Terribly glad for the help
11-4-2006 (Aida, Reyce):
Caucus Office
As offices go, this one is fairly standard. Larger than most due to being shared, there are a pair of desks set facing each other in the center of the room. Each desk has a set of shelves running the length of the wall behind it and those shelves are filled with neatly organized scroll-tubes. The floor has been covered in a thick blue-and-black braided rug, and the wall not hidden behind shelves bears a tapestry that shows a Harper instructing a class of young students.
As the morning fades away and the day starts to make a slow approach towards the lunch hour, the office is as it often is: fairly quiet. The door leading from the upper caverns has been left open a few inches -- not enough to make peeking in a 'just passing' affair, but enough that any obvious approaches are heard just soon enough to give warning. Aida is perched in the chair behind her desk, right now reading over a hide with a generally thoughtful sort of look, chewing a bit on her lower lip. The office itself is warm and bright, kept as cheerful as it can be to counter the gloom of the Reaches's fall.
Reyce's arrival is nonetheless muffled, both by the fact that he walks quietly out of habit and the fact that a group of men from the lower caverns happen to go tromping past at the same time he makes his approach. But the opening of the door certainly heralds his arrival, for all that he doesn't open it very far: only enough for him to slip through. He marks Aida's presence with a cautious scan of her features, staying put by the doorway until he's satisfied with his appraisal. Then he takes a steps up to her desk, knocking his knuckles down on top of it. "Headmaster's assistant, yeah?"
The movement of the door brings Aida's attention up, but only for an instant; she glances, sees that there is indeed someone there, and then looks back to the hide to finish the sentence she's reading. That being finished has her eyes coming up without her focus being distracted, and when she registers that it's Reyce that's stepping up to her desk, there's a brief pause before she's putting on a smile. "Yes," she agrees, giving an easy nod to go with the word as she slides the hide off to the side. "The headmaster has stepped out for a bit -- he has a meeting. Is there something I might be able to help you with?"
Reyce keeps his knuckles on the desk, establishing a line of communication that he doesn't bother to maintain with his eyes. Those he raises to the shelves on the wall behind her, scanning the numerous contents unhurriedly. "Teacher I work for met with him yesterday. Thinks he left his papers here - Putnam?" At the name, Reyce glances down at Aida for identification, offering a brief shrug on behalf of his hapless math teacher. "Be a bundle of survey scrolls, if he did."
With him looking elsewhere, Aida takes a moment to study him, a hint of curiosity making an appearance before it's shuffled away again behind the polite smile. There's a soft chuckle at the name given to her, smile brightening briefly before she nods and moves to slide up to her feet. "It's likely," she replies lightly, turning to slip over to the other desk. "I think that I saw them here somewhere; it may take me a moment to find them. You can make yourself comfortable if you'd like; can I pour you some klah or cider or something else?"
Reyce withdraws his knuckles from her desk as she stands, shifting a half-step backwards himself. This time his eyes fall downwards, staring absently at the contents of her desk (including that hide she was so thoughtfully examining when he entered); he's settling in to wait, and by the time she offers him a drink, his hands are already stuffed away inside his jacket pockets. "No," he answers simply, lifting his eyes from his desk and finding her face again, though he keeps his hands - pointedly, perhaps - pocketed and out-of-use. "I'm fine."
The hide that she was looking over appears to be a lesson outline for one of the history classes, not terribly detailed. Aida starts poking through a particular stack of scrolls on the other desk, dismissing some just by looking at what's keeping them tied, unrolling and peeking at a few others. Reyce's response to the offer has her looking back to him again for a moment, smile holding. It takes her a few heartbeats of searching for the words before they finally do come, and when they do her tone is conversational. "Is it going well, working with Putnam? I expect he's terribly glad for the help." More poking through the scrolls. Poke, poke.
Reyce, suspicious of anyone's motives in trying to converse with him, narrows his eyes at the question. His first response is the quiet flap of leather as he tugs his jacket further forward, his hands pushing into sullen fists somewhere in the pockets. Then, "Yeah," he answers, not bothering to hide his wariness or match her friendly tone. "He's fine. Knows what he's doing." He narrows his eyes further over this last pronouncement, watching her closely: Putnam is one of two entry-level geometry teachers at the Caucus, and decidedly the less popular one.
Wary. Aida pauses in her search for a moment to set her eyes on him again, tilting her head to the side and lifting an eyebrow slightly. It's an openly quizzical look, though the question is not given voice. It's held for two heartbeats and then a third, and then she's going back to poking through the scrolls. That stack is eventually abandoned, and she circles away from Sefton's desk to a shelf where there's another pile. "I haven't had a chance to sit in on his class recently," she replies, her tone stubbornly holding onto that conversational note. "Unfortunately, that's an area where I have not had much experience, so I'm not the best judge. Geometry is very new to me. It's good to hear that you think he does."
Reyce's eyes squint further down on catching her quizzical look, holding it for a beat of three heartbeats just as she does, and then breaks his eyes away to look across the room, settling his expression slowly and drawing in a quick, sinus-clearing sniff to help him do so. Up until that last sentence, he doesn't even seem to hear her talking, such is his sudden disinterest in her goings-on, but a thin quirk appears on his lips when she says 'it's good to hear.' "Who knows if I know what I'm doing, though." It's good that the room is so quiet, otherwise it might be hard to hear his voice - naturally soft and dark - much less the dull note of amusement that infuses those words.
It only takes her a quick run through on the shelf to decide the bundle is not there, and Aida stands staring at it for a moment with a thoughtful look, tilting her head to the side and considering. Where are those scrolls? His comment snaps her out of it, and a chuckle escapes promptly as she glances over his way again, smile wry. "Right," she says, not bothering to hide her own note of humor. "I hope you'll forgive me if I have decided that you do." She rolls her eyes there, turning away from the shelf to survey the room again. "You said surveys. I wonder..." Trailing off there, she heads back to her own desk, staying on her feet as she goes through a pile there, chewing on her lip. "I'm usually better at finding things," she points out. "I am just not certain what I assumed they were when I found them."
Reyce allows a blink this time, his eyes trailing back to Aida as he murmurs a disinterested "Sure," allowing her to decide what she wants about him without issue. While she surveys the room, he surveys her again, taking advantage of her distraction to direct another suspicious, narrow-eyed glare at her back, but it's short-lived: when she turns back towards her desk, it's gone. "Stack about this high," he offers, holding his palms a descriptive inch apart. "First page may not have much on it. Index or something. If it's blending in." A small shrug here, a theory proposed for why she can't find the papers.
Flicking a look to his hands when he notes the size of the stack, Aida wrinkles up her nose. "Thank you," she replies, wry amusement lingering as she goes back to flipping through the stack. "It would stand to figure that the one stack of scrolls I can't find, I can't find when it's you that needs them. Have to keep up the routine of looking like an idiot for you." She sends a grin up his way to ensure that he catches that she's joking, then heads back to Sefton's desk. "How are the rest of your classes?"
Reyce squints over his confusion at her response, shifting his pocketed hands once again so they cross in front of him, the two flaps of his jacket pulled forth over his stomach. The grin she sends him eases away that squinted expression he has, but it doesn't break his own withdrawed manner: he stares back at her, unresponsive at first, and eventually says, "Okay," drawing out the second syllable for at least a second. It could as well be a response to her joke as to her question; Reyce certainly doesn't clarify, and the long space between it and the shrug that follows doesn't help.
Sending another glance over his way at his response, Aida studies him again for a long moment, not bothering to hide that she's doing so. Thoughtful, that look. The study is punctuated with a little nod and then she's turning her head back away, returning to her rifling through things. First stack, and then a second. For all that the urge to continue to babble is suppressed, she doesn't seem to be particularly tense or awkward for it -- there's another apologetic smile sent his way as she moves from the first stack of papers to the second. She'll find it -- really. It's got to be here somewhere. At least for a minute or two, he's allowed his quiet without being poked or prodded at more than the occasional look over towards him.
Reyce draws himself up for her unhidden study, bringing to bear the height differences between them so he can look down at her through eyes that slant lazily, dismissively, towards closing. At her nod, the laziness dissipates in favor of another quick suspicious narrowing, and then he banishes both impulses in favor of adopting a neutral expression that makes him look oddly like a guard on duty, when coupled with his straightened posture and the way his gaze unfailingly traces her around the room, observing but not interfering. There's no efforts to make small talk at all on his part.
Exhaling a little displeased sort of sigh, Aida gets ready to give up on the second stack when she perks up a bit, eyebrows both lifting. Oh! Her smile appears, bright as can be, and she's soon tugging out a smaller bunch from within the whole, turning to step back to her own desk and offering these out towards him. "I apologize that it took me so long," Aida says, to go with the papers being held out. "If there's anything else I can do for you, let me know?"
Reyce takes the stack from her and becomes quickly absorbed in it, flipping through the pages and checking, especially, the last page - apparently to assure himself that all the papers are in fact, there. Meeting with success in this, he gives a little grunt of approval, dropping all the pages together again and tucking them under his arm. "That's all," he answers. His posture changes in some undefinable way: still drawn up, but less tense now that he's accomplished his goal. And he even goes so far as to add, "Thanks," and a small tilt of his head. Barring some other effort from her, he'll turn around and be out the door in the next second, careful to leave it - as he found it - a few inches ajar.
"You're welcome," Aida tells him, taking up a lean against the side of her desk and bringing her arms up to cross them over her chest. She turns her head to watch after him, her expression touching with thoughtfulness. Hunh. Oh. "See you around some time," she adds at the last moment, the statement given just enough of a lilt at the end that it could pass just as easily as a question. still, for all that there's thoughtful curiosity there, she makes no attempt at further keeping him.
Reyce is out, then, answering her parting comment with no more than a glance tossed over his shoulder - and not even at her, specifically, but at her area of the room - and then disappearing back into the upper caverns with his prize.
Caucus Office
As offices go, this one is fairly standard. Larger than most due to being shared, there are a pair of desks set facing each other in the center of the room. Each desk has a set of shelves running the length of the wall behind it and those shelves are filled with neatly organized scroll-tubes. The floor has been covered in a thick blue-and-black braided rug, and the wall not hidden behind shelves bears a tapestry that shows a Harper instructing a class of young students.
As the morning fades away and the day starts to make a slow approach towards the lunch hour, the office is as it often is: fairly quiet. The door leading from the upper caverns has been left open a few inches -- not enough to make peeking in a 'just passing' affair, but enough that any obvious approaches are heard just soon enough to give warning. Aida is perched in the chair behind her desk, right now reading over a hide with a generally thoughtful sort of look, chewing a bit on her lower lip. The office itself is warm and bright, kept as cheerful as it can be to counter the gloom of the Reaches's fall.
Reyce's arrival is nonetheless muffled, both by the fact that he walks quietly out of habit and the fact that a group of men from the lower caverns happen to go tromping past at the same time he makes his approach. But the opening of the door certainly heralds his arrival, for all that he doesn't open it very far: only enough for him to slip through. He marks Aida's presence with a cautious scan of her features, staying put by the doorway until he's satisfied with his appraisal. Then he takes a steps up to her desk, knocking his knuckles down on top of it. "Headmaster's assistant, yeah?"
The movement of the door brings Aida's attention up, but only for an instant; she glances, sees that there is indeed someone there, and then looks back to the hide to finish the sentence she's reading. That being finished has her eyes coming up without her focus being distracted, and when she registers that it's Reyce that's stepping up to her desk, there's a brief pause before she's putting on a smile. "Yes," she agrees, giving an easy nod to go with the word as she slides the hide off to the side. "The headmaster has stepped out for a bit -- he has a meeting. Is there something I might be able to help you with?"
Reyce keeps his knuckles on the desk, establishing a line of communication that he doesn't bother to maintain with his eyes. Those he raises to the shelves on the wall behind her, scanning the numerous contents unhurriedly. "Teacher I work for met with him yesterday. Thinks he left his papers here - Putnam?" At the name, Reyce glances down at Aida for identification, offering a brief shrug on behalf of his hapless math teacher. "Be a bundle of survey scrolls, if he did."
With him looking elsewhere, Aida takes a moment to study him, a hint of curiosity making an appearance before it's shuffled away again behind the polite smile. There's a soft chuckle at the name given to her, smile brightening briefly before she nods and moves to slide up to her feet. "It's likely," she replies lightly, turning to slip over to the other desk. "I think that I saw them here somewhere; it may take me a moment to find them. You can make yourself comfortable if you'd like; can I pour you some klah or cider or something else?"
Reyce withdraws his knuckles from her desk as she stands, shifting a half-step backwards himself. This time his eyes fall downwards, staring absently at the contents of her desk (including that hide she was so thoughtfully examining when he entered); he's settling in to wait, and by the time she offers him a drink, his hands are already stuffed away inside his jacket pockets. "No," he answers simply, lifting his eyes from his desk and finding her face again, though he keeps his hands - pointedly, perhaps - pocketed and out-of-use. "I'm fine."
The hide that she was looking over appears to be a lesson outline for one of the history classes, not terribly detailed. Aida starts poking through a particular stack of scrolls on the other desk, dismissing some just by looking at what's keeping them tied, unrolling and peeking at a few others. Reyce's response to the offer has her looking back to him again for a moment, smile holding. It takes her a few heartbeats of searching for the words before they finally do come, and when they do her tone is conversational. "Is it going well, working with Putnam? I expect he's terribly glad for the help." More poking through the scrolls. Poke, poke.
Reyce, suspicious of anyone's motives in trying to converse with him, narrows his eyes at the question. His first response is the quiet flap of leather as he tugs his jacket further forward, his hands pushing into sullen fists somewhere in the pockets. Then, "Yeah," he answers, not bothering to hide his wariness or match her friendly tone. "He's fine. Knows what he's doing." He narrows his eyes further over this last pronouncement, watching her closely: Putnam is one of two entry-level geometry teachers at the Caucus, and decidedly the less popular one.
Wary. Aida pauses in her search for a moment to set her eyes on him again, tilting her head to the side and lifting an eyebrow slightly. It's an openly quizzical look, though the question is not given voice. It's held for two heartbeats and then a third, and then she's going back to poking through the scrolls. That stack is eventually abandoned, and she circles away from Sefton's desk to a shelf where there's another pile. "I haven't had a chance to sit in on his class recently," she replies, her tone stubbornly holding onto that conversational note. "Unfortunately, that's an area where I have not had much experience, so I'm not the best judge. Geometry is very new to me. It's good to hear that you think he does."
Reyce's eyes squint further down on catching her quizzical look, holding it for a beat of three heartbeats just as she does, and then breaks his eyes away to look across the room, settling his expression slowly and drawing in a quick, sinus-clearing sniff to help him do so. Up until that last sentence, he doesn't even seem to hear her talking, such is his sudden disinterest in her goings-on, but a thin quirk appears on his lips when she says 'it's good to hear.' "Who knows if I know what I'm doing, though." It's good that the room is so quiet, otherwise it might be hard to hear his voice - naturally soft and dark - much less the dull note of amusement that infuses those words.
It only takes her a quick run through on the shelf to decide the bundle is not there, and Aida stands staring at it for a moment with a thoughtful look, tilting her head to the side and considering. Where are those scrolls? His comment snaps her out of it, and a chuckle escapes promptly as she glances over his way again, smile wry. "Right," she says, not bothering to hide her own note of humor. "I hope you'll forgive me if I have decided that you do." She rolls her eyes there, turning away from the shelf to survey the room again. "You said surveys. I wonder..." Trailing off there, she heads back to her own desk, staying on her feet as she goes through a pile there, chewing on her lip. "I'm usually better at finding things," she points out. "I am just not certain what I assumed they were when I found them."
Reyce allows a blink this time, his eyes trailing back to Aida as he murmurs a disinterested "Sure," allowing her to decide what she wants about him without issue. While she surveys the room, he surveys her again, taking advantage of her distraction to direct another suspicious, narrow-eyed glare at her back, but it's short-lived: when she turns back towards her desk, it's gone. "Stack about this high," he offers, holding his palms a descriptive inch apart. "First page may not have much on it. Index or something. If it's blending in." A small shrug here, a theory proposed for why she can't find the papers.
Flicking a look to his hands when he notes the size of the stack, Aida wrinkles up her nose. "Thank you," she replies, wry amusement lingering as she goes back to flipping through the stack. "It would stand to figure that the one stack of scrolls I can't find, I can't find when it's you that needs them. Have to keep up the routine of looking like an idiot for you." She sends a grin up his way to ensure that he catches that she's joking, then heads back to Sefton's desk. "How are the rest of your classes?"
Reyce squints over his confusion at her response, shifting his pocketed hands once again so they cross in front of him, the two flaps of his jacket pulled forth over his stomach. The grin she sends him eases away that squinted expression he has, but it doesn't break his own withdrawed manner: he stares back at her, unresponsive at first, and eventually says, "Okay," drawing out the second syllable for at least a second. It could as well be a response to her joke as to her question; Reyce certainly doesn't clarify, and the long space between it and the shrug that follows doesn't help.
Sending another glance over his way at his response, Aida studies him again for a long moment, not bothering to hide that she's doing so. Thoughtful, that look. The study is punctuated with a little nod and then she's turning her head back away, returning to her rifling through things. First stack, and then a second. For all that the urge to continue to babble is suppressed, she doesn't seem to be particularly tense or awkward for it -- there's another apologetic smile sent his way as she moves from the first stack of papers to the second. She'll find it -- really. It's got to be here somewhere. At least for a minute or two, he's allowed his quiet without being poked or prodded at more than the occasional look over towards him.
Reyce draws himself up for her unhidden study, bringing to bear the height differences between them so he can look down at her through eyes that slant lazily, dismissively, towards closing. At her nod, the laziness dissipates in favor of another quick suspicious narrowing, and then he banishes both impulses in favor of adopting a neutral expression that makes him look oddly like a guard on duty, when coupled with his straightened posture and the way his gaze unfailingly traces her around the room, observing but not interfering. There's no efforts to make small talk at all on his part.
Exhaling a little displeased sort of sigh, Aida gets ready to give up on the second stack when she perks up a bit, eyebrows both lifting. Oh! Her smile appears, bright as can be, and she's soon tugging out a smaller bunch from within the whole, turning to step back to her own desk and offering these out towards him. "I apologize that it took me so long," Aida says, to go with the papers being held out. "If there's anything else I can do for you, let me know?"
Reyce takes the stack from her and becomes quickly absorbed in it, flipping through the pages and checking, especially, the last page - apparently to assure himself that all the papers are in fact, there. Meeting with success in this, he gives a little grunt of approval, dropping all the pages together again and tucking them under his arm. "That's all," he answers. His posture changes in some undefinable way: still drawn up, but less tense now that he's accomplished his goal. And he even goes so far as to add, "Thanks," and a small tilt of his head. Barring some other effort from her, he'll turn around and be out the door in the next second, careful to leave it - as he found it - a few inches ajar.
"You're welcome," Aida tells him, taking up a lean against the side of her desk and bringing her arms up to cross them over her chest. She turns her head to watch after him, her expression touching with thoughtfulness. Hunh. Oh. "See you around some time," she adds at the last moment, the statement given just enough of a lilt at the end that it could pass just as easily as a question. still, for all that there's thoughtful curiosity there, she makes no attempt at further keeping him.
Reyce is out, then, answering her parting comment with no more than a glance tossed over his shoulder - and not even at her, specifically, but at her area of the room - and then disappearing back into the upper caverns with his prize.