log [ priceless ]
Where: The Sandbar
Who: Fadra, V'lano
What: Fadra, after getting wind that someone else has been given her Wingleader's knot, hunts down V'lano in outrage. Too bad he always manages to talk her down.
Ista Weyr -- The Sandbar(#4182RJ)
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 end 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.
The wet fall season oppresses the island with high humidity and sweltering temperatures. As the sun sets, the sun shines from a clear, blue sky and a nice, light breeze carries the scent of sea air.
Obvious exits:
Beach Docks
V'lano's put in a hard sevenday's work creating dischord and rumor. He's earned a drink. Well, another in a long series of drinks. This one, like it's predecessors, is two-toned red and gold, the colors blending in a slow swirl as the bronzer tilts the glass to drink from it. With one elbow on the bar and his hip nudged against, but not seated upon, a barstool, the weyrleader looks like he's not planning to stay long, like he might just down everything from the glass in a mighty gulp and walk away. But he just sips, and sets down the glass, and leans a little deeper into his elbow so with head down he can consider the surface of the bar. Or, rather, a hide resting there, its corner just beneath his lazy fingertips, a roster of some kind.
Lemon-peppermint tea, to soothe the throat after a bout of outraged yelling and threats: 2 marks. Bribes to four different riders: 6 marks. Finding the rotten dog after a long evening hunting: Priceless. So is the situation for Fadra, who's mark pouch is decidedly lighter than it was that morning, when she woke weyrling free and even in a good enough mood to let Timor off the hook for drills - they'd be back tomorrow, she'd promised. Alas, she should have taken it, because word had reached her quickly that she'd missed her last chance, and her esteemed assistant weyrlingmaster had been passed her very own Wingleader knot. A rather helpful (and terrified) bluerider had mentioned seeing V'lano heading towards the Sandbar; the tip proved right, and so she wasted no time in barking as she stomped into the bar, "V'lano, y'rotten, two-faced, son-of-a...how /dare/ you?"
V'lano, rotten, two-faced son-of-a, sets down his drink on the roster, right in the middle. Condesnation sweats down the sides of the glass and runs ink on the hide, but the weyrleader has no affection for the words being ruined; he's busy looking up, greeting Timor's former wingleader's rage with a smile and arms spread wide. Hug? "Fadra. Weyrlingmaster. Come on over, pull up a stool, order a drink. - Hey, a whiskey and rocks for the lady, won't you?" The barkeep glances up, turns away - all too willing to be far from V'lano's immediate vicinity, all of a sudden. Royally pleasant, the bronzerider goes on, "Congratulations on a well-trained assistant, by the way?"
No. No hug. V'lano will be lucky if Fadra doesn't deck him right in the mouth for that gesture, her mouth drawing into a grim line as she covers the distance between them. Her hands have been balled into fists, as though she just might take the risk of knocking the Weyrleader's teeth down his throat. "I don't /want/ a stool. I want an explanation, and I want it fracking /fast/." Despite her protesting, she still hauls herself on the stool, slouching against the bar and looking bitter even when he orders for her. It's harder than she drinks now, but still she grabs it and drags it closer, huddling over the glass almost protectively while she bristles at his last comment. Her response is through gritted teeth: "You're pushin' it." Lowering her voice, the brownrider continues to murmur unkind and probably unbecoming insults of the Weyrleader, as though he's not beside her.
"Pushing it," says V'lano, rolling the words around in his mouth like he delights in their flavor, "is my specialty." He turns toward the bar, though, giving the brownrider his shoulder and jaw instead of his smirky mouth as most likely targets. Those, and his eyes, cornered tight and dancing their dark, bright dance. A little lower, he murmurs, "You know the wings are taking adjustments, Fadra. Don't you think you deserve a little rest time?" And those are all very fine words for him to say, or would be if he intoned them as the pleading explanation they should be. How he intones them instead is as a wry aside, almost a tease, one he follows by lifting his glass subtly in her direction in a gesture of a toast.
Fadra makes her first intelligent decision of the evening, since she stepped off the black sands into the bar, and doesn't let the first words that come to mind jump off her tongue. Instead, she stoppers her mouth with a large gulp of the whiskey, swishing it around in her mouth. Her eyes are dark as V'lano turns away from her, and she swallows to say (with a bit more calm), "I think that's /my/ decision t'make. Nay yours or Griere's or Noemie's. If'n I wanted rest, I'd rest."
"Oh, no. I think to some degree it's my decision. Or at least, I do have some say in it." V'lano's shoulders brace somewhat, making the most possible breadth out of his moderate build, but he tips back his head and raises his glass for a swallow of the gold-and-bloody mix, casual still. "I can pull you, after all, if I think you need time. And I can put you back in somewhere new, if I think there's someplace that needs your particular expertise. Which, Fadra, believe me." He turns his head a little toward her, head tipped. "I'm not trying to belittle."
Fadra makes a snorting sound to her glass, swirling the liquid and refusing to even look at V'lano at this point. She's still bristling, her body tense from it. "Could've fooled me," she grumps, making a very great effort to remain calm and keep her voice steady. Her hand is white-knuckled around her glass, and it's pure luck she doesn't have the strength to shatter the glass with her bare hands. "Y'could've had the sharding courtesy t'tell me y'were going t'give m'wing away." She reaches up to tug on the knot at her shoulder. "Y'gonna take this one too?"
"Perhaps." V'lano's reply is quiet and, this time, it holds the solemnity necessary for the topic of conversation. "You know how we try to manage Starblaze." He does not trouble to explain his simple answer with so much as a glance at the knot she now wears. Instead, he puts his glass down on the bar and sets it swirling in a little puddle of its own sweat inside the corral of his loose-curled hand. Watching the colors mix into a sunset orange, he speaks to the drink as much as to Fadra, companionable but no longer overtly, ridiculously friendly. "There's another one I want to give you."
Fadra notes his change in tone immediately, and her grip relaxes slightly on the glass, even if her eyes don't lift from the potent amber liquid. And, as usual when the brownrider flies off the handle in V'lano's presence, she's forced into a stunned and frustrated silence. After a moment of swallowing that down, she coughs slightly, inquiring dryly, "Again?"
"Yeah," replies the weyrleader, and that syllable is as dry and quirky as it is uncharacteristically unpolished. He unleans from the bar enough to put a hand down into his trouser pocket, but the check comes up empty and he puts both arms onto the bar now, leaning over his drink. "Didn't expect to see you quite this soon or I'd have it on me. You'll have to come for it. No hurry. Won't need it 'til after your rest days."
"You're assuming I'll take it," Fadra says, swallowing the rest of her drink and pushing the glass across the bar, declining with a shake of hand and head when the bartender gestures his inquiry for a refill. "Y'know what they say about assuming, don't you? 'Cept you'll be makin' an ass outta yourself, if y'ask me." Not that he did, and not that she particularly cares if he wants her opinion. "I nay e'en know what it's for."
"Tea," suggests V'lano to the barkeep, a mere aside; his focus, though slung sidelong from just the corners of his eyes, is firmly on the brownrider beside him. "I would have thought that I'd brayed my loudest already; that I could be no more an ass than I already am, in your eyes." Droll, the remark's not without some pleasure, as though he takes some small pride in having reached this achievement. He treasures it for a moment, then surrenders it to something more serious and again looks down into his glass, swirling it again to mix the colors. "You're right; I don't know that you'd take it. Especially with what it costs. I mean, you'd have to fly with me, for starters."
"Y'sound so smug. Ugh. How does Griere live with it?" Clearly, she doesn't really want an answer, because she adds, "Nay that it matters - I don't get a say in much, so I've been told." That said with a wrinkle of the nose, disdainful. "If'n it's any consolation," Fadra says, perhaps in an attempt to not insult him at every turn, "flyin' with you is probably better'n flyin' with the weyrlings all the sharding time. At least y'know /how/ t'fly, by now."
"At least I do," agrees V'lano, and there's no smugness in that - wryfulness, or rue, or a twinge of bitterness even, certainly. But he swallows them all down with a sudden swallow from his glass and, setting the drink back down on the bar with a soft glassy thud, recovers his satisfied demeanor and the twinkle in his eyes. "You don't get a say in how Griere lives with me," he assures her, "not, anyway, if you don't want the details. If you do," and here he makes great show of making eyes at the brownrider; shouldn't he know better? maybe he does; "say all you like. But I do try to let my second have some say in the rest. My balance, my rein. Too much support makes me soft. Well, M'yr'd agree, I'm sure."
Fadra makes a face at him, a long suffering half-scowl that doesn't become her well. His humoring echo of each of her statements seems to be the source of the expression, and with a sigh to complete the expression completely, she leans forward against the bar, resting her chin in her hands, watching the bartender's movements absently. "I nay want details," she establishes with a visible cringe. "I was just /sayin'/." It takes a few moments before his subtle rank- and name-dropping. "Your second? I can hardly suffer y'now, and we hardly e'er see each other. Pff." Though something about it all seems to strike her as interesting, and she can't help but chuckle a bit. "Soft. You? /Nay/." She seems to think about it again, her finger tracing along a knot in the wood, before deciding, "Aye, I suppose I can accept that. But you're still horrible for nay telling me before y'gave Noemie /my/ knot."
"You flatter me," V'lano points out, but with a grin that broaches no hesitation to accept, wanton, such flattery. He lowers his lashes and sidelongs another corner-eyed look, glittering, at the rider who wants no details. "I am horrible," he agrees, "but not without purpose. If I'd come to you while you still figured you had Timor waiting for you, what might you have said? Maybe you'd have considered it. I can't propose to know." But his brows arch high, too knowing themselves to agree wholly with his humility. He raises his glass then, a toast waiting on the bench while he finishes up his justifications. "But that's only because I don't know you that well. Yet." It's that last word that apparently is the toast - he tips up the glass, then tips down his chin in a little gesture to the tea the bartender sets down before Fadra now. It's simple stuff, plain, but this is a bar, not a teahouse. After a sip, the bronzerider asks, "How long do you want for rest, by the way?"
"P'raps y'could have simply asked; we'll nay know what I would've said. But what if I'd said nay now? Then what would y'have done?" She straightens now, turning to face him directly, her mouth not changing from that practiced, neutral line, and yet she takes a swallow of tea right on cue -- who is she to teach tact and diplomacy if she can't even execute it herself? Better late than never, really. After insulting someone, toasting with them and smiling vaguely is really the way to go. "I nay ne--" she stops the protest half-way, and almost grudgingly grants, "A sevenday, I guess."
V'lano has, clearly, an answer ready for Fadra's question - what he would have done - but he holds it on the tip of his tongue, and holds that tonguetip neat between his teeth until she takes tea and speaks again. What she says next gives him cause to close his mouth, raise his brows, and nod once in approval. "Make good of it," he murmurs, and then, "Tell you what. If you're content with the knot five turns from now, I'll tell you what I would have done. And if you're not content, well, we'll change things." His mouth twists a little, brows twitching, fire begging to light in his eyes. He turns, leaning one elbow into the bar, so he's facing the ex-wingleader from Timor; he crosses one foot over the other at the ankle, becoming the picture of the causal pick-up artist. "Although if it's so bad, really, you probably ought to tell me so before then. Keeping me in line, you know: part of the job."
Fadra shakes her head, her eyes rolling in a gesture she probably doesn't even realize she's doing. "We'll see, I suppose." Now Fadra's eyes light, with a mischief she rarely displays. The corner of her mouth twists into a satisfied smirk. "And I nay do a job halfway. I sure hope you've thought this through thoroughly - I've spent th'past two Turns /searching/ for errors." And the weyrlings will testify, no doubt, that she's damn good at it. Slipping off the stool, she leaves the remainder of the tea untouched. "Then I guess I'll see you in a sevenday."
"We will," he murmurs, softly, only to grin slowly, widely, as she warns him of her diligence and skill. V'lano's brows raise, but his eyes gleam, and he straightens from the bar as though to prove he does in fact have the capacity to exhibit proper posture. "I'm counting on it," he says, and deep and teasing as those words may be, there's a note of honest enthusiasm and another of gratitude in them, too. "In a sevenday." He clears up his hands by setting aside his drink and offers one out, like a gambler offering to shake on a deal.
Fadra eyes his hand for a few moments as though it might bite. Eventually, though, she has no choice but to yield to the fact that V'lano's hand has no teeth, and that the shake is more than likely cordial. She crosses palms with him (but there's no doubt it's brief), and pulls away once again, shoving both hands in her pockets and saying, "I expect t'be left alone for a sevenday, then. Fair warning, there." A sage nod accompanies the statement, since there seems to be no pending threat to what'll happen to anyone who does bother her. "I'll pick up m'knot then - nay a day before." And that's that, with her stepping away and making her way out of the Sandbar with much more poise than she entered with.
Who: Fadra, V'lano
What: Fadra, after getting wind that someone else has been given her Wingleader's knot, hunts down V'lano in outrage. Too bad he always manages to talk her down.
Ista Weyr -- The Sandbar(#4182RJ)
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 end 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.
The wet fall season oppresses the island with high humidity and sweltering temperatures. As the sun sets, the sun shines from a clear, blue sky and a nice, light breeze carries the scent of sea air.
Obvious exits:
Beach Docks
V'lano's put in a hard sevenday's work creating dischord and rumor. He's earned a drink. Well, another in a long series of drinks. This one, like it's predecessors, is two-toned red and gold, the colors blending in a slow swirl as the bronzer tilts the glass to drink from it. With one elbow on the bar and his hip nudged against, but not seated upon, a barstool, the weyrleader looks like he's not planning to stay long, like he might just down everything from the glass in a mighty gulp and walk away. But he just sips, and sets down the glass, and leans a little deeper into his elbow so with head down he can consider the surface of the bar. Or, rather, a hide resting there, its corner just beneath his lazy fingertips, a roster of some kind.
Lemon-peppermint tea, to soothe the throat after a bout of outraged yelling and threats: 2 marks. Bribes to four different riders: 6 marks. Finding the rotten dog after a long evening hunting: Priceless. So is the situation for Fadra, who's mark pouch is decidedly lighter than it was that morning, when she woke weyrling free and even in a good enough mood to let Timor off the hook for drills - they'd be back tomorrow, she'd promised. Alas, she should have taken it, because word had reached her quickly that she'd missed her last chance, and her esteemed assistant weyrlingmaster had been passed her very own Wingleader knot. A rather helpful (and terrified) bluerider had mentioned seeing V'lano heading towards the Sandbar; the tip proved right, and so she wasted no time in barking as she stomped into the bar, "V'lano, y'rotten, two-faced, son-of-a...how /dare/ you?"
V'lano, rotten, two-faced son-of-a, sets down his drink on the roster, right in the middle. Condesnation sweats down the sides of the glass and runs ink on the hide, but the weyrleader has no affection for the words being ruined; he's busy looking up, greeting Timor's former wingleader's rage with a smile and arms spread wide. Hug? "Fadra. Weyrlingmaster. Come on over, pull up a stool, order a drink. - Hey, a whiskey and rocks for the lady, won't you?" The barkeep glances up, turns away - all too willing to be far from V'lano's immediate vicinity, all of a sudden. Royally pleasant, the bronzerider goes on, "Congratulations on a well-trained assistant, by the way?"
No. No hug. V'lano will be lucky if Fadra doesn't deck him right in the mouth for that gesture, her mouth drawing into a grim line as she covers the distance between them. Her hands have been balled into fists, as though she just might take the risk of knocking the Weyrleader's teeth down his throat. "I don't /want/ a stool. I want an explanation, and I want it fracking /fast/." Despite her protesting, she still hauls herself on the stool, slouching against the bar and looking bitter even when he orders for her. It's harder than she drinks now, but still she grabs it and drags it closer, huddling over the glass almost protectively while she bristles at his last comment. Her response is through gritted teeth: "You're pushin' it." Lowering her voice, the brownrider continues to murmur unkind and probably unbecoming insults of the Weyrleader, as though he's not beside her.
"Pushing it," says V'lano, rolling the words around in his mouth like he delights in their flavor, "is my specialty." He turns toward the bar, though, giving the brownrider his shoulder and jaw instead of his smirky mouth as most likely targets. Those, and his eyes, cornered tight and dancing their dark, bright dance. A little lower, he murmurs, "You know the wings are taking adjustments, Fadra. Don't you think you deserve a little rest time?" And those are all very fine words for him to say, or would be if he intoned them as the pleading explanation they should be. How he intones them instead is as a wry aside, almost a tease, one he follows by lifting his glass subtly in her direction in a gesture of a toast.
Fadra makes her first intelligent decision of the evening, since she stepped off the black sands into the bar, and doesn't let the first words that come to mind jump off her tongue. Instead, she stoppers her mouth with a large gulp of the whiskey, swishing it around in her mouth. Her eyes are dark as V'lano turns away from her, and she swallows to say (with a bit more calm), "I think that's /my/ decision t'make. Nay yours or Griere's or Noemie's. If'n I wanted rest, I'd rest."
"Oh, no. I think to some degree it's my decision. Or at least, I do have some say in it." V'lano's shoulders brace somewhat, making the most possible breadth out of his moderate build, but he tips back his head and raises his glass for a swallow of the gold-and-bloody mix, casual still. "I can pull you, after all, if I think you need time. And I can put you back in somewhere new, if I think there's someplace that needs your particular expertise. Which, Fadra, believe me." He turns his head a little toward her, head tipped. "I'm not trying to belittle."
Fadra makes a snorting sound to her glass, swirling the liquid and refusing to even look at V'lano at this point. She's still bristling, her body tense from it. "Could've fooled me," she grumps, making a very great effort to remain calm and keep her voice steady. Her hand is white-knuckled around her glass, and it's pure luck she doesn't have the strength to shatter the glass with her bare hands. "Y'could've had the sharding courtesy t'tell me y'were going t'give m'wing away." She reaches up to tug on the knot at her shoulder. "Y'gonna take this one too?"
"Perhaps." V'lano's reply is quiet and, this time, it holds the solemnity necessary for the topic of conversation. "You know how we try to manage Starblaze." He does not trouble to explain his simple answer with so much as a glance at the knot she now wears. Instead, he puts his glass down on the bar and sets it swirling in a little puddle of its own sweat inside the corral of his loose-curled hand. Watching the colors mix into a sunset orange, he speaks to the drink as much as to Fadra, companionable but no longer overtly, ridiculously friendly. "There's another one I want to give you."
Fadra notes his change in tone immediately, and her grip relaxes slightly on the glass, even if her eyes don't lift from the potent amber liquid. And, as usual when the brownrider flies off the handle in V'lano's presence, she's forced into a stunned and frustrated silence. After a moment of swallowing that down, she coughs slightly, inquiring dryly, "Again?"
"Yeah," replies the weyrleader, and that syllable is as dry and quirky as it is uncharacteristically unpolished. He unleans from the bar enough to put a hand down into his trouser pocket, but the check comes up empty and he puts both arms onto the bar now, leaning over his drink. "Didn't expect to see you quite this soon or I'd have it on me. You'll have to come for it. No hurry. Won't need it 'til after your rest days."
"You're assuming I'll take it," Fadra says, swallowing the rest of her drink and pushing the glass across the bar, declining with a shake of hand and head when the bartender gestures his inquiry for a refill. "Y'know what they say about assuming, don't you? 'Cept you'll be makin' an ass outta yourself, if y'ask me." Not that he did, and not that she particularly cares if he wants her opinion. "I nay e'en know what it's for."
"Tea," suggests V'lano to the barkeep, a mere aside; his focus, though slung sidelong from just the corners of his eyes, is firmly on the brownrider beside him. "I would have thought that I'd brayed my loudest already; that I could be no more an ass than I already am, in your eyes." Droll, the remark's not without some pleasure, as though he takes some small pride in having reached this achievement. He treasures it for a moment, then surrenders it to something more serious and again looks down into his glass, swirling it again to mix the colors. "You're right; I don't know that you'd take it. Especially with what it costs. I mean, you'd have to fly with me, for starters."
"Y'sound so smug. Ugh. How does Griere live with it?" Clearly, she doesn't really want an answer, because she adds, "Nay that it matters - I don't get a say in much, so I've been told." That said with a wrinkle of the nose, disdainful. "If'n it's any consolation," Fadra says, perhaps in an attempt to not insult him at every turn, "flyin' with you is probably better'n flyin' with the weyrlings all the sharding time. At least y'know /how/ t'fly, by now."
"At least I do," agrees V'lano, and there's no smugness in that - wryfulness, or rue, or a twinge of bitterness even, certainly. But he swallows them all down with a sudden swallow from his glass and, setting the drink back down on the bar with a soft glassy thud, recovers his satisfied demeanor and the twinkle in his eyes. "You don't get a say in how Griere lives with me," he assures her, "not, anyway, if you don't want the details. If you do," and here he makes great show of making eyes at the brownrider; shouldn't he know better? maybe he does; "say all you like. But I do try to let my second have some say in the rest. My balance, my rein. Too much support makes me soft. Well, M'yr'd agree, I'm sure."
Fadra makes a face at him, a long suffering half-scowl that doesn't become her well. His humoring echo of each of her statements seems to be the source of the expression, and with a sigh to complete the expression completely, she leans forward against the bar, resting her chin in her hands, watching the bartender's movements absently. "I nay want details," she establishes with a visible cringe. "I was just /sayin'/." It takes a few moments before his subtle rank- and name-dropping. "Your second? I can hardly suffer y'now, and we hardly e'er see each other. Pff." Though something about it all seems to strike her as interesting, and she can't help but chuckle a bit. "Soft. You? /Nay/." She seems to think about it again, her finger tracing along a knot in the wood, before deciding, "Aye, I suppose I can accept that. But you're still horrible for nay telling me before y'gave Noemie /my/ knot."
"You flatter me," V'lano points out, but with a grin that broaches no hesitation to accept, wanton, such flattery. He lowers his lashes and sidelongs another corner-eyed look, glittering, at the rider who wants no details. "I am horrible," he agrees, "but not without purpose. If I'd come to you while you still figured you had Timor waiting for you, what might you have said? Maybe you'd have considered it. I can't propose to know." But his brows arch high, too knowing themselves to agree wholly with his humility. He raises his glass then, a toast waiting on the bench while he finishes up his justifications. "But that's only because I don't know you that well. Yet." It's that last word that apparently is the toast - he tips up the glass, then tips down his chin in a little gesture to the tea the bartender sets down before Fadra now. It's simple stuff, plain, but this is a bar, not a teahouse. After a sip, the bronzerider asks, "How long do you want for rest, by the way?"
"P'raps y'could have simply asked; we'll nay know what I would've said. But what if I'd said nay now? Then what would y'have done?" She straightens now, turning to face him directly, her mouth not changing from that practiced, neutral line, and yet she takes a swallow of tea right on cue -- who is she to teach tact and diplomacy if she can't even execute it herself? Better late than never, really. After insulting someone, toasting with them and smiling vaguely is really the way to go. "I nay ne--" she stops the protest half-way, and almost grudgingly grants, "A sevenday, I guess."
V'lano has, clearly, an answer ready for Fadra's question - what he would have done - but he holds it on the tip of his tongue, and holds that tonguetip neat between his teeth until she takes tea and speaks again. What she says next gives him cause to close his mouth, raise his brows, and nod once in approval. "Make good of it," he murmurs, and then, "Tell you what. If you're content with the knot five turns from now, I'll tell you what I would have done. And if you're not content, well, we'll change things." His mouth twists a little, brows twitching, fire begging to light in his eyes. He turns, leaning one elbow into the bar, so he's facing the ex-wingleader from Timor; he crosses one foot over the other at the ankle, becoming the picture of the causal pick-up artist. "Although if it's so bad, really, you probably ought to tell me so before then. Keeping me in line, you know: part of the job."
Fadra shakes her head, her eyes rolling in a gesture she probably doesn't even realize she's doing. "We'll see, I suppose." Now Fadra's eyes light, with a mischief she rarely displays. The corner of her mouth twists into a satisfied smirk. "And I nay do a job halfway. I sure hope you've thought this through thoroughly - I've spent th'past two Turns /searching/ for errors." And the weyrlings will testify, no doubt, that she's damn good at it. Slipping off the stool, she leaves the remainder of the tea untouched. "Then I guess I'll see you in a sevenday."
"We will," he murmurs, softly, only to grin slowly, widely, as she warns him of her diligence and skill. V'lano's brows raise, but his eyes gleam, and he straightens from the bar as though to prove he does in fact have the capacity to exhibit proper posture. "I'm counting on it," he says, and deep and teasing as those words may be, there's a note of honest enthusiasm and another of gratitude in them, too. "In a sevenday." He clears up his hands by setting aside his drink and offers one out, like a gambler offering to shake on a deal.
Fadra eyes his hand for a few moments as though it might bite. Eventually, though, she has no choice but to yield to the fact that V'lano's hand has no teeth, and that the shake is more than likely cordial. She crosses palms with him (but there's no doubt it's brief), and pulls away once again, shoving both hands in her pockets and saying, "I expect t'be left alone for a sevenday, then. Fair warning, there." A sage nod accompanies the statement, since there seems to be no pending threat to what'll happen to anyone who does bother her. "I'll pick up m'knot then - nay a day before." And that's that, with her stepping away and making her way out of the Sandbar with much more poise than she entered with.