What they would say
1-17-2007 (J'cor [Shaya], Roa):
Yosset's house is a living thing, often as much at the service of its servants as its masters. The small, cool room usually set aside for Shaya's dance lessons has been taken over by kitchen women celebrating a birthday, and the three dancers have moved to an even smaller space upstairs, well-lit but close and warm. As compensation, Shaya has brought up a small urn of water and keeps it by her side, ready to share with her dancers once they've done their steps to her satisfaction. Nessa is first to finish: as Roa's diligence brings her closer to catching up with the young girl, her tantrums have transitioned into a fierce determination not to be overtaken. She comes smoothly out of a turn-step-turn combo, receives her sister's nod, and sneaks in close to dip her cup into the urn-water. While she drinks, Nessa watches Roa carrying out the eight dictated repetitions of the hipswing-step that Shaya has her working on before she too can quit.
Her feet are bare, her shirt has been peeled away to reveal a sleeveless undershirt, and her long pants have been tossed aside so she wears only her half-pants. A thin sheen of sweat coats the weyrwoman's skin and if some have a hard time adapting to High Reaches cold, perhaps the native of cooler Telgari climes finds it equally challeging to manage in desert heat. Still, the final hipswing ends with a precise flick of said bodypart and Roa returns to a neutral position, waiting to see if she, too, might win a pause and a drink.
Shaya has been very picky about Roa's hips today, and she watches the execution of that final move with a singular focus. The precision of the final flick earns her approval, and a sharp nod to confirm it before she melts out of her strict teaching role and straightens, placing her hands on the knees of her crossed legs and pushing into an arch that makes her back crack. Abashed, but also mischievous, she shoots a smile at Roa and beckons her forward with a loose wave of her hand. "Very good," she says, the warmth of her Igenite accent rolling gently beneath the words. "Come get a drink." Nessa slips back to the square she was dancing in, echoing her sister's cross-legged seat as she settles down where she can watch the older girls and continue with her own silent sipping.
Shoulders relax a little and Roa offers Shaya a small smile at the pop of the younger girl's spine. One arm lifts, the back of her hand swiping at her forehead as she pads over to the urn, picks up a mug and dips it down into the water. It is raised to her lips, Roa's eyes close, and she drains the entire mug in a matter of moments. She seems about to dunk her cup a second time, but then she pauses and looks over at Shaya with raised brows, waiting for an all-clear before doing so.
Shaya has been watching the weyrwoman drink, and her draining thirst makes the Gezzan smile a curved smile, pleased and a little secretive. It brightens when Roa looks for permission for a second cup, and Shaya raises her own cup with a permissive tilt. "Have more. The water is good?" Raising her own brows, she brings up the slim amount of water remaining in her cup, and blinks at Roa while she drinks it off and awaits her answer.
The weyrwoman fills her cup again and swallows down half, lowering the mug from her lips with a contented sigh as her innards cool and announce that they are sated. "Very," she says with a little smile. "Everything tastes better when you work for it."
"It is oasis water," Shaya notes, dipping her own cup once Roa's filled her second. "What isn't?" Water trickles down the edge of the cup she dipped in, and she swipes it off with her fingers before any of it can fall. Pressing the fingers to her mouth, she dabs up all the water as though it were precious candy, not plain water. "But this is the best. Most pure," she explains, though she has to frown as she says it, wrinkling her nose up and giving Roa a cute quirk of a smile to allow that she doesn't know exactly how it is 'most pure.'
"Oasis water seems to be the cure and the prevention of most things," Roa notes solemnly. She peers down into the mug as if she might be able to see all of that purity. "What oasis does it come from? Do you know?"
Shaya sets her cup down between the bow of her crossed legs, because sometimes explanations require gestures. Her hands sweep north, the fingers pressed together in a lattice (or a net, catching consciousness and moving it), when she says, "Out of the hold that way, about half a day. On the way there is our oasis, larger -" her hands spread out suddenly, cupping into a large circle shape that contracts to a smaller size with her next words - "but more used." "Alshar waters his pigs there," Nessa pipes up, the word 'pigs' spoken with a naughty glee mixed with an effort to sound disdainful of the livestock. Shaya looks at her strangely, but she shrugs and allows, "He does."
Roa watches the gestures with a quiet fascination. There is a ritual even to these tiny things. Everything, here, has a way about it. Funny, that such dogmatic tradition is both something she struggles against at home and something she finds strange comfort in here at Igen. But if those thoughts show on her face, it's only in a tiny half smile. "I suppose pigs get thirsty too," she notes demurely before polishing off the last of the water. It is the empty cup that Roa studies then. "This will have to be our last class for a while, I'm afraid."
There's a slight pause for adjustment and processing, but Shaya seems somehow prepared for such a statement. "Your queen?" she asks, bringing her cupped hands down to frame an egg-shape over her belly. She peers up at Roa. Nessa seems less prepared for the news, and in her response is the sudden sly calculation of a student who's just discovered an edge over her peer. The little girl bundles herself over her cup, cradling the last bit of liquid there while she undoubtedly tries to figure out how far ahead of Roa she can get during this unexpected break.
The weyrwoman only nods, eyes still cast on the bottom of her mug. "Yes," comes the soft verbal agreement. She does not notice Nessa's sly little smirk, but it is possible she has not quite noticed Nessa's competitive streak in the first place.
Undoubtedly Shaya has noticed, but she does not deign to look at her sister's contemplative huddle. "Wonderful," she says, the subtle richness of her accent submerging the 'er' beneath the contrasting clarity of approval in the syllables before and after it. "She will have her eggs. And you?" Tipping her head to the side, Shaya reclaims her cup of oasis water, though she holds off drinking it just yet.
"She will," Roa agrees with a quiet chuckle, "and they shall keep her wholly occupied, much as she doesn't believe it just now. And I..." Up tip Roa's eyebrows as she waits for some clarification of the question.
Shaya has come to find Roa's soft laughter infectuous, but she dares not chuckle at a queen's expense. Popping her lips tight over a curving smile, she holds her mouth shut until she can get some water up to it, drowning the possibility of a disrespectful giggle of her own. She pulls the water down quickly, recovering from mirth, and holds the mug over the stomach in an echo of the gesture she used to indicate an egg not long ago. "What will you have?" she clairifies easily. She lifts a hand from her cup, pressing the cool fingers against her temple and leaning her cheek towards them, almost as though she were soothing a headache, though there's no pain, only curiosity, in the expression.
The weyrwoman's mouth opens and then closes, brows shooting high. "I'll have no more opportunities to go flying for a while and a somewhat restless lifemate. Mmm, and more time for hidework, I expect." Seating herself besides Shaya, she settles her cup on her knee. "That's all."
Even when she takes a break for chatter, Shaya cannot help but slip into her teaching mode from time to time. The little 'tchk!' of her tongue is disapproving - she may not laugh at the queen, but she will reprove the weyrwoman. "That cannot be so," she intones, her words swinging up and down along a musical string that softens the note of reproof by pairing it with more playful ones. "You dance too - mm," she stops to reflect, "lithe." A nod confirms this description. "Too lithe to be made all of hidework."
At that, the weyrwoman laughs. "I've been found out," she confesses with a grin. "Do you remember my other instructor?" Roa cants her head a little to the side so for all that she looks straight ahead, she's watching Shaya out of the corner of her eyes, a small smile still lingering on her lips.
The blush comes first, ducked behind a curtain of dark hair as the bob of Shaya's head dislodges a heavy brown lock from behind her ear. She tucks it back and turns her head back to Roa, trying to ignore the embarrassment written on her cheeks. "The guard," she confirms, with a glance at Nessa. Innocent of the subject of this discussion, the little girl has begun creeping back to get another cup of water, but her focus is more on not being noticed than on eavesdropping. She scoots back to her place as soon as she has a cupful.
Nod. "The guard," Roa confirms. "We are..." there is a quick glance towards Nessa before returnng her attention to Shaya, "...more than instructor and student, now." Her gaze dips downward again, chin tucking, bottom lip nibbled.
Nessa is, for the moment, entranced by her water. She filled it right up to the rim, and her scooting must be carefully done lest any of that precious water spill on the floor. While she lifts it for that first tentative sip, bringing the level down to something more reasonable, Shaya politely averts her eyes and allows Roa a moment to nibble her lip in silence. "You think of him, when you dance?" she asks once a suitable silence has passed.
"Sometimes," is the weyrwoman's admission. "Sometimes I only think of the next step, but the more I must think, the less my body has memorized and the poorer I do until it goes from here," one hand uncurls from her cup so her first finger can tap at her temple, "to here." The hand gesture vaguely to the rest of her. Her body. Muscle memory. "I haven't, yet. Danced for him. He doesn't know I take lessons."
Shaya follows Roa's gestures with no less fascination; they are, for her, as much a part of the conversation as the speech itself, and vital to understanding. She nods when Roa indicates her body, removing her own fingers from her temple to echo the gesture with a sweep that winds up back on her cup. "When the body knows, the mind wanders. I like your little steps, the old ones you know best. I think your mind is wandering." Her voice drops into that same impish conspiracy it took on when they first spoke of this mysterious guard character.
"Dancing is better, I think, when you do it for someone to see," Roa muses, "even if only in your own thoughts." The smile, small and playful, is reflected back to Shaya.
Shaya returns the smile, but only for a moment; grown suddenly shy, she directs her focus down at her feet. Setting the cup down outside the brace of her legs, she wraps her bare toes up in her hands and tugs them inwards, leaning on them. "Do you know," she asks suddenly, the words popping out in a hurry, "they say the moons are dancers?" She lifts another glance to Roa, another smile, and gives her head a small shake, helpless.
"I did not know." Roa sits a little straighter and her legs are drawn up ontot he bench so that they can tuck up beside her. "Will you tell me the story?"
Story? Nessa's interest has been piqued. She lifts her dark eyes from the cup she holds, ripples still running across the surface where she blew on it to keep herself amused at the light splashing off them. Her gaze shifts, like the ticking of a clock, from Roa to Shaya, Shaya to Roa. Her sister dips a little nod, hiding a quick swallow as she too sits up straighter. Her toes come with her, bent back with the continued contact of her hands. "They say the moons are sisters," she begins, her eyes moving to her cup. "Though Belior, Timor - these are not women's names. Some say they were once Belia and Tima, maybe Beliora and Timora, but Grandmama says they were always Belior and Timor, because all stories are true and not true." "True and not true," Nessa echoes at the same time, in a mere whisper; clearly she's familiar with the same phrase. Shaya glances at her sister, sliding her hands off her feet. Each hand extends an index finger down and turns it in slow circles. "Some say Belior and Timor were the men they loved." The fingers stop and she stares at them.
"They were not beautiful," Shaya continues with a small start. She raises her fingers to her cheeks, pressing little spots along them. "You have seen the moons. They are pockmarked. A little chubby." The fingers pinch down, drawing her cheeks out briefly. "But they were beautiful when they danced. They could not hop and whirl as I do," her fingers whirl around each other dizzingly fast, "but they could turn." Abruptly she halts, turns the points of her fingers down again, and traces slow circles again. She watches the motions intently. "So very slow, they turned, but so very beautiful. Their husbands could not stop staring. Men could not, women could not, strangers could not stop staring. When they died, the stars claimed them, because the stars had been staring at them, too." The turning stops, and she lifts the pads of her fingers to just below her eyes. "One night, one step. That is how slow they move, yet how often have you or I or the ones who came before us stopped to look at them?" She drags her fingers off her cheekbones, removing them with a flick at the end. "That is how beautiful they are," she says with an air of finality. Unable to meet anybody's gaze, Shaya reaches down to wrap her hands around her cup again, tapping out quiet patterns on the sides. Nessa dares to look, and she looks at Roa, her small mouth pressed together in study.
The weyrwoman has ever ben a sucker for stories, although age has given her slightly better skill at hiding her rapt interest than Nessa. But, not by so very much. Roa sets her mug down and draws her legs to her chest so that her chin can settle on her knees. She watches silently, her eyes following Shaya's fingers and crinkling in the corners faintly at the description of stories' truth, of the aesthetic of the moons, and of how they call everyone's attention to them, even now. "It never occured to me, that when we watch the stars, the stars might be watching back. It makes me wonder what they would say about everyone else."
Shaya twists a little smile, her discomfort still evident but fading as the time of the story does. She lifts her cup to her lips, just tipping in a drop of the water to wet her dry mouth. "It makes me wonder what they would say about me," she admits.
"Perhaps they say of you that they would not mind, in time, a third moon. One that can hop and whirl." Roa's hands unwind so that they can repeat Shaya's gesture of whirling fingers. Her eyes watch not her own hands, but shaya's face, gaze twinkling.
Shaya's laugh is light, but still nervous. She was not anxious when she told the story, only before and after; when she told it, she did so with an air of concentration, carefully tuning out Roa and Nessa's listening ears. Now that she must respond to those listening ears, she can be embarrassed again. "I like being fast, but I would like being slow even more. I am not there yet."
"Nor I," Roa laughs in return, ignoring the nervousness the younger girl projects. "I suppose we will both slow in time, though. But, there's much to do between now and then. We'll likely have to get faster before we are allowed to slow down."
"Many turns," Shaya agrees. "Many /many/ turns," she emends, another timid ripple of laughter running through her voice. She has kept the cup of oasis water by her mouth this whole time, and now she tilts back a long drink of it. She winds up swallowing quickly, a thought returned to her and hastened out. "Oh, but I wanted you to hear that story for a reason. You must be gone for a time, but that does not mean you have nothing to practice. Even the little steps can be something, hmm?" With her teacher mask back on, Shaya looks back up at Roa with her eyebrows raised expectantly.
"Sometimes, I suspect it is the little steps that matter the most," Roa muses in response to that very teacherly examination she finds herself under.
Shaya considers this statement over another sip of water, this one allowed to be more leisurely. When she's done drinking, though, her response is immediate. "They do. They are the foundation and they are the goal also."
"The foundation, I understand. But, the real goal?" Rao's head tips to the side. "How do you mean?"
A finger spins through the air, the hand lifted from its cup to do this. "It is not being flashy," Shaya explains, setting her hand back to the cup. She's mostly finished with the water now, yet she holds it there poised for another sip. "Hopping and whirling. It is pleasant to look at, and hard to do, yet not as hard as taking one simple step and making a dance of it. The one takes practice, the other more than practice."
That is considered for a long moment before the weyrwoman nods, slow and thoughtful. "I see," she murmurs softly. "I think that I understand. I will practice the little steps while I'm gone.
"Good," Shaya says, leaning sideways to dip her cup into the water again. She repeats the step of swiping off excess water before it can drop away, but she's silent while she dabs it off her fingers, apparently satisfied with the point she's made.
Roa's own mug remains empty and the student seems content to wait for the instructor, rather than having more water herself. Her chin again rests on her knees, and she smiles softly.
Yosset's house is a living thing, often as much at the service of its servants as its masters. The small, cool room usually set aside for Shaya's dance lessons has been taken over by kitchen women celebrating a birthday, and the three dancers have moved to an even smaller space upstairs, well-lit but close and warm. As compensation, Shaya has brought up a small urn of water and keeps it by her side, ready to share with her dancers once they've done their steps to her satisfaction. Nessa is first to finish: as Roa's diligence brings her closer to catching up with the young girl, her tantrums have transitioned into a fierce determination not to be overtaken. She comes smoothly out of a turn-step-turn combo, receives her sister's nod, and sneaks in close to dip her cup into the urn-water. While she drinks, Nessa watches Roa carrying out the eight dictated repetitions of the hipswing-step that Shaya has her working on before she too can quit.
Her feet are bare, her shirt has been peeled away to reveal a sleeveless undershirt, and her long pants have been tossed aside so she wears only her half-pants. A thin sheen of sweat coats the weyrwoman's skin and if some have a hard time adapting to High Reaches cold, perhaps the native of cooler Telgari climes finds it equally challeging to manage in desert heat. Still, the final hipswing ends with a precise flick of said bodypart and Roa returns to a neutral position, waiting to see if she, too, might win a pause and a drink.
Shaya has been very picky about Roa's hips today, and she watches the execution of that final move with a singular focus. The precision of the final flick earns her approval, and a sharp nod to confirm it before she melts out of her strict teaching role and straightens, placing her hands on the knees of her crossed legs and pushing into an arch that makes her back crack. Abashed, but also mischievous, she shoots a smile at Roa and beckons her forward with a loose wave of her hand. "Very good," she says, the warmth of her Igenite accent rolling gently beneath the words. "Come get a drink." Nessa slips back to the square she was dancing in, echoing her sister's cross-legged seat as she settles down where she can watch the older girls and continue with her own silent sipping.
Shoulders relax a little and Roa offers Shaya a small smile at the pop of the younger girl's spine. One arm lifts, the back of her hand swiping at her forehead as she pads over to the urn, picks up a mug and dips it down into the water. It is raised to her lips, Roa's eyes close, and she drains the entire mug in a matter of moments. She seems about to dunk her cup a second time, but then she pauses and looks over at Shaya with raised brows, waiting for an all-clear before doing so.
Shaya has been watching the weyrwoman drink, and her draining thirst makes the Gezzan smile a curved smile, pleased and a little secretive. It brightens when Roa looks for permission for a second cup, and Shaya raises her own cup with a permissive tilt. "Have more. The water is good?" Raising her own brows, she brings up the slim amount of water remaining in her cup, and blinks at Roa while she drinks it off and awaits her answer.
The weyrwoman fills her cup again and swallows down half, lowering the mug from her lips with a contented sigh as her innards cool and announce that they are sated. "Very," she says with a little smile. "Everything tastes better when you work for it."
"It is oasis water," Shaya notes, dipping her own cup once Roa's filled her second. "What isn't?" Water trickles down the edge of the cup she dipped in, and she swipes it off with her fingers before any of it can fall. Pressing the fingers to her mouth, she dabs up all the water as though it were precious candy, not plain water. "But this is the best. Most pure," she explains, though she has to frown as she says it, wrinkling her nose up and giving Roa a cute quirk of a smile to allow that she doesn't know exactly how it is 'most pure.'
"Oasis water seems to be the cure and the prevention of most things," Roa notes solemnly. She peers down into the mug as if she might be able to see all of that purity. "What oasis does it come from? Do you know?"
Shaya sets her cup down between the bow of her crossed legs, because sometimes explanations require gestures. Her hands sweep north, the fingers pressed together in a lattice (or a net, catching consciousness and moving it), when she says, "Out of the hold that way, about half a day. On the way there is our oasis, larger -" her hands spread out suddenly, cupping into a large circle shape that contracts to a smaller size with her next words - "but more used." "Alshar waters his pigs there," Nessa pipes up, the word 'pigs' spoken with a naughty glee mixed with an effort to sound disdainful of the livestock. Shaya looks at her strangely, but she shrugs and allows, "He does."
Roa watches the gestures with a quiet fascination. There is a ritual even to these tiny things. Everything, here, has a way about it. Funny, that such dogmatic tradition is both something she struggles against at home and something she finds strange comfort in here at Igen. But if those thoughts show on her face, it's only in a tiny half smile. "I suppose pigs get thirsty too," she notes demurely before polishing off the last of the water. It is the empty cup that Roa studies then. "This will have to be our last class for a while, I'm afraid."
There's a slight pause for adjustment and processing, but Shaya seems somehow prepared for such a statement. "Your queen?" she asks, bringing her cupped hands down to frame an egg-shape over her belly. She peers up at Roa. Nessa seems less prepared for the news, and in her response is the sudden sly calculation of a student who's just discovered an edge over her peer. The little girl bundles herself over her cup, cradling the last bit of liquid there while she undoubtedly tries to figure out how far ahead of Roa she can get during this unexpected break.
The weyrwoman only nods, eyes still cast on the bottom of her mug. "Yes," comes the soft verbal agreement. She does not notice Nessa's sly little smirk, but it is possible she has not quite noticed Nessa's competitive streak in the first place.
Undoubtedly Shaya has noticed, but she does not deign to look at her sister's contemplative huddle. "Wonderful," she says, the subtle richness of her accent submerging the 'er' beneath the contrasting clarity of approval in the syllables before and after it. "She will have her eggs. And you?" Tipping her head to the side, Shaya reclaims her cup of oasis water, though she holds off drinking it just yet.
"She will," Roa agrees with a quiet chuckle, "and they shall keep her wholly occupied, much as she doesn't believe it just now. And I..." Up tip Roa's eyebrows as she waits for some clarification of the question.
Shaya has come to find Roa's soft laughter infectuous, but she dares not chuckle at a queen's expense. Popping her lips tight over a curving smile, she holds her mouth shut until she can get some water up to it, drowning the possibility of a disrespectful giggle of her own. She pulls the water down quickly, recovering from mirth, and holds the mug over the stomach in an echo of the gesture she used to indicate an egg not long ago. "What will you have?" she clairifies easily. She lifts a hand from her cup, pressing the cool fingers against her temple and leaning her cheek towards them, almost as though she were soothing a headache, though there's no pain, only curiosity, in the expression.
The weyrwoman's mouth opens and then closes, brows shooting high. "I'll have no more opportunities to go flying for a while and a somewhat restless lifemate. Mmm, and more time for hidework, I expect." Seating herself besides Shaya, she settles her cup on her knee. "That's all."
Even when she takes a break for chatter, Shaya cannot help but slip into her teaching mode from time to time. The little 'tchk!' of her tongue is disapproving - she may not laugh at the queen, but she will reprove the weyrwoman. "That cannot be so," she intones, her words swinging up and down along a musical string that softens the note of reproof by pairing it with more playful ones. "You dance too - mm," she stops to reflect, "lithe." A nod confirms this description. "Too lithe to be made all of hidework."
At that, the weyrwoman laughs. "I've been found out," she confesses with a grin. "Do you remember my other instructor?" Roa cants her head a little to the side so for all that she looks straight ahead, she's watching Shaya out of the corner of her eyes, a small smile still lingering on her lips.
The blush comes first, ducked behind a curtain of dark hair as the bob of Shaya's head dislodges a heavy brown lock from behind her ear. She tucks it back and turns her head back to Roa, trying to ignore the embarrassment written on her cheeks. "The guard," she confirms, with a glance at Nessa. Innocent of the subject of this discussion, the little girl has begun creeping back to get another cup of water, but her focus is more on not being noticed than on eavesdropping. She scoots back to her place as soon as she has a cupful.
Nod. "The guard," Roa confirms. "We are..." there is a quick glance towards Nessa before returnng her attention to Shaya, "...more than instructor and student, now." Her gaze dips downward again, chin tucking, bottom lip nibbled.
Nessa is, for the moment, entranced by her water. She filled it right up to the rim, and her scooting must be carefully done lest any of that precious water spill on the floor. While she lifts it for that first tentative sip, bringing the level down to something more reasonable, Shaya politely averts her eyes and allows Roa a moment to nibble her lip in silence. "You think of him, when you dance?" she asks once a suitable silence has passed.
"Sometimes," is the weyrwoman's admission. "Sometimes I only think of the next step, but the more I must think, the less my body has memorized and the poorer I do until it goes from here," one hand uncurls from her cup so her first finger can tap at her temple, "to here." The hand gesture vaguely to the rest of her. Her body. Muscle memory. "I haven't, yet. Danced for him. He doesn't know I take lessons."
Shaya follows Roa's gestures with no less fascination; they are, for her, as much a part of the conversation as the speech itself, and vital to understanding. She nods when Roa indicates her body, removing her own fingers from her temple to echo the gesture with a sweep that winds up back on her cup. "When the body knows, the mind wanders. I like your little steps, the old ones you know best. I think your mind is wandering." Her voice drops into that same impish conspiracy it took on when they first spoke of this mysterious guard character.
"Dancing is better, I think, when you do it for someone to see," Roa muses, "even if only in your own thoughts." The smile, small and playful, is reflected back to Shaya.
Shaya returns the smile, but only for a moment; grown suddenly shy, she directs her focus down at her feet. Setting the cup down outside the brace of her legs, she wraps her bare toes up in her hands and tugs them inwards, leaning on them. "Do you know," she asks suddenly, the words popping out in a hurry, "they say the moons are dancers?" She lifts another glance to Roa, another smile, and gives her head a small shake, helpless.
"I did not know." Roa sits a little straighter and her legs are drawn up ontot he bench so that they can tuck up beside her. "Will you tell me the story?"
Story? Nessa's interest has been piqued. She lifts her dark eyes from the cup she holds, ripples still running across the surface where she blew on it to keep herself amused at the light splashing off them. Her gaze shifts, like the ticking of a clock, from Roa to Shaya, Shaya to Roa. Her sister dips a little nod, hiding a quick swallow as she too sits up straighter. Her toes come with her, bent back with the continued contact of her hands. "They say the moons are sisters," she begins, her eyes moving to her cup. "Though Belior, Timor - these are not women's names. Some say they were once Belia and Tima, maybe Beliora and Timora, but Grandmama says they were always Belior and Timor, because all stories are true and not true." "True and not true," Nessa echoes at the same time, in a mere whisper; clearly she's familiar with the same phrase. Shaya glances at her sister, sliding her hands off her feet. Each hand extends an index finger down and turns it in slow circles. "Some say Belior and Timor were the men they loved." The fingers stop and she stares at them.
"They were not beautiful," Shaya continues with a small start. She raises her fingers to her cheeks, pressing little spots along them. "You have seen the moons. They are pockmarked. A little chubby." The fingers pinch down, drawing her cheeks out briefly. "But they were beautiful when they danced. They could not hop and whirl as I do," her fingers whirl around each other dizzingly fast, "but they could turn." Abruptly she halts, turns the points of her fingers down again, and traces slow circles again. She watches the motions intently. "So very slow, they turned, but so very beautiful. Their husbands could not stop staring. Men could not, women could not, strangers could not stop staring. When they died, the stars claimed them, because the stars had been staring at them, too." The turning stops, and she lifts the pads of her fingers to just below her eyes. "One night, one step. That is how slow they move, yet how often have you or I or the ones who came before us stopped to look at them?" She drags her fingers off her cheekbones, removing them with a flick at the end. "That is how beautiful they are," she says with an air of finality. Unable to meet anybody's gaze, Shaya reaches down to wrap her hands around her cup again, tapping out quiet patterns on the sides. Nessa dares to look, and she looks at Roa, her small mouth pressed together in study.
The weyrwoman has ever ben a sucker for stories, although age has given her slightly better skill at hiding her rapt interest than Nessa. But, not by so very much. Roa sets her mug down and draws her legs to her chest so that her chin can settle on her knees. She watches silently, her eyes following Shaya's fingers and crinkling in the corners faintly at the description of stories' truth, of the aesthetic of the moons, and of how they call everyone's attention to them, even now. "It never occured to me, that when we watch the stars, the stars might be watching back. It makes me wonder what they would say about everyone else."
Shaya twists a little smile, her discomfort still evident but fading as the time of the story does. She lifts her cup to her lips, just tipping in a drop of the water to wet her dry mouth. "It makes me wonder what they would say about me," she admits.
"Perhaps they say of you that they would not mind, in time, a third moon. One that can hop and whirl." Roa's hands unwind so that they can repeat Shaya's gesture of whirling fingers. Her eyes watch not her own hands, but shaya's face, gaze twinkling.
Shaya's laugh is light, but still nervous. She was not anxious when she told the story, only before and after; when she told it, she did so with an air of concentration, carefully tuning out Roa and Nessa's listening ears. Now that she must respond to those listening ears, she can be embarrassed again. "I like being fast, but I would like being slow even more. I am not there yet."
"Nor I," Roa laughs in return, ignoring the nervousness the younger girl projects. "I suppose we will both slow in time, though. But, there's much to do between now and then. We'll likely have to get faster before we are allowed to slow down."
"Many turns," Shaya agrees. "Many /many/ turns," she emends, another timid ripple of laughter running through her voice. She has kept the cup of oasis water by her mouth this whole time, and now she tilts back a long drink of it. She winds up swallowing quickly, a thought returned to her and hastened out. "Oh, but I wanted you to hear that story for a reason. You must be gone for a time, but that does not mean you have nothing to practice. Even the little steps can be something, hmm?" With her teacher mask back on, Shaya looks back up at Roa with her eyebrows raised expectantly.
"Sometimes, I suspect it is the little steps that matter the most," Roa muses in response to that very teacherly examination she finds herself under.
Shaya considers this statement over another sip of water, this one allowed to be more leisurely. When she's done drinking, though, her response is immediate. "They do. They are the foundation and they are the goal also."
"The foundation, I understand. But, the real goal?" Rao's head tips to the side. "How do you mean?"
A finger spins through the air, the hand lifted from its cup to do this. "It is not being flashy," Shaya explains, setting her hand back to the cup. She's mostly finished with the water now, yet she holds it there poised for another sip. "Hopping and whirling. It is pleasant to look at, and hard to do, yet not as hard as taking one simple step and making a dance of it. The one takes practice, the other more than practice."
That is considered for a long moment before the weyrwoman nods, slow and thoughtful. "I see," she murmurs softly. "I think that I understand. I will practice the little steps while I'm gone.
"Good," Shaya says, leaning sideways to dip her cup into the water again. She repeats the step of swiping off excess water before it can drop away, but she's silent while she dabs it off her fingers, apparently satisfied with the point she's made.
Roa's own mug remains empty and the student seems content to wait for the instructor, rather than having more water herself. Her chin again rests on her knees, and she smiles softly.