The new girl
Issa stumbles on three of Reyce's sisters during an afternoon of indoors babysitting. She gets some embarrassing stories, and gives some in return.
Day 5:
Over the past few days, the wedding party has filled out with more and more guests that make it more and more difficult to find a quiet spot. This third floor hallway is no exception, alive with the echoes of high-pitched giggles and shrieks one of which turns suddenly into a shriek of very genuine pain. The source of the screaming is a room about halfway down the hall, its door left open so the sounds from it are unmuffled. Inside stands a miniature model of a ship, complete with both hold and deck, on which a little girl lies cross-legged and wailing at her foot. A grown woman is climbing her way up the tiny playship, but her efforts are impeded by another, smaller girl who keeps begging her to be picked up, please, and let down, please mommy. It's another woman - not mommy - who steps forward to grant her pleas, swinging the child up and pulling her to her chest to leave the mother free. Not helpful at all, a third woman stands near the entrance and stares out at the hallway with clear displeasure shown only in the slight but telling tension around her lips and eyes: her posture is ramrod straight, the same as it was the first time Issa met her at the Reaches gather. If the other two women are not recognizable, this one, at least, will be: Calla, one of Reyce's sisters.
With the week wearing on, it also leaves the visiting greenrider with fewer and fewer options to fill her idle time before after-dinner activities arrive to keep her busy. So she's taken to wandering, through halls and hills both. A dainty wildflower, its white color matching that of her skirt, droops from one hand and suggests that part of today has already been spent outdoors before she ventured down this particular hallway, though already a few of its petals have been stripped to lay behind her like a needless trail of breadcrumbs. Her attention is up for grabs and so easily won, being tossed from the stretched stain down the carpet to the flickering glow she passes. But the scream a few doors down overshadow those meager interests and surprise widens her eyes as she figures out the door that it comes from. Smart money's on the open one with the Blooded woman loitering outside. With Issa's lips sliding up into an easily amused smile, she waits until her steps bring her to a conversational distance before asking simply, "Trouble?" She gives no sign, other than a vague sense of familiarity, that she recognizes this Calla girl.
Trouble? The smaller girl is weeping as she beats her rescuer about the shoulders, wailing for mommy and even trying to twist out of her grasp so she can run for mommy's skirts. Mommy, however, is rather busy at the moment, hunched over her other daughter whose screams have died into whimpers now while her foot is examined. Calla lifts her gaze to this scene, surveying it with cool detachment, and then returns a flat, unimpressed look to Issa. "Yes," she concludes. As if to emphasize her simple point, the smaller of the two girls starts pushing back on her rescuer's face, her efforts to squirm away intensified since her sister's need for attention appears to have dwindled with her screams. "Cenze-" the woman holding her begins, in a tone of warning. "One minute, Cance, hold her just one minute!" 'Cenze' does not bother looking up to issue this command, but Cance obeys it, even though it means that she and the child both are now fuming. At least her fume is quiet for a moment or two, before a glare thrown back at Calla lands her sights on Issa, too, and her sights immediately narrow. "You have a problem?" she asks, in sharp tones that make the little girl in her arms wriggle and kick some more. Calla merely watches this exchange; clearly, she is not going to interfere on either side.
Just now stepping into the section of hallway outside the door, Issa peers into the room just as Calla turns to watch her sisters handle damage control. Along with the hurting little girl and the soothing woman, she also takes in the ship, busy tracing its mast to the ceiling when Cance's sharp voice alerts her to the other side of the scene. Her pale gaze drops suddenly to the other woman, light smile unfaltering for all the harsh confrontation she finds there. "Um, no," she responds calmly, though it's a far cry from the indifference personified that stands next to her. "Not at all. In fact, it seems more like you do." The bobbing flower head points toward the squirming girl in Cance's arms before the hand that holds it turns palm up for a second, sympathetic helplessness. Then it drops to her waist, the fingers of both hands contributing to the fidgeting spin of the flower as it's held in front of her.
"Ha," Cance responds, with a sarcastic expression that indicates very strongly how not amused she is by this patently true observation. Finding that she cannot escape from her captor (once rescuer), the little girl in Cance's arms collapses to her chest, seeking solace in the very woman she so recently tried to strike. Cance shifts her on a hip, allowing her attention to wander a moment from the new arrival by the door to the boat, where Cenze has quieted her other daughter and now hunches over her, murmuring comforts while she smoothes the dark curls back from her face. The scene is tender and cute, and it makes Cance roll her eyes expressively. Even the stranger by the door is preferable to watching that, so to Issa she returns. "Seems like we've got everything in hand, but thanks for offering your help, flower girl." Never mind that, though she calls Issa 'girl,' she can't be that much older than her if older at all. Dour as they are, however, her words attract the little girl she's holding, and a pair of dark brown eyes turn up to Issa as the child repeats, tremblingly, "Flower?"
Issa lifts a single eyebrow into a pointed arch for the nickname she's assigned, but her smile only grows more amused for the sister's lack of it. "Good," she comments, sliding a quick look at Calla before running a sweeping glance across the room, toy ship and all. It might have been her last look, in fact, as she was already beginning to shift in the direction she was headed when she first came across the crying. But the little girl's quivering question draws her back in and the step she takes is toward the door, not away from it. The greenrider moves to take up the opposite side of the doorframe from Calla, leaning gently on it. "Yeah," she responds, addressing the girl in Cance's arms with little regard for Cance herself just now. The flower in question is clearly displayed, standing out against the burgundy of her shirt. "I found a whole bunch of them outside," she explains, jerking a thumb over her shoulder before her hand drops to the stem again. "I was going to sit down and make a necklace, flower girl that I am," she says cheerily, eyes darting quickly up to Cance's face and then back. She shrug and lets a casually disappointed sigh continue into her words. "But I didn't have anyone to make them with."
Calla does not particularly wish to be associated with this personage, and as it seems that Issa will not be vacating the premises on her own, she chooses to move further into the room to take herself away. Cance takes note of this, following the retreat with her eyes and giving a high 'hmph!' of amusement when Calla resettles, in the exact same poise, with the exact same detachment, only shifted five feet to the right. The little girl has no mind for any of this, watching the flower Issa holds for much longer than she watches the woman herself. "I wanted to go outside, but Dacey wanted to play on the ship. Can I have it?" Her eyes shift back to Issa's face and her hand clenches on Cance's shoulder. "Your flower." By now, Cance has lost interest in her sister and returned to listening to the child; her eyebrow goes up but otherwise her expression does not change: still cynical, still disapproving, although a shrug suggests that she doesn't care if the girl gets the flower or not.
Issa, too, notes Calla's readjustment, but she gives it even less heed than Cance does, turning back to the rapt little girl as she turns the flower slowly, temptingly in her grip. "I don't know," the flower girl muses, turning a glance at the girl's holder before she looks down at the rows of spinning petals. With casual ease, her attention slips back up to fall on Cenzia and the ship-bound scene of comforting. "Seems to me," she continues, "that your sister might need it more than you do." Blue eyes turn back quickly to the younger girl, pinning her with a steady gaze and slightly raised eyebrows.
The wrinkle of a pout takes over the girl's expression, and she buries her anger back into Cance's shoulder. "/I/ asked for it," she reminds Issa, the implied contrast being, and Dacey didn't. "Besides she doesn't like flowers. She'd probably just rip it apart and make a turtle out of it, or something stupid like that, if she didn't just /stomp/ on it, and besides I /asked/ for it!" By the end of her sentence the little girl is near tears again, her voice spiraling up with anxiety, but if she actually has any she hides them in Cance's blouse. Her aunt, callous as she can be, senses trouble here and quickly lifts a hand to the girl's head, patting her hair in an awkard imitation of the way Cenzia has been soothing Dacey. Has been, but is no more. She leans over the side of the ship, holding her daughter's hands while she walks down the steeply tilted ladder to the ship's deck, but her eyes are on the rest of the room, and particularly on the stranger with the flower by the door. She does not demand an explanation for Issa's presence quite so roughly as Cance did, but the silently raised eyebrow (and small clearing of her throat, lest her expression not be noticed) speaks her expectant inquiry plain enough.
Well. That didn't go as planned. The girl's outburst takes Issa by surprise, but the only indication of that fact is a swift blink and a fleeting tension to her ever-present little smile while she looks quickly down to that popular flower. It's Cenzia's throat-clearing that draws her back in, smile parting slightly as she looks back up to find an arched eyebrow waiting on her. "Oh," the greenrider stalls before beginning with, "Sorry, I didn't mean to..." To what? The offending flower nods slightly toward the upset girl, its owner doesn't elaborate. "I just happened by." And then the flower swings back to indicate the hallway, drooping all the more for the jerking about when it comes back to rest in front of her stomach again.
Her attentions absorbed by the snuffling girl in her arms, and her back to the ship, Cance didn't notice the return of her sister's attention, but when Issa addresses her it's enough to make Cance turn, now bouncing the little girl on her hip while she pets her. "Oh, Cenze, this is flower girl. Flower girl, Cenzia." "Pleased to meet you," Cenzia responds, a small dry note for whatever odd mood has inspired her sister to address Issa in this way. Now she's helped Dacey down the ladder, leaving her in the ship's inner hold, she scoots herself to the edge of the deck and swings her legs over, lowering herself carefully. No sooner have her feet touched the floor than her eldest daughter's face appears in one of the tiny port holes, peering curiously out at the scene before her.
"Likewise," Issa replies cordially, giving a slight wave with the hand holding the source of inspiration for her new title. The peering face draws her attention while Cenzia settles, and this newcomer sneaks the girl who was so recently wailing a brief, almost secretive smile and a subtle nod before turning back a more polite expression on the adults. The fidgeting twirling rolls to a stop and she drops her hands to her sides, the flower turned upside down to dangle from one hand. Her eyes find Cenzia first, waiting for the woman to look her way before she asks calmly, "She all right?" with a tilt of a nod at the ship-bound girl.
Cenzia's first action, once she gets down, is to relieve her sister of the burden of her other daughter, taking the whimpering bundle into her own arms and looking down at her face, murmuring a few short, inaudible questions before cuddling the girl to her chest. Then she looks again at Issa, needing only a breath of a look backwards to confirm it's Dacey she's talking about, and twists up a smile. "She's fine. Just stubbed her toe." Leaning her other daughter back so she can see her face, Cenzia begins to coo at her, wrinkling her nose up as she pokes it in her daughter's face and nuzzles her, asking her more little questions that eventually get a giggle out of her. Cance, no longer stuck with the child, retreats as far away as she can get, to a low (but broad) child's chair near the door and Issa. "Here she goes with the nesting," she declares, her voice tried and tired. Cenzia shoots her a reproachful look before turning back to her daughter, but Cance shrugs it off and lets her gaze swing idly to Issa. Calla, by her wall, remains aloof from the affair as always.
Issa nods with understanding as the explanition for the hubbub is offered, her eyes dropping to again find the owner of that stubbed toe, offering a wider smile for the girl she hasn't already offended. She plays the part of observer better now, her gaze tripping past Cance and up to catch Cenzia's reaction to her sister's comment. Even Calla gets a glance, however brief, before the flower girl turns to look at her black slipper, peeking out past the hem of her white skirt. The only interruption to her silence is a mouthed "Nesting," the quiet sound of it probably not carrying past Cance's ears. It's followed by a slow breath of amusement and a suppressed smile-- she's heard the term somewhere before-- but nothing more. She just hangs there at the door like the rude passer-by she is.
Cance is equally guilty of being rude, for she continues to stare openly at Issa while she sits in her little child's chair, slouching into the short back and holding her arms crossed over her chest. Were it not for her expression, alert and unbothered and (of course) rude, she would look very much as though she had just sunk into a childish sulk. When Issa echoes her word - a gesture that is not lost on her, near as she is and with her attention so focused - Cance raises a brow and dispels the sulking image even further. "So what's your story, flower girl?" She has no interest in her sisters, the one nesting and the other distancing, so she makes no effort to rein in her loud, sharp voice. Cenzia smoothly turns her back on the question, lowering her daughter so she can stare back through the window at Dacey (who's making silly faces for her); Calla, however, lifts her chin and turns her gaze, far more discomforting than Cance's, to Issa. She watches, blinking at slow, measured intervals but otherwise unmoving.
Issa's head drops to the side, angling her gaze down to Cance instead of her shoe. "Oh," she begins, her smile growing free of restraing now. "It's nothing much." Tired of that angle, already, she lifts her chin and, in doing so, catches the indifferent burn of Calla's stare. She turns to meet it as she says, "I'm just a little greenrider from High Reaches," then drifts back to watching Cance, "come to play the awed spectator for your brother's wedding." Reyce's name is never mentioned, but it hangs in the silence nonetheless. She waits patiently, calmly for recognition that not only does she know their identities, but she fits to the tee the description of their half-brother's new girl.
Cance's eyebrow moves a little higher at the sight of that growing smile on Issa's face, but her gaze begins to wander after that; by the time the little greenrider has returned from meeting Calla's stare, Cance has already moved on to watching her sister, a faintly derisive twist taking up her features as Cenzia eases her youngest to the floor and sets her loose to shove her face against the other side of Dacey's porthole, no doubt making silly faces of her own in turn. "Cut the cute," Cance returns suddenly: so she was still listening to Issa, if not bothering to watch. "You're the only one impressed by it." "Impressed by what?" Cenzia wonders, picking up the tail of the conversation as seems to be her habit. Her daughters safely occupied, she retreats to stand by Cance, leaning her hip into her sister's chair and shifting a curious look between her and Issa, for certainly Calla is not involved. "Flower girl is cute," Cance answers, indolent and useless.
With Cance ignoring her smile and Calla completely indifferent to it, Issa chooses to give it to Cenzia. Her grin widens ever so slightly when her sister catches her up on the conversation, demonstration of the cuteness in question that comes paired with a helpless shrug. The flower then comes into play again, lifted waist high so she can stare at it as she says, with the same calm cheer she's maintained since she arrived at their open door, "If I'd come here to impress then I'd really be... so crushed." And then, she goes right on being cute, lifting the flower so the spinning petals tickle her nose while she gives it a light sniff.
Cenzia stares at Issa for a moment, seeming - despite the explanation, and the demonstration that followed it - more puzzled than anything. "Oh," she decides, turning a brief look to her sister - Calla, strangely, not Cance. The cool young woman turns to meet the gaze that's aimed at her, but does nothing helpful on her own. "What did you come for, then?" Cenzia wonders, turning back to Issa with a little shake of her head. "To waste time," Cance cuts in for her, lifting her hand palm up off the arm of the little chair. Cenzia drops her own palm down on it, grabbing her sister's hand and giving it a shake before dropping it back down. Cance simply lets it slap into her lap this time, a faint, wry twist showing up on her lips when she does.
"To waste time," Issa echoes with a short nod, accepting Cance's description as easily as she accepted her whimsical new title. The sisterly exchange falls in her periphery as she surveys the tiny yellow center of the flower, but the drop of the hand marks the lifting of the greenrider's gaze, turned to peer over the top of Cance's head at Cenzia. "While Reyce is busy assisting the Steward." No longer at her nose, the flower gets brushed against her cheek with a single twirl and then is lowered again to her side. "I'm the new girl," she explains with amusement tinting her smile, half a glance tossed Calla's way before she decides it's probably useless anyway and turns back to the elder two.
On the contrary, that glance at Calla is not entirely wasted. Just mostly. The young Blood flares her nostrils when those words are spoken, but within a fraction of a second has melted back behind her wall of indifference. Cenzia's response is more animated, anyway, her eyebrows going up as she processes the easy hint contained in Reyce's name - and confirmed in that next statement. "Oh," she says, with an air of reaching understanding. "Sorry to hear that." She twists up a wicked little smile, earning from Cance a derisive snort. "Should have stayed a flower girl," the latter comments darkly.
Cance's comment draws an amused breath from Issa, smooth and slow, as she watches the hem of her skirt again. "Maybe so," she replies easily, shrugging the shoulder that isn't pinned to the doorframe. Looking up again, she catches the older sister's smile in the sidelong sweep of her eyes and matches it with one of her own, no longer quite so cute. There's a sneaking sense of a dare, instead. Bring it on.
The dare will have to be interrupted, briefly, by the shrill scream of the littler girl as she leaps away from the porthole. Dacey has just decided to get her sister's face off the glass by rapping it, hard, and startling her; no real harm done, but Cenzia has to let herself be distracted all the same, throwing a look over her shoulder to measure the situation. "Play nice, girls," she calls back - advice that could well be taken among the adults, as well, but the girls certainly seem minded to ignore it. They run around to meet each other by the prow of the ship, and soon dissolve into a tickling fight that has Cenzia shifting her stance so she can keep watch on them from the corner of her eye at all times. Cance, then, gets stuck with the conversational ball, and it's clear she doesn't want it. "So. High Reaches. Caucus. Say some boring things about them before Cenze starts to talk about her children." Cenzia has not gone out of earshot, of course, and hears this clearly; she digs her finger's into Cance's hair and gives her whole head a disapproving shake, ruffling up her hair in the process.
The children give Issa a reason to not try and engage any of the adults in smiling glances or sullen conversation; she takes it. Lightly amused, she watches the girls race to meet each other, her smile breaking wider when they erupt into a storm of tickling and shrieking giggles. "Oh," she responds distractedly, quieting her expression. "Lots of snow and snotty students. Not much more to say." Another one-sided shrug brings her back to Cenzia. "But I'm interested," she says. It might just be to piss Cance off, but it sounds sincere. A tiny jerk of her chin indicates the girls as she asks, "How old are they?"
"Well, that much I already knew," Cance mutters, turning her head sharply to the side. Knocking away Cenzia's hand, she drags her own fingers through her hair which - thankfully - is not curly like her sister's, and can be settled easily. The choice of conversational topic does indeed displease her, her lips sinking into a quiet scowl, yet it's the children whose games she watches (absently) while it goes on. Cenzia is as easily distracted by her children as her sister warned, and pulls up a mother's tired but affectionate smile when she finds the chance to speak about them. "Dacey, my eldest there, just turned seven, and little Caira's four, but she'd tell you four and eight months." "All those turns, and not a son," Cance remarks bitterly. "Poor Darius." Her sister gives her an odd look for this statement, and ruffles her hair (so recently fixed) up again. "He can have his son when I'm finished raising his daughters," she remarks with a disinterested shrug.
Issa sends a momentary smirk down at Cance-- she asked for boring after all-- but there's no comment made, and soon the subject turns to the girls and both the smirk and her attention for Cance disappear. Even when the woman in the chair speaks again, she doesn't get noticed by the greenriding flower girl. "I hear the boys are like bouncing little tunnelsnakes, anyway," she contributes. Amused by the image, her chin drops to hide the grin that grows over the thought, covered by a casual glance at her flower. A second later, her smile's under control again and she lifts her face to find the girls on their toy ship. "Seems like your pair's got enough spunk to give them all good competition, though," she remarks, her tone admiring as the tickling tussle brings to mind the earlier thrashing kicks of the younger one.
Cenzia does not even try to hide her pleasure at hearing her girls called spunky, lifting her hand from Cance's hair to her own to give her curls a preening sort of bounce. Her sister takes advantage of her distraction to smooth down her hair again, but she's gotten nowhere before Cenzia remembers her and musses it up again, for consistency's sake. "The Benden curse," Cenzia explains, for if she does not hide her pleasure she does at least try to diminish it slightly. "Caira's a little calmer, thankfully, but Dacey can rile her up any time day or night. Drives me wild sometimes, trying to keep up with them." At the moment, troublemaking Dacey has yielded to her sister's tickles; she shrieks her laughter wildly as she tries to escape, and a grinning Caira bumbles after with tiny fingers intent on tickling her tummy.
Issa reorients her gaze just in time to catch that third hair-mussing, turning up her same lightly amused, good-natured smile up to Cenzia after she's had long enough to catch just a quick glimpse of the annoying sisterly gesture. "Well," she continues conversationally, "I'm glad it's your job and not mine." A particularly shrill shriek causes Issa's eyes to squint into a subtle wince, as if to emphasize her point, though her smile turns up its edges for the ear-ringing sound and her eyes return eagerly to watch the two girls once again.
Cance does not take the hair-mussing half so well, her shoulders bunching up with contained rage and her cheeks sucking inside her mouth. Perhaps Cenzia takes pity on her, or else fixing mussed hair is just a habit, but as she speaks her hand begins smoothing down the flat chestnut hair she's so thoroughly messed up. "I'm not," she answers, though her tone's drily amused. "What they ought to have is a Caucus for little children, so I can send these away and get them back all tidied up." "What you'd get back is a pair of bitter things, or else a pair of Callas." The use of her name is enough to bring the third sister in for a moment, blinking at Cance for a moment before she pulls a frown. "Hardly." Cenzia watches the conversation shift between the two of them, but ultimately dismisses it with a flick of her hand. "Can't a mother dream?" Especially when her eldest lets out another shriek to emphasize Issa's point.
The voice of the third sister carries enough weight, short-lived though it is, to drag Issa's gaze around to her, though it's only for a polite smile and, a taste of her own medicine, a steady, silent blink. That's all. "I'll make sure to speak with the Headmaster about setting one up," she teases, her eyes lifting playfully to find Cenzia's before darting over to the ship. "I'll let you know how it turns out. Though I doubt that a Caucus could manage such elaborate sets," she comments, flicking the flower gently toward the enormous plaything. Her eyes roam over the hull and up to the deck, halting only briefly to watch the progress of the girls' little duel.
"Hmm?" Cenzia follows the flower's guidance to find the mini-ship, enormous plaything behind her. "Oh. That." Planting a hand on her hip, she turns more fully to view it, the corner of her lip twisting up as she does. "Best not repeat our example with that thing. It's been around for ages, and racked up a steady count of broken legs and such from kids dumb enough to jump off." She eyes her own girls with sudden suspicious, although they're nowhere near the edge. It takes her a moment to satisfy her motherly urges, but when she has, it's an impish smile she turns back on Issa. "Reyce liked to jump off," she states. Cance, who since her hair-fixing has taken to glowering in Issa's direction, heaves a heavily derisive snort here and shifts her gaze - without much diminishing the glower - to her sister.
Issa has been ignoring Cance's pointed prodding and glaring glances well enough so far and she's not about to give in to them now. So she simply looks right over the line of her gaze to find Cenzia's, impish smile met with a wryly twisted one of her own. "He would," she states with a fond ridicule curled into her tone. She follows it with a quick half-snorted note of laughter. "Were his legs any of those broken, or did he get lucky?" The word prompts a stronger grin from the greenrider, the corners of her eyes crinkling up with the effort.
Cance tends to throw her antagonism around without respect to whom it reaches (or does not reach), and there's no exception here even though Issa ignores her. Her glance, with a sardonically raised brow, returns to the greenrider as soon as she answers, but another snort (quieter, this time) announces her disinterest and she returns her gaze to her sister. Cenzia does not even have to look down to know where Cance is at right now, cupping a hand to her sister's cheek and following her with it when she attempts to lean away. If a bit of a smile breaks through as she does this, she bites it down quickly. "Oh, broken with the rest," she says, turning breezily to Issa's question to distract herself from her amusement over Cance's behavior. "I admit I didn't help." Setting her amusement free - some distraction - she turns her sparkling smile down to Cance. "I hit him a few times while he was down. I'd /finally/ gotten Coren to sit down with me and Reyce went and jumped him from the ship." Her fingers drum a playful little measure on her sister's cheek before she returns her attention to Issa.
Issa gives in to amusement of a different sort, shooting a grinning glance at the floor as she aligns the image of young Reyce with the one she knows now. Her wider smile mulls for only a few seconds on her downturned face before she throws herself back into conversation, composed again. "Sounds like a spiteful little snot," she comments with that same fond undertone that annoyed Cance so much the first time. In it is a prompt though, a subtle cue for Cenzia that she has the flower girl's attention for more such stories, should she care to share.
Oh, she cares, but Cance can pick up that subtle cue as easily as her sister and try to head her off at the pass. "He was, and all the stories end like that. I'd rather hear stories about Dacey and Caira; at least they mix it up." But Cenzia just pinches her cheek, delighted to find such an unreceptive audience. "Oh, come on. Everyone needs embarassing stories told, and you /know/ Father and Mother won't do it. I guess the responsibility falls to me." She sighs, but her drama is overshadowed by her girls, giggling and laughing in the background as they try to catch each other running around the ship. Cenzia begins to watch them more carefully, now, but she still has attention to spare for remembering stories. "And they don't all end at the healer's anyway," she assures Issa, daring just a moment's attention spared from her daughters to look at the greenrider. "There's one where he just winds up naked in harper class, because his clothes were new and he decided they itched. So - pfft - off they go."
Even Cance's words go unheeded now as Issa focuses expectantly on Cenzia despite her sister's discouragement. Her laugh rises to join the girls', much lower and lazier, but just as amused. "Oh," she ends it, unsquinting her eyes, "that'll give me ammunition for months, at least." She pivots slightly in her lean, nudging her shoulder to the inside of the doorframe and moving a step further into the room. The motion leaves Calla with an indifferent shoulder, but grants Cenzia a more eager attention, greedy eyes waiting for more the only reward for that useful tidbit. "Did he ever swim when he was younger?" she prompts, head tilting with curiosity into the wall.
Now there's a random question, and it makes Cenzia blink. "Nowhere to swim around here," she answers with a shrug that rolls all the way down her arm into an upturned palm. She still has an eye for her daughters, but their antics are slowing down now as they get tired. "Well, aside from the river, but that'd just be /cold/." She grimaces and pulls off an expressive shiver, but it's all an act, and she soon lets go of it. "Reyce, really - well, he ran, he climbed, all those sorts of things, but for the most part we had to stay inside the hold." Tilting her head to the side, now her explanation is through, she quirks an expectant half-smile that suggests she wants a story in return. "Why swimming?" is her prompt.
With a drawn, "Mmm," Issa ponders the explanation, letting her head bob in its sideways tilt with a good approximation of a nod. When she's prompted in return, her eyes flick out of the thoughtful haze they'd taken on and soon after she gives a light, dismissive wave of the flower-bearing hand. "Oh, he won't swim when we get the chance. Doesn't like water very much. I just thought there might be something there, that's all," she explains her part, rounding it off with a lazy half shrug. "Apparently I'm wide of the mark," she says jokingly, her smile twisting sideways for a moment before it drops down to its normal curve again.
Another quiet snort from Cance, leaving her (for a moment) with her mouth twisted sideways in what would be an echo of Issa's expression, were Issa's expression only cynical and not at all amused. Cenzia seems only mildly disappointed that the story she gets isn't as full of embarassment as her own, but she brushes away her expectations with a flip of her hand that winds up brushing her curls. "He probably doesn't know how," she guesses, "and doesn't want to admit it. Sounds like him," she says, turning another smile down on her sister. Cance rolls her eyes, moving her gaze beyond this discussion of embarassing moments to catch a glimpse at Calla, who has been watching them (for lack of anything more interesting) and now, with her gaze met, turns away. She will watch the daughters, thank you, now collapsed in a panting heap from which the murmurs of conversation and occasional giggles emerge.
Issa's eyes light with mischief, but it's visible only for a second, glossed over with her casual, "Hm, maybe," and a roving glance for the relative quiet of the children's play. A single chuckle sounds as she draws herself back in. "You know," she starts again, perhaps in response to that slight disappointment detected from the only sister willing to converse civilly with her, "we first met in the baths. At the Weyr it's all common," she notes with a quick waggle of her fingers for the lack of importance, "not like here, and everyone normally just minds their own business. But he seemed so uncomfortable with it all, once I got there-- he wouldn't even open his eyes he was so awkward-- that I had to make him talk." There's that mischief again, just a brief flash in her blue eyes before another light chuckle stamps it out. "I don't think he even caught a glimpse of my face the entire time." Then, ammunition repayed, Issa grows silent to linger over the mirth brought up by her memory.
Now, there's the reward Cenzia has been waiting for. For her rich voice, she has a surprisingly light and ladylike laugh that suggests the influence, at some point, of an especially strict etiquette instructor. "Did he?" she wonders, her voice already restored on the tail of that delicate laugh. "Well, hmm. The nannies used to bathe him with Cance - " and, since it's been quite long enough, she punctuates this statement with a ruffle of her sister's hair - "until Mother found out and threw a fit. So maybe there's your precedent." With her daughters having collapsed safely in a heap, she allows her attention to waver from them entirely, taking on a sly smile. "But you leave me wondering how you ever found him again, if he hadn't seen your face. You didn't stare, did you?" Allowing her smile to spread out to a grin, Cenzia flicks an explanatory gaze down Issa's body, as if giving her a once-over.
The mischief bubbles to the surface once again, but sticks around this time, waiting for Cenzia's gaze to return from that mock assessment. "Of course I did," Issa responds, all nonchalance about it, though her eyes fairly dance as she says further, "I watched him the whole time." The corners of her mouth draw wide into a tooth-filled grin as she lets her words sink in, only to be forced back again when she gives a more frank explanation. "Turn's End was right around the corner at that point. He was there with Carina, I believe, and hating it, naturally. So I swung by and, uh... reintroduced myself," she finishes with a jerked flourish of her fingers at her side, simple as that, her smile still straining to tug higher though she restrains it for the most part.
Cenzia laughs again, her fingers anchored in Cance's hair and at least rocking her slightly with the laughter, though there's no chance of tempting her to join in. Not to judge by her expression, grown more sour by the minute; like Calla, she has decided to watch the girls, however inactive they may be right now. "Now, there's a romantic tale for me to sigh over. First meeting, naked and spying; second first meeting, stalking him on a date with his sister. No wonder you two are together." Although she seems indifferent, she does has some concern for her sister's gathering foul mood, and as she speaks stretches her free hand down Cance's shoulder with the palm turned up, not too unlike the gesture she herself was greeted with when she came back from coddling her daughters. Cance delays only a moment before lifting her hand up to slap that palm, pressing it to her shoulder before she moves her hand away and shakes her head. The small gesture of warmth earns her a shoulder rub and a pat from Cenzia.
Issa furtively notes the exchange between the two and allows it a moment to exist undisturbed while she shoots another silently amused glance at the carpet. "Anything but typical," she comments on the edge of a breathy little laugh, turning back to Cenzia, "that's for sure." Her mouth sweeps up into a smoother curve, another hint of fondness for their bastard brother, even with all her talk. "His surliness. My... cute," she decides teasingly, her eyes dipping briefly to find the younger sister in her chair. "We fit somehow," she tells them, dismissively, then lets the subject lie. A sigh, lazy and content, lifts her shoulders. "I suppose I should get out of your hair," she says next, sparing another quick, darting look for Cance and the mussed brown strands still standing apart from the rest. She shoves herself lightly up from her lean and straightens again, but isn't so fast to make her exit; with the flower brought up across her midsection again, held in both hands, she lingers in place for pleasantries.
Sisterly affection expressed, Cance settles into a dull stare, responding with no more than a twitch of her nostrils when Issa throws her word back at her. Cenzia spares a smile for it, her eyes crinkling up with mirth. "Back to our surly bastard," she observes. A little flick of her hand gives permission for the retreat, playfully waving the greenrider off. "Best you do. The girls will wake up eventually, after all." She turns a fond look over her shoulder, where the girls in question have righted themselves and now sit facing each other, so Dacey can exhibit some hand contorting tricks she's learned. "Nice meeting you, anyway." That, and the smile (still somewhat melted by the sight of her daughters) may be the best pleasantry Issa can hope for; Cance still hasn't broken her stare, and Calla certainly isn't moving.
Pleasantry enough, it seems, for Issa keeps right on smiling brightly (at Cenzia at least), offering, "It was lovely," in return. The flower girl goes to turn, but the bloom, drooping sideways now for all its mishandling though its petals still stand pretty and mostly intact, idly twisting in her hands suddenly reminds her. "Oh," she mumbles, pausing to hand the thing to Cenzia, her arm passing fearlessly into Cance's personal space as it stretches out over her head. "For the little one," she explains once the woman's taken it, nodding her head toward the girls to clarify, "when they come down again." It's faint the shrug she gives before turning away, though her smile isn't quite as enigmatic and beams brightly to serve as an unspoken goodbye. Her trajectory makes a parting glance for Calla inevitable, and her tossed little wave in the Cenzia's direction might as well include Cance, too. But then she's gone, past the door and down the hallway to continue her wandering.
Day 5:
Over the past few days, the wedding party has filled out with more and more guests that make it more and more difficult to find a quiet spot. This third floor hallway is no exception, alive with the echoes of high-pitched giggles and shrieks one of which turns suddenly into a shriek of very genuine pain. The source of the screaming is a room about halfway down the hall, its door left open so the sounds from it are unmuffled. Inside stands a miniature model of a ship, complete with both hold and deck, on which a little girl lies cross-legged and wailing at her foot. A grown woman is climbing her way up the tiny playship, but her efforts are impeded by another, smaller girl who keeps begging her to be picked up, please, and let down, please mommy. It's another woman - not mommy - who steps forward to grant her pleas, swinging the child up and pulling her to her chest to leave the mother free. Not helpful at all, a third woman stands near the entrance and stares out at the hallway with clear displeasure shown only in the slight but telling tension around her lips and eyes: her posture is ramrod straight, the same as it was the first time Issa met her at the Reaches gather. If the other two women are not recognizable, this one, at least, will be: Calla, one of Reyce's sisters.
With the week wearing on, it also leaves the visiting greenrider with fewer and fewer options to fill her idle time before after-dinner activities arrive to keep her busy. So she's taken to wandering, through halls and hills both. A dainty wildflower, its white color matching that of her skirt, droops from one hand and suggests that part of today has already been spent outdoors before she ventured down this particular hallway, though already a few of its petals have been stripped to lay behind her like a needless trail of breadcrumbs. Her attention is up for grabs and so easily won, being tossed from the stretched stain down the carpet to the flickering glow she passes. But the scream a few doors down overshadow those meager interests and surprise widens her eyes as she figures out the door that it comes from. Smart money's on the open one with the Blooded woman loitering outside. With Issa's lips sliding up into an easily amused smile, she waits until her steps bring her to a conversational distance before asking simply, "Trouble?" She gives no sign, other than a vague sense of familiarity, that she recognizes this Calla girl.
Trouble? The smaller girl is weeping as she beats her rescuer about the shoulders, wailing for mommy and even trying to twist out of her grasp so she can run for mommy's skirts. Mommy, however, is rather busy at the moment, hunched over her other daughter whose screams have died into whimpers now while her foot is examined. Calla lifts her gaze to this scene, surveying it with cool detachment, and then returns a flat, unimpressed look to Issa. "Yes," she concludes. As if to emphasize her simple point, the smaller of the two girls starts pushing back on her rescuer's face, her efforts to squirm away intensified since her sister's need for attention appears to have dwindled with her screams. "Cenze-" the woman holding her begins, in a tone of warning. "One minute, Cance, hold her just one minute!" 'Cenze' does not bother looking up to issue this command, but Cance obeys it, even though it means that she and the child both are now fuming. At least her fume is quiet for a moment or two, before a glare thrown back at Calla lands her sights on Issa, too, and her sights immediately narrow. "You have a problem?" she asks, in sharp tones that make the little girl in her arms wriggle and kick some more. Calla merely watches this exchange; clearly, she is not going to interfere on either side.
Just now stepping into the section of hallway outside the door, Issa peers into the room just as Calla turns to watch her sisters handle damage control. Along with the hurting little girl and the soothing woman, she also takes in the ship, busy tracing its mast to the ceiling when Cance's sharp voice alerts her to the other side of the scene. Her pale gaze drops suddenly to the other woman, light smile unfaltering for all the harsh confrontation she finds there. "Um, no," she responds calmly, though it's a far cry from the indifference personified that stands next to her. "Not at all. In fact, it seems more like you do." The bobbing flower head points toward the squirming girl in Cance's arms before the hand that holds it turns palm up for a second, sympathetic helplessness. Then it drops to her waist, the fingers of both hands contributing to the fidgeting spin of the flower as it's held in front of her.
"Ha," Cance responds, with a sarcastic expression that indicates very strongly how not amused she is by this patently true observation. Finding that she cannot escape from her captor (once rescuer), the little girl in Cance's arms collapses to her chest, seeking solace in the very woman she so recently tried to strike. Cance shifts her on a hip, allowing her attention to wander a moment from the new arrival by the door to the boat, where Cenze has quieted her other daughter and now hunches over her, murmuring comforts while she smoothes the dark curls back from her face. The scene is tender and cute, and it makes Cance roll her eyes expressively. Even the stranger by the door is preferable to watching that, so to Issa she returns. "Seems like we've got everything in hand, but thanks for offering your help, flower girl." Never mind that, though she calls Issa 'girl,' she can't be that much older than her if older at all. Dour as they are, however, her words attract the little girl she's holding, and a pair of dark brown eyes turn up to Issa as the child repeats, tremblingly, "Flower?"
Issa lifts a single eyebrow into a pointed arch for the nickname she's assigned, but her smile only grows more amused for the sister's lack of it. "Good," she comments, sliding a quick look at Calla before running a sweeping glance across the room, toy ship and all. It might have been her last look, in fact, as she was already beginning to shift in the direction she was headed when she first came across the crying. But the little girl's quivering question draws her back in and the step she takes is toward the door, not away from it. The greenrider moves to take up the opposite side of the doorframe from Calla, leaning gently on it. "Yeah," she responds, addressing the girl in Cance's arms with little regard for Cance herself just now. The flower in question is clearly displayed, standing out against the burgundy of her shirt. "I found a whole bunch of them outside," she explains, jerking a thumb over her shoulder before her hand drops to the stem again. "I was going to sit down and make a necklace, flower girl that I am," she says cheerily, eyes darting quickly up to Cance's face and then back. She shrug and lets a casually disappointed sigh continue into her words. "But I didn't have anyone to make them with."
Calla does not particularly wish to be associated with this personage, and as it seems that Issa will not be vacating the premises on her own, she chooses to move further into the room to take herself away. Cance takes note of this, following the retreat with her eyes and giving a high 'hmph!' of amusement when Calla resettles, in the exact same poise, with the exact same detachment, only shifted five feet to the right. The little girl has no mind for any of this, watching the flower Issa holds for much longer than she watches the woman herself. "I wanted to go outside, but Dacey wanted to play on the ship. Can I have it?" Her eyes shift back to Issa's face and her hand clenches on Cance's shoulder. "Your flower." By now, Cance has lost interest in her sister and returned to listening to the child; her eyebrow goes up but otherwise her expression does not change: still cynical, still disapproving, although a shrug suggests that she doesn't care if the girl gets the flower or not.
Issa, too, notes Calla's readjustment, but she gives it even less heed than Cance does, turning back to the rapt little girl as she turns the flower slowly, temptingly in her grip. "I don't know," the flower girl muses, turning a glance at the girl's holder before she looks down at the rows of spinning petals. With casual ease, her attention slips back up to fall on Cenzia and the ship-bound scene of comforting. "Seems to me," she continues, "that your sister might need it more than you do." Blue eyes turn back quickly to the younger girl, pinning her with a steady gaze and slightly raised eyebrows.
The wrinkle of a pout takes over the girl's expression, and she buries her anger back into Cance's shoulder. "/I/ asked for it," she reminds Issa, the implied contrast being, and Dacey didn't. "Besides she doesn't like flowers. She'd probably just rip it apart and make a turtle out of it, or something stupid like that, if she didn't just /stomp/ on it, and besides I /asked/ for it!" By the end of her sentence the little girl is near tears again, her voice spiraling up with anxiety, but if she actually has any she hides them in Cance's blouse. Her aunt, callous as she can be, senses trouble here and quickly lifts a hand to the girl's head, patting her hair in an awkard imitation of the way Cenzia has been soothing Dacey. Has been, but is no more. She leans over the side of the ship, holding her daughter's hands while she walks down the steeply tilted ladder to the ship's deck, but her eyes are on the rest of the room, and particularly on the stranger with the flower by the door. She does not demand an explanation for Issa's presence quite so roughly as Cance did, but the silently raised eyebrow (and small clearing of her throat, lest her expression not be noticed) speaks her expectant inquiry plain enough.
Well. That didn't go as planned. The girl's outburst takes Issa by surprise, but the only indication of that fact is a swift blink and a fleeting tension to her ever-present little smile while she looks quickly down to that popular flower. It's Cenzia's throat-clearing that draws her back in, smile parting slightly as she looks back up to find an arched eyebrow waiting on her. "Oh," the greenrider stalls before beginning with, "Sorry, I didn't mean to..." To what? The offending flower nods slightly toward the upset girl, its owner doesn't elaborate. "I just happened by." And then the flower swings back to indicate the hallway, drooping all the more for the jerking about when it comes back to rest in front of her stomach again.
Her attentions absorbed by the snuffling girl in her arms, and her back to the ship, Cance didn't notice the return of her sister's attention, but when Issa addresses her it's enough to make Cance turn, now bouncing the little girl on her hip while she pets her. "Oh, Cenze, this is flower girl. Flower girl, Cenzia." "Pleased to meet you," Cenzia responds, a small dry note for whatever odd mood has inspired her sister to address Issa in this way. Now she's helped Dacey down the ladder, leaving her in the ship's inner hold, she scoots herself to the edge of the deck and swings her legs over, lowering herself carefully. No sooner have her feet touched the floor than her eldest daughter's face appears in one of the tiny port holes, peering curiously out at the scene before her.
"Likewise," Issa replies cordially, giving a slight wave with the hand holding the source of inspiration for her new title. The peering face draws her attention while Cenzia settles, and this newcomer sneaks the girl who was so recently wailing a brief, almost secretive smile and a subtle nod before turning back a more polite expression on the adults. The fidgeting twirling rolls to a stop and she drops her hands to her sides, the flower turned upside down to dangle from one hand. Her eyes find Cenzia first, waiting for the woman to look her way before she asks calmly, "She all right?" with a tilt of a nod at the ship-bound girl.
Cenzia's first action, once she gets down, is to relieve her sister of the burden of her other daughter, taking the whimpering bundle into her own arms and looking down at her face, murmuring a few short, inaudible questions before cuddling the girl to her chest. Then she looks again at Issa, needing only a breath of a look backwards to confirm it's Dacey she's talking about, and twists up a smile. "She's fine. Just stubbed her toe." Leaning her other daughter back so she can see her face, Cenzia begins to coo at her, wrinkling her nose up as she pokes it in her daughter's face and nuzzles her, asking her more little questions that eventually get a giggle out of her. Cance, no longer stuck with the child, retreats as far away as she can get, to a low (but broad) child's chair near the door and Issa. "Here she goes with the nesting," she declares, her voice tried and tired. Cenzia shoots her a reproachful look before turning back to her daughter, but Cance shrugs it off and lets her gaze swing idly to Issa. Calla, by her wall, remains aloof from the affair as always.
Issa nods with understanding as the explanition for the hubbub is offered, her eyes dropping to again find the owner of that stubbed toe, offering a wider smile for the girl she hasn't already offended. She plays the part of observer better now, her gaze tripping past Cance and up to catch Cenzia's reaction to her sister's comment. Even Calla gets a glance, however brief, before the flower girl turns to look at her black slipper, peeking out past the hem of her white skirt. The only interruption to her silence is a mouthed "Nesting," the quiet sound of it probably not carrying past Cance's ears. It's followed by a slow breath of amusement and a suppressed smile-- she's heard the term somewhere before-- but nothing more. She just hangs there at the door like the rude passer-by she is.
Cance is equally guilty of being rude, for she continues to stare openly at Issa while she sits in her little child's chair, slouching into the short back and holding her arms crossed over her chest. Were it not for her expression, alert and unbothered and (of course) rude, she would look very much as though she had just sunk into a childish sulk. When Issa echoes her word - a gesture that is not lost on her, near as she is and with her attention so focused - Cance raises a brow and dispels the sulking image even further. "So what's your story, flower girl?" She has no interest in her sisters, the one nesting and the other distancing, so she makes no effort to rein in her loud, sharp voice. Cenzia smoothly turns her back on the question, lowering her daughter so she can stare back through the window at Dacey (who's making silly faces for her); Calla, however, lifts her chin and turns her gaze, far more discomforting than Cance's, to Issa. She watches, blinking at slow, measured intervals but otherwise unmoving.
Issa's head drops to the side, angling her gaze down to Cance instead of her shoe. "Oh," she begins, her smile growing free of restraing now. "It's nothing much." Tired of that angle, already, she lifts her chin and, in doing so, catches the indifferent burn of Calla's stare. She turns to meet it as she says, "I'm just a little greenrider from High Reaches," then drifts back to watching Cance, "come to play the awed spectator for your brother's wedding." Reyce's name is never mentioned, but it hangs in the silence nonetheless. She waits patiently, calmly for recognition that not only does she know their identities, but she fits to the tee the description of their half-brother's new girl.
Cance's eyebrow moves a little higher at the sight of that growing smile on Issa's face, but her gaze begins to wander after that; by the time the little greenrider has returned from meeting Calla's stare, Cance has already moved on to watching her sister, a faintly derisive twist taking up her features as Cenzia eases her youngest to the floor and sets her loose to shove her face against the other side of Dacey's porthole, no doubt making silly faces of her own in turn. "Cut the cute," Cance returns suddenly: so she was still listening to Issa, if not bothering to watch. "You're the only one impressed by it." "Impressed by what?" Cenzia wonders, picking up the tail of the conversation as seems to be her habit. Her daughters safely occupied, she retreats to stand by Cance, leaning her hip into her sister's chair and shifting a curious look between her and Issa, for certainly Calla is not involved. "Flower girl is cute," Cance answers, indolent and useless.
With Cance ignoring her smile and Calla completely indifferent to it, Issa chooses to give it to Cenzia. Her grin widens ever so slightly when her sister catches her up on the conversation, demonstration of the cuteness in question that comes paired with a helpless shrug. The flower then comes into play again, lifted waist high so she can stare at it as she says, with the same calm cheer she's maintained since she arrived at their open door, "If I'd come here to impress then I'd really be... so crushed." And then, she goes right on being cute, lifting the flower so the spinning petals tickle her nose while she gives it a light sniff.
Cenzia stares at Issa for a moment, seeming - despite the explanation, and the demonstration that followed it - more puzzled than anything. "Oh," she decides, turning a brief look to her sister - Calla, strangely, not Cance. The cool young woman turns to meet the gaze that's aimed at her, but does nothing helpful on her own. "What did you come for, then?" Cenzia wonders, turning back to Issa with a little shake of her head. "To waste time," Cance cuts in for her, lifting her hand palm up off the arm of the little chair. Cenzia drops her own palm down on it, grabbing her sister's hand and giving it a shake before dropping it back down. Cance simply lets it slap into her lap this time, a faint, wry twist showing up on her lips when she does.
"To waste time," Issa echoes with a short nod, accepting Cance's description as easily as she accepted her whimsical new title. The sisterly exchange falls in her periphery as she surveys the tiny yellow center of the flower, but the drop of the hand marks the lifting of the greenrider's gaze, turned to peer over the top of Cance's head at Cenzia. "While Reyce is busy assisting the Steward." No longer at her nose, the flower gets brushed against her cheek with a single twirl and then is lowered again to her side. "I'm the new girl," she explains with amusement tinting her smile, half a glance tossed Calla's way before she decides it's probably useless anyway and turns back to the elder two.
On the contrary, that glance at Calla is not entirely wasted. Just mostly. The young Blood flares her nostrils when those words are spoken, but within a fraction of a second has melted back behind her wall of indifference. Cenzia's response is more animated, anyway, her eyebrows going up as she processes the easy hint contained in Reyce's name - and confirmed in that next statement. "Oh," she says, with an air of reaching understanding. "Sorry to hear that." She twists up a wicked little smile, earning from Cance a derisive snort. "Should have stayed a flower girl," the latter comments darkly.
Cance's comment draws an amused breath from Issa, smooth and slow, as she watches the hem of her skirt again. "Maybe so," she replies easily, shrugging the shoulder that isn't pinned to the doorframe. Looking up again, she catches the older sister's smile in the sidelong sweep of her eyes and matches it with one of her own, no longer quite so cute. There's a sneaking sense of a dare, instead. Bring it on.
The dare will have to be interrupted, briefly, by the shrill scream of the littler girl as she leaps away from the porthole. Dacey has just decided to get her sister's face off the glass by rapping it, hard, and startling her; no real harm done, but Cenzia has to let herself be distracted all the same, throwing a look over her shoulder to measure the situation. "Play nice, girls," she calls back - advice that could well be taken among the adults, as well, but the girls certainly seem minded to ignore it. They run around to meet each other by the prow of the ship, and soon dissolve into a tickling fight that has Cenzia shifting her stance so she can keep watch on them from the corner of her eye at all times. Cance, then, gets stuck with the conversational ball, and it's clear she doesn't want it. "So. High Reaches. Caucus. Say some boring things about them before Cenze starts to talk about her children." Cenzia has not gone out of earshot, of course, and hears this clearly; she digs her finger's into Cance's hair and gives her whole head a disapproving shake, ruffling up her hair in the process.
The children give Issa a reason to not try and engage any of the adults in smiling glances or sullen conversation; she takes it. Lightly amused, she watches the girls race to meet each other, her smile breaking wider when they erupt into a storm of tickling and shrieking giggles. "Oh," she responds distractedly, quieting her expression. "Lots of snow and snotty students. Not much more to say." Another one-sided shrug brings her back to Cenzia. "But I'm interested," she says. It might just be to piss Cance off, but it sounds sincere. A tiny jerk of her chin indicates the girls as she asks, "How old are they?"
"Well, that much I already knew," Cance mutters, turning her head sharply to the side. Knocking away Cenzia's hand, she drags her own fingers through her hair which - thankfully - is not curly like her sister's, and can be settled easily. The choice of conversational topic does indeed displease her, her lips sinking into a quiet scowl, yet it's the children whose games she watches (absently) while it goes on. Cenzia is as easily distracted by her children as her sister warned, and pulls up a mother's tired but affectionate smile when she finds the chance to speak about them. "Dacey, my eldest there, just turned seven, and little Caira's four, but she'd tell you four and eight months." "All those turns, and not a son," Cance remarks bitterly. "Poor Darius." Her sister gives her an odd look for this statement, and ruffles her hair (so recently fixed) up again. "He can have his son when I'm finished raising his daughters," she remarks with a disinterested shrug.
Issa sends a momentary smirk down at Cance-- she asked for boring after all-- but there's no comment made, and soon the subject turns to the girls and both the smirk and her attention for Cance disappear. Even when the woman in the chair speaks again, she doesn't get noticed by the greenriding flower girl. "I hear the boys are like bouncing little tunnelsnakes, anyway," she contributes. Amused by the image, her chin drops to hide the grin that grows over the thought, covered by a casual glance at her flower. A second later, her smile's under control again and she lifts her face to find the girls on their toy ship. "Seems like your pair's got enough spunk to give them all good competition, though," she remarks, her tone admiring as the tickling tussle brings to mind the earlier thrashing kicks of the younger one.
Cenzia does not even try to hide her pleasure at hearing her girls called spunky, lifting her hand from Cance's hair to her own to give her curls a preening sort of bounce. Her sister takes advantage of her distraction to smooth down her hair again, but she's gotten nowhere before Cenzia remembers her and musses it up again, for consistency's sake. "The Benden curse," Cenzia explains, for if she does not hide her pleasure she does at least try to diminish it slightly. "Caira's a little calmer, thankfully, but Dacey can rile her up any time day or night. Drives me wild sometimes, trying to keep up with them." At the moment, troublemaking Dacey has yielded to her sister's tickles; she shrieks her laughter wildly as she tries to escape, and a grinning Caira bumbles after with tiny fingers intent on tickling her tummy.
Issa reorients her gaze just in time to catch that third hair-mussing, turning up her same lightly amused, good-natured smile up to Cenzia after she's had long enough to catch just a quick glimpse of the annoying sisterly gesture. "Well," she continues conversationally, "I'm glad it's your job and not mine." A particularly shrill shriek causes Issa's eyes to squint into a subtle wince, as if to emphasize her point, though her smile turns up its edges for the ear-ringing sound and her eyes return eagerly to watch the two girls once again.
Cance does not take the hair-mussing half so well, her shoulders bunching up with contained rage and her cheeks sucking inside her mouth. Perhaps Cenzia takes pity on her, or else fixing mussed hair is just a habit, but as she speaks her hand begins smoothing down the flat chestnut hair she's so thoroughly messed up. "I'm not," she answers, though her tone's drily amused. "What they ought to have is a Caucus for little children, so I can send these away and get them back all tidied up." "What you'd get back is a pair of bitter things, or else a pair of Callas." The use of her name is enough to bring the third sister in for a moment, blinking at Cance for a moment before she pulls a frown. "Hardly." Cenzia watches the conversation shift between the two of them, but ultimately dismisses it with a flick of her hand. "Can't a mother dream?" Especially when her eldest lets out another shriek to emphasize Issa's point.
The voice of the third sister carries enough weight, short-lived though it is, to drag Issa's gaze around to her, though it's only for a polite smile and, a taste of her own medicine, a steady, silent blink. That's all. "I'll make sure to speak with the Headmaster about setting one up," she teases, her eyes lifting playfully to find Cenzia's before darting over to the ship. "I'll let you know how it turns out. Though I doubt that a Caucus could manage such elaborate sets," she comments, flicking the flower gently toward the enormous plaything. Her eyes roam over the hull and up to the deck, halting only briefly to watch the progress of the girls' little duel.
"Hmm?" Cenzia follows the flower's guidance to find the mini-ship, enormous plaything behind her. "Oh. That." Planting a hand on her hip, she turns more fully to view it, the corner of her lip twisting up as she does. "Best not repeat our example with that thing. It's been around for ages, and racked up a steady count of broken legs and such from kids dumb enough to jump off." She eyes her own girls with sudden suspicious, although they're nowhere near the edge. It takes her a moment to satisfy her motherly urges, but when she has, it's an impish smile she turns back on Issa. "Reyce liked to jump off," she states. Cance, who since her hair-fixing has taken to glowering in Issa's direction, heaves a heavily derisive snort here and shifts her gaze - without much diminishing the glower - to her sister.
Issa has been ignoring Cance's pointed prodding and glaring glances well enough so far and she's not about to give in to them now. So she simply looks right over the line of her gaze to find Cenzia's, impish smile met with a wryly twisted one of her own. "He would," she states with a fond ridicule curled into her tone. She follows it with a quick half-snorted note of laughter. "Were his legs any of those broken, or did he get lucky?" The word prompts a stronger grin from the greenrider, the corners of her eyes crinkling up with the effort.
Cance tends to throw her antagonism around without respect to whom it reaches (or does not reach), and there's no exception here even though Issa ignores her. Her glance, with a sardonically raised brow, returns to the greenrider as soon as she answers, but another snort (quieter, this time) announces her disinterest and she returns her gaze to her sister. Cenzia does not even have to look down to know where Cance is at right now, cupping a hand to her sister's cheek and following her with it when she attempts to lean away. If a bit of a smile breaks through as she does this, she bites it down quickly. "Oh, broken with the rest," she says, turning breezily to Issa's question to distract herself from her amusement over Cance's behavior. "I admit I didn't help." Setting her amusement free - some distraction - she turns her sparkling smile down to Cance. "I hit him a few times while he was down. I'd /finally/ gotten Coren to sit down with me and Reyce went and jumped him from the ship." Her fingers drum a playful little measure on her sister's cheek before she returns her attention to Issa.
Issa gives in to amusement of a different sort, shooting a grinning glance at the floor as she aligns the image of young Reyce with the one she knows now. Her wider smile mulls for only a few seconds on her downturned face before she throws herself back into conversation, composed again. "Sounds like a spiteful little snot," she comments with that same fond undertone that annoyed Cance so much the first time. In it is a prompt though, a subtle cue for Cenzia that she has the flower girl's attention for more such stories, should she care to share.
Oh, she cares, but Cance can pick up that subtle cue as easily as her sister and try to head her off at the pass. "He was, and all the stories end like that. I'd rather hear stories about Dacey and Caira; at least they mix it up." But Cenzia just pinches her cheek, delighted to find such an unreceptive audience. "Oh, come on. Everyone needs embarassing stories told, and you /know/ Father and Mother won't do it. I guess the responsibility falls to me." She sighs, but her drama is overshadowed by her girls, giggling and laughing in the background as they try to catch each other running around the ship. Cenzia begins to watch them more carefully, now, but she still has attention to spare for remembering stories. "And they don't all end at the healer's anyway," she assures Issa, daring just a moment's attention spared from her daughters to look at the greenrider. "There's one where he just winds up naked in harper class, because his clothes were new and he decided they itched. So - pfft - off they go."
Even Cance's words go unheeded now as Issa focuses expectantly on Cenzia despite her sister's discouragement. Her laugh rises to join the girls', much lower and lazier, but just as amused. "Oh," she ends it, unsquinting her eyes, "that'll give me ammunition for months, at least." She pivots slightly in her lean, nudging her shoulder to the inside of the doorframe and moving a step further into the room. The motion leaves Calla with an indifferent shoulder, but grants Cenzia a more eager attention, greedy eyes waiting for more the only reward for that useful tidbit. "Did he ever swim when he was younger?" she prompts, head tilting with curiosity into the wall.
Now there's a random question, and it makes Cenzia blink. "Nowhere to swim around here," she answers with a shrug that rolls all the way down her arm into an upturned palm. She still has an eye for her daughters, but their antics are slowing down now as they get tired. "Well, aside from the river, but that'd just be /cold/." She grimaces and pulls off an expressive shiver, but it's all an act, and she soon lets go of it. "Reyce, really - well, he ran, he climbed, all those sorts of things, but for the most part we had to stay inside the hold." Tilting her head to the side, now her explanation is through, she quirks an expectant half-smile that suggests she wants a story in return. "Why swimming?" is her prompt.
With a drawn, "Mmm," Issa ponders the explanation, letting her head bob in its sideways tilt with a good approximation of a nod. When she's prompted in return, her eyes flick out of the thoughtful haze they'd taken on and soon after she gives a light, dismissive wave of the flower-bearing hand. "Oh, he won't swim when we get the chance. Doesn't like water very much. I just thought there might be something there, that's all," she explains her part, rounding it off with a lazy half shrug. "Apparently I'm wide of the mark," she says jokingly, her smile twisting sideways for a moment before it drops down to its normal curve again.
Another quiet snort from Cance, leaving her (for a moment) with her mouth twisted sideways in what would be an echo of Issa's expression, were Issa's expression only cynical and not at all amused. Cenzia seems only mildly disappointed that the story she gets isn't as full of embarassment as her own, but she brushes away her expectations with a flip of her hand that winds up brushing her curls. "He probably doesn't know how," she guesses, "and doesn't want to admit it. Sounds like him," she says, turning another smile down on her sister. Cance rolls her eyes, moving her gaze beyond this discussion of embarassing moments to catch a glimpse at Calla, who has been watching them (for lack of anything more interesting) and now, with her gaze met, turns away. She will watch the daughters, thank you, now collapsed in a panting heap from which the murmurs of conversation and occasional giggles emerge.
Issa's eyes light with mischief, but it's visible only for a second, glossed over with her casual, "Hm, maybe," and a roving glance for the relative quiet of the children's play. A single chuckle sounds as she draws herself back in. "You know," she starts again, perhaps in response to that slight disappointment detected from the only sister willing to converse civilly with her, "we first met in the baths. At the Weyr it's all common," she notes with a quick waggle of her fingers for the lack of importance, "not like here, and everyone normally just minds their own business. But he seemed so uncomfortable with it all, once I got there-- he wouldn't even open his eyes he was so awkward-- that I had to make him talk." There's that mischief again, just a brief flash in her blue eyes before another light chuckle stamps it out. "I don't think he even caught a glimpse of my face the entire time." Then, ammunition repayed, Issa grows silent to linger over the mirth brought up by her memory.
Now, there's the reward Cenzia has been waiting for. For her rich voice, she has a surprisingly light and ladylike laugh that suggests the influence, at some point, of an especially strict etiquette instructor. "Did he?" she wonders, her voice already restored on the tail of that delicate laugh. "Well, hmm. The nannies used to bathe him with Cance - " and, since it's been quite long enough, she punctuates this statement with a ruffle of her sister's hair - "until Mother found out and threw a fit. So maybe there's your precedent." With her daughters having collapsed safely in a heap, she allows her attention to waver from them entirely, taking on a sly smile. "But you leave me wondering how you ever found him again, if he hadn't seen your face. You didn't stare, did you?" Allowing her smile to spread out to a grin, Cenzia flicks an explanatory gaze down Issa's body, as if giving her a once-over.
The mischief bubbles to the surface once again, but sticks around this time, waiting for Cenzia's gaze to return from that mock assessment. "Of course I did," Issa responds, all nonchalance about it, though her eyes fairly dance as she says further, "I watched him the whole time." The corners of her mouth draw wide into a tooth-filled grin as she lets her words sink in, only to be forced back again when she gives a more frank explanation. "Turn's End was right around the corner at that point. He was there with Carina, I believe, and hating it, naturally. So I swung by and, uh... reintroduced myself," she finishes with a jerked flourish of her fingers at her side, simple as that, her smile still straining to tug higher though she restrains it for the most part.
Cenzia laughs again, her fingers anchored in Cance's hair and at least rocking her slightly with the laughter, though there's no chance of tempting her to join in. Not to judge by her expression, grown more sour by the minute; like Calla, she has decided to watch the girls, however inactive they may be right now. "Now, there's a romantic tale for me to sigh over. First meeting, naked and spying; second first meeting, stalking him on a date with his sister. No wonder you two are together." Although she seems indifferent, she does has some concern for her sister's gathering foul mood, and as she speaks stretches her free hand down Cance's shoulder with the palm turned up, not too unlike the gesture she herself was greeted with when she came back from coddling her daughters. Cance delays only a moment before lifting her hand up to slap that palm, pressing it to her shoulder before she moves her hand away and shakes her head. The small gesture of warmth earns her a shoulder rub and a pat from Cenzia.
Issa furtively notes the exchange between the two and allows it a moment to exist undisturbed while she shoots another silently amused glance at the carpet. "Anything but typical," she comments on the edge of a breathy little laugh, turning back to Cenzia, "that's for sure." Her mouth sweeps up into a smoother curve, another hint of fondness for their bastard brother, even with all her talk. "His surliness. My... cute," she decides teasingly, her eyes dipping briefly to find the younger sister in her chair. "We fit somehow," she tells them, dismissively, then lets the subject lie. A sigh, lazy and content, lifts her shoulders. "I suppose I should get out of your hair," she says next, sparing another quick, darting look for Cance and the mussed brown strands still standing apart from the rest. She shoves herself lightly up from her lean and straightens again, but isn't so fast to make her exit; with the flower brought up across her midsection again, held in both hands, she lingers in place for pleasantries.
Sisterly affection expressed, Cance settles into a dull stare, responding with no more than a twitch of her nostrils when Issa throws her word back at her. Cenzia spares a smile for it, her eyes crinkling up with mirth. "Back to our surly bastard," she observes. A little flick of her hand gives permission for the retreat, playfully waving the greenrider off. "Best you do. The girls will wake up eventually, after all." She turns a fond look over her shoulder, where the girls in question have righted themselves and now sit facing each other, so Dacey can exhibit some hand contorting tricks she's learned. "Nice meeting you, anyway." That, and the smile (still somewhat melted by the sight of her daughters) may be the best pleasantry Issa can hope for; Cance still hasn't broken her stare, and Calla certainly isn't moving.
Pleasantry enough, it seems, for Issa keeps right on smiling brightly (at Cenzia at least), offering, "It was lovely," in return. The flower girl goes to turn, but the bloom, drooping sideways now for all its mishandling though its petals still stand pretty and mostly intact, idly twisting in her hands suddenly reminds her. "Oh," she mumbles, pausing to hand the thing to Cenzia, her arm passing fearlessly into Cance's personal space as it stretches out over her head. "For the little one," she explains once the woman's taken it, nodding her head toward the girls to clarify, "when they come down again." It's faint the shrug she gives before turning away, though her smile isn't quite as enigmatic and beams brightly to serve as an unspoken goodbye. Her trajectory makes a parting glance for Calla inevitable, and her tossed little wave in the Cenzia's direction might as well include Cance, too. But then she's gone, past the door and down the hallway to continue her wandering.