Journey's End
Location: The Road to Five Mines
Time: Early Morning on Day 27, Month 9, Turn 3
Players: Sedgewick, Ilonzo (NPCed by Derek), Corvet (NPCed by Derek)
Scene: One more wayward soul seeks a resting place at Five Mines.
Ilonzo and Corvet are walking down the road that led from the mine to the foothills. They have not got far, and would not go far before turning back. Ilonzo speaks, amicably and jovially in his rich mongrel accent, about the captain and the captain's men. He makes sure to include the riders from time to time, and has just now spent the daybreak describing the future they all desire, when hard work and fairness will prevail over wealth and privilege.
Corvet laughs at the rhetoric, but his laugh is jovial appreciation; the traces of bitter disbelief grow fewer with every smile the darker man bleeds out of him. "Just a," he interjects, and doesn't go on to specify how long a time he needs; instead he steps off the road and into the trees. He slips around a short black snag from selective logging done turns ago, then between two whole trees left alive to grow taller, into the brush.
Ilonzo laughs loud, letting his syrupy voice echo through the dawn. "You could have let on I was starting to repeat myself, little man." As he waits for the other man to come back to the road he turns toward the sun with face uplifted, black eyes tangled in the dappled morning light.
Getting from Tillek to Nabol without the aid of a dragon has been no particularly easy task. There was the timing of falls and the scarcity of caravans now that the pass has returned. Still, Sedgewick is a resourceful sort and he managed, over the course of a seven and a half, to creep himself away from the fishcraft and towards the decimated fields of Nabol.
This last leg he makes on his own, backpack on his back, dagger at his hip, and walking staff in one hand. His last ride left him a day's walk away from Five Mines, and he spent most of yesterday making good time. But rather than arrive at the little mining hold in the darkness, he chose to sleep on the side of the road and finish the trek in the morning's sun. Sedgewick whistles as he walks, his close-cropped brown curls a bit unkempt, a day's growth of stubble on his jaw, and no knot on his shoulder.
His pace slows just a little, when Sedgewick notices the man in the middle of the road, but he continues forward. When he's close enough to see Ilonzo's face, Sedgewick's pouting lips shape themselves into a wry half smile. "Good morning, friend," he calls. "Are you here to lead the way or to turn travelers back?"
The man on the road, dark-eyed and dark-skinned and auburn-black-haired, turns from the sunlight with a shrug ready. He wears rough khaki trousers and a billowy-sleeved shirt in cream, black boots and a leather vest from which wool peeks out at underarm and collar; an overcoat, likely hip-length, rests on his arm. If the cold chills him, there's no sign. His smile is warm, and warmth rolls out on his soft consonants when he speaks. "The hospitality of Five Mines turns nobody back." He takes a few paces toward the new arrival, one arm outstretched as if he welcomes a visitor to sumptuous quarters rather than a couple miles more of dusty mountain climb. "What little we have is here to serve every man." A little flourish; he draws his hand back toward his chest. "Ilonzo. To whom have I the pleasure?"
As Ilonzo speaks, Sedge finishes ambling closer, his walking stick thumping down before him each time his right foot steps forward. His own dark green eyes dart over the other man and his smile brightens. "Relief, that. Hate to turn back around, now that I'm nearly there. Well met, Ilonzo. My name's Sedgewick. Sedge, if you like."
That there is recognition in the dark man's black eyes is questionable; the split-second silence before he replies might have just as easily been spent in coming up with cleverness. "Something that can grow between the chinks in every stone."
The soft crunches of boots coming through the underbrush toward the road is followed by the louder crunch of boots on the dirt itself, and Ilonzo turns to make introductions here as well. "Corvet," he almost sings out, "Meet Sedge."
"Sedge," says Corvet. He's a sleek tall man, blond hair slicked back, wide-faced and blue-eyed, older than Ilonzo and more weathered, too. He comes along the road brushing his hands on his pants, then tucks his fingers into his back pockets. He grins, showing gappy teeth. "Going down, or coming up?"
"Up," Ilonzo fills in; to Sedgewick he tacks on, "We were just heading back ourselves."
For Ilonzo's cleverness, Sedgewick looks down, the smile still curling his lips, as if he is a bit embarrassed by the darker man's commentary. He looks up suddenly as new footsteps arrive, but the small tension that sings though his body eases as this second arrival is introduced. "Hullo Corvet. Suppose, you're going up, I'll follow along."
"A wonderful plan," enthuses Ilonzo, putting a hand into his vest as he turns; Corvet turns too, and soon the men dark and light flank Sedgewick - loosely - on either side. Ilonzo brings out from his vest a little flat tin, flicks it open with his thumbnail, and with the other hand pulls out a little rolled cigarette.
"You're new, then? I've been here since - well, since before," Corvet reveals, jovially enough though he stays quite clear of the walking stick between himself and the curl-haired man. "It's just now coming to the point where I have to ask who's new rather than know on sight." Another gappy grin and he transfers his hands from back pockets to front, shrugging along the way.
Ilonzo tucks the cigarette into his palm and pops out a tinder-locket. "Do you mind," he asks all but rhetorically, unobtrusively; a little flinty glimmer shines in his eyes before he adds, "I share."
Sedgewick is silent as he walks, letting the men speak to and around him while he and his walking stick move closer to Five Mines proper. "Brand new," he agrees. "This'll be a first time I even clap eyes on the place. I didn't expect anybody to be waiting for me. That many people heading here, these days?" He flicks a glance towards Corvet, and then towards Ilonzo as that little tin comes out. "Don't mind. Don't smoke much myself, but don't mind when others do."
"Oh, we weren't waiting," Corvet laughs. Unlike Ilonzo's, his laughter is hefty, sawn from raw wood. "Just having a walk." His blue eyes slip to their corners, but it's not Sedgewick he focuses on; he looks right past him for a cue from the black-eyed man on the other side.
"You want one, you know where they are," slips in Ilonzo, smile half-curled as he puts up the cigarette into the other corner of his mouth. He tucks away the tin and shakes the flint-locket a few times, then checks the tinder inside for glow. "What brings you?" he asks, bending his head a little to tuck the end of the cigarette into the spark-infested wool, then shakes closed the locket, looking up and east into the sun.
"I do at that," Sedgewick agrees to Ilonzo's comment on his cigarettes' locale. "Just a walk? Guess my timing's spot on, then, it got me a pair of escorts." He thumps a few more steps down the road, watching the path ahead, before he answers Ilonzo's question. "Not exactly sure, yet. Curiosity, maybe. Fascination. Hope, maybe. Wanted to see what I could see. Maybe talk to a man I used to know, he's willing."
"Stretch the legs. Had a bit of a night," laughs Corvet, getting his hands out of his pockets so he can brush them down the front of his shirt. He ambles up the road in no seeming hurry, good-natured. "Well, we certainly have hope to spare," he adds, for Sedge's list of reasons.
"We do at that." Ilonzo, delayed in speaking until now by the draw and leisurely savor of his cigarette, exhales smoke around his words and turns his gaze back over toward Sedgewick. "Anyone we can find for you, this man you used to know?" A smile lazes on his lips, just to make sure he sounds polite.
"That so?" Sedge steals another glance towards Corvet with his dark green eyes. "Comforting to hear, that." At Ilonzo's question, he again ducks his head down, smiling as if shy. "Think, he's around and kicking won't be too hard for me to find him myself. Not the sort to keep himself from being found. Least, not when I knew him, though time can do its best to change a man. But enough about old ties. Tell me a bit about the new ones. Who're the folks I need to talk to, I'd like a bed for a few nights or longer?"
"It's so," says Corvet, and slips his blue gaze past Sedgewick onto the shadow of a man who flanks the other side, casually smiley.
"Time and distance," agrees Ilonzo between drags. He lets the gaunt man between them take silence for answer to his question for the term of three paces up the road, holding smoke in his mouth for that time before letting it out from a bemused smirk. "Nera. Or whomever she points you toward."
The middle-man's head comes up, dark green eyes wide, and surprise evident on his boyish face. "A woman?" Sedge asks, his voice hushed with shock, although his legs continue to move along at their previous pace, walking stick thudding down with each step of his right foot. "I'm...surprised. What about this 'Lord Odern' fellow rumor keeps tossing about?"
"Would you ask the Lord Holder for a few nights' bed?" Ilonzo's question stops short of derisive; his voice remains rich and pleasured, as if it delights him a little to have to explain. "Certainly there are more important things the likes of Lords distinguish their hours with. Although should you wish to stay for some time - " These last two words he draws out long on an exhale, then tucks the cigarette into his mouth to replace that breath with smoke.
"The Lord Odern requires sworn loyalty from his people," explains Corvet. "Or those they're loyal to."
All of that is mulled on and considered as the mining hold comes into view, a strange and inverted sight for a man who has never looked on its like before. Sedgewick stops walking and allows himself a long moment to simply stare, eyes flicking here and there, noting the small shapes that denote people. "I guess I'd want to stay a few days, before I decided if I wanted to stay for longer. That possible?"
"Nera, then," agrees Corvet, stopping when Sedgewick does. "She's, what. Sort of like the headwoman?"
"Sort of like," Ilonzo agrees around his cigarette, black eyes sidelining as his gaze slips off to the side of the road. He stops too, though he takes his stopping slowly, each pace a bit shorter than the last until, a couple feet ahead of the others, he's not walking at all. "Feast your eyes," he says, drawing in a long draught from the cigarette before plucking it from his mouth and turning his head so he's regarding Sedge over-shoulder.
"Mmm," Sedgewick agrees quietly as he does just that. "Headwoman. Well, that makes sense, then." With a little nod he takes up walking again, tossing his staff from right hand to left, and then back again, before again proceeding forward.
Corvet starts walking again in a beat after Sedgewick does, flanking him just to the rear rather than directly beside. "Everyone has to do something," he remarks affably, as though this is his agreement with the staff-tosser's statement.
"So what do you make of it," asks Ilonzo, dropping his cigarette and turning his heel over it as Sedge passes by him. "Our home in the mountains?" He walks too, letting the new man take the lead now; plenty of room for the staff, and to get a clear view of the mine ahead.
"Happy to pull my weight like any other man," Sedgewick says, his eyes still on Five Mines. "It's..." he swallows once, twice as he considers, "odd looking," he admits with a dip of his head and the return of his small sheepish smile. "Looks like a mountain flipped inside-out."
Corvet laughs. "Not the first to say so," says he, taking a faster step forward to dare a swift hand up on the new arrival's shoulder.
Ilonzo's more keen to help add detail to the illusion than to make their traveling companion feel more comfortable in his observation; he lifts a point over Sedgewick's left shoulder. "Look, are your eyes good enough to see the dark spots, west and east? They're the mineshafts. Our dragonriders weyr there, now."
As Sedgewick walks, his head comes up and his chin tips higher, a touch more proud, as Corvet settles a hand on his shoulder. He squints, trying to see those dark spots mentioned, but his gaze can only widen again as those shadows are given the title of 'weyr'. "Dragonriders," he breathes softly, looking over at Ilonzo. "They're really here, then."
The dark man draws back his hand. "What kind of place would it be if they weren't?" But Ilonzo's question is softly spoken, too close to the back of Sedgewick's ear, easy for Corvet to speak over the top of.
"Oh, they really are," the blond all but chortles, an awed note tingeing his own voice, however jovial. "Over two dozen ready to fight, two bronzes, a queen! And a whole little nest of young ones with weyrs of their own already. You'll have to watch them train, you get a chance." His hand tightens on Sedgewick's shoulder, then pats once, then releases. "Quite the thing."
"Can't say it's a sight I've ever seen before," Sedgewick muses to Corvet. But it's toward Ilonzo that the curly-haired man looks, his features thoughtful at the darker man's quiet words. "Just another hold, I guess," is his equally quiet answer.
Though far from loud, Ilonzo's exotic laughter rings out through the mountain air in sweet clarity. "Exactly," he says. "Now as we come up this little ridge here - "
"You can see the tiers of the fields," fills in Corvet, taking his turn now to point. Though the south-facing slope of the stripped mountain pit is farthest off from this northward road, the fact that the deep steps carved into that slope by the mining that made this place is already apparent. From the base of the pit up about a third of the face those ledges sprout green with crops. Of course the hold itself, built out from the wall of the west-facing slope, may now be seen if not in detail; but against the splendor of the copper- and debris-stained rock ledges, the strange ledged farm and the mountain backdrop above, the hold is less than glorious, a sturdy and efficient study in stone.
"Clever, that," Sedgewick says with a nod, looking where directed and noting those fields. "Will I be working them, then, while I stay? Or..." another small glance to Ilonzo, "something else?" He turns to Corvet with an easier smile. "Fields make me think of food. Haven't had a thing to nibble since yesterday afternoon."
"Then let's pick it up a bit," says Corvet, teasingly, though his pace picks up easily and in a couple of jostling steps he's pulling ahead of the other men like a canine always anxious to get home. "We can probably make breakfast, you think?"
Ilonzo apparently takes Corvet's question as rhetorical. "I suppose that depends on how long you stay and who you see," says the dark man, smiling a smile that seems crooked, one side thin as if still holding a cigarette.
"Want to see everything." His eyes find Ilonzo's again. "Everyone of interest." Then Sedgewick catches up more properly with Corvet and easily starts in on the walk he's spent the last day taking, who he ran across, bits of this and that he's heard. Easy chatter as they drift down the bowl and towards promised sustenance.
"There's a few people of interest here," Corvet puts in. "Maybe more than a few. Let's start with the breakfast crew, though, what say?" And he leaps out with a long-legged stride ahead of the other men, electing himself now to lead the way toward the courtyard, the Hold, and food.
Ilonzo waits a time, long enough to place seemly distance between himself and his fleet-footed friend. Should Sedgewick choose to wait alongside, he will hear the smoker's low murmur: "He won't be at breakfast today."
Sedgewick's pace slows so that while Corvet moves ahead, it's only the curly-haired man's enthusiasm that follows. His body remains near Ilonzo, and for his words, Sedge's chin tips downward for just a moment. "Where will he be?"
"Looking in on Solein," Ilonzo replies, speeding a stride forward so he's an inch of shoulder ahead of the other man, ostensibly following Corvet - in case Corvet looks back. "Speaking to the rest of us." Dark shoulders twitch out a sparing shrug. "Counting heads."
Sedgewick keeps his place to a step behind Ilonzo, though he now walks with his staff slung over his shoulder as if the tip pointed behind him out to be sporting a bright bandana filled with the various odds and ends of a traveler. "A busy man," he chuckles. "Would he mind an intrusion, do you suppose?"
"Solein would mind," Ilonzo says, slowing his step more suddenly than necessary, turning his head just a little. With his head so turned there's apparent in the sunlight just a trace of blue beneath the brown of his temple; either he's thin-skinned, or bruised. Only that, no more; Ilonzo walks on. "Less than yesterday, I think. Do you want to see Nera first? Or the Lord? Or - " His smile's audible. "Breakfast?"
"I suppose I'd better find my place, before I begin eating like it's owed me," Sedgewick murmurs as he looks quickly up towards that faint blue discoloration, and then away. "Nera. Then the Lord. Then breakfast. And then, guess I'll see about trying my luck."
"Nera will be at breakfast, and she'll want you to be eating if she's to greet you hospitably," Ilonzo replies, and speeds his pace. He turns his face up toward the sun, needing no guidance of sight for his feet to carry him toward Five Mines Hold. "Your luck is good already."
"Made it here," Sedge notes with a bright smile, "Guess it must be." He picks up his own pace to match Ilonzo's, and they follow Corvet inside. Sedgewick is whistling softly as they disappear from view.
Time: Early Morning on Day 27, Month 9, Turn 3
Players: Sedgewick, Ilonzo (NPCed by Derek), Corvet (NPCed by Derek)
Scene: One more wayward soul seeks a resting place at Five Mines.
Ilonzo and Corvet are walking down the road that led from the mine to the foothills. They have not got far, and would not go far before turning back. Ilonzo speaks, amicably and jovially in his rich mongrel accent, about the captain and the captain's men. He makes sure to include the riders from time to time, and has just now spent the daybreak describing the future they all desire, when hard work and fairness will prevail over wealth and privilege.
Corvet laughs at the rhetoric, but his laugh is jovial appreciation; the traces of bitter disbelief grow fewer with every smile the darker man bleeds out of him. "Just a," he interjects, and doesn't go on to specify how long a time he needs; instead he steps off the road and into the trees. He slips around a short black snag from selective logging done turns ago, then between two whole trees left alive to grow taller, into the brush.
Ilonzo laughs loud, letting his syrupy voice echo through the dawn. "You could have let on I was starting to repeat myself, little man." As he waits for the other man to come back to the road he turns toward the sun with face uplifted, black eyes tangled in the dappled morning light.
Getting from Tillek to Nabol without the aid of a dragon has been no particularly easy task. There was the timing of falls and the scarcity of caravans now that the pass has returned. Still, Sedgewick is a resourceful sort and he managed, over the course of a seven and a half, to creep himself away from the fishcraft and towards the decimated fields of Nabol.
This last leg he makes on his own, backpack on his back, dagger at his hip, and walking staff in one hand. His last ride left him a day's walk away from Five Mines, and he spent most of yesterday making good time. But rather than arrive at the little mining hold in the darkness, he chose to sleep on the side of the road and finish the trek in the morning's sun. Sedgewick whistles as he walks, his close-cropped brown curls a bit unkempt, a day's growth of stubble on his jaw, and no knot on his shoulder.
His pace slows just a little, when Sedgewick notices the man in the middle of the road, but he continues forward. When he's close enough to see Ilonzo's face, Sedgewick's pouting lips shape themselves into a wry half smile. "Good morning, friend," he calls. "Are you here to lead the way or to turn travelers back?"
The man on the road, dark-eyed and dark-skinned and auburn-black-haired, turns from the sunlight with a shrug ready. He wears rough khaki trousers and a billowy-sleeved shirt in cream, black boots and a leather vest from which wool peeks out at underarm and collar; an overcoat, likely hip-length, rests on his arm. If the cold chills him, there's no sign. His smile is warm, and warmth rolls out on his soft consonants when he speaks. "The hospitality of Five Mines turns nobody back." He takes a few paces toward the new arrival, one arm outstretched as if he welcomes a visitor to sumptuous quarters rather than a couple miles more of dusty mountain climb. "What little we have is here to serve every man." A little flourish; he draws his hand back toward his chest. "Ilonzo. To whom have I the pleasure?"
As Ilonzo speaks, Sedge finishes ambling closer, his walking stick thumping down before him each time his right foot steps forward. His own dark green eyes dart over the other man and his smile brightens. "Relief, that. Hate to turn back around, now that I'm nearly there. Well met, Ilonzo. My name's Sedgewick. Sedge, if you like."
That there is recognition in the dark man's black eyes is questionable; the split-second silence before he replies might have just as easily been spent in coming up with cleverness. "Something that can grow between the chinks in every stone."
The soft crunches of boots coming through the underbrush toward the road is followed by the louder crunch of boots on the dirt itself, and Ilonzo turns to make introductions here as well. "Corvet," he almost sings out, "Meet Sedge."
"Sedge," says Corvet. He's a sleek tall man, blond hair slicked back, wide-faced and blue-eyed, older than Ilonzo and more weathered, too. He comes along the road brushing his hands on his pants, then tucks his fingers into his back pockets. He grins, showing gappy teeth. "Going down, or coming up?"
"Up," Ilonzo fills in; to Sedgewick he tacks on, "We were just heading back ourselves."
For Ilonzo's cleverness, Sedgewick looks down, the smile still curling his lips, as if he is a bit embarrassed by the darker man's commentary. He looks up suddenly as new footsteps arrive, but the small tension that sings though his body eases as this second arrival is introduced. "Hullo Corvet. Suppose, you're going up, I'll follow along."
"A wonderful plan," enthuses Ilonzo, putting a hand into his vest as he turns; Corvet turns too, and soon the men dark and light flank Sedgewick - loosely - on either side. Ilonzo brings out from his vest a little flat tin, flicks it open with his thumbnail, and with the other hand pulls out a little rolled cigarette.
"You're new, then? I've been here since - well, since before," Corvet reveals, jovially enough though he stays quite clear of the walking stick between himself and the curl-haired man. "It's just now coming to the point where I have to ask who's new rather than know on sight." Another gappy grin and he transfers his hands from back pockets to front, shrugging along the way.
Ilonzo tucks the cigarette into his palm and pops out a tinder-locket. "Do you mind," he asks all but rhetorically, unobtrusively; a little flinty glimmer shines in his eyes before he adds, "I share."
Sedgewick is silent as he walks, letting the men speak to and around him while he and his walking stick move closer to Five Mines proper. "Brand new," he agrees. "This'll be a first time I even clap eyes on the place. I didn't expect anybody to be waiting for me. That many people heading here, these days?" He flicks a glance towards Corvet, and then towards Ilonzo as that little tin comes out. "Don't mind. Don't smoke much myself, but don't mind when others do."
"Oh, we weren't waiting," Corvet laughs. Unlike Ilonzo's, his laughter is hefty, sawn from raw wood. "Just having a walk." His blue eyes slip to their corners, but it's not Sedgewick he focuses on; he looks right past him for a cue from the black-eyed man on the other side.
"You want one, you know where they are," slips in Ilonzo, smile half-curled as he puts up the cigarette into the other corner of his mouth. He tucks away the tin and shakes the flint-locket a few times, then checks the tinder inside for glow. "What brings you?" he asks, bending his head a little to tuck the end of the cigarette into the spark-infested wool, then shakes closed the locket, looking up and east into the sun.
"I do at that," Sedgewick agrees to Ilonzo's comment on his cigarettes' locale. "Just a walk? Guess my timing's spot on, then, it got me a pair of escorts." He thumps a few more steps down the road, watching the path ahead, before he answers Ilonzo's question. "Not exactly sure, yet. Curiosity, maybe. Fascination. Hope, maybe. Wanted to see what I could see. Maybe talk to a man I used to know, he's willing."
"Stretch the legs. Had a bit of a night," laughs Corvet, getting his hands out of his pockets so he can brush them down the front of his shirt. He ambles up the road in no seeming hurry, good-natured. "Well, we certainly have hope to spare," he adds, for Sedge's list of reasons.
"We do at that." Ilonzo, delayed in speaking until now by the draw and leisurely savor of his cigarette, exhales smoke around his words and turns his gaze back over toward Sedgewick. "Anyone we can find for you, this man you used to know?" A smile lazes on his lips, just to make sure he sounds polite.
"That so?" Sedge steals another glance towards Corvet with his dark green eyes. "Comforting to hear, that." At Ilonzo's question, he again ducks his head down, smiling as if shy. "Think, he's around and kicking won't be too hard for me to find him myself. Not the sort to keep himself from being found. Least, not when I knew him, though time can do its best to change a man. But enough about old ties. Tell me a bit about the new ones. Who're the folks I need to talk to, I'd like a bed for a few nights or longer?"
"It's so," says Corvet, and slips his blue gaze past Sedgewick onto the shadow of a man who flanks the other side, casually smiley.
"Time and distance," agrees Ilonzo between drags. He lets the gaunt man between them take silence for answer to his question for the term of three paces up the road, holding smoke in his mouth for that time before letting it out from a bemused smirk. "Nera. Or whomever she points you toward."
The middle-man's head comes up, dark green eyes wide, and surprise evident on his boyish face. "A woman?" Sedge asks, his voice hushed with shock, although his legs continue to move along at their previous pace, walking stick thudding down with each step of his right foot. "I'm...surprised. What about this 'Lord Odern' fellow rumor keeps tossing about?"
"Would you ask the Lord Holder for a few nights' bed?" Ilonzo's question stops short of derisive; his voice remains rich and pleasured, as if it delights him a little to have to explain. "Certainly there are more important things the likes of Lords distinguish their hours with. Although should you wish to stay for some time - " These last two words he draws out long on an exhale, then tucks the cigarette into his mouth to replace that breath with smoke.
"The Lord Odern requires sworn loyalty from his people," explains Corvet. "Or those they're loyal to."
All of that is mulled on and considered as the mining hold comes into view, a strange and inverted sight for a man who has never looked on its like before. Sedgewick stops walking and allows himself a long moment to simply stare, eyes flicking here and there, noting the small shapes that denote people. "I guess I'd want to stay a few days, before I decided if I wanted to stay for longer. That possible?"
"Nera, then," agrees Corvet, stopping when Sedgewick does. "She's, what. Sort of like the headwoman?"
"Sort of like," Ilonzo agrees around his cigarette, black eyes sidelining as his gaze slips off to the side of the road. He stops too, though he takes his stopping slowly, each pace a bit shorter than the last until, a couple feet ahead of the others, he's not walking at all. "Feast your eyes," he says, drawing in a long draught from the cigarette before plucking it from his mouth and turning his head so he's regarding Sedge over-shoulder.
"Mmm," Sedgewick agrees quietly as he does just that. "Headwoman. Well, that makes sense, then." With a little nod he takes up walking again, tossing his staff from right hand to left, and then back again, before again proceeding forward.
Corvet starts walking again in a beat after Sedgewick does, flanking him just to the rear rather than directly beside. "Everyone has to do something," he remarks affably, as though this is his agreement with the staff-tosser's statement.
"So what do you make of it," asks Ilonzo, dropping his cigarette and turning his heel over it as Sedge passes by him. "Our home in the mountains?" He walks too, letting the new man take the lead now; plenty of room for the staff, and to get a clear view of the mine ahead.
"Happy to pull my weight like any other man," Sedgewick says, his eyes still on Five Mines. "It's..." he swallows once, twice as he considers, "odd looking," he admits with a dip of his head and the return of his small sheepish smile. "Looks like a mountain flipped inside-out."
Corvet laughs. "Not the first to say so," says he, taking a faster step forward to dare a swift hand up on the new arrival's shoulder.
Ilonzo's more keen to help add detail to the illusion than to make their traveling companion feel more comfortable in his observation; he lifts a point over Sedgewick's left shoulder. "Look, are your eyes good enough to see the dark spots, west and east? They're the mineshafts. Our dragonriders weyr there, now."
As Sedgewick walks, his head comes up and his chin tips higher, a touch more proud, as Corvet settles a hand on his shoulder. He squints, trying to see those dark spots mentioned, but his gaze can only widen again as those shadows are given the title of 'weyr'. "Dragonriders," he breathes softly, looking over at Ilonzo. "They're really here, then."
The dark man draws back his hand. "What kind of place would it be if they weren't?" But Ilonzo's question is softly spoken, too close to the back of Sedgewick's ear, easy for Corvet to speak over the top of.
"Oh, they really are," the blond all but chortles, an awed note tingeing his own voice, however jovial. "Over two dozen ready to fight, two bronzes, a queen! And a whole little nest of young ones with weyrs of their own already. You'll have to watch them train, you get a chance." His hand tightens on Sedgewick's shoulder, then pats once, then releases. "Quite the thing."
"Can't say it's a sight I've ever seen before," Sedgewick muses to Corvet. But it's toward Ilonzo that the curly-haired man looks, his features thoughtful at the darker man's quiet words. "Just another hold, I guess," is his equally quiet answer.
Though far from loud, Ilonzo's exotic laughter rings out through the mountain air in sweet clarity. "Exactly," he says. "Now as we come up this little ridge here - "
"You can see the tiers of the fields," fills in Corvet, taking his turn now to point. Though the south-facing slope of the stripped mountain pit is farthest off from this northward road, the fact that the deep steps carved into that slope by the mining that made this place is already apparent. From the base of the pit up about a third of the face those ledges sprout green with crops. Of course the hold itself, built out from the wall of the west-facing slope, may now be seen if not in detail; but against the splendor of the copper- and debris-stained rock ledges, the strange ledged farm and the mountain backdrop above, the hold is less than glorious, a sturdy and efficient study in stone.
"Clever, that," Sedgewick says with a nod, looking where directed and noting those fields. "Will I be working them, then, while I stay? Or..." another small glance to Ilonzo, "something else?" He turns to Corvet with an easier smile. "Fields make me think of food. Haven't had a thing to nibble since yesterday afternoon."
"Then let's pick it up a bit," says Corvet, teasingly, though his pace picks up easily and in a couple of jostling steps he's pulling ahead of the other men like a canine always anxious to get home. "We can probably make breakfast, you think?"
Ilonzo apparently takes Corvet's question as rhetorical. "I suppose that depends on how long you stay and who you see," says the dark man, smiling a smile that seems crooked, one side thin as if still holding a cigarette.
"Want to see everything." His eyes find Ilonzo's again. "Everyone of interest." Then Sedgewick catches up more properly with Corvet and easily starts in on the walk he's spent the last day taking, who he ran across, bits of this and that he's heard. Easy chatter as they drift down the bowl and towards promised sustenance.
"There's a few people of interest here," Corvet puts in. "Maybe more than a few. Let's start with the breakfast crew, though, what say?" And he leaps out with a long-legged stride ahead of the other men, electing himself now to lead the way toward the courtyard, the Hold, and food.
Ilonzo waits a time, long enough to place seemly distance between himself and his fleet-footed friend. Should Sedgewick choose to wait alongside, he will hear the smoker's low murmur: "He won't be at breakfast today."
Sedgewick's pace slows so that while Corvet moves ahead, it's only the curly-haired man's enthusiasm that follows. His body remains near Ilonzo, and for his words, Sedge's chin tips downward for just a moment. "Where will he be?"
"Looking in on Solein," Ilonzo replies, speeding a stride forward so he's an inch of shoulder ahead of the other man, ostensibly following Corvet - in case Corvet looks back. "Speaking to the rest of us." Dark shoulders twitch out a sparing shrug. "Counting heads."
Sedgewick keeps his place to a step behind Ilonzo, though he now walks with his staff slung over his shoulder as if the tip pointed behind him out to be sporting a bright bandana filled with the various odds and ends of a traveler. "A busy man," he chuckles. "Would he mind an intrusion, do you suppose?"
"Solein would mind," Ilonzo says, slowing his step more suddenly than necessary, turning his head just a little. With his head so turned there's apparent in the sunlight just a trace of blue beneath the brown of his temple; either he's thin-skinned, or bruised. Only that, no more; Ilonzo walks on. "Less than yesterday, I think. Do you want to see Nera first? Or the Lord? Or - " His smile's audible. "Breakfast?"
"I suppose I'd better find my place, before I begin eating like it's owed me," Sedgewick murmurs as he looks quickly up towards that faint blue discoloration, and then away. "Nera. Then the Lord. Then breakfast. And then, guess I'll see about trying my luck."
"Nera will be at breakfast, and she'll want you to be eating if she's to greet you hospitably," Ilonzo replies, and speeds his pace. He turns his face up toward the sun, needing no guidance of sight for his feet to carry him toward Five Mines Hold. "Your luck is good already."
"Made it here," Sedge notes with a bright smile, "Guess it must be." He picks up his own pace to match Ilonzo's, and they follow Corvet inside. Sedgewick is whistling softly as they disappear from view.