Hurting Him
Location: Aida's Room
Time: Early Morning on Day 5, Month 3, Turn 3, the morning after Cassiel speaks.
Players: Roa and Lorna
Scene: Roa delivers a letter. Many old wounds are found and poked.
The morning of Day 5, Month 3, Turn 3, the day after the strange meeting with Cassiel, J'lor, the Masterharper and some healers, and there is a gentle knock on the door of the room shared by Lorna and Aida. Standing out in the hallway is a person with a basket of breakfast, blue eyes, a quiet smile. The only major difference is that this morning it is Roa, rather than Ashwin, who waits for the door to open.
By this time in the morning Aida is already at the Headmaster's office, and Lorna is alone in the room they share. She is dressed, though inappropriately for the cold outside, suggesting that today is one of those she intends to spend indoors. She opens the door and peers out, her head already tilted up to see Ashwin, though it's quick to readjust when she sees the goldrider. "Roa," she greets, after a second's pause. Another second, and she flashes a smile, standing aside so that she can make her way into the room.
The smile is returned as the weyrwoman slips inside. "Good morning, Lorna. Sleep all right?" She moves over to set the basket down on the room's small table. The violet shadows under her own eyes suggest a negative answer, were the question to be redirected onto her.
"Well enough," Lorna replies. She does not offer a polite return of the question, though, either ignoring social niceties for the moment or noticing the goldrider's appearance. Used to Ashwin's company in the mornings, she moves after Roa to begin unpacking the basket. "You do not often get mornings to spare," she comments, though perhaps there is a question in that statement as well, about the shift in the normal routine.
"No, I suppose I don't," Roa agrees quietly. "I took this one off, though. It was a long night, last night." She glances up and over towards Lorna before reaching down to snatch one of the plain breadrolls she's setting out. "Do you know what happened? Did Ashwin say?"
Lorna pauses, pale eyes shifting toward the diminutive goldrider. Something that affects her makeshift family affects her, and she has learned to recognize the signs of something coming. "No, I did not speak to him yesterday." One of her days spent alone, apparently. "Is he all right?"
"Oh, yes," Roa is quick to confirm, turning the roll around and around in her hands. "He's fine. Everyone's fine. I went..." she presses her lips thin and clears her throat quietly, "Myself and the weyrleader took two healers and met the Masterharper and a Master Ysidro at a small cothold. We came to collect a statement. From Cassiel. About Telgar. It went well." Turn, turn, turn goes the breadroll. "I've a letter for you."
Silence follows all of this, and Lorna does not return to unpacking breakfast. Instead she continues to fix Roa with her vague stare, perhaps even a little more vacant now, not hostile but merely blank. Then, "Cassiel was here? On the mainland?"
"For about an hour," Roa says with a small nod. "Yes. Her and J'lor." Her gaze slides back down to the roll, but only so she can return it to the table.
Just like that, the news that J'lor had been here, separated from her only by leagues of land rather than the supposedly forbidden stretch of ocean. Lorna is unsurprisingly quiet, though there is no sign behind her pale gaze that she is attempting to assimilate the information. Instead, she says, "Of course. He would not let her come here again alone."
"That seemed to be the general gist of it, yes," Roa says with a small nod. "I'm sorry you couldn't have come. Do you understand why?" Why she couldn't come.
"What reason does a girl from Ista have to be at a meeting of exiles?" Lorna's words forgive the fact that she didn't know about the meeting, that she wasn't asked to come along, though her tone is still merely quiet. "The letter you mentioned. It is from J'lor. I'd like to have it, please." A letter from Cassiel is one thing -- a letter from the bluerider is quite another.
With another little nod, both agreement to her words and acknowledgment that Lorna would like her letter, a folded hide is pulled out of Roa's sweater pocket and held out to Lorna. "Should I go?"
Lorna reaches out for the letter, glances up to see Roa. She gives a little shake of her head. "I won't be able to read it all on my own," she says. "I will need your help with the words, if he writes the way he speaks." That said, she does not open the letter, merely holds it in her hands, uncertain.
There is a flicker of something in the corner of her lips that almost wants to be a smile. But Roa flattens it back down into something neutral as she nods. "All right." She pulls out a chair and sits, hands in her lap, waiting.
Lorna is still watching, doesn't miss that twitch of Roa's face, and waits for a moment before she shifts her eyes to the letter. No ceremony when she opens it, lowering her eyes to the words with all the excitement of someone checking a record for last year's tuber crop. Silence follows, a rather painfully extended silence. She does not ask Roa for help after all, apparently moving past the words she doesn't understand. After some time, her eyes shift back up the page, for a second attempt, this time picking their way through certain parts of the message.
Roa only waits. And waits. And waits some more. her hands occasionally move to smooth her skirts or her sweater sleeves. Her gaze drifts from the table to the walls to Lorna to the ceiling, and then repeat their circuit.
Finally, Lorna sits. She spends a moment longer looking at the page, and then sets it down gently, reverently, on the table. "You can read it, if you like," she offers to the goldrider. Then she draws her knees up, as is her habit, heels on the edge of the chair so she can wrap her arms around her legs. Instead of resting her chin on her knees, she ducks her head to hide her mouth against them.
The weyrwoman only shakes her head and keeps her hands in her lap, away from that letter on the table. "No, thank you," she murmurs quietly. And then, in seeing from Lorna a posture that Roa is so very and personally familiar with she asks, "Are you all right?"
Eyes flick from the letter to Roa, and back again at the weyrwoman's refusal of her offer. There is a hesitation at that, as if Lorna might press the issue, but Roa's question halts her. She gives a little shake of her head. How could she be all right? It's a common enough pose, though the whiteness of her knuckles as her hands clasp around her legs is telling.
It is the corner of Roa's lips that whiten as she again presses her lips into that thin line. She reaches over and carefully draws the letter towards herself. With a slow and careful breath, she begins to read. After a couple of minutes, the words are pushed away again and she regards the other young woman. "Why aren't you all right?" she asks gently.
The eyes that flick back toward Roa register surprise for a moment, unshielded around the weyrwoman. She takes a moment, then lifts her head enough to speak. "I miss him," she says, in a voice that makes it clear she doesn't understand why Roa doesn't understand. "And he thinks I might not wish to speak to him again." She opens her mouth as if she might say more, but evidently she decides against it, because she simply watches Roa, instead. "Would you be all right?"
"I don't know. I'm not all right for different reasons. I think, from what I read, he would like to speak with you again. I..." Roa closes her eyes slowly. "Katric impressed. That...I didn't think it would be possible. Sorry. I don't...I'm trying."
"I did not know him well, before I left," is Lorna's only answer. She hesitates a moment, though hesitation is only expressed in a brief silence. "There are not so many people there, not a wealth of candidates to choose from." She reaches out for the letter, inches it toward herself again. "Don't apologize. Someone told me once that there is no wrong way to do things like this. You do what you must, say what you must." She may not understand, but she'll try to assist. Lorna lifts a shoulder in a bit of a shrug. She is not yet rereading the letter, though her fingers still bring it nearer.
"He was...exiled for good reason," is all Roa has to say about Katric. K'tric. "Funny. I feel like I'm doing it wrong. This isn't about me. It's about you. I'm going to be quiet this time around. It's your turn to speak, if you'd like to."
For a moment, there is a bit of humor in Lorna's gaze as she lifts it to the goldrider again. "Not everyone is good at handling grief in other people," she comments, as if she wasn't talking about her own feelings for her home and for J'lor. "It isn't a crime not to know what to do." She pulls the letter the rest of the way to her, resting it against her knees as she draws back enough to look at it again. She touches the writing, tracing it slowly with her fingertips. After a length of silence, taking Roa's offer of quiet to heart, she says, "You are wrong, though. When you say it isn't about you. He is your father." And unspoken, the idea that she ought to care.
The weyrwoman sighs softly and shakes her head a little. "No," she disagrees quietly. "Not really. Not for a long time." A small smile touches her lips. "I'd venture to guess he's probably more yours than mine by this point."
"Don't say that." Lorna doesn't raise her voice, but she is intent, and her gaze a little less searchingly vague. "He is your father. And you ought to remember it." Quick to defend the bluerider, she is also quick to add, quietly, "I had a father, Roa, and I knew who he was." The letter is folded again, tucked between her body and her knees. "J'lor is my friend."
"If you wish to," Lorna says, glancing toward the door, "go ahead." Out of sight, clasped to her, the letter has been put away so that she can think of it later and have her reactions when the goldrider is not there to see. Instead she keeps her pale eyes on Roa, and her voice is soft. There's no hostility there, only an intensity in her gaze that belies the calm. "For someone who is so intent on managing everything, solving everything, getting through everything on her own, you run away faster than anyone I have ever seen." Just a little heat there, because she is young, and she is hurt, and Roa is nearby.
"I know what I want," Roa replies, not yet pushing up into a stand, "and I also know what is. I'm not always so good at managing things as I'd like to be. I don't know what to say to you about him. I don't think there's anything to say. Our paths diverged a long time ago, and I've no interest in reuniting them. I'm sorry. He's your friend. You think less of me for saying so. But...it's still the case."
"You are as blind as he is," Lorna says, swiftly. "Roa, he is your father, and he loves you, and all you have to say is that it's a chapter past and there's nothing you can do about it? How many times recently have you seen him, or talked to others who have? You picked us up from the island, you saw him at the meeting." Unspoken, the knowledge that there are times nobody has told Lorna about. "Your paths are coming back together whether you like it or not, and what would it cost you for one small kindness to him? Your pride? Anger? What is all of that compared to a man who has kept hold of you for over ten turns to the point where the mere mention of your name hurts?" She can be fierce, the entire speech uttered quickly, softly, using her stare like a weapon.
Hands curl into fists as Roa's chin lifts and her shoulders square. "If our paths come together as much as you claim, then I'll find some way to coexist peaceably with him. But if he and the other comes to the mainland, there will be a great deal more to worry about than him and me." One hand unclenches so that thumb and forefinger can pinch the bridge of her nose. "How did this turn into another one of these arguments?"
"Because--" Lorna stops, dropping her forehead onto her knees for a moment. She lifts it again after a few seconds. "Because I am nowhere near as much to him as you are, because you're his daughter. And yet you want nothing of it. If you knew how much I would--" But she stops again, one of those rare occasions when Lorna's frustration outstrips her calm, leaving her torn. "I only know J'lor, and I know that there is no hurt he could have done to justify such distance." She takes a breath, gives a shake of her head. "It became one of these arguments because I can see his guilt in this letter, and if you knew him at all you would know that he carries everything as his fault, and each time you turn from him he truly believes he deserves it. I asked him, once, why he left you behind. Do you want to know what he said?" Almost a pleasant offer, her voice is soft again.
"No." The reply is not pleasant. It is flat and cold. "I don't." Now Roa is standing. "I'll leave breakfast here. Just drop the plates off in the kitchen when you're done." She shoves her hands into her pockets as she begins to moves towards the door. "We'll talk later. About something else. I'll tell Ashwin you'd like to speak with him when I see him next."
"I didn't think you would," Lorna replies. "It might interfere with your constructed version of the past, and that might interfere with your anger, and then you might actually have to face up to the thing you are doing to him." She stands as well, taking the letter in one hand and turning away, moving toward her corner. "Close the door when you leave, it is cold in the corridor."
Roa only shakes her head and jerks the door open. "Cold in here, too," she says curtly over her shoulder before stepping out into the hallway and pulling the door shut again. It meets the wall with a sound just a bit too loud to be considered polite.
The goldrider leaves, and Lorna sinks down onto her little bed in her corner, the folded letter clutched tightly in one hand. Now that Roa is gone, the girl is left breathing hard for a few seconds, staring at the door. After a few moments she draws back into her pillows, tucking the letter under her cheek as she curls onto her side, and starts to cry.
Time: Early Morning on Day 5, Month 3, Turn 3, the morning after Cassiel speaks.
Players: Roa and Lorna
Scene: Roa delivers a letter. Many old wounds are found and poked.
The morning of Day 5, Month 3, Turn 3, the day after the strange meeting with Cassiel, J'lor, the Masterharper and some healers, and there is a gentle knock on the door of the room shared by Lorna and Aida. Standing out in the hallway is a person with a basket of breakfast, blue eyes, a quiet smile. The only major difference is that this morning it is Roa, rather than Ashwin, who waits for the door to open.
By this time in the morning Aida is already at the Headmaster's office, and Lorna is alone in the room they share. She is dressed, though inappropriately for the cold outside, suggesting that today is one of those she intends to spend indoors. She opens the door and peers out, her head already tilted up to see Ashwin, though it's quick to readjust when she sees the goldrider. "Roa," she greets, after a second's pause. Another second, and she flashes a smile, standing aside so that she can make her way into the room.
The smile is returned as the weyrwoman slips inside. "Good morning, Lorna. Sleep all right?" She moves over to set the basket down on the room's small table. The violet shadows under her own eyes suggest a negative answer, were the question to be redirected onto her.
"Well enough," Lorna replies. She does not offer a polite return of the question, though, either ignoring social niceties for the moment or noticing the goldrider's appearance. Used to Ashwin's company in the mornings, she moves after Roa to begin unpacking the basket. "You do not often get mornings to spare," she comments, though perhaps there is a question in that statement as well, about the shift in the normal routine.
"No, I suppose I don't," Roa agrees quietly. "I took this one off, though. It was a long night, last night." She glances up and over towards Lorna before reaching down to snatch one of the plain breadrolls she's setting out. "Do you know what happened? Did Ashwin say?"
Lorna pauses, pale eyes shifting toward the diminutive goldrider. Something that affects her makeshift family affects her, and she has learned to recognize the signs of something coming. "No, I did not speak to him yesterday." One of her days spent alone, apparently. "Is he all right?"
"Oh, yes," Roa is quick to confirm, turning the roll around and around in her hands. "He's fine. Everyone's fine. I went..." she presses her lips thin and clears her throat quietly, "Myself and the weyrleader took two healers and met the Masterharper and a Master Ysidro at a small cothold. We came to collect a statement. From Cassiel. About Telgar. It went well." Turn, turn, turn goes the breadroll. "I've a letter for you."
Silence follows all of this, and Lorna does not return to unpacking breakfast. Instead she continues to fix Roa with her vague stare, perhaps even a little more vacant now, not hostile but merely blank. Then, "Cassiel was here? On the mainland?"
"For about an hour," Roa says with a small nod. "Yes. Her and J'lor." Her gaze slides back down to the roll, but only so she can return it to the table.
Just like that, the news that J'lor had been here, separated from her only by leagues of land rather than the supposedly forbidden stretch of ocean. Lorna is unsurprisingly quiet, though there is no sign behind her pale gaze that she is attempting to assimilate the information. Instead, she says, "Of course. He would not let her come here again alone."
"That seemed to be the general gist of it, yes," Roa says with a small nod. "I'm sorry you couldn't have come. Do you understand why?" Why she couldn't come.
"What reason does a girl from Ista have to be at a meeting of exiles?" Lorna's words forgive the fact that she didn't know about the meeting, that she wasn't asked to come along, though her tone is still merely quiet. "The letter you mentioned. It is from J'lor. I'd like to have it, please." A letter from Cassiel is one thing -- a letter from the bluerider is quite another.
With another little nod, both agreement to her words and acknowledgment that Lorna would like her letter, a folded hide is pulled out of Roa's sweater pocket and held out to Lorna. "Should I go?"
Lorna reaches out for the letter, glances up to see Roa. She gives a little shake of her head. "I won't be able to read it all on my own," she says. "I will need your help with the words, if he writes the way he speaks." That said, she does not open the letter, merely holds it in her hands, uncertain.
There is a flicker of something in the corner of her lips that almost wants to be a smile. But Roa flattens it back down into something neutral as she nods. "All right." She pulls out a chair and sits, hands in her lap, waiting.
Lorna is still watching, doesn't miss that twitch of Roa's face, and waits for a moment before she shifts her eyes to the letter. No ceremony when she opens it, lowering her eyes to the words with all the excitement of someone checking a record for last year's tuber crop. Silence follows, a rather painfully extended silence. She does not ask Roa for help after all, apparently moving past the words she doesn't understand. After some time, her eyes shift back up the page, for a second attempt, this time picking their way through certain parts of the message.
Roa only waits. And waits. And waits some more. her hands occasionally move to smooth her skirts or her sweater sleeves. Her gaze drifts from the table to the walls to Lorna to the ceiling, and then repeat their circuit.
Finally, Lorna sits. She spends a moment longer looking at the page, and then sets it down gently, reverently, on the table. "You can read it, if you like," she offers to the goldrider. Then she draws her knees up, as is her habit, heels on the edge of the chair so she can wrap her arms around her legs. Instead of resting her chin on her knees, she ducks her head to hide her mouth against them.
The weyrwoman only shakes her head and keeps her hands in her lap, away from that letter on the table. "No, thank you," she murmurs quietly. And then, in seeing from Lorna a posture that Roa is so very and personally familiar with she asks, "Are you all right?"
Eyes flick from the letter to Roa, and back again at the weyrwoman's refusal of her offer. There is a hesitation at that, as if Lorna might press the issue, but Roa's question halts her. She gives a little shake of her head. How could she be all right? It's a common enough pose, though the whiteness of her knuckles as her hands clasp around her legs is telling.
It is the corner of Roa's lips that whiten as she again presses her lips into that thin line. She reaches over and carefully draws the letter towards herself. With a slow and careful breath, she begins to read. After a couple of minutes, the words are pushed away again and she regards the other young woman. "Why aren't you all right?" she asks gently.
The eyes that flick back toward Roa register surprise for a moment, unshielded around the weyrwoman. She takes a moment, then lifts her head enough to speak. "I miss him," she says, in a voice that makes it clear she doesn't understand why Roa doesn't understand. "And he thinks I might not wish to speak to him again." She opens her mouth as if she might say more, but evidently she decides against it, because she simply watches Roa, instead. "Would you be all right?"
"I don't know. I'm not all right for different reasons. I think, from what I read, he would like to speak with you again. I..." Roa closes her eyes slowly. "Katric impressed. That...I didn't think it would be possible. Sorry. I don't...I'm trying."
"I did not know him well, before I left," is Lorna's only answer. She hesitates a moment, though hesitation is only expressed in a brief silence. "There are not so many people there, not a wealth of candidates to choose from." She reaches out for the letter, inches it toward herself again. "Don't apologize. Someone told me once that there is no wrong way to do things like this. You do what you must, say what you must." She may not understand, but she'll try to assist. Lorna lifts a shoulder in a bit of a shrug. She is not yet rereading the letter, though her fingers still bring it nearer.
"He was...exiled for good reason," is all Roa has to say about Katric. K'tric. "Funny. I feel like I'm doing it wrong. This isn't about me. It's about you. I'm going to be quiet this time around. It's your turn to speak, if you'd like to."
For a moment, there is a bit of humor in Lorna's gaze as she lifts it to the goldrider again. "Not everyone is good at handling grief in other people," she comments, as if she wasn't talking about her own feelings for her home and for J'lor. "It isn't a crime not to know what to do." She pulls the letter the rest of the way to her, resting it against her knees as she draws back enough to look at it again. She touches the writing, tracing it slowly with her fingertips. After a length of silence, taking Roa's offer of quiet to heart, she says, "You are wrong, though. When you say it isn't about you. He is your father." And unspoken, the idea that she ought to care.
The weyrwoman sighs softly and shakes her head a little. "No," she disagrees quietly. "Not really. Not for a long time." A small smile touches her lips. "I'd venture to guess he's probably more yours than mine by this point."
"Don't say that." Lorna doesn't raise her voice, but she is intent, and her gaze a little less searchingly vague. "He is your father. And you ought to remember it." Quick to defend the bluerider, she is also quick to add, quietly, "I had a father, Roa, and I knew who he was." The letter is folded again, tucked between her body and her knees. "J'lor is my friend."
"If you wish to," Lorna says, glancing toward the door, "go ahead." Out of sight, clasped to her, the letter has been put away so that she can think of it later and have her reactions when the goldrider is not there to see. Instead she keeps her pale eyes on Roa, and her voice is soft. There's no hostility there, only an intensity in her gaze that belies the calm. "For someone who is so intent on managing everything, solving everything, getting through everything on her own, you run away faster than anyone I have ever seen." Just a little heat there, because she is young, and she is hurt, and Roa is nearby.
"I know what I want," Roa replies, not yet pushing up into a stand, "and I also know what is. I'm not always so good at managing things as I'd like to be. I don't know what to say to you about him. I don't think there's anything to say. Our paths diverged a long time ago, and I've no interest in reuniting them. I'm sorry. He's your friend. You think less of me for saying so. But...it's still the case."
"You are as blind as he is," Lorna says, swiftly. "Roa, he is your father, and he loves you, and all you have to say is that it's a chapter past and there's nothing you can do about it? How many times recently have you seen him, or talked to others who have? You picked us up from the island, you saw him at the meeting." Unspoken, the knowledge that there are times nobody has told Lorna about. "Your paths are coming back together whether you like it or not, and what would it cost you for one small kindness to him? Your pride? Anger? What is all of that compared to a man who has kept hold of you for over ten turns to the point where the mere mention of your name hurts?" She can be fierce, the entire speech uttered quickly, softly, using her stare like a weapon.
Hands curl into fists as Roa's chin lifts and her shoulders square. "If our paths come together as much as you claim, then I'll find some way to coexist peaceably with him. But if he and the other comes to the mainland, there will be a great deal more to worry about than him and me." One hand unclenches so that thumb and forefinger can pinch the bridge of her nose. "How did this turn into another one of these arguments?"
"Because--" Lorna stops, dropping her forehead onto her knees for a moment. She lifts it again after a few seconds. "Because I am nowhere near as much to him as you are, because you're his daughter. And yet you want nothing of it. If you knew how much I would--" But she stops again, one of those rare occasions when Lorna's frustration outstrips her calm, leaving her torn. "I only know J'lor, and I know that there is no hurt he could have done to justify such distance." She takes a breath, gives a shake of her head. "It became one of these arguments because I can see his guilt in this letter, and if you knew him at all you would know that he carries everything as his fault, and each time you turn from him he truly believes he deserves it. I asked him, once, why he left you behind. Do you want to know what he said?" Almost a pleasant offer, her voice is soft again.
"No." The reply is not pleasant. It is flat and cold. "I don't." Now Roa is standing. "I'll leave breakfast here. Just drop the plates off in the kitchen when you're done." She shoves her hands into her pockets as she begins to moves towards the door. "We'll talk later. About something else. I'll tell Ashwin you'd like to speak with him when I see him next."
"I didn't think you would," Lorna replies. "It might interfere with your constructed version of the past, and that might interfere with your anger, and then you might actually have to face up to the thing you are doing to him." She stands as well, taking the letter in one hand and turning away, moving toward her corner. "Close the door when you leave, it is cold in the corridor."
Roa only shakes her head and jerks the door open. "Cold in here, too," she says curtly over her shoulder before stepping out into the hallway and pulling the door shut again. It meets the wall with a sound just a bit too loud to be considered polite.
The goldrider leaves, and Lorna sinks down onto her little bed in her corner, the folded letter clutched tightly in one hand. Now that Roa is gone, the girl is left breathing hard for a few seconds, staring at the door. After a few moments she draws back into her pillows, tucking the letter under her cheek as she curls onto her side, and starts to cry.