Log: A Night Out
Summary: Skinner heard of something was going to happen at the tavern, so on the night June was being blackmailed, he takes Valenia to see a play at Ista Hold. They gossip about the other sisters.
Location: The Lucky Seven, Ista Weyr, then Ista Hold
Date: 9-13-09
Afternoon is wearing on, but it's not even late enough yet for the girls of the Lucky Seven to have begun eating their early dinners when Skinner arrives on the porch. "Yoohoo!" he calls out playfully, pushing open one of the double doors and hanging off the frame while he peers inside. Is anybody there?
There is, though they're not immediately visible. Petra is the closest to the front door, and she comes into view only after she pops her head out of a storeroom down the hallway behind the bar. "What do you want?" she asks, and though her tone is blunt as ever it's not at all hostile. Indeed, her thin lips shift into a fleeting approximation of a smile to greet him with. Livi's fluffed head peeks out behind her sister, and she gives him an "Oh, hey," before she slips back into the room again. Softly, Valenia's voice can be heard from somewhere back there, asking, "Who is it?"
Not at all put off by Petra's bluntness, Skinner answers her thin smile with a beaming one. "I'm looking for Val. Is she-" he pauses and tips his head, having just picked up on the faint voice from the back. With a wink for Petra, he lets himself inside the tavern, though he leaves the door open behind him. "Hey, Val, come out here."
Val, summoned, appears quickly in the space just occupied by Livi with a smile spread and waiting in a way that says she was warned it was Skinner. "Hi!" she bubbles as her eyes find him, her hands twisted in the apron she wears, white showing the dust she's taken on in that storeroom. "What're you doing here?"
Now that Val's appeared, Skinner has somewhere to go - right up next to her, to sling an arm around her shoulders. "Stealing you away. Can you take an evening off? I'm headed out to Ista to check out a play, and I need," he pokes her breastbone, "a second opinion. I've hitched us a ride with one of my merchants," he tempts further, in case she was worried about the walk.
Val's bright blue eyes grow round and excited at the prospect of such a cultured thing as a play, her excitement already showing in a shivery little fidget of her shoulders beneath his arm. "Really?" she demands, not even waiting on his answer for that rhetorical to repeat, "Really?" and then move on. "Petra," she pinpoints her sister in the darkened room, where she's just finished helping Livi to haul a heavy crate to the top of a stack. "Oh, Petra, please," she begs, leaving Skinner's side to assail her sister, "please, please, please, switch days with me. I really want to go." Petra pauses, hands on her hips to consider, then replies, "You'll do laundry the next seven?" Val is quick to come back with an eager, "Yes." "Alright." That was easy enough. Valenia bounces quite literally back to Skinner, throwing her arms around his neck with enough momentum to muck with his balance, laughing the whole way. Suddenly a thought occurs to her, though. She draws back a few inches to ask, very seriously, "Can I change?"
Knowing full well that it's a rhetorical question, Skinner nods at her anyway, his eyes sparkling with amusement at the sudden excitement his offer provokes. He's got a grin for Petra and Livi, poor suffering souls, that's interrupted when Val throws herself into him and does, indeed, muck with his balance. He puts his arms around her waist to catch her and stumbles back with her a few steps before he catches them both, and turns that momentum into the first steps of a dance. Looking down at Val when she draws back, he flashes her a sparkling smile. "Of course, doll." Releasing her, he steps back and gestures at himself, in what has become his usual well-picked clothes. "You have to keep up with me, after all."
Val's eye turns assessing when she glances down at the outfit he gestures to, a second of seriousness entering into her expression as she considers his level of dress. "I'll be right back," she announces then, flouncing off into the living quarters of the building, leaving Skinner with the other two sisters. Just now, they use Skinner as an excuse to take a break, Petra lifting her apron's edge all the way to her forehead to pat away the sweat. Livi beams at him as she heaves a caught breath. "Must be doing well, if you're taking joy rides off to the hold," Livi comments good naturedly, leaning against the crate they just lifted up. Away down the hall, Valenia can be heard to yell, "Chee Chee, I'm taking your earrings!"
Skinner hops back on a table to wait, meeting Livi with a broad smile. "Never joy rides with me, sweets, I'm all business." He glances towards the hall, pausing to listen to that yell, then chuckles. "I've been looking at things to entertain my merchants while they're down here. Not that I'd pay for it, but it's one more thing to tempt them with." He quirks an eyebrow at Livi, soliciting her opinion.
But it's Petra's opinion he'll get. "I would have thought profit would have been temptation enough," she comments, surfacing from herr swiping with a cleaner forehead and a mussed hairline for her efforts. "You having trouble getting them to come in?" Livi asks, then.
"Some," Skinner admits with a shrug. "The stalls are filling up, but I'm repeating myself a lot these days." He puts a finger over his lips after saying this, swearing them to secrecy on this point. "There's some interesting stuff out there, but I can't bring it in if I can't convince the people who make it that it's worth their while to come all the way here."
Both of the girls give understanding nods for his troubles, Livi even going so far as to cluck her tongue sympathetically. "Must be difficult, too," Petra adds, stealing a short glance at Livi, "with rumors of dangerous men spreading further each day." Blandly, her gaze returns to him. It's only a moment later that Valenia bursts onto the scene again, decked in one of her nicer dresses of rich blue, with accents of twisted gold at her ears, wrists and in her hair, where it's been clipped back. "Ready," she announces breathlessly, leaning against Skinner's table while she grins at him.
Skinner grimaces at Petra. "Don't remind me," he says, already moving down from his table now that he sees Valenia returning. Clapping his hands on the redhead's shoulders, he holds her out so he can inspect the clothes. "Perfect, doll. Pretty as a picture." He drops one hand away and uses it to wave goodbye to Petra and Livi. "You girls have a good evening," he tells them, and walks off with Valenia under his arm. Outside, parked on the jungle path, there's an old man waiting in his wagon, and he gives them a short look before twisting his lips at Skinner. "You hurry on up," the old man orders and goes back to staring straight ahead. Skinner winks at Valenia, but he lengthens his stride. "Your carriage awaits."
Valenia preens under his praise, though it's interrupted by Petra's practical question. "You have your knife?" Long-suffering, Val rolls her eyes back to her sisters and utters a short, "Yes," before giving them a wave and turning to leave with Skinner. At the old man's urging, she hurries, too, seeking to smooth any ruffled feathers with her friendly smile and friendly chatter as she hoists herself up. "Hi, I'm Valenia, nice to meet you. Thank you so much for driving us, it's really very kind of you. At least the weather's a little bit nicer today, it should be a nice ride down to the Hold." Her beam turns over to Skinner and she returns his wink from earlier, though hers is not nearly as practiced as his is.
The old man looks back when Valenia starts talking to him, flat-faced and silent. But his posture does soften a bit, affected by her sweetness though unwilling to admit it, and finally he gives her a grunt that at least acknowledges her thanks. Skinner answers that wink with a grin, and holds his arm out for her to use as leverage as she hops up on the back of the (otherwise empty) wagon. "Your knife?" he asks, waiting for her to get settled up there before he hops up after her. And once he's up, the old man's not going to waste his time eavesdropping: he'll flip the reins at his beast and start them off.
Valenia jumps as the wagon starts into motion, her grin widening self-conciously as she recovers from it. "Oh, it's been a while since I was in the back of one of these things," she giggles before answering his question. A hand smoothes her hair in a gesture that could be stolen from June herself and she squints her eyes at Skinner as she shares, a trifle secretive, "We're armed now." She pauses over a slight laugh and continues, "Just little old things, June got us after, you know, that guy came around. It's really just in case, it's not like they think that you or your friend here are any trouble, not at all."
"But I /am/ trouble," Skinner insists petulantly, the act breaking quickly into a grin. He plants a hand behind himself, bracing lest he fall off the wagon, and leans around to get a good look at her. "Where are you even keeping the thing?" he wonders, giving her ribs a tickle as he pretends to search for the knife there.
"Oh, right, I forgot," Valenia humors him, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes and a slight giggle. His tickling hand gets a quick slap from her own, but other than that and a quick squirm his tickle doesn't affect her. "Not there, silly. I have to be able to reach it if I need to." She reaches under the fullness of her skirt, up to the lower thigh, and easily extracts a small knife to show him. "See? It's not much." Her hold is inexpert as she turns it this way and that, looking at it's sides idly. "Just enough to keep things from going bad. So don't make me angry," she threatens jokingly, hardly able to dim her smile enough to glower at him, wavering the tip of the knife over so that it points directly at him.
Skinner puts his hands up and widens his eyes, thoroughly intimidated by the knife. Then he falls back with a laugh, stretching out in the back of the wagon and crossing his arms behind him. His legs are still stretched over the edge, still dangling as the wagon jars its way along the jungle path, but now he's looking up at Valenia. "I'll try to stay on your good side, doll. Good to hear June's got a couple of tricks up her sleeves. Or skirts," he amends, twitching Valenia's.
When Skinner laughs, Val follows suit, dissolving into a fit of giggles gentle enough not to jar her hand when she's picking up her hem again to replace the knife in its sheath. "Oh yeah," she replies when she's rearranging her skirts around her legs again, "June's not the kind to not have something ready for a situation if she can see it coming. She's really good about that. Cause I wouldn't have thought about it, I probably would have just closed everything down and hid in my room unless I had a muscley escort like yourself to take me out." She bats lashes at him along with the minute flattery.
Skinner obligingly lifts an arm and flexes it for her, though his shirt sleeves cover it, and she'll have to conjecture about the muscles beneath. He's not a big guy, so it's probably nothing too impressive. "Lucky you do, then, huh? You ever been to a play before?" The once-flexed arm now waves out in the rough direction of Ista Hold, before he drops it onto his tummy to rest.
"Oh, no," Valenia tells him, shaking her head quickly. "Nothing more than little acts with my siblings and cousins when the traveling harper would come, just teaching ballads and things like that. Not ever a real, actual play." Her tone still wonders a bit at the thought of it, and she stares off in the direction he gestured, as if with her eyes she could pull it nearer, sooner. "I've read a couple, just here and there when I could get my hands on them, but I've been told that it's just not the same, reading them and then seeing them. It'll be fun. Do you know what the one we're seeing is called?" she asks, returning her eyes to him.
"It isn't the same," Skinner agrees, "but let's not be unkind to reading. It's still good. This one's called 'The Braggart,'" he tells her, abruptly doing a sit-up so he's upright again. Stretching his arm out, he tries to get her to visualize the story through the frame of his fingers. "This braggart thinks he's just the best thing ever, irresisitible to women, and he pays this courtesan," she gets a friendly nudge, "to come live with him. Only she's got a thing for this man she knew when she was younger, and the story's about how she finds him again and they find a way to be together. Despite the braggart." Summary down, he turns to Valenia with a smile to see how she likes the sound of it. "It's a comedy," he adds.
Valenia's smile droops a tiny bit with the effort of listening to the summary, of imagining it all in her head. But with that nudge, it perks again and sticks despite the thought visible in her distracted gaze. "Oh, that sounds so perfect," she gushes, that's how much she likes it. "Now I can guess why you picked me to come with you," she teases, eyelids lowered just so to introduce a bit of flirtation into the mix, intentional or not.
Skinner watches her expression through that short-lived droop, and he gives her another nudge to help her through it. "You'll like it," he announces confidently. "Love and laughter. Who wouldn't?" Quick as he was to pick up that tiny droop in her smile, he either misses or disregards the new, flirtatious element.
Valenia ponders that question of his as if it weren't rhetorical at all. "Petra, for one. Probably Chidiree. They get bored easily with that sort of thing." A sudden laugh bubbles up at some thought and she pauses to let it have its moment. "Can you imagine Chee sitting next to you at a play?" Immediately, Val settles into a mimicry of her moody sister, crossing her arms and slouching in her seat, though her voice is still definitely her own bright tone. "She'd sit there next to you with a sour puss the whole time," her own lips pout outward in exaggeration, making her words a bit nasal, "and roll her eyes and sigh at all the sweet things they'd say." She demonstrates, just brushing up to grumpy before dropping the whole thing with another few chuckles. "She'd probably hate you for taking her."
After that excellent imitation, what can Skinner do but laugh? He throws back his head and tosses an arm around Valenia's shoulders to bring her into it, rewarding her good humor with an affectionate squeeze. "Between you and me," he tells her, "that's why I call her Chiri, not Chee. To get under her skin," he explains, illustrating with a little wave of his fingers, as if slipping them under something. "Does it work?" he wonders, turning to Valenia with a spark in his eyes.
Valenia flounces and shifts a bit to lean herself up against him, settling into his squeezing embrace happily. "I don't know," she admits openly, tilting her head to think a moment before repeating, "Yeah, I don't know. She doesn't mention it if it does. But it probably does. Bother her. She doesn't even like Chee all that much, but we just ignore her. Her full name is too long anyway, and doesn't fit her at all."
That she can't give him any inside info on what irritates Chidiree puts a moue on Skinner's face, one he clears almost immediately to smile at her again. The bright teeth flash. "It is chirpy. Now, you would make a good Chidiree, doll. But I like Valenia." The wagon pulls out of the heavily forested jungle, which gradually transforms into a series of well-tended orchards, flat fields just visible beyond.
"Chirpy, yeah," Valenia agrees brightly, as if she'd never thought of the word but she thinks it's the most perfect descriptor ever. Now that the rows of trees begin to scroll by, more of her attention is spared for the landscape outside of the wagon. "Valenia's okay," she'll give him, but she adds, "I like Val better. Like if I was a Lady." At the mention, she cranes a bit to peer forward and see if any sliver of the Hold can be seen from where they are. "Lady Valenia, it just sounds so boring, like sitting around staring out a window. But Lady Val." Her tone infuses it with all the aspects she talks about then. "It's stronger, powerful, like adventure and dancing and living it up. Don't you think?"
A sliver of the hold is indeed visible, though interrupted by trees at the moment, and getting ever closer. Now that the path is more even, the old man even clicks his mule up to a trot. Skinner looks surprised when she doesn't think Valenia is a lady's name, but when she goes on to explain her reasons he tips his head to the side and considers it. "You've sold me," he concludes. "If she were in a play, Lady Val would be the fierce Lady Holder who knows how to get things done her way. She might have a big nose, though," he decides, putting his finger on Val's actual nose and analyzing.
Valenia gives up her craning glances and slaps his hand lightly away from her nose, squinting at him. Her smile is persistant as ever, though, as she chastises, "I do not have a big nose!" She sounds confidant enough in that fact, though her hand goes up to that nose, fingers briefly stroking the sides of it while she goes on. "But yes. All of that except the nose. Much better than boring Valenia."
Skinner's hand goes limp when she slaps it, but it still hangs close by. "You don't have a big nose," he assures her with a grin. "You have a cute button nose." And he tweaks it, his hand coming to life just long enough to do that, then pull away in case she slaps him again. "But if I read Lady Val in the history books, or in a play, I might picture a big nose. Nothing wrong with a big nose," he adds, touching his own.
Valenia does attempt to give his hand a second slap, but he's quick enough to avoid it and her hand goes swishing through the air harmlessly. "Maybe for a guy," she replies, "but not for a girl. Petra hates hers and I wouldn't take it for anything. Big noses just look wrong on girls." She gives a short nod to assert her opinion further.
Skinner laughs. "Suit yourself," he tells her, then pauses to ponder. "Is Petra's nose big? I never noticed." Which either means he really doesn't mind big noses on his women, or he hasn't been ogling Petra much.
"It is, a bit," Val tells him, nodding her head with a slow, pitying air. "Poor thing. Ruesse does, too, but she doesn't mind it at all, says that big noses were sort of, like, prestigious where she's from and in her family. I guess some beloved great great great grandfather had a big nose or something. She's kind of weird sometimes, anyway. I still don't think big noses look pretty on any girl."
Skinner laughs when she calls Ruesse weird. He's so easily amused. "Believe me, doll, I've met my share of sexy women, and the nose has nothing to do with it. But not every guy can be as smart about it as I am," he tells her with a wink and a cocky click at the side of his mouth.
Valenia gives him a hum, soft and unconvinced, that's surely not the only reply he's going to get, not out of Ms. Chatterbox here. "I guess. Okay, then," she prefaces, giving herself some time to sort out her thoughts. "If you had to pick, then, between, let's say, two twins who look exactly the same in every way /except/ their noses-- one has a small one and one has a big one," she clarifies, just in case he didn't get it. "Then which one would you choose?"
"Oh, doll," Skinner begins, like he's disappointed in her. "I would pick /both/ of them. Twins, Val?" He leans out to arm's length and peers at her, his eyebrows raised way up. "Twins are any guy's dreams." Then, just to play along, he adds, "If I can't have both, I'll take the one that's easiest."
Oh, but he's not playing along, and Valenia will deal him a faint slap on his chest for each of the choices that don't conform to her hypothetical situation. "You're such a dirty boy," she scolds weakly with the slap for two at once, then for the second, she explains, "No, no. They're /exactly/ the same, except for their noses. Equal easiness for lazy lovers." That would be him, and she has a chuckle at his expense, holding up a finger when that's finished. "But. You can only choose one."
She slaps him and he grins, but when it's time to answer the question she keeps pressing on him he plays up the 'injury,' rubbing his chest and giving her a pitiful look. "Now I'm picking Miss Big Nose, just to spite you." He quirks an eyebrow at her. Does she feel spited?
Oh, she does. Valenia can't help her grin, but a tiny frown draws down between her brows and she slaps him again, this time with more force. "You," she accuses, for lack of something better to accuse with, though there's more than enough laugh in that tone. "I think it's even worse that you know when you're being... insufferable." That word didn't come easy, she had to pull it from some shred of memory and when she speaks it there's a carefulness to the pronunciation saying she doesn't use it often.
Skinner lets her slap him again, though his hand's in the way this time and winds up taking the brunt of the blow. He roughs up her shoulder in retribution. "That's what makes it fun, sweets." They've been so busy chatting it up that neither of them noticed the wagon pulling into Ista Hold proper, but the old man breaks it to them by twisting around to say, "Hey, we're here. Get out of the wagon." His gaze trails from Skinner to Val and, in deference to her earlier sweetness, he softens the sharp words by giving her a polite nod. Skinner just hops off the wagon and turns around to wait for Val, whom he'll escort all the way to the play and a lovely, carefree evening.
Location: The Lucky Seven, Ista Weyr, then Ista Hold
Date: 9-13-09
Afternoon is wearing on, but it's not even late enough yet for the girls of the Lucky Seven to have begun eating their early dinners when Skinner arrives on the porch. "Yoohoo!" he calls out playfully, pushing open one of the double doors and hanging off the frame while he peers inside. Is anybody there?
There is, though they're not immediately visible. Petra is the closest to the front door, and she comes into view only after she pops her head out of a storeroom down the hallway behind the bar. "What do you want?" she asks, and though her tone is blunt as ever it's not at all hostile. Indeed, her thin lips shift into a fleeting approximation of a smile to greet him with. Livi's fluffed head peeks out behind her sister, and she gives him an "Oh, hey," before she slips back into the room again. Softly, Valenia's voice can be heard from somewhere back there, asking, "Who is it?"
Not at all put off by Petra's bluntness, Skinner answers her thin smile with a beaming one. "I'm looking for Val. Is she-" he pauses and tips his head, having just picked up on the faint voice from the back. With a wink for Petra, he lets himself inside the tavern, though he leaves the door open behind him. "Hey, Val, come out here."
Val, summoned, appears quickly in the space just occupied by Livi with a smile spread and waiting in a way that says she was warned it was Skinner. "Hi!" she bubbles as her eyes find him, her hands twisted in the apron she wears, white showing the dust she's taken on in that storeroom. "What're you doing here?"
Now that Val's appeared, Skinner has somewhere to go - right up next to her, to sling an arm around her shoulders. "Stealing you away. Can you take an evening off? I'm headed out to Ista to check out a play, and I need," he pokes her breastbone, "a second opinion. I've hitched us a ride with one of my merchants," he tempts further, in case she was worried about the walk.
Val's bright blue eyes grow round and excited at the prospect of such a cultured thing as a play, her excitement already showing in a shivery little fidget of her shoulders beneath his arm. "Really?" she demands, not even waiting on his answer for that rhetorical to repeat, "Really?" and then move on. "Petra," she pinpoints her sister in the darkened room, where she's just finished helping Livi to haul a heavy crate to the top of a stack. "Oh, Petra, please," she begs, leaving Skinner's side to assail her sister, "please, please, please, switch days with me. I really want to go." Petra pauses, hands on her hips to consider, then replies, "You'll do laundry the next seven?" Val is quick to come back with an eager, "Yes." "Alright." That was easy enough. Valenia bounces quite literally back to Skinner, throwing her arms around his neck with enough momentum to muck with his balance, laughing the whole way. Suddenly a thought occurs to her, though. She draws back a few inches to ask, very seriously, "Can I change?"
Knowing full well that it's a rhetorical question, Skinner nods at her anyway, his eyes sparkling with amusement at the sudden excitement his offer provokes. He's got a grin for Petra and Livi, poor suffering souls, that's interrupted when Val throws herself into him and does, indeed, muck with his balance. He puts his arms around her waist to catch her and stumbles back with her a few steps before he catches them both, and turns that momentum into the first steps of a dance. Looking down at Val when she draws back, he flashes her a sparkling smile. "Of course, doll." Releasing her, he steps back and gestures at himself, in what has become his usual well-picked clothes. "You have to keep up with me, after all."
Val's eye turns assessing when she glances down at the outfit he gestures to, a second of seriousness entering into her expression as she considers his level of dress. "I'll be right back," she announces then, flouncing off into the living quarters of the building, leaving Skinner with the other two sisters. Just now, they use Skinner as an excuse to take a break, Petra lifting her apron's edge all the way to her forehead to pat away the sweat. Livi beams at him as she heaves a caught breath. "Must be doing well, if you're taking joy rides off to the hold," Livi comments good naturedly, leaning against the crate they just lifted up. Away down the hall, Valenia can be heard to yell, "Chee Chee, I'm taking your earrings!"
Skinner hops back on a table to wait, meeting Livi with a broad smile. "Never joy rides with me, sweets, I'm all business." He glances towards the hall, pausing to listen to that yell, then chuckles. "I've been looking at things to entertain my merchants while they're down here. Not that I'd pay for it, but it's one more thing to tempt them with." He quirks an eyebrow at Livi, soliciting her opinion.
But it's Petra's opinion he'll get. "I would have thought profit would have been temptation enough," she comments, surfacing from herr swiping with a cleaner forehead and a mussed hairline for her efforts. "You having trouble getting them to come in?" Livi asks, then.
"Some," Skinner admits with a shrug. "The stalls are filling up, but I'm repeating myself a lot these days." He puts a finger over his lips after saying this, swearing them to secrecy on this point. "There's some interesting stuff out there, but I can't bring it in if I can't convince the people who make it that it's worth their while to come all the way here."
Both of the girls give understanding nods for his troubles, Livi even going so far as to cluck her tongue sympathetically. "Must be difficult, too," Petra adds, stealing a short glance at Livi, "with rumors of dangerous men spreading further each day." Blandly, her gaze returns to him. It's only a moment later that Valenia bursts onto the scene again, decked in one of her nicer dresses of rich blue, with accents of twisted gold at her ears, wrists and in her hair, where it's been clipped back. "Ready," she announces breathlessly, leaning against Skinner's table while she grins at him.
Skinner grimaces at Petra. "Don't remind me," he says, already moving down from his table now that he sees Valenia returning. Clapping his hands on the redhead's shoulders, he holds her out so he can inspect the clothes. "Perfect, doll. Pretty as a picture." He drops one hand away and uses it to wave goodbye to Petra and Livi. "You girls have a good evening," he tells them, and walks off with Valenia under his arm. Outside, parked on the jungle path, there's an old man waiting in his wagon, and he gives them a short look before twisting his lips at Skinner. "You hurry on up," the old man orders and goes back to staring straight ahead. Skinner winks at Valenia, but he lengthens his stride. "Your carriage awaits."
Valenia preens under his praise, though it's interrupted by Petra's practical question. "You have your knife?" Long-suffering, Val rolls her eyes back to her sisters and utters a short, "Yes," before giving them a wave and turning to leave with Skinner. At the old man's urging, she hurries, too, seeking to smooth any ruffled feathers with her friendly smile and friendly chatter as she hoists herself up. "Hi, I'm Valenia, nice to meet you. Thank you so much for driving us, it's really very kind of you. At least the weather's a little bit nicer today, it should be a nice ride down to the Hold." Her beam turns over to Skinner and she returns his wink from earlier, though hers is not nearly as practiced as his is.
The old man looks back when Valenia starts talking to him, flat-faced and silent. But his posture does soften a bit, affected by her sweetness though unwilling to admit it, and finally he gives her a grunt that at least acknowledges her thanks. Skinner answers that wink with a grin, and holds his arm out for her to use as leverage as she hops up on the back of the (otherwise empty) wagon. "Your knife?" he asks, waiting for her to get settled up there before he hops up after her. And once he's up, the old man's not going to waste his time eavesdropping: he'll flip the reins at his beast and start them off.
Valenia jumps as the wagon starts into motion, her grin widening self-conciously as she recovers from it. "Oh, it's been a while since I was in the back of one of these things," she giggles before answering his question. A hand smoothes her hair in a gesture that could be stolen from June herself and she squints her eyes at Skinner as she shares, a trifle secretive, "We're armed now." She pauses over a slight laugh and continues, "Just little old things, June got us after, you know, that guy came around. It's really just in case, it's not like they think that you or your friend here are any trouble, not at all."
"But I /am/ trouble," Skinner insists petulantly, the act breaking quickly into a grin. He plants a hand behind himself, bracing lest he fall off the wagon, and leans around to get a good look at her. "Where are you even keeping the thing?" he wonders, giving her ribs a tickle as he pretends to search for the knife there.
"Oh, right, I forgot," Valenia humors him, with an exaggerated roll of her eyes and a slight giggle. His tickling hand gets a quick slap from her own, but other than that and a quick squirm his tickle doesn't affect her. "Not there, silly. I have to be able to reach it if I need to." She reaches under the fullness of her skirt, up to the lower thigh, and easily extracts a small knife to show him. "See? It's not much." Her hold is inexpert as she turns it this way and that, looking at it's sides idly. "Just enough to keep things from going bad. So don't make me angry," she threatens jokingly, hardly able to dim her smile enough to glower at him, wavering the tip of the knife over so that it points directly at him.
Skinner puts his hands up and widens his eyes, thoroughly intimidated by the knife. Then he falls back with a laugh, stretching out in the back of the wagon and crossing his arms behind him. His legs are still stretched over the edge, still dangling as the wagon jars its way along the jungle path, but now he's looking up at Valenia. "I'll try to stay on your good side, doll. Good to hear June's got a couple of tricks up her sleeves. Or skirts," he amends, twitching Valenia's.
When Skinner laughs, Val follows suit, dissolving into a fit of giggles gentle enough not to jar her hand when she's picking up her hem again to replace the knife in its sheath. "Oh yeah," she replies when she's rearranging her skirts around her legs again, "June's not the kind to not have something ready for a situation if she can see it coming. She's really good about that. Cause I wouldn't have thought about it, I probably would have just closed everything down and hid in my room unless I had a muscley escort like yourself to take me out." She bats lashes at him along with the minute flattery.
Skinner obligingly lifts an arm and flexes it for her, though his shirt sleeves cover it, and she'll have to conjecture about the muscles beneath. He's not a big guy, so it's probably nothing too impressive. "Lucky you do, then, huh? You ever been to a play before?" The once-flexed arm now waves out in the rough direction of Ista Hold, before he drops it onto his tummy to rest.
"Oh, no," Valenia tells him, shaking her head quickly. "Nothing more than little acts with my siblings and cousins when the traveling harper would come, just teaching ballads and things like that. Not ever a real, actual play." Her tone still wonders a bit at the thought of it, and she stares off in the direction he gestured, as if with her eyes she could pull it nearer, sooner. "I've read a couple, just here and there when I could get my hands on them, but I've been told that it's just not the same, reading them and then seeing them. It'll be fun. Do you know what the one we're seeing is called?" she asks, returning her eyes to him.
"It isn't the same," Skinner agrees, "but let's not be unkind to reading. It's still good. This one's called 'The Braggart,'" he tells her, abruptly doing a sit-up so he's upright again. Stretching his arm out, he tries to get her to visualize the story through the frame of his fingers. "This braggart thinks he's just the best thing ever, irresisitible to women, and he pays this courtesan," she gets a friendly nudge, "to come live with him. Only she's got a thing for this man she knew when she was younger, and the story's about how she finds him again and they find a way to be together. Despite the braggart." Summary down, he turns to Valenia with a smile to see how she likes the sound of it. "It's a comedy," he adds.
Valenia's smile droops a tiny bit with the effort of listening to the summary, of imagining it all in her head. But with that nudge, it perks again and sticks despite the thought visible in her distracted gaze. "Oh, that sounds so perfect," she gushes, that's how much she likes it. "Now I can guess why you picked me to come with you," she teases, eyelids lowered just so to introduce a bit of flirtation into the mix, intentional or not.
Skinner watches her expression through that short-lived droop, and he gives her another nudge to help her through it. "You'll like it," he announces confidently. "Love and laughter. Who wouldn't?" Quick as he was to pick up that tiny droop in her smile, he either misses or disregards the new, flirtatious element.
Valenia ponders that question of his as if it weren't rhetorical at all. "Petra, for one. Probably Chidiree. They get bored easily with that sort of thing." A sudden laugh bubbles up at some thought and she pauses to let it have its moment. "Can you imagine Chee sitting next to you at a play?" Immediately, Val settles into a mimicry of her moody sister, crossing her arms and slouching in her seat, though her voice is still definitely her own bright tone. "She'd sit there next to you with a sour puss the whole time," her own lips pout outward in exaggeration, making her words a bit nasal, "and roll her eyes and sigh at all the sweet things they'd say." She demonstrates, just brushing up to grumpy before dropping the whole thing with another few chuckles. "She'd probably hate you for taking her."
After that excellent imitation, what can Skinner do but laugh? He throws back his head and tosses an arm around Valenia's shoulders to bring her into it, rewarding her good humor with an affectionate squeeze. "Between you and me," he tells her, "that's why I call her Chiri, not Chee. To get under her skin," he explains, illustrating with a little wave of his fingers, as if slipping them under something. "Does it work?" he wonders, turning to Valenia with a spark in his eyes.
Valenia flounces and shifts a bit to lean herself up against him, settling into his squeezing embrace happily. "I don't know," she admits openly, tilting her head to think a moment before repeating, "Yeah, I don't know. She doesn't mention it if it does. But it probably does. Bother her. She doesn't even like Chee all that much, but we just ignore her. Her full name is too long anyway, and doesn't fit her at all."
That she can't give him any inside info on what irritates Chidiree puts a moue on Skinner's face, one he clears almost immediately to smile at her again. The bright teeth flash. "It is chirpy. Now, you would make a good Chidiree, doll. But I like Valenia." The wagon pulls out of the heavily forested jungle, which gradually transforms into a series of well-tended orchards, flat fields just visible beyond.
"Chirpy, yeah," Valenia agrees brightly, as if she'd never thought of the word but she thinks it's the most perfect descriptor ever. Now that the rows of trees begin to scroll by, more of her attention is spared for the landscape outside of the wagon. "Valenia's okay," she'll give him, but she adds, "I like Val better. Like if I was a Lady." At the mention, she cranes a bit to peer forward and see if any sliver of the Hold can be seen from where they are. "Lady Valenia, it just sounds so boring, like sitting around staring out a window. But Lady Val." Her tone infuses it with all the aspects she talks about then. "It's stronger, powerful, like adventure and dancing and living it up. Don't you think?"
A sliver of the hold is indeed visible, though interrupted by trees at the moment, and getting ever closer. Now that the path is more even, the old man even clicks his mule up to a trot. Skinner looks surprised when she doesn't think Valenia is a lady's name, but when she goes on to explain her reasons he tips his head to the side and considers it. "You've sold me," he concludes. "If she were in a play, Lady Val would be the fierce Lady Holder who knows how to get things done her way. She might have a big nose, though," he decides, putting his finger on Val's actual nose and analyzing.
Valenia gives up her craning glances and slaps his hand lightly away from her nose, squinting at him. Her smile is persistant as ever, though, as she chastises, "I do not have a big nose!" She sounds confidant enough in that fact, though her hand goes up to that nose, fingers briefly stroking the sides of it while she goes on. "But yes. All of that except the nose. Much better than boring Valenia."
Skinner's hand goes limp when she slaps it, but it still hangs close by. "You don't have a big nose," he assures her with a grin. "You have a cute button nose." And he tweaks it, his hand coming to life just long enough to do that, then pull away in case she slaps him again. "But if I read Lady Val in the history books, or in a play, I might picture a big nose. Nothing wrong with a big nose," he adds, touching his own.
Valenia does attempt to give his hand a second slap, but he's quick enough to avoid it and her hand goes swishing through the air harmlessly. "Maybe for a guy," she replies, "but not for a girl. Petra hates hers and I wouldn't take it for anything. Big noses just look wrong on girls." She gives a short nod to assert her opinion further.
Skinner laughs. "Suit yourself," he tells her, then pauses to ponder. "Is Petra's nose big? I never noticed." Which either means he really doesn't mind big noses on his women, or he hasn't been ogling Petra much.
"It is, a bit," Val tells him, nodding her head with a slow, pitying air. "Poor thing. Ruesse does, too, but she doesn't mind it at all, says that big noses were sort of, like, prestigious where she's from and in her family. I guess some beloved great great great grandfather had a big nose or something. She's kind of weird sometimes, anyway. I still don't think big noses look pretty on any girl."
Skinner laughs when she calls Ruesse weird. He's so easily amused. "Believe me, doll, I've met my share of sexy women, and the nose has nothing to do with it. But not every guy can be as smart about it as I am," he tells her with a wink and a cocky click at the side of his mouth.
Valenia gives him a hum, soft and unconvinced, that's surely not the only reply he's going to get, not out of Ms. Chatterbox here. "I guess. Okay, then," she prefaces, giving herself some time to sort out her thoughts. "If you had to pick, then, between, let's say, two twins who look exactly the same in every way /except/ their noses-- one has a small one and one has a big one," she clarifies, just in case he didn't get it. "Then which one would you choose?"
"Oh, doll," Skinner begins, like he's disappointed in her. "I would pick /both/ of them. Twins, Val?" He leans out to arm's length and peers at her, his eyebrows raised way up. "Twins are any guy's dreams." Then, just to play along, he adds, "If I can't have both, I'll take the one that's easiest."
Oh, but he's not playing along, and Valenia will deal him a faint slap on his chest for each of the choices that don't conform to her hypothetical situation. "You're such a dirty boy," she scolds weakly with the slap for two at once, then for the second, she explains, "No, no. They're /exactly/ the same, except for their noses. Equal easiness for lazy lovers." That would be him, and she has a chuckle at his expense, holding up a finger when that's finished. "But. You can only choose one."
She slaps him and he grins, but when it's time to answer the question she keeps pressing on him he plays up the 'injury,' rubbing his chest and giving her a pitiful look. "Now I'm picking Miss Big Nose, just to spite you." He quirks an eyebrow at her. Does she feel spited?
Oh, she does. Valenia can't help her grin, but a tiny frown draws down between her brows and she slaps him again, this time with more force. "You," she accuses, for lack of something better to accuse with, though there's more than enough laugh in that tone. "I think it's even worse that you know when you're being... insufferable." That word didn't come easy, she had to pull it from some shred of memory and when she speaks it there's a carefulness to the pronunciation saying she doesn't use it often.
Skinner lets her slap him again, though his hand's in the way this time and winds up taking the brunt of the blow. He roughs up her shoulder in retribution. "That's what makes it fun, sweets." They've been so busy chatting it up that neither of them noticed the wagon pulling into Ista Hold proper, but the old man breaks it to them by twisting around to say, "Hey, we're here. Get out of the wagon." His gaze trails from Skinner to Val and, in deference to her earlier sweetness, he softens the sharp words by giving her a polite nod. Skinner just hops off the wagon and turns around to wait for Val, whom he'll escort all the way to the play and a lovely, carefree evening.