Log: Milani's Kind Of... Buzzed
RL: May 20, 2008.
VR: Day 11, month 6, Turn 16 of the Interval. It is a summer afternoon.
Leova and Milani go on a picnic. Milani has many smiles. Also, news.
Vrianth goes flying with Kevruth. Sort of.
Festival Clearing, High Reaches Weyr (#420RAIJs)
At this point partway up the mountainside, the ground levels out in a grassy expanse. The soft green of the mountainside is liberally sprinkled with other colors: blues and purples, reds and pinks, bright yellows and pale whites. The late summer mountain is covered with the delicate blooms of wildflowers. While most, like the tiny sungazers, rest ankle high in small patches, bolder cardinalflowers and Dragontails teeter on thin, waist-high stalks, waving their blooms in the breeze.
Whatever Vrianth may be doing, wherever she lounges or flies or eats, the pleasant rhythm of creaking wood and snapping sails inserts itself somewhere in the back of her mind. The lap of waves on a hull, the faint cry of sea-borne birds is layered further, and then the touch of Kevruth's mind resolves into words. << Hello again. >> (Kevruth to Vrianth)
Pleasant to some, perhaps. Incessant, even aggravating to others who would prefer quietness, or only the rush of wind across sails of a particularly draconic sort. Just now Vrianth may be flying, may be sensed to be flying and swiftly at that, but she may also be sensed to relish those layers as they appear, as recognition dawns over a clear summer's blue afternoon. Today. << Kevruth. Again. >> An image of that dark form he'd shown her, perched atop a mast that somehow holds his mass. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
Lunchtime finds Milani and Leova enjoying a little downtime for their meal, sprawled on a blanket up in the mountain meadow, flowers nodding all around. Their basket of goodies is open, bread, cheese, cold meat rolls, fruit, a skin of water and one of wine make for a hearty enough picnic. "I don't think I can eat anymore," groans Millie and lies back, hands folded atop stomach, hair spilling over the edge of the blanket into the grass. She looks up right over her head where a blue flower nods and reaches up to pick it, turning the bloom this way and that. "How're those straps coming along?" she turns her head lazily towards the greenrider, eyes curious on the other woman's work.
"About like you'd think," Leova says from her tailor's seat, eyes slitted against sunlight off strawberry-blonde hair until she lifts a portion of the leather and uses it to shade those eyes, make it a smile. "Good thing about it being warm, the cream rubs in well. No fighting it." She has a pot of it by her, her own crumbs long swept away into the grass, Vrianth swept even longer ago up into the skies. Sometimes flying fast. Sometimes floating, exploring. Right now she's flying quite fast indeed, and if it weren't for those straps needing maintenance, Leova could be up with her /right/ /now/. And if it weren't for company, to whom Leova adds, "You? Doing good?" before getting back to the work of keeping that leather supple.
Never one to tone himself down for anyone - not even this intriguing green who he has sought out not once, but twice - Kevruth allows his ambient sounds to continue through her relishing and recognizing. Once she returns his greeting they quiet to stillness, leaving her with words backed by silence. << Again. >> He agrees with a single word and no embarassment for reaching out to her. << Vrianth. Where are you flying? >> His usual verbose nature is shortened by her choppy phrasing, the knowledge of this is shared with amusement. And then, nearly flustered, he tweaks that vision, removing the mast and putting a stark cliff, Telgar's star stones, in its place. Ridiculous. (Kevruth to Vrianth)
Which means that, as her mind would have it, he's settled on the Eye Rock itself. Although then Vrianth makes as though to hesitate, all lit up with bright sparks for an instant, and shows him his Finger Rock: which would Kevruth prefer? << High, >> she teases him further, but also follows through: an instant later it's felt rather than exactly shown, the summer's wind made cold by speed and Rukbat's glaring touch that fuels it, unfettered by straps, two mountains away from the clearing that houses wildflowers and soft grasses and her very own Leova. A picnic, there in the High Reaches. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
"In other words, fussy, annoying and a pain in the rear?" Milani grins wickedly over at her friend and stretches out long, fingers still playing with that flower and looks up high high, like she could see Vrianth. "Is she having fun up there?" Wistful note to that and then a slow smile that's not wicked but something entirely else creeps across her face. "Mmmm. I am. Very good."
And Leova chuckles for it, too, lifting her face to the sunlight for a moment before getting back to work. Doesn't mean she doesn't add, "Keep 'em up, don't give you as many problems later," before continuing with, "A whole lot. Over on the other side of... not this mountain, but the one over back that way. And we'll go fast going back, lunch should be settled by then, hm?" She keeps rubbing the cream into the leather, keeps giving it yanks at staggered lengths to make sure the stitching holds, only every once in a long while having to add the clip that says, go back. Fix this. She's gotten a smile while she works, too, at Millie's tone which is not the least bit wicked at all. "Really."
Vrianth senses that Kevruth twitches, a little mental tug for her hijack of his image. But he leaves himself on Eye Rock, ebony claws digging into the stone and eyes on the sky, which is suddenly dark with night and a full Belior rising. << You put me on a pedestal, >> he murmurs, droll. << I am flattered. >> He soaks in the feel of wind rippling, exentuates the delicate aroma of wildflowers and offers his own sense of rough sand and too much heat. << Flattered and jealous. I am happy to watch over the eggs of course, but this place begins to chafe. >> Literally and figuratively it seems.
Kevruth senses Vrianth sends a warm current of pleasure for his playing along with it, answer to that tug, and even keeps the nighttime sky and that rising moon while she's at it. That rising moon, which happens to backlight him into such a striking silhouette, surely by complete coincidence. << And that is how it feels for you to be flattered, Kevruth? >> Such an amused gravelly tone she has, more apt to strike sparks than make music. She takes in the sense of sand and heat, and in time, returns it to him with an echo of the sea-songs he'd sent her earlier: beaches deserve water, after all. << Your eggs. Show them to me? Will it be so very much longer? >>
"Papa says the same thing. That keeping up straps is ... oh I dunno, ten percent of a rider's real work, something like that." Milani chuckles and rolls up onto her side, listening to Leova about Vrianth. "Far ... and not far at the same time. And good. I'm looking forward to fast. And yeah, I have a strong stomach!" The smile from Leova is answered by a brilliantly innocent one from Milani. "Really. All sorts of good," she says very very seriously, but still with that big smile on her face.
"Stronger than my stomach," Leova avers. "And no, not so far... did he say what the rest was about?" She uses a fingernail to scrape out a bit that had solidified around the stitching, enough that if it were left that way it would be a waste. When she does finally look up, it's not because of the sun that her eyes are narrowed, her mouth pulled up at the corners. And she just eyes Milani for a time. Then says, smile growing, "Spill."
"And you fly with Vrianth allll the time," Milani teases the greenrider lightly, eyes twinkling. "Ummmm .... good straps, good leathers and control. Self-discipline is the other 80 percent of the job." Her head bobs up and down again. "Papa has very very definite opinions about being a dragonrider." As if that weren't obvious, she sniffs at the bloom she picked, then reaches up to tuck it into her hair over her ear and looks across at Leova very seriously, though her lips are twitching a little. "Sex is very nice," she finally states bluntly.
If she's looking for surprise, she certainly gets it, Leova startled into a belly-deep laugh that, why not, she exaggerates into a fall backward onto the blanket and twitching arms, the straps left to coil over her like a particularly fearsome nest of sakes. Leova twitches a little more, then lifts her head just enough to give Milani a sideways glance: how was that? At least the little pot didn't get upset. "Good. Keep it that way." No talk about straps and control and self-discipline just yet. "When? A'son?"
That current is accepted, savored, and appreciation for her retention of his offerings sweeps back. Kevruth's amusement is lighter than Vrianth's perhaps, his baritone more melodic than her gravelly notes. << You don't believe me? >> It's teasing though, playful sea breeze whispering around his words. It picks up with her offer of beaches and water - water, yes, that would be good. Better than scratchy sand and too many prying eyes. All this comes as a sense rather than words, followed by lingering flashes of eyes so colorful they border on gaudy. << A month, maybe more A'zan says. They grow harder though. >> (Kevruth to Vrianth)
<< I might believe you, >> she returns with the veriest hint of mischief, ozone on the sea breeze, the foretaste of lightning. But there are those eyes, those eggs, and she settles somewhat as they appear and then remove themselves, solidly, from the picture. << So long. >> It could be an eternity. << And all this time, you are not allowed to fly, Kevruth? >> Worse. And in the meantime her flight changes, momentum sent into a swoop that becomes a spiral, tight and fast and down towards the snow, enough to lurch the stomach out of the unwary. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
She can't help it. Fits of giggles from Milani as she reaches over to make sure the straps don't tangle all around Leova. "I'm planning to," she answers between giggles and holds out a hand to the greenrider to help her up. She shakes her head though for that last. "No." Then counts back on her fingers. "Twelve days ago."
Leova takes that hand, threatens to yank Milani down with her... only then she sits up anyway. "This is me, not asking who," she says. "Yet. And twelve days! But, I know." A sideways look at Milani, and for a moment there she could have long hair, skirts, a different past and different dreams. "You were just waiting to tell me, to make sure it wasn't just an accident. These things have to be tested, hm?"
Milani makes big eyes at that tug on her hand, but then she's leaning back to help Leova up and nods. "Don't bother because I'm not telling. Well not about /one/ of them, anyway," Milani says casually and draws her knees up to her chest, pillows her cheek atop her knees. "But I went to see E'dre and made things right," she continues softly with a little quirk in her smile. "And it was good and everything's all sorted out and he's happy and I'm happy." Exhale. "No, I've just been kind of ... buzzed, I guess. Is it like this for long? Being all kind of, loopy in the head and thinking about it all the time?"
"Them. Must be a story there," Leova surmises once she's uright, and leaves it there. Except she doesn't. "I know. N'thei. R'hin?" A speaking pause. "Hayda?" and that no more serious than the rest, during which she lids the pot so she won't have to think about it. Extricates her legs. Flops forward, hands cupping cheeks once she's on her belly again. "Well, good on you. Can be. Sometimes it's not so good. A bad day. Someone's cranky. Too tense. Too tired. But." Another pause, and this one is less a giveaway. "Thinking about it. Not him? Or them."
Vrianth senses that Kevruth is more deeply amused, the rumble that might be heard if she were present carried across his mind's touch. Her mischief is touched, turned and approved before his focus returns to his eggs. An iridescent one, champagne and butter yellow and near ivory in tone is offered last, smugly. << Not terribly long, >> he counters though his tone belies his actual strain against the dragging time. << I can fly if I choose to, but they do need tending. Perhaps one day I will come there to visit you. >> But there's snow there, the cold crunch offered to her before her feet touch it. And that's no beach. Not so different from Telgar itself. The swift landing is taken with his usual aplomb, some sense of reflected riderly irritation following his own common teeth-jarring jolt.
For that deep amusement, there may return a sense that Vrianth, new to such things, is at the moment quite willing to let herself be tutored. She turns the last egg's image over. Curious. Gives it a mental poke. << What is there to tend, Kevruth? If they do not yet move. >> And if she herself is not yet convinced that it is worth the trouble, she seems willing enough to believe /he/ finds it worth the trouble. The more so for that sense of strain. His holding himself back that way. That focused will. << Perhaps. >> Simple. Distancing, perhaps. Until. << Until then you may fly with me when you choose. >> And then there's no landing after all: the jolt's instead from suddenly outstretched wings, spiraling up and up and up into the skies, into the wild and boundless blue. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
There's another little smile from Milani and nod too as she props her chin atop her knees and looks down at rolling-over Leova. "After things went funny with E'dre I was feeling all weird about the whole thing and just ... you know." She waves a hand vaguely. "And then I talked about it with a friend and he offered to help." She takes a deep breath, folds lips in and then laughs, releasing them. "So I said yes. And it was good. So then I felt all right about E'dre and just ... shells you know. It's /nice/." There's a little ping in her cheeks suddenly and she joins the greenrider in rolling over onto belly and nods. "Yeah. Like anything else right? But overall. Just ... nice." Her chin goes into the cup of her hands, legs swinging back and forth behind her. "A little bit of both," she hazards.
"Very kind of him." Could Leova be more dry? But her smile's unfettered too, Milani in such a bright mood that way, right on top of the clear skies and fast dragon, the good food and the good work. Even if the work isn't seeing much attention right at the moment. "Yeah. Like all that. Hopefully he, they, gave you some ideas to keep it fun. And E'dre. He isn't going to be left moping after you, is he?" She adds after a moment, "Could be that it was easier. Not A'son. Not where it mattered /so/ much." And then she laughs again, but her eyes are slipping away, up into the sky.
This newness, this willingness to be taught is for Kevruth a novel thing. He's one of the youngest at his weyr and rarely pursues acquaintances outside of it, so he turns this newness around in his mind and examines it before replying. When he does it is somewhat distracted, vague and maybe purposefully so. << I turn them. I make sure they look their best and that the sand is smooth as I want it to be. >> The first necessary, the rest obliging his own vanity and yet ther is no chagrin for that fact. With her distance he begins to fade, but then he is snapped back, caught up in that whirl of wind and stretch of sky. The snap of sails returns, but draconic ones this time, another pair to match her own. << Soon, perhaps. >> And with that he slips away, considering. (Kevruth to Vrianth)
That vague distraction is the sort of thing that may send a student slipping away. Still, there's only a moment's even more vague dissatisfaction before, untroubled now, << So that is what is important. >> For eggs. To him. Perhaps Vrianth will even remember. Exhilaration overrides it, though, as Kevruth joins her in the game: up, up, up, and off along their separate ways. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
"He's a good man," Milani says softly about this mysterious shadow figure and she just smiles down at the blanket and looks up, shaking her head. "No. No more moping from E'dre. Though you know, it's not ... " she furrows her brow thinking it through, "no committments, no strings, I don't know. He's not the type and neither am I. Right now." The last bit takes a little of the edge off her smile. "I don't think he was ever going to anyway, Leova. Not sex, not ... anything. So it's okay. Just friends. Ays and me. Just friends." And the way she says that, she sounds like she's really okay with it." Her eyes lift to the sky too and she smiles, thinking about Vrianth. "Fast?"
"Better be." And, glancing back down, Leova lets it go in light of Milani's smile, settling for teasing, "Not no commitments? Know what you mean, though. Convenient." If it stays that way. The greenrider doesn't repeat the just-friends, doesn't make the third time the charm, just starts rolling up the spare set to finish the refurbishing later. Above them, Vrianth descends. Very fast. And then, floating.
VR: Day 11, month 6, Turn 16 of the Interval. It is a summer afternoon.
Leova and Milani go on a picnic. Milani has many smiles. Also, news.
Vrianth goes flying with Kevruth. Sort of.
Festival Clearing, High Reaches Weyr (#420RAIJs)
At this point partway up the mountainside, the ground levels out in a grassy expanse. The soft green of the mountainside is liberally sprinkled with other colors: blues and purples, reds and pinks, bright yellows and pale whites. The late summer mountain is covered with the delicate blooms of wildflowers. While most, like the tiny sungazers, rest ankle high in small patches, bolder cardinalflowers and Dragontails teeter on thin, waist-high stalks, waving their blooms in the breeze.
Whatever Vrianth may be doing, wherever she lounges or flies or eats, the pleasant rhythm of creaking wood and snapping sails inserts itself somewhere in the back of her mind. The lap of waves on a hull, the faint cry of sea-borne birds is layered further, and then the touch of Kevruth's mind resolves into words. << Hello again. >> (Kevruth to Vrianth)
Pleasant to some, perhaps. Incessant, even aggravating to others who would prefer quietness, or only the rush of wind across sails of a particularly draconic sort. Just now Vrianth may be flying, may be sensed to be flying and swiftly at that, but she may also be sensed to relish those layers as they appear, as recognition dawns over a clear summer's blue afternoon. Today. << Kevruth. Again. >> An image of that dark form he'd shown her, perched atop a mast that somehow holds his mass. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
Lunchtime finds Milani and Leova enjoying a little downtime for their meal, sprawled on a blanket up in the mountain meadow, flowers nodding all around. Their basket of goodies is open, bread, cheese, cold meat rolls, fruit, a skin of water and one of wine make for a hearty enough picnic. "I don't think I can eat anymore," groans Millie and lies back, hands folded atop stomach, hair spilling over the edge of the blanket into the grass. She looks up right over her head where a blue flower nods and reaches up to pick it, turning the bloom this way and that. "How're those straps coming along?" she turns her head lazily towards the greenrider, eyes curious on the other woman's work.
"About like you'd think," Leova says from her tailor's seat, eyes slitted against sunlight off strawberry-blonde hair until she lifts a portion of the leather and uses it to shade those eyes, make it a smile. "Good thing about it being warm, the cream rubs in well. No fighting it." She has a pot of it by her, her own crumbs long swept away into the grass, Vrianth swept even longer ago up into the skies. Sometimes flying fast. Sometimes floating, exploring. Right now she's flying quite fast indeed, and if it weren't for those straps needing maintenance, Leova could be up with her /right/ /now/. And if it weren't for company, to whom Leova adds, "You? Doing good?" before getting back to the work of keeping that leather supple.
Never one to tone himself down for anyone - not even this intriguing green who he has sought out not once, but twice - Kevruth allows his ambient sounds to continue through her relishing and recognizing. Once she returns his greeting they quiet to stillness, leaving her with words backed by silence. << Again. >> He agrees with a single word and no embarassment for reaching out to her. << Vrianth. Where are you flying? >> His usual verbose nature is shortened by her choppy phrasing, the knowledge of this is shared with amusement. And then, nearly flustered, he tweaks that vision, removing the mast and putting a stark cliff, Telgar's star stones, in its place. Ridiculous. (Kevruth to Vrianth)
Which means that, as her mind would have it, he's settled on the Eye Rock itself. Although then Vrianth makes as though to hesitate, all lit up with bright sparks for an instant, and shows him his Finger Rock: which would Kevruth prefer? << High, >> she teases him further, but also follows through: an instant later it's felt rather than exactly shown, the summer's wind made cold by speed and Rukbat's glaring touch that fuels it, unfettered by straps, two mountains away from the clearing that houses wildflowers and soft grasses and her very own Leova. A picnic, there in the High Reaches. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
"In other words, fussy, annoying and a pain in the rear?" Milani grins wickedly over at her friend and stretches out long, fingers still playing with that flower and looks up high high, like she could see Vrianth. "Is she having fun up there?" Wistful note to that and then a slow smile that's not wicked but something entirely else creeps across her face. "Mmmm. I am. Very good."
And Leova chuckles for it, too, lifting her face to the sunlight for a moment before getting back to work. Doesn't mean she doesn't add, "Keep 'em up, don't give you as many problems later," before continuing with, "A whole lot. Over on the other side of... not this mountain, but the one over back that way. And we'll go fast going back, lunch should be settled by then, hm?" She keeps rubbing the cream into the leather, keeps giving it yanks at staggered lengths to make sure the stitching holds, only every once in a long while having to add the clip that says, go back. Fix this. She's gotten a smile while she works, too, at Millie's tone which is not the least bit wicked at all. "Really."
Vrianth senses that Kevruth twitches, a little mental tug for her hijack of his image. But he leaves himself on Eye Rock, ebony claws digging into the stone and eyes on the sky, which is suddenly dark with night and a full Belior rising. << You put me on a pedestal, >> he murmurs, droll. << I am flattered. >> He soaks in the feel of wind rippling, exentuates the delicate aroma of wildflowers and offers his own sense of rough sand and too much heat. << Flattered and jealous. I am happy to watch over the eggs of course, but this place begins to chafe. >> Literally and figuratively it seems.
Kevruth senses Vrianth sends a warm current of pleasure for his playing along with it, answer to that tug, and even keeps the nighttime sky and that rising moon while she's at it. That rising moon, which happens to backlight him into such a striking silhouette, surely by complete coincidence. << And that is how it feels for you to be flattered, Kevruth? >> Such an amused gravelly tone she has, more apt to strike sparks than make music. She takes in the sense of sand and heat, and in time, returns it to him with an echo of the sea-songs he'd sent her earlier: beaches deserve water, after all. << Your eggs. Show them to me? Will it be so very much longer? >>
"Papa says the same thing. That keeping up straps is ... oh I dunno, ten percent of a rider's real work, something like that." Milani chuckles and rolls up onto her side, listening to Leova about Vrianth. "Far ... and not far at the same time. And good. I'm looking forward to fast. And yeah, I have a strong stomach!" The smile from Leova is answered by a brilliantly innocent one from Milani. "Really. All sorts of good," she says very very seriously, but still with that big smile on her face.
"Stronger than my stomach," Leova avers. "And no, not so far... did he say what the rest was about?" She uses a fingernail to scrape out a bit that had solidified around the stitching, enough that if it were left that way it would be a waste. When she does finally look up, it's not because of the sun that her eyes are narrowed, her mouth pulled up at the corners. And she just eyes Milani for a time. Then says, smile growing, "Spill."
"And you fly with Vrianth allll the time," Milani teases the greenrider lightly, eyes twinkling. "Ummmm .... good straps, good leathers and control. Self-discipline is the other 80 percent of the job." Her head bobs up and down again. "Papa has very very definite opinions about being a dragonrider." As if that weren't obvious, she sniffs at the bloom she picked, then reaches up to tuck it into her hair over her ear and looks across at Leova very seriously, though her lips are twitching a little. "Sex is very nice," she finally states bluntly.
If she's looking for surprise, she certainly gets it, Leova startled into a belly-deep laugh that, why not, she exaggerates into a fall backward onto the blanket and twitching arms, the straps left to coil over her like a particularly fearsome nest of sakes. Leova twitches a little more, then lifts her head just enough to give Milani a sideways glance: how was that? At least the little pot didn't get upset. "Good. Keep it that way." No talk about straps and control and self-discipline just yet. "When? A'son?"
That current is accepted, savored, and appreciation for her retention of his offerings sweeps back. Kevruth's amusement is lighter than Vrianth's perhaps, his baritone more melodic than her gravelly notes. << You don't believe me? >> It's teasing though, playful sea breeze whispering around his words. It picks up with her offer of beaches and water - water, yes, that would be good. Better than scratchy sand and too many prying eyes. All this comes as a sense rather than words, followed by lingering flashes of eyes so colorful they border on gaudy. << A month, maybe more A'zan says. They grow harder though. >> (Kevruth to Vrianth)
<< I might believe you, >> she returns with the veriest hint of mischief, ozone on the sea breeze, the foretaste of lightning. But there are those eyes, those eggs, and she settles somewhat as they appear and then remove themselves, solidly, from the picture. << So long. >> It could be an eternity. << And all this time, you are not allowed to fly, Kevruth? >> Worse. And in the meantime her flight changes, momentum sent into a swoop that becomes a spiral, tight and fast and down towards the snow, enough to lurch the stomach out of the unwary. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
She can't help it. Fits of giggles from Milani as she reaches over to make sure the straps don't tangle all around Leova. "I'm planning to," she answers between giggles and holds out a hand to the greenrider to help her up. She shakes her head though for that last. "No." Then counts back on her fingers. "Twelve days ago."
Leova takes that hand, threatens to yank Milani down with her... only then she sits up anyway. "This is me, not asking who," she says. "Yet. And twelve days! But, I know." A sideways look at Milani, and for a moment there she could have long hair, skirts, a different past and different dreams. "You were just waiting to tell me, to make sure it wasn't just an accident. These things have to be tested, hm?"
Milani makes big eyes at that tug on her hand, but then she's leaning back to help Leova up and nods. "Don't bother because I'm not telling. Well not about /one/ of them, anyway," Milani says casually and draws her knees up to her chest, pillows her cheek atop her knees. "But I went to see E'dre and made things right," she continues softly with a little quirk in her smile. "And it was good and everything's all sorted out and he's happy and I'm happy." Exhale. "No, I've just been kind of ... buzzed, I guess. Is it like this for long? Being all kind of, loopy in the head and thinking about it all the time?"
"Them. Must be a story there," Leova surmises once she's uright, and leaves it there. Except she doesn't. "I know. N'thei. R'hin?" A speaking pause. "Hayda?" and that no more serious than the rest, during which she lids the pot so she won't have to think about it. Extricates her legs. Flops forward, hands cupping cheeks once she's on her belly again. "Well, good on you. Can be. Sometimes it's not so good. A bad day. Someone's cranky. Too tense. Too tired. But." Another pause, and this one is less a giveaway. "Thinking about it. Not him? Or them."
Vrianth senses that Kevruth is more deeply amused, the rumble that might be heard if she were present carried across his mind's touch. Her mischief is touched, turned and approved before his focus returns to his eggs. An iridescent one, champagne and butter yellow and near ivory in tone is offered last, smugly. << Not terribly long, >> he counters though his tone belies his actual strain against the dragging time. << I can fly if I choose to, but they do need tending. Perhaps one day I will come there to visit you. >> But there's snow there, the cold crunch offered to her before her feet touch it. And that's no beach. Not so different from Telgar itself. The swift landing is taken with his usual aplomb, some sense of reflected riderly irritation following his own common teeth-jarring jolt.
For that deep amusement, there may return a sense that Vrianth, new to such things, is at the moment quite willing to let herself be tutored. She turns the last egg's image over. Curious. Gives it a mental poke. << What is there to tend, Kevruth? If they do not yet move. >> And if she herself is not yet convinced that it is worth the trouble, she seems willing enough to believe /he/ finds it worth the trouble. The more so for that sense of strain. His holding himself back that way. That focused will. << Perhaps. >> Simple. Distancing, perhaps. Until. << Until then you may fly with me when you choose. >> And then there's no landing after all: the jolt's instead from suddenly outstretched wings, spiraling up and up and up into the skies, into the wild and boundless blue. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
There's another little smile from Milani and nod too as she props her chin atop her knees and looks down at rolling-over Leova. "After things went funny with E'dre I was feeling all weird about the whole thing and just ... you know." She waves a hand vaguely. "And then I talked about it with a friend and he offered to help." She takes a deep breath, folds lips in and then laughs, releasing them. "So I said yes. And it was good. So then I felt all right about E'dre and just ... shells you know. It's /nice/." There's a little ping in her cheeks suddenly and she joins the greenrider in rolling over onto belly and nods. "Yeah. Like anything else right? But overall. Just ... nice." Her chin goes into the cup of her hands, legs swinging back and forth behind her. "A little bit of both," she hazards.
"Very kind of him." Could Leova be more dry? But her smile's unfettered too, Milani in such a bright mood that way, right on top of the clear skies and fast dragon, the good food and the good work. Even if the work isn't seeing much attention right at the moment. "Yeah. Like all that. Hopefully he, they, gave you some ideas to keep it fun. And E'dre. He isn't going to be left moping after you, is he?" She adds after a moment, "Could be that it was easier. Not A'son. Not where it mattered /so/ much." And then she laughs again, but her eyes are slipping away, up into the sky.
This newness, this willingness to be taught is for Kevruth a novel thing. He's one of the youngest at his weyr and rarely pursues acquaintances outside of it, so he turns this newness around in his mind and examines it before replying. When he does it is somewhat distracted, vague and maybe purposefully so. << I turn them. I make sure they look their best and that the sand is smooth as I want it to be. >> The first necessary, the rest obliging his own vanity and yet ther is no chagrin for that fact. With her distance he begins to fade, but then he is snapped back, caught up in that whirl of wind and stretch of sky. The snap of sails returns, but draconic ones this time, another pair to match her own. << Soon, perhaps. >> And with that he slips away, considering. (Kevruth to Vrianth)
That vague distraction is the sort of thing that may send a student slipping away. Still, there's only a moment's even more vague dissatisfaction before, untroubled now, << So that is what is important. >> For eggs. To him. Perhaps Vrianth will even remember. Exhilaration overrides it, though, as Kevruth joins her in the game: up, up, up, and off along their separate ways. (Vrianth to Kevruth)
"He's a good man," Milani says softly about this mysterious shadow figure and she just smiles down at the blanket and looks up, shaking her head. "No. No more moping from E'dre. Though you know, it's not ... " she furrows her brow thinking it through, "no committments, no strings, I don't know. He's not the type and neither am I. Right now." The last bit takes a little of the edge off her smile. "I don't think he was ever going to anyway, Leova. Not sex, not ... anything. So it's okay. Just friends. Ays and me. Just friends." And the way she says that, she sounds like she's really okay with it." Her eyes lift to the sky too and she smiles, thinking about Vrianth. "Fast?"
"Better be." And, glancing back down, Leova lets it go in light of Milani's smile, settling for teasing, "Not no commitments? Know what you mean, though. Convenient." If it stays that way. The greenrider doesn't repeat the just-friends, doesn't make the third time the charm, just starts rolling up the spare set to finish the refurbishing later. Above them, Vrianth descends. Very fast. And then, floating.