The Death of Bubbles
8-11-2006 (Kianda, Issa, Reyce):
Baths
The bathing cavern is divided into a number of large pools, each spacious enough for ten to fifteen people. There is one cold-water pool with the remainder being given over to water warm enough to fill the air with swirling clouds of steam. Each pool has been tiled in blue and white and boasts benches along the sides to allow people to sit and soak. Alcoves in the walls have been hollowed out to provide places to store clean, dry towels and various other bathing paraphernalia.
The corners of the room have been decorated with potted ferns, brought here from Ista Island. They are pampered and fussed over by the staff who keep the baths clean and stocked. The plants provide a cheerful splash of color in an otherwise pale and steamy cavern.
Contents:
Issa
Kianda
Obvious Exits:
Out (O)
Utter, total, blissful relaxation. Half-floating in one of the warmer pools, Kia practically purrs in the revelry of the moment. Eyes half-lidded, she cocks one open occasionally to see who's coming and going.
The baths are cluttered with bodies. Moreso than a usual evening, even. Riders of a rebel sort especially seem in ready supply, lingering to soak away the boredom of their confinement. Issa is among these, sitting silent in Kianda's pool after the usual small talk has been exchanged. Her knees are drawn up to her chest, bare arms slung around them easily as her head rests against the stone behind her. Eyes aren't closed, however, they are open and pensive, staring up through the steam at the stony cracks of the ceiling. Perhaps this is how the Reachians tell their own futures.
Reyce walks into the baths already soaked - not the light watering of someone who had to dash through the rain, but the bone-wet drenching of someone who found himself out in the rain and stayed outside anyway. He strips with well-practiced stealth, whipping a towel around his waist in practically the same moment he drops trou. After his clothes have been stuffed safely away in a little alcove, he moves off in search of a bath, keeping his chin elevated and his eyes carefully away from the nudity. Peripherally, however, he can see faces; so he sees Issa and pauses by her chosen pool with a frown. He dares a glance at the others in the bath - Kianda, because she's watching, gets a moment of narrowed eyes - then squats down, towel carefully pulled forward to cover, and says, "Evening."
Kianda lifts a hand rather carefully, lest she upset her floating self into capsizing. "Evening," is called softly. She glances toward Issa once before looking back at the man. "You seem... displeased about something?"
Issa blinks slowly as her eyes switch from focusing on the far away ceiling to the much closer Reyce. "Hi," she greets, her words transitioning seamlessly into a smile. She lifts her head then, the hair that was trailing in the water sprinkling droplets about her submerged shoulders. "That's Reyce for you, Kianda," she says, using the newly learned name as she spares the seamstress a glance. "Always displeased about something. Or at least looking like it." Those teasing blue eyes fall on him again as she shifts into a more upright position, her knees still kept close to her chest. "How have you been, hm?"
Reyce's glance flicks back to Kianda - a delicate operation, considering how much of an effort he puts in to not eyeballing her while she's naked; he pulls it off by fixes his eyes on her for just a second, and then looking up at that ceiling Issa was inspecting, earlier. The greenrider's explanation of his perpetual displeasure earns a shrug and a small grunt. "Sure. I'm all right." He continues to just crouch there, making no move to join them.
Kianda wags a finger at Issa. "I told you, it's Kia. Heroes are allowed to use nicknames." Reyce- and the name goes by with no flash of recognition- is given an amused look. "Gooooooood. But you do look a little silly, sitting there like that. There's plenty of room in here, you know."
"Kia, of course," Issa replies quickly, a swift shake of her head for such a silly slip of her memory. As for the mention of heroes, she brushes past it without even a bat of an eyelash, turning her gaze quickly on the Bendenite. "I think he might have just come to pose here in his towel for us," she muses, grin growing mischievous right before their very eyes. She plops her chin down on top of her upraised knees then, watching Reyce's response.
Reyce shrugs at their teasing, his distracted expression unchanged as he stares at the ceiling. "Shove it," he offers, without a hint of malice - resignation, if anything. A hand goes down to brace him, but it has to wait a few seconds before he actually decides to get up, hands going to his towel as his gaze levels for a look across the room. /Not/ at either of them. If they're going to look, they're going to look; Reyce is just going to drop his towel on the edge and get in quickly, which he does.
Kianda looks, but rather inadvertantly. When she realizes what she's doing, she turns her crimson-cheeked face away quickly. One of these days she'll get used to it. Maybe. Clearing her throat, she nods a little. "Much better, Reyce," the young woman murmurs, and glances toward Issa, regaining some of her humor. "Posing? Kind of a waste. I don't know any sculptors in the Weyr."
Issa, of course, looks. But slyly. No blush rises to her cheeks though, and she tosses a womanly glance Kia's way, one of her eyebrows cocking just slightly upward. Very quickly though, it's gone, and her eyes are on the waves that Reyce makes as he gets in. "Not entirely a waste," Issa corrects the other girl cryptically, smiling down at her toes through the water. Reyce is allowed to settle without Issa watching, as she busies herself, cupping water with one hand and spreading it down her upper arm. "There is aesthetic appreciation to consider after all, sculptor or no."
Reyce scowls at Kianda's murmured approval, clearly misinterpreting it. Perhaps to dodge other comments, the first thing he does once he's in the baths is to stick his head under water, where of course he can't hear anything. Submerged, he scratches at his hair to help get rain out, then reemerges with long waves instead of curls. He's quick to grab some soapsand and suds that hairstyle away, however.
Kianda's blush deepens even further. "I think I'll take your word for that, Issa!" Now that he's safely in the water, she can look over for a more detailed look at the man. "Hmmmmm. Yes. I'd never realized before how... pleasing aesthetics can be."
With Reyce still submerged, Issa rolls her eyes over at the other girl, her grin deepening and a subtle laugh offered. Once he's surfaced, however, her expression has quieted quite a bit, and she studies his face with calm eyes. "Pleasing enough, I suppose," she returns, eyes squinting just slightly as she briefly relishes in her nudging banter. But then she changes the subject, asking with a sincere curiousity, "What were you up to that got you so soaked before even jumping in the water?"
Reyce tilts his head up sharply as some escaped suds start slipping towards his eye. He lifts a very careful pinky up and brushes them away, answering while distracted: "Nothing. Just didn't feel like hurrying inside." His policy of ignoring the teases continues, as he dips his head back again to wash out the suds.
Kianda tilts her head a little, then looks at Issa. "Men," she says lightly. "Don't even know enough to come in out of the rain." With a chuckle, she turns over in the water, and pushes off toward the lip of the pool to pull herself out. "You two have fun, eh?" Wrapping a towel around herself, she takes up her clothes, and heads out.
Kianda leaves the warmth of the Weyr's baths behind.
Kianda has left.
Fun? Issa's eyebrow quirks again at Kianda as she picks up and leaves, offering, "Bye, Kia. Thanks for all the... kind words." The greenrider's humbly smiling as the seamstress walks out, her finger trips tracing fleeting lines on the surface of the water. That inescapable mischief creeps into her expression again, though, and she flicks a fine spray Reyce-wards. "So you were just... standing out in the rain for no good reason at all?"
Reyce winces away, squinting his eye shut as that fine spray of water hits him. His face is already wet, of course, but he makes a point of reaching up to rub off the spray. "Walking in it," he corrects. "Been cooped up-" a pause, a glance flicked in her direction (or at least, the direction of her forehead) - "anyway, 'cause of the rain. Caucus is a mess of idiots when it rains. Nobody can go anywhere." With a shrug, he reaches back for more soapsand.
The game's no fun if he doesn't play along. The splashing desists for the moment, Issa's hands sinking to grasp her feet, now completely curled into a ball, perched on her little spot of the submerged stone bench. "I sympathize," she says, chin again falling to rest in the space between her two upraised knees. "Though my weyr does seem to have a few less idiots in it, so I'd say that Oshisyth and I have the much better deal." Lips form a twisted smile as she turns her eyes across the baths, casually spotting all of the other, more or less naked, riders that have shared her fate.
Reyce washes himself very thoroughly, scrubbing till he brings a touch of red to the surface of his skin and then moving on. "Hero?" he asks simply, repeating Kianda's word from before. His attention is not on her, however, but on his left arm as he works his way down it.
Issa attempts to capture some eye contact from him, but resigns herself then to letting her eyes follow the scrubbing down that arm as she speaks. "So some say," she affirms in a way, the shrug that she gives sending little ripples out across the bath. "I'm either a hero or a scourge on the Weyr. Maybe both according to others. But all we did was fly Thread, like we have a hundred times before." The humble delivery of Issa's words comes with a subtle tint, a tiny tilt that reveals the fact that the motives behind her actions weren't nearly as uncomplicated.
Reyce catches that small tilt to her voice, and sends a look over his shoulder as if summoned by that desire for eye contact. He's got his chin up, preventing accidental viewings, but he is looking at her for once. "I don't think that's all," he says quietly, and then the contact is lost. His own opinion, whether she's a hero or a scourge, would be hard to catch from those neutral words, and there's no sign of it on his face, either, as he concentrates on his right arm.
Issa's eyes jump up rather sheepishly from her survey of his scrubbing, as she lifts her head, meeting his gaze unwaveringly while he holds it. There's no search for his opinion, either. It's likely he doesn't care, is her assumption. "Maybe not. For some of the riders," she answers, only after he's looked away again. Her hands drift up her legs, bringing a rush of water with them as they rise to cover her kneecaps, fingers tapping out a rhythm in damp thuds. "Some riders had other motives. Some wanted the hero title, of course, quite badly. Some wanted to get in E'sere's good graces. Some just wanted to throw things off, defy the Weyrleaders." Some. But not her, that distinction is clearly made.
Reyce is silent for a while, distracted by his washing. Arms, armpits, chest, et cetera. All with that rigorous insistence on cleaning every single spot before he'll move on to the next. "So very diverse," he remarks suddenly, and in very dry tones, as his hands plunge below the water. He may well be trying to distract her from what he's washing at the moment. "And your own motives?"
The distraction seems to be successful, on some level, though it's likely Issa would have been unphased no matter what he was washing over there. For the moment, she takes the time to stare at her plumped fingers. Her face is unbothered by both Reyce's question and the pruny wrinkles slowly accumulating there at her fingertips. "Honorable. Though not as wholly so as some might think." She looks over to him again, watching his face this time as she adds, her voice significantly lowered, "Couldn't let Igen get by without a challenge of some sort, now, could we? It was just sort of... fortunate that it came in a form that could save some lives along the way."
Reyce's eyebrows go up at the word honorable, and he pauses his washing to flick her another glance. It's predictably short-lived; he finds a spot on the wall to stare at, and resumes washing. "That's a far cry from fuck it, fuck it all," he answers, lowering his own voice to match hers.
The predictability elicits a small sigh from the greenrider, her gaze turning away from him again as she unravels, first one foot falling off the bench to search out the bottom, then the other following. "Yeah, well," she begins, shifting into a plank-like position, her head supported by the stone wall as the rest of her stretches out below, hands curled around her belly. "I was drunk at the time. And I told you I wasn't very good at pretending." She remembers, it seems, that conversation. No longer do her eyes seek his. Instead they drift back up to the ceiling, though they seem to chase steam tendrils now, jumping and shifting with her thoughts.
Reyce finishes his washing, at last, and washes the last bit of soapsand scrub off his hands. There's now a little circle of suds surrounding him, but he dispels them and sends them wafting away with a few flicks of his hand. "Yeah," he says simply, letting his head fall slowly back against the side of the pool. As his hair dries, the little waves start pulling back into curls. "Kinda figured you'd gone up, when I heard about it. Go okay?"
"You did, hm?" The curve of a grin returns to Issa's lips as she tucks her chin to get a look at his face. "It went alright, considering our numbers. Oshisyth got scored though. Our first." The defeat of a lucky streak now dead and buried sounds hollowly in her voice. There's a stirring under the water, ankle crossing over ankle forcing the water to move toward Reyce. "The challenge of it all," she says, returning her gaze to the space above them as she pulls in that snippet of earlier conversation, "didn't come off quite as well as I'd hoped, though."
Reyce frowns suddenly, rolling his head to the side so he doesn't have to peer over his nose to see Issa. It's the 'Oshisyth got scored' that prompts this look; he's scanning her face for any further clues - should he be worried? - when that water moves back towards him, carrying with it the suds of his bath. Reyce just moves out of the way, creating a counter-ripple that effectively stops the suds in the middle of the pool, there to linger until they fizzle away. "Didn't it," he prompts as he settles back again.
Issa carries on as if there's no need for worry. Indeed, she wouldn't be lounging here under a sea of suds if it was anything serious. "They're so fucking... stoic," is her hissed explanation. "Just stood there. We needed a reaction. Anger, dismay, something. But they're too good." She makes a motion as if to shake her head, but the imeding stone makes it seem more like a stiff waggle. "Though whatever Diya wrote..." She pauses as some large naked man passes by their little pool, entering within earshot. She's avoiding eye contact with him, but following him slowly with her periphery until he's past. When she returns to the conversation, though, she doesn't seem to intent on finishing it. "I'm sorry. I keep going on about Weyr issues, as if it actually mattered to you. We can talk about something else." The apology is sincere, as if she's left her manners with her clothes on that bench over there.
Reyce lets out a small snort, reaching a hand up to scratch at his stubble. "Doesn't matter, really. Told you all about my luck with sevens, you can tell me all about the weyr." He stretches out on the bench, sinking a bit lower in the water as he does. "'m sure they're pissed off, whatever they acted like at the time. If it's what you want." He shrugs.
Issa eyes him again, but continues nonetheless. "That's something, yes, but something visible would have been... so much better." A sigh escapes her for the way things turned out instead, curls of steam rushing away from her. "You can't convince people with something kept hidden. There's dissent, but not nearly enough people to..." To... what exactly? It seems even Issa doesn't know. Or if she has something in mind, her mouth refuses to pronounce such incendiary thoughts. "If only Diya were still here." Following the wistful rambling is another sigh, her chest heaving under the water.
Reyce flings his arms back over the edge of the pool, stretching out and making a small barrier to a would-be bather who turns in the direction of their shared pool. How he knew about it is anybody's guess, since he wasn't looking in that direction, but the elderly woman in question stops and decides to go to another pool that's easier to step into. "Something-" Reyce starts, but he stops himself, cutting his words into a small grunt. "Yeah, well." He doesn't have anything so he shuts up.
Issa continues with a quick flash of a glance for the slighted bather, shifting to sit up straighter, unsprawling. "She'd know what to do," she mutters, utterly confident in that fact. The rest she delivers from a more traditional sitting position, her eyes focused on the stone wall to Reyce's right as she conjures up the images of days past. "Like that note. It must have been brilliant. It got to Yevide, somehow, I saw it. Ruffled something." A brief pause. "I don't know what to do without her." Diya, presumably. The Issa's pale blue eyes switch to Reyce, as if suddenly made all too aware of his silence. "You sure you don't mind... all this?"
Reyce sits quiet for a while, then scratches a hand through his curls - they're back in full form now, and need to be reordered. "No, I don't mind. I mean -" he plucks a tangle out with fore- and middle finger - "it's not my thing. Told you that already. But you can talk about it however much you want." A pause, words caught in his throat. He lets them out as a sigh pushed through his teeth, and says carefully, "Not my business and I don't want it to be, but." He frowns, clamps his mouth shut, and looks at her. This time, he meets her eyes, none of the edgy avoidance that has marked his looks so far this evening; what he doesn't do is finish that sentence.
The avoiding words bother her more than the whole conversation's worth of avoiding glances, a brooding frown of her own forming between those brows as she meets his stare head on. "But... what?" Issa urges, and edge creeping into her voice unchecked, a string of suspicion snapping under the surface of her calm face. She's certainly done revealing things to him for tonight. She's talked all she wants.
Reyce draws himself up, his relaxed posture gone, at that snap of suspicion in her tone. "Look," he says, twisting to reach behind him. He soon finds his towel - damp from all the moisture in the air, but that won't stop it from covering him. "I don't know Diya. Never met her. But something tells me if she knew what to do about this thing's got you so pissed off, she'd be here doing it." And on those words, he stands and steps out, the water slooshing off his body while he ties the towel around his waist.
That niggling suspicion is forgotten, that's for sure. But Issa's frown deepens nonetheless, her lips parting ever so slightly as she stares into the space he used to occupy blankly. "Maybe so, Benden." The title is cool and distancing, but not disrespectful. Then her eyes turn on him, with a withering thinness. "Maybe I should just fuck it all, then. If she doesn't know, then no one does, and I should just give up now. Let the Igenites have the Weyr and salvage what's left of my hero's dignity." As she glances away, her words have a hint of that sneering civility so unique to the dealings of the upper crust. "Thank you for making it all so clear."
Reyce shrugs as he bends over, raising an edge of his towel to dry out his ears. "Guess so," he answers, face pointed at the floor such that his words have to rebound off it. He straightens, tucking that edge of the towel back, and looks at her. This time his eyes don't seem to edge around her nudity; quite the opposite, there's something downright /leering/ in the way he looks at her this time, even if his attention does seem to stay fixed on her face. And then he tilts a tiny bow. "It's Bastard of Benden. Full titles, please." Still dipped in the bow, he pauses for effect; then draws up and goes to regain his clothes, get dressed, and leave.
Issa fumes, eyes taking in his last look, a challenge of her own in the hardness that lies there. Her mouth closes tightly again, the wispy steam that swirls around her head now seeming as if it's indeed coming from her. But she sits, silent, helpless to do much else as he's... right there. Instead she directs her full fury at the dwindling soapsuds he's left behind, taking comfort in the way they die with their tiny, validating pops. It isn't until he's left the cavern completely that she storms out of the water toward her own pile of clothes.
Baths
The bathing cavern is divided into a number of large pools, each spacious enough for ten to fifteen people. There is one cold-water pool with the remainder being given over to water warm enough to fill the air with swirling clouds of steam. Each pool has been tiled in blue and white and boasts benches along the sides to allow people to sit and soak. Alcoves in the walls have been hollowed out to provide places to store clean, dry towels and various other bathing paraphernalia.
The corners of the room have been decorated with potted ferns, brought here from Ista Island. They are pampered and fussed over by the staff who keep the baths clean and stocked. The plants provide a cheerful splash of color in an otherwise pale and steamy cavern.
Contents:
Issa
Kianda
Obvious Exits:
Out (O)
Utter, total, blissful relaxation. Half-floating in one of the warmer pools, Kia practically purrs in the revelry of the moment. Eyes half-lidded, she cocks one open occasionally to see who's coming and going.
The baths are cluttered with bodies. Moreso than a usual evening, even. Riders of a rebel sort especially seem in ready supply, lingering to soak away the boredom of their confinement. Issa is among these, sitting silent in Kianda's pool after the usual small talk has been exchanged. Her knees are drawn up to her chest, bare arms slung around them easily as her head rests against the stone behind her. Eyes aren't closed, however, they are open and pensive, staring up through the steam at the stony cracks of the ceiling. Perhaps this is how the Reachians tell their own futures.
Reyce walks into the baths already soaked - not the light watering of someone who had to dash through the rain, but the bone-wet drenching of someone who found himself out in the rain and stayed outside anyway. He strips with well-practiced stealth, whipping a towel around his waist in practically the same moment he drops trou. After his clothes have been stuffed safely away in a little alcove, he moves off in search of a bath, keeping his chin elevated and his eyes carefully away from the nudity. Peripherally, however, he can see faces; so he sees Issa and pauses by her chosen pool with a frown. He dares a glance at the others in the bath - Kianda, because she's watching, gets a moment of narrowed eyes - then squats down, towel carefully pulled forward to cover, and says, "Evening."
Kianda lifts a hand rather carefully, lest she upset her floating self into capsizing. "Evening," is called softly. She glances toward Issa once before looking back at the man. "You seem... displeased about something?"
Issa blinks slowly as her eyes switch from focusing on the far away ceiling to the much closer Reyce. "Hi," she greets, her words transitioning seamlessly into a smile. She lifts her head then, the hair that was trailing in the water sprinkling droplets about her submerged shoulders. "That's Reyce for you, Kianda," she says, using the newly learned name as she spares the seamstress a glance. "Always displeased about something. Or at least looking like it." Those teasing blue eyes fall on him again as she shifts into a more upright position, her knees still kept close to her chest. "How have you been, hm?"
Reyce's glance flicks back to Kianda - a delicate operation, considering how much of an effort he puts in to not eyeballing her while she's naked; he pulls it off by fixes his eyes on her for just a second, and then looking up at that ceiling Issa was inspecting, earlier. The greenrider's explanation of his perpetual displeasure earns a shrug and a small grunt. "Sure. I'm all right." He continues to just crouch there, making no move to join them.
Kianda wags a finger at Issa. "I told you, it's Kia. Heroes are allowed to use nicknames." Reyce- and the name goes by with no flash of recognition- is given an amused look. "Gooooooood. But you do look a little silly, sitting there like that. There's plenty of room in here, you know."
"Kia, of course," Issa replies quickly, a swift shake of her head for such a silly slip of her memory. As for the mention of heroes, she brushes past it without even a bat of an eyelash, turning her gaze quickly on the Bendenite. "I think he might have just come to pose here in his towel for us," she muses, grin growing mischievous right before their very eyes. She plops her chin down on top of her upraised knees then, watching Reyce's response.
Reyce shrugs at their teasing, his distracted expression unchanged as he stares at the ceiling. "Shove it," he offers, without a hint of malice - resignation, if anything. A hand goes down to brace him, but it has to wait a few seconds before he actually decides to get up, hands going to his towel as his gaze levels for a look across the room. /Not/ at either of them. If they're going to look, they're going to look; Reyce is just going to drop his towel on the edge and get in quickly, which he does.
Kianda looks, but rather inadvertantly. When she realizes what she's doing, she turns her crimson-cheeked face away quickly. One of these days she'll get used to it. Maybe. Clearing her throat, she nods a little. "Much better, Reyce," the young woman murmurs, and glances toward Issa, regaining some of her humor. "Posing? Kind of a waste. I don't know any sculptors in the Weyr."
Issa, of course, looks. But slyly. No blush rises to her cheeks though, and she tosses a womanly glance Kia's way, one of her eyebrows cocking just slightly upward. Very quickly though, it's gone, and her eyes are on the waves that Reyce makes as he gets in. "Not entirely a waste," Issa corrects the other girl cryptically, smiling down at her toes through the water. Reyce is allowed to settle without Issa watching, as she busies herself, cupping water with one hand and spreading it down her upper arm. "There is aesthetic appreciation to consider after all, sculptor or no."
Reyce scowls at Kianda's murmured approval, clearly misinterpreting it. Perhaps to dodge other comments, the first thing he does once he's in the baths is to stick his head under water, where of course he can't hear anything. Submerged, he scratches at his hair to help get rain out, then reemerges with long waves instead of curls. He's quick to grab some soapsand and suds that hairstyle away, however.
Kianda's blush deepens even further. "I think I'll take your word for that, Issa!" Now that he's safely in the water, she can look over for a more detailed look at the man. "Hmmmmm. Yes. I'd never realized before how... pleasing aesthetics can be."
With Reyce still submerged, Issa rolls her eyes over at the other girl, her grin deepening and a subtle laugh offered. Once he's surfaced, however, her expression has quieted quite a bit, and she studies his face with calm eyes. "Pleasing enough, I suppose," she returns, eyes squinting just slightly as she briefly relishes in her nudging banter. But then she changes the subject, asking with a sincere curiousity, "What were you up to that got you so soaked before even jumping in the water?"
Reyce tilts his head up sharply as some escaped suds start slipping towards his eye. He lifts a very careful pinky up and brushes them away, answering while distracted: "Nothing. Just didn't feel like hurrying inside." His policy of ignoring the teases continues, as he dips his head back again to wash out the suds.
Kianda tilts her head a little, then looks at Issa. "Men," she says lightly. "Don't even know enough to come in out of the rain." With a chuckle, she turns over in the water, and pushes off toward the lip of the pool to pull herself out. "You two have fun, eh?" Wrapping a towel around herself, she takes up her clothes, and heads out.
Kianda leaves the warmth of the Weyr's baths behind.
Kianda has left.
Fun? Issa's eyebrow quirks again at Kianda as she picks up and leaves, offering, "Bye, Kia. Thanks for all the... kind words." The greenrider's humbly smiling as the seamstress walks out, her finger trips tracing fleeting lines on the surface of the water. That inescapable mischief creeps into her expression again, though, and she flicks a fine spray Reyce-wards. "So you were just... standing out in the rain for no good reason at all?"
Reyce winces away, squinting his eye shut as that fine spray of water hits him. His face is already wet, of course, but he makes a point of reaching up to rub off the spray. "Walking in it," he corrects. "Been cooped up-" a pause, a glance flicked in her direction (or at least, the direction of her forehead) - "anyway, 'cause of the rain. Caucus is a mess of idiots when it rains. Nobody can go anywhere." With a shrug, he reaches back for more soapsand.
The game's no fun if he doesn't play along. The splashing desists for the moment, Issa's hands sinking to grasp her feet, now completely curled into a ball, perched on her little spot of the submerged stone bench. "I sympathize," she says, chin again falling to rest in the space between her two upraised knees. "Though my weyr does seem to have a few less idiots in it, so I'd say that Oshisyth and I have the much better deal." Lips form a twisted smile as she turns her eyes across the baths, casually spotting all of the other, more or less naked, riders that have shared her fate.
Reyce washes himself very thoroughly, scrubbing till he brings a touch of red to the surface of his skin and then moving on. "Hero?" he asks simply, repeating Kianda's word from before. His attention is not on her, however, but on his left arm as he works his way down it.
Issa attempts to capture some eye contact from him, but resigns herself then to letting her eyes follow the scrubbing down that arm as she speaks. "So some say," she affirms in a way, the shrug that she gives sending little ripples out across the bath. "I'm either a hero or a scourge on the Weyr. Maybe both according to others. But all we did was fly Thread, like we have a hundred times before." The humble delivery of Issa's words comes with a subtle tint, a tiny tilt that reveals the fact that the motives behind her actions weren't nearly as uncomplicated.
Reyce catches that small tilt to her voice, and sends a look over his shoulder as if summoned by that desire for eye contact. He's got his chin up, preventing accidental viewings, but he is looking at her for once. "I don't think that's all," he says quietly, and then the contact is lost. His own opinion, whether she's a hero or a scourge, would be hard to catch from those neutral words, and there's no sign of it on his face, either, as he concentrates on his right arm.
Issa's eyes jump up rather sheepishly from her survey of his scrubbing, as she lifts her head, meeting his gaze unwaveringly while he holds it. There's no search for his opinion, either. It's likely he doesn't care, is her assumption. "Maybe not. For some of the riders," she answers, only after he's looked away again. Her hands drift up her legs, bringing a rush of water with them as they rise to cover her kneecaps, fingers tapping out a rhythm in damp thuds. "Some riders had other motives. Some wanted the hero title, of course, quite badly. Some wanted to get in E'sere's good graces. Some just wanted to throw things off, defy the Weyrleaders." Some. But not her, that distinction is clearly made.
Reyce is silent for a while, distracted by his washing. Arms, armpits, chest, et cetera. All with that rigorous insistence on cleaning every single spot before he'll move on to the next. "So very diverse," he remarks suddenly, and in very dry tones, as his hands plunge below the water. He may well be trying to distract her from what he's washing at the moment. "And your own motives?"
The distraction seems to be successful, on some level, though it's likely Issa would have been unphased no matter what he was washing over there. For the moment, she takes the time to stare at her plumped fingers. Her face is unbothered by both Reyce's question and the pruny wrinkles slowly accumulating there at her fingertips. "Honorable. Though not as wholly so as some might think." She looks over to him again, watching his face this time as she adds, her voice significantly lowered, "Couldn't let Igen get by without a challenge of some sort, now, could we? It was just sort of... fortunate that it came in a form that could save some lives along the way."
Reyce's eyebrows go up at the word honorable, and he pauses his washing to flick her another glance. It's predictably short-lived; he finds a spot on the wall to stare at, and resumes washing. "That's a far cry from fuck it, fuck it all," he answers, lowering his own voice to match hers.
The predictability elicits a small sigh from the greenrider, her gaze turning away from him again as she unravels, first one foot falling off the bench to search out the bottom, then the other following. "Yeah, well," she begins, shifting into a plank-like position, her head supported by the stone wall as the rest of her stretches out below, hands curled around her belly. "I was drunk at the time. And I told you I wasn't very good at pretending." She remembers, it seems, that conversation. No longer do her eyes seek his. Instead they drift back up to the ceiling, though they seem to chase steam tendrils now, jumping and shifting with her thoughts.
Reyce finishes his washing, at last, and washes the last bit of soapsand scrub off his hands. There's now a little circle of suds surrounding him, but he dispels them and sends them wafting away with a few flicks of his hand. "Yeah," he says simply, letting his head fall slowly back against the side of the pool. As his hair dries, the little waves start pulling back into curls. "Kinda figured you'd gone up, when I heard about it. Go okay?"
"You did, hm?" The curve of a grin returns to Issa's lips as she tucks her chin to get a look at his face. "It went alright, considering our numbers. Oshisyth got scored though. Our first." The defeat of a lucky streak now dead and buried sounds hollowly in her voice. There's a stirring under the water, ankle crossing over ankle forcing the water to move toward Reyce. "The challenge of it all," she says, returning her gaze to the space above them as she pulls in that snippet of earlier conversation, "didn't come off quite as well as I'd hoped, though."
Reyce frowns suddenly, rolling his head to the side so he doesn't have to peer over his nose to see Issa. It's the 'Oshisyth got scored' that prompts this look; he's scanning her face for any further clues - should he be worried? - when that water moves back towards him, carrying with it the suds of his bath. Reyce just moves out of the way, creating a counter-ripple that effectively stops the suds in the middle of the pool, there to linger until they fizzle away. "Didn't it," he prompts as he settles back again.
Issa carries on as if there's no need for worry. Indeed, she wouldn't be lounging here under a sea of suds if it was anything serious. "They're so fucking... stoic," is her hissed explanation. "Just stood there. We needed a reaction. Anger, dismay, something. But they're too good." She makes a motion as if to shake her head, but the imeding stone makes it seem more like a stiff waggle. "Though whatever Diya wrote..." She pauses as some large naked man passes by their little pool, entering within earshot. She's avoiding eye contact with him, but following him slowly with her periphery until he's past. When she returns to the conversation, though, she doesn't seem to intent on finishing it. "I'm sorry. I keep going on about Weyr issues, as if it actually mattered to you. We can talk about something else." The apology is sincere, as if she's left her manners with her clothes on that bench over there.
Reyce lets out a small snort, reaching a hand up to scratch at his stubble. "Doesn't matter, really. Told you all about my luck with sevens, you can tell me all about the weyr." He stretches out on the bench, sinking a bit lower in the water as he does. "'m sure they're pissed off, whatever they acted like at the time. If it's what you want." He shrugs.
Issa eyes him again, but continues nonetheless. "That's something, yes, but something visible would have been... so much better." A sigh escapes her for the way things turned out instead, curls of steam rushing away from her. "You can't convince people with something kept hidden. There's dissent, but not nearly enough people to..." To... what exactly? It seems even Issa doesn't know. Or if she has something in mind, her mouth refuses to pronounce such incendiary thoughts. "If only Diya were still here." Following the wistful rambling is another sigh, her chest heaving under the water.
Reyce flings his arms back over the edge of the pool, stretching out and making a small barrier to a would-be bather who turns in the direction of their shared pool. How he knew about it is anybody's guess, since he wasn't looking in that direction, but the elderly woman in question stops and decides to go to another pool that's easier to step into. "Something-" Reyce starts, but he stops himself, cutting his words into a small grunt. "Yeah, well." He doesn't have anything so he shuts up.
Issa continues with a quick flash of a glance for the slighted bather, shifting to sit up straighter, unsprawling. "She'd know what to do," she mutters, utterly confident in that fact. The rest she delivers from a more traditional sitting position, her eyes focused on the stone wall to Reyce's right as she conjures up the images of days past. "Like that note. It must have been brilliant. It got to Yevide, somehow, I saw it. Ruffled something." A brief pause. "I don't know what to do without her." Diya, presumably. The Issa's pale blue eyes switch to Reyce, as if suddenly made all too aware of his silence. "You sure you don't mind... all this?"
Reyce sits quiet for a while, then scratches a hand through his curls - they're back in full form now, and need to be reordered. "No, I don't mind. I mean -" he plucks a tangle out with fore- and middle finger - "it's not my thing. Told you that already. But you can talk about it however much you want." A pause, words caught in his throat. He lets them out as a sigh pushed through his teeth, and says carefully, "Not my business and I don't want it to be, but." He frowns, clamps his mouth shut, and looks at her. This time, he meets her eyes, none of the edgy avoidance that has marked his looks so far this evening; what he doesn't do is finish that sentence.
The avoiding words bother her more than the whole conversation's worth of avoiding glances, a brooding frown of her own forming between those brows as she meets his stare head on. "But... what?" Issa urges, and edge creeping into her voice unchecked, a string of suspicion snapping under the surface of her calm face. She's certainly done revealing things to him for tonight. She's talked all she wants.
Reyce draws himself up, his relaxed posture gone, at that snap of suspicion in her tone. "Look," he says, twisting to reach behind him. He soon finds his towel - damp from all the moisture in the air, but that won't stop it from covering him. "I don't know Diya. Never met her. But something tells me if she knew what to do about this thing's got you so pissed off, she'd be here doing it." And on those words, he stands and steps out, the water slooshing off his body while he ties the towel around his waist.
That niggling suspicion is forgotten, that's for sure. But Issa's frown deepens nonetheless, her lips parting ever so slightly as she stares into the space he used to occupy blankly. "Maybe so, Benden." The title is cool and distancing, but not disrespectful. Then her eyes turn on him, with a withering thinness. "Maybe I should just fuck it all, then. If she doesn't know, then no one does, and I should just give up now. Let the Igenites have the Weyr and salvage what's left of my hero's dignity." As she glances away, her words have a hint of that sneering civility so unique to the dealings of the upper crust. "Thank you for making it all so clear."
Reyce shrugs as he bends over, raising an edge of his towel to dry out his ears. "Guess so," he answers, face pointed at the floor such that his words have to rebound off it. He straightens, tucking that edge of the towel back, and looks at her. This time his eyes don't seem to edge around her nudity; quite the opposite, there's something downright /leering/ in the way he looks at her this time, even if his attention does seem to stay fixed on her face. And then he tilts a tiny bow. "It's Bastard of Benden. Full titles, please." Still dipped in the bow, he pauses for effect; then draws up and goes to regain his clothes, get dressed, and leave.
Issa fumes, eyes taking in his last look, a challenge of her own in the hardness that lies there. Her mouth closes tightly again, the wispy steam that swirls around her head now seeming as if it's indeed coming from her. But she sits, silent, helpless to do much else as he's... right there. Instead she directs her full fury at the dwindling soapsuds he's left behind, taking comfort in the way they die with their tiny, validating pops. It isn't until he's left the cavern completely that she storms out of the water toward her own pile of clothes.