Log: Because of the Snowman
Who: Aleczir, Milani
When: Afternoon, 13/10/19
Where: Resident Common Room, High Reaches Weyr
What: Alex haz a cold. Milani can haz tea for that!
Resident Common Room, High Reaches Weyr(#378RJs)
Just off of the main passageway lies the small cavern that forms the hub of the residents' quarters, kept immaculately clean by the headwoman's staff and warmed in cold weather by a stone hearth to the left and well back from the entrance. Comfortable chairs and a plush fur arrayed before the hearth make an inviting spot to curl up with a book or handicraft, or just to sit and chat. Beyond, additional chairs stand in clusters throughout the room, some upholstered with age-softened hide, some plain wood. At the widest point of the cavern, a round table gleams with polish, though its surface is nicked and scarred from Turns of use. Beyond the table, the very back of the cavern often lies in shadow unless the glowbaskets there are unlidded to cast cozy pools of light. The commingled scents of klah, smoke and polish permeate the air along with the sweetness of rosemary and lavender.
Tapestries hang across the entrances to dormitories and more private quarters as well as the exit to the outer hall, colorful protections from drafts.
The weather's finally sunny outside-- for all it's ridiculously cold still-- which means Alex is naturally holed up inside. Figure that one out. Sniffling, huddled, someone's gone and caught himself a head-cold, which-- when that same someone isn't much for taking care of himself under the best of circumstances-- makes him quite a wreck. Huddled in front of the common room fire, which someone else was nice enough to stoke for him, he's zombied.
The clink of skateblades sounds as the headwoman swings her office door shut and locks it behind her. Another clink follows: keys dropping into a coat pocket. Millie hums blithely as she starts to head out, pauses as she catches sight of one miserable starcrafter. "Alex? What in Faranth's name ... oh shells. Do you need some tea or something?" the headwoman asks solicitously, forehead wrinkling with sympathetic concern as she nears.
Clink. Clink. Not a normal noise in the common room, thank you, and it draws Alex out of the miserable reverie of blowing his nose and wishing the fire would jump out of the hearth and warm him up. "You're going out?" he deduces-- and we'll assume Milani can parse the 'you're bowing dout' of nasal congestion. Her question, which he was totally unprepared for, draws an owlish blink. "Why?"
"Sure," Millie says chipperly about going out. "Great skating weather. The lake's solid, it's sunny. I've been looking forward to my first skate since the hatching," the headwoman continues blithely. "And why? Because you have a miserable cold and usually a little bit of lemon-chamomile-mint tea with sweet syrup helps with the sniffles and soothes my throat. What do you think? Sound good?"
The skating's really presenting a problem. Not the most cohesive thinker under the best of circumstances, Alex is having a particularly hard time with-- "Skating weather." He'll parse that eventually. Just not yet. "Lemon... mint... Can you say that again, please?" He sits up straighter at that, rubs a thumb into his ear, and makes ever pretense that he's going to pay strict attention this time. "Tea. Syrup. Where?"
"Great wather for doing a few rounds on the lake, yep!" Milani repeats in slightly different language then blinks once, twice at Alex. "Lemon. Mint. Chamomile. Sweet syrup." Beat. "Kitchen. But you stay /there/ and I will get it for you, okay?"
Pulling the blanket up to his ears, Alex begs to differ, "It's cold out there." Not that he looks so much warmer in here, but at least he had the sense not to go mucking around no matter how fair the day appears to be. "I have issues with the--" Kitchen. But she said to stay here, and he's peering at her with a thorough confusion settling in. "Okay." Like, he's at a loss beyond that, sorry.
"Not once you get moving," Milani counters about the cold. But. One finger upheld. A moment please! And then she's setting her skates down nearish Alex' chair. Clink-thud. And turning in a little flurry of coat-tails to go to the kitchen. A few minutes elapse and the headwoman returns with a steaming mug of hot tea in one hand and two jars in the other. "Here, drink this, or well, wrap your hands around it for now so you don't burn your tongue, it's hot. And /these/ are for refills. I made pouty-faces at one of the cooks and they mixed up the stuff in a jar for me and this is the sweet syrup." Jars waggled. "That way you can fill up at the nighthearth. Always hot water there." Because she does remember Alex' kitchen issues.
"Then the wind..." No, Alex shakes his head and dismisses what could have been a very reliable argument. If his head wasn't stuffed with cotton at the moment. Off she goes, leaving him to blow his nose in a way that he would hardly dream of doing with anyone, let alone a girl, on the premises. He's still recovering from this when Milani returns, and he reaches out of his blanket for that mug. "Thank you," he says authentically, cracks a smile-- yes, cracks, given the bleariness-- and takes the hot mug gratefully in both hands. FYI: "It's because of the snowman."
Wind? Milani would probably have asked about that if she wasn't focused on tea-getting. As it is, once the mug is handed over and she's smiled brightly at the starcrafter, she's tucking his jars into the chair between him and the arm. "So you don't forget them," she notes with another one of those brilliant smiles of hers. Here's hoping to Faranth he doesn't forget anyway and wind up breaking his foot if they drop when he gets up. "Snowman?"
Now that she goes and says that about forgetting them, the odds are tripled that they're still going to be sitting there long after Alex is not. But that's a problem for the future. For now-- the brilliant smile makes him try a little harder not to smile like he feels as badly as he looks, fortified by the tea-in-hand though he hasn't got around to sipping yet. "Snowman. Are you asking because you're... not familiar with the concept?" Dubious, especially while he's eyeing her skates.
"I'm asking what a snowman has to do with 'because'. Unless you mean that you stayed outside too long making one?" Milani queries, head tipped to the side as she sinks hands into pockets and shifts weight from foot to foot. CLearly, the headwoman has antsiness problems.
It's rare, but he can occasionally be pointed. Alex looks down at Milani's feet, deliberately, then just as deliberately at a vacant chair. Not that he's one to criticize the fidgets, but... "Cause-and-effect? I already felt poorly, then the snowman had to be built, now I have a headcold. It's not an exciting story." He risks a sip, burns his tongue, holds the tea resolutely perched on his kneecap for now.
"Ohhhh. Well, that's a shame. I mean building snowmen is usually pretty fun. Milani eyes that pointed look, eyes the chair and actually sighs, but takes the hint, tugging the chair a little closer. When she sits though, the fidget don't stop. They just transfer to bouncing knees. Off and on. "Did you make it by yourself or with company?"
He tries to ignore it. For now. Alex can't help looking at the bouncing knees pretty often, though, in a sort of bleary, distractable way. "Do people normally get company for that kind of thing?" he asks, the thought clearly never having occurred to him before. "A girl wandered by, but then she wandered off again." Puzzling, that.
"Oh yes, often. The kids you know, they'll go do it in bunches. Or well, it can actually make for a kind of cute date with someone you like," Milani conveys in continuingly blithe tones. Her hands drop to her knees and push, forcibly stilling them. Then her fingers start to drum. Which might not be /as/ distracting.
"No." At 'the kids, you know.' "I don't know any." Alex looks around the edge of the chair, a brave glance finding its way toward the nursery-- but everyone in there is too occupied to notice him peering like that. "Someone gave me a carrot, butterly flapped its wings, poof. Snowman. They make you... talk to people... if you keep doing that." That last part is said with his finger pointing toward Milani's.
"Well I mean it's just something that the kids /do/ whether you know a particular one or not," Millie explains. "And having a carrot's a good reason to make one, sure!" His last earns a dubious look. "What? Fidget? No one's ever made me talk to anyone about it. It's just energy. It builds up. I have to do something with it."
Aleczir, sage-- which is hard to do when one is congested, by the way; "It could be a sign of a more serious issue." The energy, presumably, not the kids building snowmen. "That's why the ice-skating and hand-walking?"
"Good thing it isn't?" Milani says with a tip of her head to the side and a little laugh. "But yes. That's why I get out and about and move around a lot," the headwoman agrees, head bobbing up and down. "I go nuts sitting at that desk for too long." Chin jerk towards the office.
Aleczir manages to look both amused and doubtful; good thing it isn't, but-- "Says who?" Risking the tea again, since it's right there, tempting him, promising relief, he huddles low over it and glassy eyes trail the direction of her jerking chin toward the office door. "Clipboard job. It's understandable."
"My mother, the healers who've examined me all my life for general help and Carobet hasn't highlighted it as an issue," Milani says with perhaps disturbing candor. "Oh well see, it's a bit of everything, headwoman. I'm on my feet plenty too, but things stack up and then I need an outlet. At least right now it's not so busy so I have time to sneak out and skate." Which she's not doing right this second.
"That was not a serious..." Alex takes a breath on the tail-end of that remark, cuts it off, lips to the edge of his teacup again. Which is where they still are when he mumbles, "Was that intended to make me feel guilty, or accidental side-effect?" With the croakiness, it's hard to be sure, but there is a little quirk at the corner of his mouth like /maybe/ that's a joke.
Milani's head ducks and she laughs, then looks up, shakes her head. "No," she answers the last simply, even if it's a joke. Hey, she did laugh. "If you were well though, would you want to skate or is it just one of those things you don't like?"
To be honest? "I've never considered the possibility." Alex peers at the skates now, contemplating the very simple mechanics to be deduced from the look of them, and his brows climb slowly higher and higher behind the rim of his teacup. "I'll think about it some time. You people are good at avoiding cabin fever?"
"Really? Well, you know, if the fancy strikes, I can teach you," Milani offers generously about the skating. "And well, getting outside in the fresh air, that usually helps, right?"
Pardon Alex while he looks daunted at the prospect of being taught to skate. By someone who can't even sit still. The train-wreck possibilities are endless. "I'll... keep that in mind," he promises slowly. As to getting out in the fresh air, that prompts a choked snort, a dramatic wipe of his nose with his handkerchief, which must be totally gross by now; "Does it? Helps who?"
"Okay!" Milani is undaunted by that hesitation. If he asks, he asks and if he doesn't she might ask again sometime, given you know, this particular fellow's habits in the memory department. "Sunshine helps," Milani explains about the cabin fever. "So you know, a little fresh air, a walk, some sunshine, usually help with that cooped up feeling. And well, personally, getting a ride to someplace warm to break things up is a big help too."
The tea is working as much as tea can work, the frog being drowned and boiled in his throat if nothing else. Alex's eye twitches dubiously at the prospect of sunshine helping, a smile pulling the corner of his mouth. "Sunshine," says the /star/smith, brows plucking upward. At her last, there's a quick, "Mn-mn. Social experiment. Where do you go though?"
"Or just you know, fresh air. Like when you go out looking at the stars," Milani points out. "Point is to get outside and breathe, because it does get kind of musty in here over the winter." In here being the caverns that she gestures around to, though they're pretty well ventilated. "Anywhere that I can wheedle a ride to, which isn't all that hard given how many friends and family members I have who're riders. Fingers pluck at a wrinkle in her pants. "Ista. Boll. Nerat. The south."
"Musty doesn't... bother me. So much." So saying, Alex looks at the door to his own room. Locked. All the damn time. "Why are you still in here right now?" he realizes abruptly, having reached the bottom of the teacup-- a clear indicator that some measure of time has passed.
"That's an advantage when living in caves," Milani notes brightly then smiles across the way. "Talking to you. So, don't forget the jars," she slips out of the chair again and taps each in turn. "It'll help," she says gently and drifts a hand towards his shoulder for a friendly pat before collecting her skates. "Rest up and feel better soon, Alex."
Aleczir leans away away away at her brave tap, conscientious about the germs floating around his person. Also weird about his personal space, but that's more secondary, shown more in the glance to the hand on his shoulder. "Five to seven days. Have... fun." If that's possible-- his tone really doubts it.
It's only the lightest of pats and quickly given and as quick the retreat when Alex leans. "And hopefully shorter if you get plenty of rest. Thank you, I /will/," Millie says, herself convinced it will be and off she goes. It's some time later before she returns, pink-cheeked and happy and much less fidgety. Good times.
Aleczir will probably still be there. Though, bless his heart, he manages to fall asleep.
When: Afternoon, 13/10/19
Where: Resident Common Room, High Reaches Weyr
What: Alex haz a cold. Milani can haz tea for that!
Resident Common Room, High Reaches Weyr(#378RJs)
Just off of the main passageway lies the small cavern that forms the hub of the residents' quarters, kept immaculately clean by the headwoman's staff and warmed in cold weather by a stone hearth to the left and well back from the entrance. Comfortable chairs and a plush fur arrayed before the hearth make an inviting spot to curl up with a book or handicraft, or just to sit and chat. Beyond, additional chairs stand in clusters throughout the room, some upholstered with age-softened hide, some plain wood. At the widest point of the cavern, a round table gleams with polish, though its surface is nicked and scarred from Turns of use. Beyond the table, the very back of the cavern often lies in shadow unless the glowbaskets there are unlidded to cast cozy pools of light. The commingled scents of klah, smoke and polish permeate the air along with the sweetness of rosemary and lavender.
Tapestries hang across the entrances to dormitories and more private quarters as well as the exit to the outer hall, colorful protections from drafts.
The weather's finally sunny outside-- for all it's ridiculously cold still-- which means Alex is naturally holed up inside. Figure that one out. Sniffling, huddled, someone's gone and caught himself a head-cold, which-- when that same someone isn't much for taking care of himself under the best of circumstances-- makes him quite a wreck. Huddled in front of the common room fire, which someone else was nice enough to stoke for him, he's zombied.
The clink of skateblades sounds as the headwoman swings her office door shut and locks it behind her. Another clink follows: keys dropping into a coat pocket. Millie hums blithely as she starts to head out, pauses as she catches sight of one miserable starcrafter. "Alex? What in Faranth's name ... oh shells. Do you need some tea or something?" the headwoman asks solicitously, forehead wrinkling with sympathetic concern as she nears.
Clink. Clink. Not a normal noise in the common room, thank you, and it draws Alex out of the miserable reverie of blowing his nose and wishing the fire would jump out of the hearth and warm him up. "You're going out?" he deduces-- and we'll assume Milani can parse the 'you're bowing dout' of nasal congestion. Her question, which he was totally unprepared for, draws an owlish blink. "Why?"
"Sure," Millie says chipperly about going out. "Great skating weather. The lake's solid, it's sunny. I've been looking forward to my first skate since the hatching," the headwoman continues blithely. "And why? Because you have a miserable cold and usually a little bit of lemon-chamomile-mint tea with sweet syrup helps with the sniffles and soothes my throat. What do you think? Sound good?"
The skating's really presenting a problem. Not the most cohesive thinker under the best of circumstances, Alex is having a particularly hard time with-- "Skating weather." He'll parse that eventually. Just not yet. "Lemon... mint... Can you say that again, please?" He sits up straighter at that, rubs a thumb into his ear, and makes ever pretense that he's going to pay strict attention this time. "Tea. Syrup. Where?"
"Great wather for doing a few rounds on the lake, yep!" Milani repeats in slightly different language then blinks once, twice at Alex. "Lemon. Mint. Chamomile. Sweet syrup." Beat. "Kitchen. But you stay /there/ and I will get it for you, okay?"
Pulling the blanket up to his ears, Alex begs to differ, "It's cold out there." Not that he looks so much warmer in here, but at least he had the sense not to go mucking around no matter how fair the day appears to be. "I have issues with the--" Kitchen. But she said to stay here, and he's peering at her with a thorough confusion settling in. "Okay." Like, he's at a loss beyond that, sorry.
"Not once you get moving," Milani counters about the cold. But. One finger upheld. A moment please! And then she's setting her skates down nearish Alex' chair. Clink-thud. And turning in a little flurry of coat-tails to go to the kitchen. A few minutes elapse and the headwoman returns with a steaming mug of hot tea in one hand and two jars in the other. "Here, drink this, or well, wrap your hands around it for now so you don't burn your tongue, it's hot. And /these/ are for refills. I made pouty-faces at one of the cooks and they mixed up the stuff in a jar for me and this is the sweet syrup." Jars waggled. "That way you can fill up at the nighthearth. Always hot water there." Because she does remember Alex' kitchen issues.
"Then the wind..." No, Alex shakes his head and dismisses what could have been a very reliable argument. If his head wasn't stuffed with cotton at the moment. Off she goes, leaving him to blow his nose in a way that he would hardly dream of doing with anyone, let alone a girl, on the premises. He's still recovering from this when Milani returns, and he reaches out of his blanket for that mug. "Thank you," he says authentically, cracks a smile-- yes, cracks, given the bleariness-- and takes the hot mug gratefully in both hands. FYI: "It's because of the snowman."
Wind? Milani would probably have asked about that if she wasn't focused on tea-getting. As it is, once the mug is handed over and she's smiled brightly at the starcrafter, she's tucking his jars into the chair between him and the arm. "So you don't forget them," she notes with another one of those brilliant smiles of hers. Here's hoping to Faranth he doesn't forget anyway and wind up breaking his foot if they drop when he gets up. "Snowman?"
Now that she goes and says that about forgetting them, the odds are tripled that they're still going to be sitting there long after Alex is not. But that's a problem for the future. For now-- the brilliant smile makes him try a little harder not to smile like he feels as badly as he looks, fortified by the tea-in-hand though he hasn't got around to sipping yet. "Snowman. Are you asking because you're... not familiar with the concept?" Dubious, especially while he's eyeing her skates.
"I'm asking what a snowman has to do with 'because'. Unless you mean that you stayed outside too long making one?" Milani queries, head tipped to the side as she sinks hands into pockets and shifts weight from foot to foot. CLearly, the headwoman has antsiness problems.
It's rare, but he can occasionally be pointed. Alex looks down at Milani's feet, deliberately, then just as deliberately at a vacant chair. Not that he's one to criticize the fidgets, but... "Cause-and-effect? I already felt poorly, then the snowman had to be built, now I have a headcold. It's not an exciting story." He risks a sip, burns his tongue, holds the tea resolutely perched on his kneecap for now.
"Ohhhh. Well, that's a shame. I mean building snowmen is usually pretty fun. Milani eyes that pointed look, eyes the chair and actually sighs, but takes the hint, tugging the chair a little closer. When she sits though, the fidget don't stop. They just transfer to bouncing knees. Off and on. "Did you make it by yourself or with company?"
He tries to ignore it. For now. Alex can't help looking at the bouncing knees pretty often, though, in a sort of bleary, distractable way. "Do people normally get company for that kind of thing?" he asks, the thought clearly never having occurred to him before. "A girl wandered by, but then she wandered off again." Puzzling, that.
"Oh yes, often. The kids you know, they'll go do it in bunches. Or well, it can actually make for a kind of cute date with someone you like," Milani conveys in continuingly blithe tones. Her hands drop to her knees and push, forcibly stilling them. Then her fingers start to drum. Which might not be /as/ distracting.
"No." At 'the kids, you know.' "I don't know any." Alex looks around the edge of the chair, a brave glance finding its way toward the nursery-- but everyone in there is too occupied to notice him peering like that. "Someone gave me a carrot, butterly flapped its wings, poof. Snowman. They make you... talk to people... if you keep doing that." That last part is said with his finger pointing toward Milani's.
"Well I mean it's just something that the kids /do/ whether you know a particular one or not," Millie explains. "And having a carrot's a good reason to make one, sure!" His last earns a dubious look. "What? Fidget? No one's ever made me talk to anyone about it. It's just energy. It builds up. I have to do something with it."
Aleczir, sage-- which is hard to do when one is congested, by the way; "It could be a sign of a more serious issue." The energy, presumably, not the kids building snowmen. "That's why the ice-skating and hand-walking?"
"Good thing it isn't?" Milani says with a tip of her head to the side and a little laugh. "But yes. That's why I get out and about and move around a lot," the headwoman agrees, head bobbing up and down. "I go nuts sitting at that desk for too long." Chin jerk towards the office.
Aleczir manages to look both amused and doubtful; good thing it isn't, but-- "Says who?" Risking the tea again, since it's right there, tempting him, promising relief, he huddles low over it and glassy eyes trail the direction of her jerking chin toward the office door. "Clipboard job. It's understandable."
"My mother, the healers who've examined me all my life for general help and Carobet hasn't highlighted it as an issue," Milani says with perhaps disturbing candor. "Oh well see, it's a bit of everything, headwoman. I'm on my feet plenty too, but things stack up and then I need an outlet. At least right now it's not so busy so I have time to sneak out and skate." Which she's not doing right this second.
"That was not a serious..." Alex takes a breath on the tail-end of that remark, cuts it off, lips to the edge of his teacup again. Which is where they still are when he mumbles, "Was that intended to make me feel guilty, or accidental side-effect?" With the croakiness, it's hard to be sure, but there is a little quirk at the corner of his mouth like /maybe/ that's a joke.
Milani's head ducks and she laughs, then looks up, shakes her head. "No," she answers the last simply, even if it's a joke. Hey, she did laugh. "If you were well though, would you want to skate or is it just one of those things you don't like?"
To be honest? "I've never considered the possibility." Alex peers at the skates now, contemplating the very simple mechanics to be deduced from the look of them, and his brows climb slowly higher and higher behind the rim of his teacup. "I'll think about it some time. You people are good at avoiding cabin fever?"
"Really? Well, you know, if the fancy strikes, I can teach you," Milani offers generously about the skating. "And well, getting outside in the fresh air, that usually helps, right?"
Pardon Alex while he looks daunted at the prospect of being taught to skate. By someone who can't even sit still. The train-wreck possibilities are endless. "I'll... keep that in mind," he promises slowly. As to getting out in the fresh air, that prompts a choked snort, a dramatic wipe of his nose with his handkerchief, which must be totally gross by now; "Does it? Helps who?"
"Okay!" Milani is undaunted by that hesitation. If he asks, he asks and if he doesn't she might ask again sometime, given you know, this particular fellow's habits in the memory department. "Sunshine helps," Milani explains about the cabin fever. "So you know, a little fresh air, a walk, some sunshine, usually help with that cooped up feeling. And well, personally, getting a ride to someplace warm to break things up is a big help too."
The tea is working as much as tea can work, the frog being drowned and boiled in his throat if nothing else. Alex's eye twitches dubiously at the prospect of sunshine helping, a smile pulling the corner of his mouth. "Sunshine," says the /star/smith, brows plucking upward. At her last, there's a quick, "Mn-mn. Social experiment. Where do you go though?"
"Or just you know, fresh air. Like when you go out looking at the stars," Milani points out. "Point is to get outside and breathe, because it does get kind of musty in here over the winter." In here being the caverns that she gestures around to, though they're pretty well ventilated. "Anywhere that I can wheedle a ride to, which isn't all that hard given how many friends and family members I have who're riders. Fingers pluck at a wrinkle in her pants. "Ista. Boll. Nerat. The south."
"Musty doesn't... bother me. So much." So saying, Alex looks at the door to his own room. Locked. All the damn time. "Why are you still in here right now?" he realizes abruptly, having reached the bottom of the teacup-- a clear indicator that some measure of time has passed.
"That's an advantage when living in caves," Milani notes brightly then smiles across the way. "Talking to you. So, don't forget the jars," she slips out of the chair again and taps each in turn. "It'll help," she says gently and drifts a hand towards his shoulder for a friendly pat before collecting her skates. "Rest up and feel better soon, Alex."
Aleczir leans away away away at her brave tap, conscientious about the germs floating around his person. Also weird about his personal space, but that's more secondary, shown more in the glance to the hand on his shoulder. "Five to seven days. Have... fun." If that's possible-- his tone really doubts it.
It's only the lightest of pats and quickly given and as quick the retreat when Alex leans. "And hopefully shorter if you get plenty of rest. Thank you, I /will/," Millie says, herself convinced it will be and off she goes. It's some time later before she returns, pink-cheeked and happy and much less fidgety. Good times.
Aleczir will probably still be there. Though, bless his heart, he manages to fall asleep.