LOG: I want to go home
Date: Day 1, Month 13, Turn 25
Location: Candidate Barracks, High Reaches Weyr
Synopsis: Exiles make escape plans.
Candidate Quarters, High Reaches Weyr
Two caverns lead one right into the other from a hallway just off the Common Room. Taking advantage of the high, vaulted ceiling, bunk beds march in four neat rows of five beds each allowing up to forty people to sleep in one cavern. Functional and spartan in atmosphere, there's little in the way of decoration here, just the one tapestry depicting a hatching on the wall of the first cavern and eggs on the sands in the second.
Each bunk is made up when there are candidates in residence, with standard sheeting, gray woollen blankets and somewhat lumpy pillows. A trunk stands at both the head and foot of the bunks, providing a little space for the occupants to store their belongings while the wait for the eggs to hatch. The archway between the two spaces is covered over with a hide hanging, easily hooked back when both caverns are in use, but tacked into place when only the first is needed. A proper wooden door closes out noise and drafts from the hallway.
Ever since a handful of the elders came down sick, Celadion has been restless and on edge. That it's his mother and father in question carries more weight. Currently he's pacing up one side of the barracks and back up the other with his hands crossed over his chest and plots and plans scribbling across his dark features.
No one's heard much out of Rilka these past weeks: she's ghost-like, hovering on the edge of reality, silent. Still dressed in her old, tattered dress, albeit with an over-sized men's sweater over the top if it, its hem hanging to her knees, she sits, currently, huddled in a little ball on the end of her bunk, rocking back and forth just barely. Her eyes lift to watch Celadion as he paces, appearing bigger than ever next to her shrunken cheeks.
Tugging the threadbare crimson shawl around her shoulders, Phedre sits in relative quiet in contrast to Celadion's pacing. Minus the long plait that usually falls down her back, the dark curls fall freely and do much to aid in masking her expression. She has been spared, thus far, of any illness reaching her parents, but her brother has been taken away to the Infirmary along with the elders. It shows in the strain of her features, the eyes that are cast down from where she sits perched on the end of her bed. Once, twice, she glances at Celadion. "I don't think that's going to get us out of here any faster." Either she's reading the other correctly or just voicing her own opinions of their entrapment here. These words follow a look to Rilka, though the girl drops her gaze to once more stare darkly at the floor, as if it has offended her in some way.
Celadion hasn't switched any of this clothes to new mainland things. He's not even really washed up except in the old cold-water tradition. He passes Phedre's cot as she speaks to him and his dark eyes focus on her from the vast distance his thoughts have taken him. At first it's as though he hasn't understood her, shaking his head out of the fog, "No? I'm thinking. Thinking. The walking helps me put the thoughts in order. Too much sitting." Plotting really. He continues to walk and passes by Rilka and then slows, giving her a worried look. "Are you alright?"
It doesn't look as though Rilka has bathed much, if at all, either, though her face is clean: her hair is more matted than ever, her clothing filthy. She looks rather like an animal caught in a bright light when attention is turned on her, first from Phedre, then Celadion. Rusty with disuse, she says, finally, in a tiny little voice, "I want to go home. The crabs-- the /sea/." The sky. The /everything/.
Some of what Phedre is wearing is of home, for she's stringently held onto all that is *hers*, and the shawl she wears is certainly a commonplace item from home. "I miss the sea," she sighs softly, in accordance with Rilka. "Even when she's angry, it's been such a... part of life that in it's absence, it's felt." To Celadion's brief look, Phedre raises her head and meets it with a slight upraising of her eyebrows. "They should let us out more," is her only, slightly sardonic reply.
Celadion nods to Rilka, his look not nearly as feral but something in his gaze echos the girl's thoughts, her desire, to hear the ocean and feel the wind...His teeth grind in frustration, "We'll go back soon." He looks her over thoughtfully and then steps closer, crouching down and from his angle looks over to Phedre in invitation, but he doesn't appear to want to shout what he has to say out to the whole of the barracks. "It's been made clear many of our friends like this place." He jerks his chin towards the other side of the room where a couple young ladies are cooing over dresses. Disgusting.
Rilka's rocking comes to a halt as Celadion crouches so, though she gives him a careful nod in return. "They did not belong to the island," she whispers, her voice catching faintly. "They did not deserve the ocean's bounty." Her gaze flickers uncertainly between Celadion and Phedre before she adds, very carefully, "I want it to be soon. They're making people say goodbye. Forever. I don't want to go."
Unfolding her legs allows for bare feet to slip silently to the cold stone floor, which brings Phedre close enough to hear Celadion's softer said comments to Rilka. Brown eyes gleam in speculation as long tendrils of curls, even more wavy from being kept bound by a braid all the time, slip over her shoulder when she leans forward. "They can love it here all they like," comes a voice clouded in suspicion that drops to an almost husky whisper. "I feel as if we are becoming the fatted calf of this weyr. They keep us locked up without free reign." Her lips press together as eyes narrow in a moment of pique, "I had more freedom under my father's thumb back on the island, than I do here." Never a girl to fawn over frippery, Phedre's own expression is disparaging of those who would woo over the weyr's "gifts". Her dark eyes turn to include Rilka, softening a bit. "I don't want to never be able to see home again, either."
Celadion reaches out and lays a hand on Rilka's shoulder, "I won't let that happen to you Rilka. I promiss." Protective yet anger bleeds through, because it's so much out of his control. "I saw water when we were flying down from the cold-place." Pathetic excuse for water, sure, but it's water, cold and fresh, not clingy and sticky like the hot water. He keeps his voice lowered to Phedre and Rilka as the other girl joins them, "I didn't have to worry about being sick after eating anything either. Some people will try to stop us if we aren't careful, but I want out of here."
Even through the warmth of her new sweater, Rilka's shoulders can clearly be felt to be shaking, though clearly not with cold. The dark-haired woman lifts her head up further to give Celadion a wary, watchful glance, and then finally nods, her front teeth resting upon her lip. "Perhaps they will fatten us up and then feed them to their sea-monsters," she sing-songs, finally. "I want the water. The cold water. Take me with you, Celadion. /Please/." As unhinged as she seems, that last couple of sentences is a desperate but relatively clearly phrased set: she means it. She wants /in/.
Speculation deepens to calculation, the darkness of her grey-brown gaze once more falls upon the floor as Phedre considers Celadion's words. Slowly come the words that fall like whispered confessions from lips that hesitate to vocalize that which is probably forbidden, "You think we could make it?" Once asked, the question prompts the raising of her eyes to glance from Celadion to Rilka and then back to Celadion. "To this water you saw? I saw nothing, but my eyes were squeezed shut and I had my shawl around my face from the cold. So cold, it was." An admission is given, of a lack of observation. "Is it the ocean, then?"
"I want that too." And, "I'd never leave you." Celadion assures her firmly. They might not have been close on the island, but Rilka reads the weather-signs. Somehow his now restless heart, body and mind connects with the girl. "Do not eat anything else they bring in. Just the broth and fish if they have it." Spoken with bitterness, as though not feeding them fish is somehow weakening their super exile powers. "It's not the sea, it's trapped in the land like we are, but it's water. It would be a start. Maybe we can get away from the seamonsters before they can finish us all off. Do you know anyone else who can be trusted? Anyone else who wants to leave?"
Rilka is comforted by Celadion's words and gives him a small but genuine smile in return. In these strange new times, you trust the ones who offer something you need. "Just the broth," she confirms. "And fish. I hope they bring us fish." A faint flush appears in her cheeks, now: a sign of excitement? To them both, more eagerly, "I'm sure we can make it. The ocean will want us back. Who else will give her what she needs?" Her words die down to thoughtfulness, her face scrunching tight in thoughtfulness. Finally: "I don't know. Who else." She hasn't been paying attention.
A warmth comes to Phedre's expression once again for older girl, feeling far aged past her own sixteen turns. It shows in the mature cast to her features and the lack of swooning over things a teen girl might swoon over, such as the boon of a place that locks them up. "I don't know," she says finally after listening to both Rilka and Celadion and coming up with only a slight shrug of slender shoulders. "I've been caught up," she pauses here, a deep breath taken and held onto before slowly letting go to finish with a soft utterance, "My brother is ill." That blame can be laid to would-be rescuer's shows clear in dark soot-grey eyes. One more consideration is given: "Winter is here and it's far colder outside than I think even the island gets."
Celadion thinks to himself, quietly, "Xavior would be in I think, and maybe Azzarion and those savages running with him. Not Tomaeran and certainly not Riorde or Emmeline." The flat tone indicates his trust in them is long dead. Phedre's comment about her brother meets his concerned gaze and his understanding, he nods in silence. Thinking about the colder weather makes him frown, but he has ideas about that, "We can use their clothes." As disgusted as he is at the idea of submitting to wearing their cast-offs, "I don't want to wait for the sickness to take us all before we try to get away."
"I'm sorry," says Rilka, somewhat flatly, as though hearing about yet another sick person is too much - emotions shutting down. "I don't to stay to get sick. I don't want--" She looks as though she's about to cry, and gazes at Celadion imploringly. "We need to do it soon. With them. No one can give us away, and then we can be /free/." She's sounding unhinged again.
Bitterness is an emotion that has hardened the heart of Phedre into a thing of dangerous spikes. It rings softly as an undercurrent to the words she speaks, "They give us their cast-offs, and think that we should be grateful. They tell us we are 'rescued' but keep us locked up." Lips thin once again, "Like criminals." Concern is but a tool to sharpen the shards of bitterness and anger, and it's well is deep where her brother is concerned. As Rilka starts to disassemble again, Phedre shoots a glance at Celadion, "Soon." Agreement is in the word, and encompasses probably all that Celadion has suggested, though it is her fingers that tightens the ends of her shawl around her shoulders and spare a look to the others in the room. "I want free."
Celadion reaches out to try to smooth a hand over Rilka's poor matted hair, she'd never get it get in such a state even on the island and nods his head, "I'm going to go nose around a few other cots and see who else wants to help. We might have to fight." There's no use pretending they might need to use claw and tooth to get out. "I'll be back." And he gets up and starts pacing again, looking for other like-minded exiles to spread the word.
Physical touch seems to do good things for Rilka's mindset: she seems calmer once he's done that, better able to take in a deep breath and, finally, nod. She watches Celadion go, expression turned faintly bereft, though when she turns back to Phedre, she seems more or less okay. "It's going to be okay," she says. "We're going to be free again."
Phedre watches Celadion go back to pacing and manages a spare smile to Rilka, warm even though it's small. "Yes," she murmurs, offering Rilka a gentle pat on the shoulder before turning back to her bed and crawling upon it. This time, rather than take up the past time of staring at the floor, she makes herself useful in going through what spare belongings she has left and straightening them out. Lost in thought this time, though.
Location: Candidate Barracks, High Reaches Weyr
Synopsis: Exiles make escape plans.
Candidate Quarters, High Reaches Weyr
Two caverns lead one right into the other from a hallway just off the Common Room. Taking advantage of the high, vaulted ceiling, bunk beds march in four neat rows of five beds each allowing up to forty people to sleep in one cavern. Functional and spartan in atmosphere, there's little in the way of decoration here, just the one tapestry depicting a hatching on the wall of the first cavern and eggs on the sands in the second.
Each bunk is made up when there are candidates in residence, with standard sheeting, gray woollen blankets and somewhat lumpy pillows. A trunk stands at both the head and foot of the bunks, providing a little space for the occupants to store their belongings while the wait for the eggs to hatch. The archway between the two spaces is covered over with a hide hanging, easily hooked back when both caverns are in use, but tacked into place when only the first is needed. A proper wooden door closes out noise and drafts from the hallway.
Ever since a handful of the elders came down sick, Celadion has been restless and on edge. That it's his mother and father in question carries more weight. Currently he's pacing up one side of the barracks and back up the other with his hands crossed over his chest and plots and plans scribbling across his dark features.
No one's heard much out of Rilka these past weeks: she's ghost-like, hovering on the edge of reality, silent. Still dressed in her old, tattered dress, albeit with an over-sized men's sweater over the top if it, its hem hanging to her knees, she sits, currently, huddled in a little ball on the end of her bunk, rocking back and forth just barely. Her eyes lift to watch Celadion as he paces, appearing bigger than ever next to her shrunken cheeks.
Tugging the threadbare crimson shawl around her shoulders, Phedre sits in relative quiet in contrast to Celadion's pacing. Minus the long plait that usually falls down her back, the dark curls fall freely and do much to aid in masking her expression. She has been spared, thus far, of any illness reaching her parents, but her brother has been taken away to the Infirmary along with the elders. It shows in the strain of her features, the eyes that are cast down from where she sits perched on the end of her bed. Once, twice, she glances at Celadion. "I don't think that's going to get us out of here any faster." Either she's reading the other correctly or just voicing her own opinions of their entrapment here. These words follow a look to Rilka, though the girl drops her gaze to once more stare darkly at the floor, as if it has offended her in some way.
Celadion hasn't switched any of this clothes to new mainland things. He's not even really washed up except in the old cold-water tradition. He passes Phedre's cot as she speaks to him and his dark eyes focus on her from the vast distance his thoughts have taken him. At first it's as though he hasn't understood her, shaking his head out of the fog, "No? I'm thinking. Thinking. The walking helps me put the thoughts in order. Too much sitting." Plotting really. He continues to walk and passes by Rilka and then slows, giving her a worried look. "Are you alright?"
It doesn't look as though Rilka has bathed much, if at all, either, though her face is clean: her hair is more matted than ever, her clothing filthy. She looks rather like an animal caught in a bright light when attention is turned on her, first from Phedre, then Celadion. Rusty with disuse, she says, finally, in a tiny little voice, "I want to go home. The crabs-- the /sea/." The sky. The /everything/.
Some of what Phedre is wearing is of home, for she's stringently held onto all that is *hers*, and the shawl she wears is certainly a commonplace item from home. "I miss the sea," she sighs softly, in accordance with Rilka. "Even when she's angry, it's been such a... part of life that in it's absence, it's felt." To Celadion's brief look, Phedre raises her head and meets it with a slight upraising of her eyebrows. "They should let us out more," is her only, slightly sardonic reply.
Celadion nods to Rilka, his look not nearly as feral but something in his gaze echos the girl's thoughts, her desire, to hear the ocean and feel the wind...His teeth grind in frustration, "We'll go back soon." He looks her over thoughtfully and then steps closer, crouching down and from his angle looks over to Phedre in invitation, but he doesn't appear to want to shout what he has to say out to the whole of the barracks. "It's been made clear many of our friends like this place." He jerks his chin towards the other side of the room where a couple young ladies are cooing over dresses. Disgusting.
Rilka's rocking comes to a halt as Celadion crouches so, though she gives him a careful nod in return. "They did not belong to the island," she whispers, her voice catching faintly. "They did not deserve the ocean's bounty." Her gaze flickers uncertainly between Celadion and Phedre before she adds, very carefully, "I want it to be soon. They're making people say goodbye. Forever. I don't want to go."
Unfolding her legs allows for bare feet to slip silently to the cold stone floor, which brings Phedre close enough to hear Celadion's softer said comments to Rilka. Brown eyes gleam in speculation as long tendrils of curls, even more wavy from being kept bound by a braid all the time, slip over her shoulder when she leans forward. "They can love it here all they like," comes a voice clouded in suspicion that drops to an almost husky whisper. "I feel as if we are becoming the fatted calf of this weyr. They keep us locked up without free reign." Her lips press together as eyes narrow in a moment of pique, "I had more freedom under my father's thumb back on the island, than I do here." Never a girl to fawn over frippery, Phedre's own expression is disparaging of those who would woo over the weyr's "gifts". Her dark eyes turn to include Rilka, softening a bit. "I don't want to never be able to see home again, either."
Celadion reaches out and lays a hand on Rilka's shoulder, "I won't let that happen to you Rilka. I promiss." Protective yet anger bleeds through, because it's so much out of his control. "I saw water when we were flying down from the cold-place." Pathetic excuse for water, sure, but it's water, cold and fresh, not clingy and sticky like the hot water. He keeps his voice lowered to Phedre and Rilka as the other girl joins them, "I didn't have to worry about being sick after eating anything either. Some people will try to stop us if we aren't careful, but I want out of here."
Even through the warmth of her new sweater, Rilka's shoulders can clearly be felt to be shaking, though clearly not with cold. The dark-haired woman lifts her head up further to give Celadion a wary, watchful glance, and then finally nods, her front teeth resting upon her lip. "Perhaps they will fatten us up and then feed them to their sea-monsters," she sing-songs, finally. "I want the water. The cold water. Take me with you, Celadion. /Please/." As unhinged as she seems, that last couple of sentences is a desperate but relatively clearly phrased set: she means it. She wants /in/.
Speculation deepens to calculation, the darkness of her grey-brown gaze once more falls upon the floor as Phedre considers Celadion's words. Slowly come the words that fall like whispered confessions from lips that hesitate to vocalize that which is probably forbidden, "You think we could make it?" Once asked, the question prompts the raising of her eyes to glance from Celadion to Rilka and then back to Celadion. "To this water you saw? I saw nothing, but my eyes were squeezed shut and I had my shawl around my face from the cold. So cold, it was." An admission is given, of a lack of observation. "Is it the ocean, then?"
"I want that too." And, "I'd never leave you." Celadion assures her firmly. They might not have been close on the island, but Rilka reads the weather-signs. Somehow his now restless heart, body and mind connects with the girl. "Do not eat anything else they bring in. Just the broth and fish if they have it." Spoken with bitterness, as though not feeding them fish is somehow weakening their super exile powers. "It's not the sea, it's trapped in the land like we are, but it's water. It would be a start. Maybe we can get away from the seamonsters before they can finish us all off. Do you know anyone else who can be trusted? Anyone else who wants to leave?"
Rilka is comforted by Celadion's words and gives him a small but genuine smile in return. In these strange new times, you trust the ones who offer something you need. "Just the broth," she confirms. "And fish. I hope they bring us fish." A faint flush appears in her cheeks, now: a sign of excitement? To them both, more eagerly, "I'm sure we can make it. The ocean will want us back. Who else will give her what she needs?" Her words die down to thoughtfulness, her face scrunching tight in thoughtfulness. Finally: "I don't know. Who else." She hasn't been paying attention.
A warmth comes to Phedre's expression once again for older girl, feeling far aged past her own sixteen turns. It shows in the mature cast to her features and the lack of swooning over things a teen girl might swoon over, such as the boon of a place that locks them up. "I don't know," she says finally after listening to both Rilka and Celadion and coming up with only a slight shrug of slender shoulders. "I've been caught up," she pauses here, a deep breath taken and held onto before slowly letting go to finish with a soft utterance, "My brother is ill." That blame can be laid to would-be rescuer's shows clear in dark soot-grey eyes. One more consideration is given: "Winter is here and it's far colder outside than I think even the island gets."
Celadion thinks to himself, quietly, "Xavior would be in I think, and maybe Azzarion and those savages running with him. Not Tomaeran and certainly not Riorde or Emmeline." The flat tone indicates his trust in them is long dead. Phedre's comment about her brother meets his concerned gaze and his understanding, he nods in silence. Thinking about the colder weather makes him frown, but he has ideas about that, "We can use their clothes." As disgusted as he is at the idea of submitting to wearing their cast-offs, "I don't want to wait for the sickness to take us all before we try to get away."
"I'm sorry," says Rilka, somewhat flatly, as though hearing about yet another sick person is too much - emotions shutting down. "I don't to stay to get sick. I don't want--" She looks as though she's about to cry, and gazes at Celadion imploringly. "We need to do it soon. With them. No one can give us away, and then we can be /free/." She's sounding unhinged again.
Bitterness is an emotion that has hardened the heart of Phedre into a thing of dangerous spikes. It rings softly as an undercurrent to the words she speaks, "They give us their cast-offs, and think that we should be grateful. They tell us we are 'rescued' but keep us locked up." Lips thin once again, "Like criminals." Concern is but a tool to sharpen the shards of bitterness and anger, and it's well is deep where her brother is concerned. As Rilka starts to disassemble again, Phedre shoots a glance at Celadion, "Soon." Agreement is in the word, and encompasses probably all that Celadion has suggested, though it is her fingers that tightens the ends of her shawl around her shoulders and spare a look to the others in the room. "I want free."
Celadion reaches out to try to smooth a hand over Rilka's poor matted hair, she'd never get it get in such a state even on the island and nods his head, "I'm going to go nose around a few other cots and see who else wants to help. We might have to fight." There's no use pretending they might need to use claw and tooth to get out. "I'll be back." And he gets up and starts pacing again, looking for other like-minded exiles to spread the word.
Physical touch seems to do good things for Rilka's mindset: she seems calmer once he's done that, better able to take in a deep breath and, finally, nod. She watches Celadion go, expression turned faintly bereft, though when she turns back to Phedre, she seems more or less okay. "It's going to be okay," she says. "We're going to be free again."
Phedre watches Celadion go back to pacing and manages a spare smile to Rilka, warm even though it's small. "Yes," she murmurs, offering Rilka a gentle pat on the shoulder before turning back to her bed and crawling upon it. This time, rather than take up the past time of staring at the floor, she makes herself useful in going through what spare belongings she has left and straightening them out. Lost in thought this time, though.