe," answers the harper, looking like he's having trouble breathing as he stands and moves away. And oh lucky him, he doesn't have to try to awkwardly convince that other rider to take him back to Telgar because a very /mussed/ and satisfied-looking P'draig has deigned to come down to rescue his brother, though he looks past Remi, perplexed for the tall harper's panicked looking state.
Briefly, Tam reaches out to curl her fingers around one of those trembling hands, offering it a squeeze. "I broke him," she informs the arrived brownrider. "But he's tougher than he thinks. Better get 'im home, though. Or somewhere without so much sand, at any rate."
Giremi startles a little at that squeeze but after a moment, he squeezes back, but pulls away, practically stumbling over to his brother. "Take me home, please Paddy." And there's enough little boy in his voice to knock both men back to P'draig being the taller one, long before Remi shot up and topped his brother by a mile. "Riiight ..." the brownrider says a little wide eyed and gently claps the tall harper on the shoulder. "Jekzith's coming, c'mon Remi." And he looks back over at Tam with a little shake of his head. "I'm coming back later, missy." A wag of his finger and both brothers step out across the beach towards incoming Jekzith.
It's Tam's turn to drum her fingers on the bar, though she watches the two siblings depart. When they're gone, she puffs out a small sigh, shakes her head, and drifts back out to check on the tables.