Before the decennial
Turn 3, Day 2, Month 12: Jarvais has today returned to High Reaches Weyr and to Caucus. He has two orders of business to carry out immediately, and elects to attend to this one first: finding Auree (in the craft hall) to ask a proper question in a proper fashion.
After arriving in the afternoon, Jarvais has had a little time to put himself to rights: to reclaim the cot and press in the Caucus barracks, to check in with the Counselor, to check in also with the Headwoman. The purpose of that last visit may be, in another couple hours' time, a matter of some discussion among Caucus students, whose needs are usually tended to well enough by Dendani. For now, though, Jarvais has been permitted to take a little dinner in peace and with the last tidbit of it - a slice of pie - wind a casual route up to the Weyr's craft hall, eating along the way.
It's quiet up in the hall tonight; a few folk work on projects for the upcoming celebration, but the preparations that remain to be made for tomorrow's reception are mostly underway elsewhere, and the young lord Greenfields has quiet in plenty to walk among the workspaces and observe, chewing rhubarb.
Seated at one of the desks, a girl sent to Caucus from the Smithhall is working diligently. It is not entirely possible for Auree to be inconspicuous; the color of her hair often gives her away. She, like the others, is putting final touches on something that will be displayed during the celebration. It's a mosaic of the weyr bowl as seen from above, though the small pieces of colored glass she is using are pushed into a sort of putty, rather than a more permanent medium. One hand nudges bits of glass, selecting what will come next. The other sets them into place. She does not notice the hour, let alone new arrivals with rhubarb pie.
Jarvais takes what could be called his sweet time coming around to her. He has this pie to eat, first of all; and he is interested in watching her work, secondly. So he strolls through the workspaces a couple aisles east of the redhead with the glass and putty, then comes back down the next row closer. Some sort of kindness must strike him at some point because, once the pie's gone, he bypasses Auree's aisle and goes on to the next one; this allows him to approach the front of her desk rather than the back of it. He puts his hands into his coat pockets, the picture of casual, and comes right up so that he can stand close and watch the work like a curious spectator at a gather.
The mosaic is, for now, set against a square of wood for backing, which seems counterintuitive when one is using translucent pieces of glass. She has long had the ability to do the same thing for extended periods of time without becoming bored, but as the final tiny piece is set into place, Auree lifts her head, mouth open to draw in a deep sigh. The sigh never happens. Seeing Jarvais standing there so casually, her parted lips move into a smile that is soft, warm, and familiar. "You've come back," she says, as if Jarvais might need to be informed of this.
If there is something counterintuitive in her work, it is something which - fascinated by the process rather than the outcome, for now - bothers Jarvais little. By the time she looks up he's wearing one of his trademarkable empty smiles, the pleasant little grins that tend to appear on his mouth when he's not tending it carefully enough. "I have," he admits, through that smile, then lifts his lashes so he can look upon the smith instead of upon her craft. Out comes one hand, palm up. "Perhaps you'd like to stretch? I've been snooping while I wait."
"It is not very good snooping," Auree replies as she places her pale hand in his and uses the added support to pull herself up from her seat, "if you announce it. Where shall we stretch?" Her own hazel eyes traveling over the length and breadth of the heir to Greenfields. "You look well."
"There's not many people here to," begins Jarvais, using the hand not in service to the mosaicist to gesture widely at the craft hall, "overhear. - And I've already snooped on you." If he's being looked over, young Greenfields shows little awareness of it; she must know better by now than to take the ponderous and oddly-placed pauses in his speech as sign of any particular strain other than that of speaking at all. He repockets the gesturing hand and turns to face down the row he'd walked to approach Auree. "Travel agrees with me. And how have you - " Word choice; pause. "- fared?"
The smith is familiar enough with Jarvais' unique speech patterns that his pauses give her none of her own. She looks down at her finished piece before turing to face the same aisle that has Greenfields' interest. If he begins to walk, she will follow. "And what has your snooping discovered?" Her hand stays resting loosely in his. "I am well, thank you. A little lonesome for home."
Jarvais begins to walk, turning his arm so that from their lightly joined hands she might find it a simple thing to rest her elbow on his. "Just the interesting projects of the good crafters," he replies, a little more smoothly and therefore likely half-practiced. He turns his head toward her at a wry angle and flashes that loose grin. "I had heard you missed it," the grin breaks through again on the pause, "greatly. I brought you a couple things to try to ease that - good fortune they made it with me."
"Oho," Auree tips her chin down so she might better peek sideways at her companion while her elbow takes the quietly offered invitation to rest on his. "You /did/ get my letter. I was unsure." She glances, then, behind them. Perhaps she expects to find a string trailing these promised items. "Are they very small," she queries, seeing nothing but their shadows, "to hide in your pockets?"
Jarvais glances back also, cued by his companion, expression all innocence. Letter? "One of them is very small," he admits, facing forward again though his eyes stay on her for a moment longer, bright and teasing. "The other is on your bed, so you'll just have to wait and see it."
"On my bed," Auree repeats, a bit of delight sneaking into her soft-spoken words. "How forward." Now, she is only teasing, and that fact is emphasized by the way she leans to bump her shoulder against Jarvais' arm. "But you have the other? Right here?"
"Our quarters -are- rather less than private," observes Jarvais through a somewhat tighter grin, looking away; she has succeeded in embarrassing him, but not enough to put him off his stride. The bump of her shoulder becomes his opportunity, and he slips his arm against hers like to tuck her elbow into his, twining. "I might."
"Might you?" Auree's fingers turn to offer Jarvais' hand a small squeeze. "And what might I do, Jarvs? To win it from you?" She is laughing a little as she asks, hazel eyes drifting closer to green in the glowlight and her own merriment.
"Oh, that's too easy," says Jarvais on a laugh, turning his head back toward her. "You coddle me." There might have been more there; his nickname for her, perhaps, or more scolding, but his speech gives out and he lets the three words lie as spoken while he looks at her through a moment's comfortably tongue-tied silence. Slowly he changes from bright to grave, though pleasant still and fractionally smiling. "You might agree to accompany me to the ball," he suggests.
"You are easy to coddle," Auree replies. Or agrees, perhaps. "I am to agree to go with you? For an unknown present?" She turns to better observe Jarvais, rather than the path before them. "But how will you know, then, if I accept your offer to enjoy your company, or only in hopes of a trinket?"
"You are to agree to go with me," Jarvais replies, or perhaps agrees. He stops walking so he can turn toward her as she does toward him. "And as I can't imagine you'd be won by a - " This pause is not quite so long that one might not assume it was made by design rather than by fault of speech. "- trinket, I would assume you might not find my company objectionable. But - " He lifts the hand not holding hers in an airy gesture and affects an easy grin. "I do have the ungentlemanly advantage of knowing both you _and_ the gift."
The corners of her eyes crinkle as Auree's lips curve up into another smile. "Very ungentlemanly," she replies, her head lifting to better maintain eye contact. "All right. Though it shames me to encourage such behavior, I accept your offer. I'll accompany you to the ball."
"We _are_ in a weyr," murmurs Jarvais, his lashes lowering a little; perhaps by this he means to joke at an excuse for his ungentlemanliness. He'd look more coy if he weren't so easily grinning, flushed a little in the cheeks, obviously triumphant. And if he could speak; clearly - she would know the bemused look his face starts to get when words fail him entirely, no matter how his mind might form them - he cannot. So instead he puts his free hand into his coat pocket, a little showmanship in the turn of his wrist, attention-calling, and waits.
She knows better than to laugh when Jarvais has been so stalled by his own language. She only smiles, watching him with her own pale features unaffected by a blush. Her smaller hand lifts, palm facing up. Expectant. She has earned this gift, after all.
So she has. Jarvais glances down at her palm; his grin twists a little. He squeezes gently the hand he has held lightly in his, then lets go so he can lift that hand to become a cradle beneath the one held out. This way the thing he takes out of his pocket - she might catch a flash of wood, a box, between his knuckles - can be placed into her palm and encased there in his hands around hers. He looks up at her, grave again, and squeezes another time, then pulls his own hands away.
With so solemn an offering as that, Auree is slow to lower her hands down, and slower yet to open the little wooden box. It it studied first, turned, flipped gently. Her thumb rubs over the edges and the top, before fingers finally nudge it open to see what it holds within.
It is a little thing, really, this offering atop a little wrinkled velvet cushion. Lovely they may be, they are the kinds of stones Auree might most appreciate: Broad, glossy pale opals and littler beads of pale ocean amazonite, strung in an alternating pattern with darker sea-green crystals on a simple silver chain. An understated pendant of the same design hangs from the center. A token, a trinket as she called it, but a nice one, and with a purpose: Jarvais looks upon the necklace, then up at the woman to whom he's giving it, and remarks, "I am taking a bit of a gamble on what you might wear to this thing."
There are several beats of silence where Auree studies this simple and elegant gift, once finger lightly tracing the curve of each stone and metal link. Down the pendant and up again, until she's touched each tiny component. "A wise woman would already have her gown underway," Auree agrees. She peers up at Jarvais. "You are lucky I procrastinate. Do you know what they mean? They are lovely. Thank you."
"I was told a couple of things about opal," Jarvais replies, reaching out so that he might touch just one of the stones so identified. Belatedly the meaning of her remark about the gown has him looking up, eyes a little wide; the expression of surprise accompanies the drawing back of his hand, but soon that expression gives away for a wry shake of his head and an easy grin. "You've been buried in your work, haven't you." This could almost qualify as a scold.
"No more than usual," comes Auree's answer. Her finger presses down lightly on the opal Jarvais touched. "Imagination," she tells him. "Dreams and creativity." She peers upwards, lips inching into a tiny smile. "Possibility." Her finger slides down, over the silver link, to rest on a bit of amazonite. "Confidence. Self-respect. Self-assuredness in..." another glance up, "communication." Her finger finds the green quartz. "Protection, healing, a kind heart."
Jarvais lets her begin and complete her instruction in the suggestions the stones convey before he speaks - though he replies enough without speaking, grinning back for her tiny smile on 'possibility' and lowering his head a little on 'communication.' "As much as usual," he murmurs after, putting his hand out for her elbow as if he might take her to walk again, "is, if I recall, plenty to keep you from thinking to have a dress made. I hope you didn't consider not going." His head comes back up and his eyes turn away, dignified; he has not directly confirmed their letters, and evidently will not.
"I know how to manage the tasks I have taken." The box is closed and curled into one hand so Auree's other arm might settle over his again. "I was going," she says. "But I was waiting for something, first."
"Of course," says Jarvais, adequately rebuffed, and teases her for her dedication to her work no more. He walks but slowly; the end of the aisle is not far, and the entryway to the hall not far beyond that, and that beckoning is one to which he does not answer just yet. He turns his eyes toward Auree instead, and gives in to asking, "For - ?"
Auree keeps her pacing with his, so her own, smaller steps are obliged to slow. "You, you silly man," she tells him with a roll for her eyes and a soft laugh. "I wish you had taken a dragon. It would have brought you back sooner."
Auree keeps her pacing with his, so her own, smaller steps are obliged to slow. "You, you silly man," she tells him with a roll of her eyes and a soft laugh. "I wish you had taken a dragon. It would have brought you back sooner."
The thrill of her answer - he expected it, but maybe did not expect it to be given so easily - gives way to sudden solemnity when she says 'dragon,' and Greenfields' heir turns toward its mosaicist and says, "No," after which he's tongue-tied and drops his gaze in apology for the abruptness. His hand seeks hers while he recovers, swallowing. "It's important, how it looks, that I'll travel the road. Besides - " The hard part done with, this time his pause troubles him less and she gets no apology for the moment spent in waiting. "I hardly know any." A flash of grin, to finish.
"I do not think," Auree's hand gives a return squeeze, "they need to know you, to carry you about," is the return tease. "I understand. You were safe, then? The trip?" She looks away, briefly, towards her desk where the mosaic sits. "May I show you something?"
"I'm as safe as I stand here beside you," assures Jarvais, in control of his expressions if not of his speech; the moment's shadow of retrospect, of cautious choices about what he says, does not pass over his eyes until Auree's looking away. It's gone when he looks the same direction, turning his gaze toward her work. "Of course, please," and so he turns to accompany her back to her desk.
"A unique way to put it," Auree murmurs as she moves towards her desk. The putty between each of the bits of glass is touched carefully. Wit a nod, Auree lifts the piece and nudges the wood beneath it. Not a back, but a stand to prop the translucent image upright, the mosaic is carefully set atop it properly. A second indentation is for the placement of a small oil candle. One of her belt pouches reveals a bit of flint and struck sparks light the wick. The smith takes hold of Jarvais' hand and leads him back a few paces to give him the full effect of the picture's backlighting. The glass has not be colored, but painted. Both the painting and the cut of each piece are done in such a way that when the light flickers in one direction, the bowl looks lush and green. When it shines from another angle, the image becomes the cool blues and whites of High Reaches in winter.
Jarvais leaves Auree her hands to work with and stands back while she does so; he willingly follows her lead when she draws him a pace more away so he can see how the piece changes by turns. He lets out a low whistle at the revelation of the light. "That's quite a trick," he breathes, shaking his head, unwilling to take his eyes off the glasswork lest it give up any more secrets he would miss by looking away. After a moment the suggestion of the cooler shades is apparent to him, for he finally steals a quick glance at the artist and asks, "Is it - really ever so green here?"
She smiles, nodding in quiet acceptance of his praise. "Thank you. The cutting and the painting took the most time. It is that green," her own gaze is willing to travel away from the glass bowl and over to Jarvais, "if you are looking down from up high."
"No doubt," says Jarvais quietly, of what took the most time, as if he were knowledgeable enough to agree - but then he jerks a look over at her, a longer one than the glance, and for all of his cautious charm it takes him a second to let out his easy little open smile. "I see," he replies, and lifts the back of his thumb to his mouth, looking away from her and back at the artwork as he does it, trimming an imaginary hangnail with agile teeth before putting his hand hastily away in his coat pocket. "I suppose I should let you finish your work."
"You think it looks unfinished?" Auree asks, her expression quizzical. "Oh dear," her attention turns back to the mosaic as she steps away from Jarvais to blow out the candle and set it aside. "I had though it was done. At this rate I shall never know what you set on my bed."
"I - " Something of a frown plays in the lordling's eyebrows, but he keeps it off of his mouth and out of his eyes. "Wouldn't know if you might have other projects." He holds out toward her his hand, smoothing his expression, lifting his chin a little, putting aside whatever it is he's obliged to put aside so he can smile and ask, "If you're going to the barracks, might I walk you?"
With a shake of her head, Auree expounds, "I have no other projects to work on just now." Her hand is again placed in his. "I should like the company. Thank you."
After arriving in the afternoon, Jarvais has had a little time to put himself to rights: to reclaim the cot and press in the Caucus barracks, to check in with the Counselor, to check in also with the Headwoman. The purpose of that last visit may be, in another couple hours' time, a matter of some discussion among Caucus students, whose needs are usually tended to well enough by Dendani. For now, though, Jarvais has been permitted to take a little dinner in peace and with the last tidbit of it - a slice of pie - wind a casual route up to the Weyr's craft hall, eating along the way.
It's quiet up in the hall tonight; a few folk work on projects for the upcoming celebration, but the preparations that remain to be made for tomorrow's reception are mostly underway elsewhere, and the young lord Greenfields has quiet in plenty to walk among the workspaces and observe, chewing rhubarb.
Seated at one of the desks, a girl sent to Caucus from the Smithhall is working diligently. It is not entirely possible for Auree to be inconspicuous; the color of her hair often gives her away. She, like the others, is putting final touches on something that will be displayed during the celebration. It's a mosaic of the weyr bowl as seen from above, though the small pieces of colored glass she is using are pushed into a sort of putty, rather than a more permanent medium. One hand nudges bits of glass, selecting what will come next. The other sets them into place. She does not notice the hour, let alone new arrivals with rhubarb pie.
Jarvais takes what could be called his sweet time coming around to her. He has this pie to eat, first of all; and he is interested in watching her work, secondly. So he strolls through the workspaces a couple aisles east of the redhead with the glass and putty, then comes back down the next row closer. Some sort of kindness must strike him at some point because, once the pie's gone, he bypasses Auree's aisle and goes on to the next one; this allows him to approach the front of her desk rather than the back of it. He puts his hands into his coat pockets, the picture of casual, and comes right up so that he can stand close and watch the work like a curious spectator at a gather.
The mosaic is, for now, set against a square of wood for backing, which seems counterintuitive when one is using translucent pieces of glass. She has long had the ability to do the same thing for extended periods of time without becoming bored, but as the final tiny piece is set into place, Auree lifts her head, mouth open to draw in a deep sigh. The sigh never happens. Seeing Jarvais standing there so casually, her parted lips move into a smile that is soft, warm, and familiar. "You've come back," she says, as if Jarvais might need to be informed of this.
If there is something counterintuitive in her work, it is something which - fascinated by the process rather than the outcome, for now - bothers Jarvais little. By the time she looks up he's wearing one of his trademarkable empty smiles, the pleasant little grins that tend to appear on his mouth when he's not tending it carefully enough. "I have," he admits, through that smile, then lifts his lashes so he can look upon the smith instead of upon her craft. Out comes one hand, palm up. "Perhaps you'd like to stretch? I've been snooping while I wait."
"It is not very good snooping," Auree replies as she places her pale hand in his and uses the added support to pull herself up from her seat, "if you announce it. Where shall we stretch?" Her own hazel eyes traveling over the length and breadth of the heir to Greenfields. "You look well."
"There's not many people here to," begins Jarvais, using the hand not in service to the mosaicist to gesture widely at the craft hall, "overhear. - And I've already snooped on you." If he's being looked over, young Greenfields shows little awareness of it; she must know better by now than to take the ponderous and oddly-placed pauses in his speech as sign of any particular strain other than that of speaking at all. He repockets the gesturing hand and turns to face down the row he'd walked to approach Auree. "Travel agrees with me. And how have you - " Word choice; pause. "- fared?"
The smith is familiar enough with Jarvais' unique speech patterns that his pauses give her none of her own. She looks down at her finished piece before turing to face the same aisle that has Greenfields' interest. If he begins to walk, she will follow. "And what has your snooping discovered?" Her hand stays resting loosely in his. "I am well, thank you. A little lonesome for home."
Jarvais begins to walk, turning his arm so that from their lightly joined hands she might find it a simple thing to rest her elbow on his. "Just the interesting projects of the good crafters," he replies, a little more smoothly and therefore likely half-practiced. He turns his head toward her at a wry angle and flashes that loose grin. "I had heard you missed it," the grin breaks through again on the pause, "greatly. I brought you a couple things to try to ease that - good fortune they made it with me."
"Oho," Auree tips her chin down so she might better peek sideways at her companion while her elbow takes the quietly offered invitation to rest on his. "You /did/ get my letter. I was unsure." She glances, then, behind them. Perhaps she expects to find a string trailing these promised items. "Are they very small," she queries, seeing nothing but their shadows, "to hide in your pockets?"
Jarvais glances back also, cued by his companion, expression all innocence. Letter? "One of them is very small," he admits, facing forward again though his eyes stay on her for a moment longer, bright and teasing. "The other is on your bed, so you'll just have to wait and see it."
"On my bed," Auree repeats, a bit of delight sneaking into her soft-spoken words. "How forward." Now, she is only teasing, and that fact is emphasized by the way she leans to bump her shoulder against Jarvais' arm. "But you have the other? Right here?"
"Our quarters -are- rather less than private," observes Jarvais through a somewhat tighter grin, looking away; she has succeeded in embarrassing him, but not enough to put him off his stride. The bump of her shoulder becomes his opportunity, and he slips his arm against hers like to tuck her elbow into his, twining. "I might."
"Might you?" Auree's fingers turn to offer Jarvais' hand a small squeeze. "And what might I do, Jarvs? To win it from you?" She is laughing a little as she asks, hazel eyes drifting closer to green in the glowlight and her own merriment.
"Oh, that's too easy," says Jarvais on a laugh, turning his head back toward her. "You coddle me." There might have been more there; his nickname for her, perhaps, or more scolding, but his speech gives out and he lets the three words lie as spoken while he looks at her through a moment's comfortably tongue-tied silence. Slowly he changes from bright to grave, though pleasant still and fractionally smiling. "You might agree to accompany me to the ball," he suggests.
"You are easy to coddle," Auree replies. Or agrees, perhaps. "I am to agree to go with you? For an unknown present?" She turns to better observe Jarvais, rather than the path before them. "But how will you know, then, if I accept your offer to enjoy your company, or only in hopes of a trinket?"
"You are to agree to go with me," Jarvais replies, or perhaps agrees. He stops walking so he can turn toward her as she does toward him. "And as I can't imagine you'd be won by a - " This pause is not quite so long that one might not assume it was made by design rather than by fault of speech. "- trinket, I would assume you might not find my company objectionable. But - " He lifts the hand not holding hers in an airy gesture and affects an easy grin. "I do have the ungentlemanly advantage of knowing both you _and_ the gift."
The corners of her eyes crinkle as Auree's lips curve up into another smile. "Very ungentlemanly," she replies, her head lifting to better maintain eye contact. "All right. Though it shames me to encourage such behavior, I accept your offer. I'll accompany you to the ball."
"We _are_ in a weyr," murmurs Jarvais, his lashes lowering a little; perhaps by this he means to joke at an excuse for his ungentlemanliness. He'd look more coy if he weren't so easily grinning, flushed a little in the cheeks, obviously triumphant. And if he could speak; clearly - she would know the bemused look his face starts to get when words fail him entirely, no matter how his mind might form them - he cannot. So instead he puts his free hand into his coat pocket, a little showmanship in the turn of his wrist, attention-calling, and waits.
She knows better than to laugh when Jarvais has been so stalled by his own language. She only smiles, watching him with her own pale features unaffected by a blush. Her smaller hand lifts, palm facing up. Expectant. She has earned this gift, after all.
So she has. Jarvais glances down at her palm; his grin twists a little. He squeezes gently the hand he has held lightly in his, then lets go so he can lift that hand to become a cradle beneath the one held out. This way the thing he takes out of his pocket - she might catch a flash of wood, a box, between his knuckles - can be placed into her palm and encased there in his hands around hers. He looks up at her, grave again, and squeezes another time, then pulls his own hands away.
With so solemn an offering as that, Auree is slow to lower her hands down, and slower yet to open the little wooden box. It it studied first, turned, flipped gently. Her thumb rubs over the edges and the top, before fingers finally nudge it open to see what it holds within.
It is a little thing, really, this offering atop a little wrinkled velvet cushion. Lovely they may be, they are the kinds of stones Auree might most appreciate: Broad, glossy pale opals and littler beads of pale ocean amazonite, strung in an alternating pattern with darker sea-green crystals on a simple silver chain. An understated pendant of the same design hangs from the center. A token, a trinket as she called it, but a nice one, and with a purpose: Jarvais looks upon the necklace, then up at the woman to whom he's giving it, and remarks, "I am taking a bit of a gamble on what you might wear to this thing."
There are several beats of silence where Auree studies this simple and elegant gift, once finger lightly tracing the curve of each stone and metal link. Down the pendant and up again, until she's touched each tiny component. "A wise woman would already have her gown underway," Auree agrees. She peers up at Jarvais. "You are lucky I procrastinate. Do you know what they mean? They are lovely. Thank you."
"I was told a couple of things about opal," Jarvais replies, reaching out so that he might touch just one of the stones so identified. Belatedly the meaning of her remark about the gown has him looking up, eyes a little wide; the expression of surprise accompanies the drawing back of his hand, but soon that expression gives away for a wry shake of his head and an easy grin. "You've been buried in your work, haven't you." This could almost qualify as a scold.
"No more than usual," comes Auree's answer. Her finger presses down lightly on the opal Jarvais touched. "Imagination," she tells him. "Dreams and creativity." She peers upwards, lips inching into a tiny smile. "Possibility." Her finger slides down, over the silver link, to rest on a bit of amazonite. "Confidence. Self-respect. Self-assuredness in..." another glance up, "communication." Her finger finds the green quartz. "Protection, healing, a kind heart."
Jarvais lets her begin and complete her instruction in the suggestions the stones convey before he speaks - though he replies enough without speaking, grinning back for her tiny smile on 'possibility' and lowering his head a little on 'communication.' "As much as usual," he murmurs after, putting his hand out for her elbow as if he might take her to walk again, "is, if I recall, plenty to keep you from thinking to have a dress made. I hope you didn't consider not going." His head comes back up and his eyes turn away, dignified; he has not directly confirmed their letters, and evidently will not.
"I know how to manage the tasks I have taken." The box is closed and curled into one hand so Auree's other arm might settle over his again. "I was going," she says. "But I was waiting for something, first."
"Of course," says Jarvais, adequately rebuffed, and teases her for her dedication to her work no more. He walks but slowly; the end of the aisle is not far, and the entryway to the hall not far beyond that, and that beckoning is one to which he does not answer just yet. He turns his eyes toward Auree instead, and gives in to asking, "For - ?"
Auree keeps her pacing with his, so her own, smaller steps are obliged to slow. "You, you silly man," she tells him with a roll for her eyes and a soft laugh. "I wish you had taken a dragon. It would have brought you back sooner."
Auree keeps her pacing with his, so her own, smaller steps are obliged to slow. "You, you silly man," she tells him with a roll of her eyes and a soft laugh. "I wish you had taken a dragon. It would have brought you back sooner."
The thrill of her answer - he expected it, but maybe did not expect it to be given so easily - gives way to sudden solemnity when she says 'dragon,' and Greenfields' heir turns toward its mosaicist and says, "No," after which he's tongue-tied and drops his gaze in apology for the abruptness. His hand seeks hers while he recovers, swallowing. "It's important, how it looks, that I'll travel the road. Besides - " The hard part done with, this time his pause troubles him less and she gets no apology for the moment spent in waiting. "I hardly know any." A flash of grin, to finish.
"I do not think," Auree's hand gives a return squeeze, "they need to know you, to carry you about," is the return tease. "I understand. You were safe, then? The trip?" She looks away, briefly, towards her desk where the mosaic sits. "May I show you something?"
"I'm as safe as I stand here beside you," assures Jarvais, in control of his expressions if not of his speech; the moment's shadow of retrospect, of cautious choices about what he says, does not pass over his eyes until Auree's looking away. It's gone when he looks the same direction, turning his gaze toward her work. "Of course, please," and so he turns to accompany her back to her desk.
"A unique way to put it," Auree murmurs as she moves towards her desk. The putty between each of the bits of glass is touched carefully. Wit a nod, Auree lifts the piece and nudges the wood beneath it. Not a back, but a stand to prop the translucent image upright, the mosaic is carefully set atop it properly. A second indentation is for the placement of a small oil candle. One of her belt pouches reveals a bit of flint and struck sparks light the wick. The smith takes hold of Jarvais' hand and leads him back a few paces to give him the full effect of the picture's backlighting. The glass has not be colored, but painted. Both the painting and the cut of each piece are done in such a way that when the light flickers in one direction, the bowl looks lush and green. When it shines from another angle, the image becomes the cool blues and whites of High Reaches in winter.
Jarvais leaves Auree her hands to work with and stands back while she does so; he willingly follows her lead when she draws him a pace more away so he can see how the piece changes by turns. He lets out a low whistle at the revelation of the light. "That's quite a trick," he breathes, shaking his head, unwilling to take his eyes off the glasswork lest it give up any more secrets he would miss by looking away. After a moment the suggestion of the cooler shades is apparent to him, for he finally steals a quick glance at the artist and asks, "Is it - really ever so green here?"
She smiles, nodding in quiet acceptance of his praise. "Thank you. The cutting and the painting took the most time. It is that green," her own gaze is willing to travel away from the glass bowl and over to Jarvais, "if you are looking down from up high."
"No doubt," says Jarvais quietly, of what took the most time, as if he were knowledgeable enough to agree - but then he jerks a look over at her, a longer one than the glance, and for all of his cautious charm it takes him a second to let out his easy little open smile. "I see," he replies, and lifts the back of his thumb to his mouth, looking away from her and back at the artwork as he does it, trimming an imaginary hangnail with agile teeth before putting his hand hastily away in his coat pocket. "I suppose I should let you finish your work."
"You think it looks unfinished?" Auree asks, her expression quizzical. "Oh dear," her attention turns back to the mosaic as she steps away from Jarvais to blow out the candle and set it aside. "I had though it was done. At this rate I shall never know what you set on my bed."
"I - " Something of a frown plays in the lordling's eyebrows, but he keeps it off of his mouth and out of his eyes. "Wouldn't know if you might have other projects." He holds out toward her his hand, smoothing his expression, lifting his chin a little, putting aside whatever it is he's obliged to put aside so he can smile and ask, "If you're going to the barracks, might I walk you?"
With a shake of her head, Auree expounds, "I have no other projects to work on just now." Her hand is again placed in his. "I should like the company. Thank you."