Symbols
Location: Weyrleader's Weyr
Time: Evening on Day 26, Month 11, Turn 2
Players: J'cor, Roa, Karth
Scene: Roa makes amends and also makes J'cor sad.
Weyrleader's Weyr
Rank allows slightly more comfortable furnishings than can be found elsewhere in the Weyr. Done in warm tones, the walls have been white-washed and hung with sunny tapestries to match the shades of the area rugs and the bed coverings. Those rugs divide the room into sections. There is the seating area, suitable for conversation and informal meetings, with its couches and low central table. There is the working area, occupied by a desk and shelves for hidework. Last but not least, there is the living area where the Weyrleader sleeps and stores his clothing and riding gear.
The weyr has two exits. The first is a simple doorway that leads to the stairs and back down to the shared office. The second is a curtained archway that leads to the couch and ledge sized for a bronze dragon. The ledge is some distance above the bowl and accessible only from the air.
Though the usual smell of pipe smoke lingers in the weyr, it has thinned out and grown stale. The pipe itself lies abandoned on the Weyrleader's desk, J'cor having been distracted by the demands of his bronze. Karth has crawled off his couch to take up space on the floor, one foreleg held out (and carefully still) so that J'cor, perched carefully atop it, can reach an itch high up on his shoulder.
One of the troubles with being congested is that one cannot smell. In this instance, that may be a good thing. Either way, Roa taps lightly on the Weyrleader's door before nudging it open and stepping inside. Her nose is rather red, her features a bit pale, but other than that, the weyrwoman looks about the same. Her eyes go first to the desk, empty, and then she peeps around the room until her attention settles at last on Karth and his itchy needs.
Karth only seems like he's wholly wrapped up in the scratching: small as they are, he hears the the light tap of Roa's knock and the faint sound of a hinge swinging open. After a moment, he shifts his chin and turns a steady blue eye on the little weyrwoman. There's no sound exchanged, but then, there hardly needs to be; J'cor notices her a moment later, turning to blink at the door even as his hand draws back from Karth's shoulder. "Ah, Roa. Good evening."
Karth's scrutiny is met with a steady regard from Roa, one hand dipping into the pocket of her pants and drawing out a tissue. She nods to J'cor as he steps down from the bronze. "Good evening, sir," her voice is a little thick and clogged. "Do you have a minute to speak?" (hab a binude to speeg.)
J'cor tilts his head, registering the clogged voice and, belatedly, the smaller cues of her pallity and reddened nose. He eyes her for a moment before gesturing towards the seating area to her right. "Certainly. Have a seat." He does not bother to wait and see that his order (for such it is, though phrased as a polite offering) is obeyed: climbing down off Karth's forearm requires concentration, after all, lest he slip. He devotes himself to doing this.
She does as bidden, making her way to the sitting space and settling onto one of the couches. Roa leans back and seems about to tuck her legs up underneath her before she remembers the boots and they return to dangling once more. "I spoke with Miniyal, yesterday," she offers once J'cor is close enough that there is no need to raise her voice.
J'cor swings around his armchair, a hand placed on the back to claim it, as if he needed to. "Did you?" He lifts a smile to her at this statement, but it's empty of anything more pleasant interest. Come around to the front of his chair, he settles back and stretches his arms out along the rests.
A small nod. "I did. I didn't know you and she played chess but I suppose, all things considered, not knowing that still doesn't make us quite even." Roa's lips quirk upwards faintly, but the expression fades nearly as soon as it arrives. "She told me what she told you, and I wanted to apologize for not telling you first. Did you get a chance to look over the actual data?" Here Roa pauses to lift the tissue and blow her nose.
J'cor's arms, comfortably stretched out, must soon yield their position. He leans his elbows forward onto his knees, bringing himself closer while he listens and deciphers Roa's stuffed speech. There seems to be a bit of a translation day, the smile aimed for her second sentence not appearing till midway through her third. Yet he seems to get the idea. "Not in depth, but I did look at it. I am not sure what you plan to do with it, however." His eyebrow goes up.
"Well," (Bell) "there's not a great deal -to- do with it yet. It's a reasonable hypothesis that in influx of queens means they all rise more slowly, but," (bud) Roa sniffs, settling her hands in her lap, "it's not something to bring to a weyr council until we had some actual proof. I was going to ask Ginella for some assistance in that avenue, though it won't be enough. It will at least be a start." Her words slow a little, perhaps to allow J'cor a bit more time to understand them.
J'cor's other eyebrow joins the first at the mention of the council. "Even so, I wonder what it is you'd like to do with this start you propose. The council might send away the Caucus queens, whether by official decree or by the simple act of withdrawing their own golds." Still leaned forward on his knees, he manages a small shrug. "It would be effective, after a fashion."
"Except that we'd lose Caucus," Roa notes. "I'd rather not. Look, if this information is right, the other Weyrs shouldn't be losing clutches." She leans forward as well, elbows on her knees, peering up at J'cor. "The other golds still living in the weyr will adjust their rhythms to compensate for the one in Caucus. That's the whole problem. Each queen here thinks they're producing clutches for High Reaches alongside seven others. If they were right..." and here Roa arches a brow of her own, "we wouldn't have a problem."
J'cor says, "Ah." His hands fold over each other, creating a platform on which to base his chin. "Well, that would be a difficult sell. One that would have to wait, of course, until after the next senior here is chosen.
"Which is why, I suppose, I didn't bring it up earlier. There isn't much to be done except wait, just now." Roa studies her hands and avoids saying, perhaps, what all else could be said about the next leadership flight.
J'cor nods into platform of his hands. "Very well." A simple silence drops between them - if he has any thoughts about the next leadership flight, he's not jumping at the chance to discuss it, either - and he pulls a smile into it. It's a question: anything else?
The little weyrwoman seems about to shake her head but then she notes, "I think a trip to a warmer climate for a bit might be nice, considering." One hand lifts and briefly brandishes the tissue. "But I hope Shaya will forgive me, if I perhaps only watch the dance lesson tomorrow."
J'cor raises an eyebrow over this suggestion, but he concedes the point with a, "Perhaps," quietly murmured into the gap between her sentences. The brow drops back down and he shifts his smile into something more general after it. "Shaya will not mind, but you will have to endure numerous folk remedies, I'm sure, that she will want you to try."
"So long as the cure for colds is not quite so drastic as the cure for shortness," Roa struggles to fight down her smile, "I should be able to brave it. Foul concoctions are endurable, when one cannot taste." Snrrk.
J'cor drops his hands down to his knees, bracing them there as he lifts his chin to a regular level. He has, perhaps, adjusted to her current speech habits. "No, I doubt she will attempt anything so dire as swinging by the ankles. Though she might force oasis water on you: it is a panacea, that."
"Is oasis water different from other sorts?" Roa queries, "despite, of course, it's curative properties?"
J'cor lifts the fingers on his knees, giving them an uncertain little wiggle. "Realistically? No." The fingers drop back with a small tap. "Symbolically, it is life within the desert."
"Hmm," Roa's eyes close for a moment. "That makes sense. It holds power because it's necessary. And rare. I like symbols. What other symbols are important in the desert?"
J'cor gives out a low chuckle, leaning back into the cushion his chair. "That is a long question. Hmm." Tilting his chin up, he presses his lips together while he, presumably, gathers a few examples mentally. "The sun," he says finally, returning his gaze to her with a twitch of a smile to excuse his recent distraction. "Which symbolizes travel. The moon, but you had best ask Shaya about that. The eye is often evil, but the hand counters it. Animals each have their own significance, too many to list, but it usually a symbol of character: the snake, for example, would be cunning."
There is interest plain on the little weyrwoman's face as she listens. A small nod for the sun and a faint quirk of her lips for the moon. Animals have her brows lifting. "And I suppose the--" but there Roa stops, the little smile on her lips jarring away. "What about casting stones and reading cards? Where do those traditions come from?" she asks instead.
J'cor blinks suddenly, turning his gaze off towards Karth. The bronze still lies on the floor, still pointing a great blue eye at them. J'cor's hands lift off his knees, rubbing together absently as he holds them above his lap. "Yes," he answers absently, though it doesn't answer her question. He realizes this a second later, returning his gaze to her and clasping his hands into stillness. "Those come from old tradition, as well, but being more complicated, their symbolism would be difficult to trace. What they promise is attractive, so they are passed along."
She is watching J'cor through her lashes as he turns away and loses his focus, but when Roa speaks it is with a snuffly and congested ease. "I suppose we'd all like a way to know what comes next." Roa's chuckle is rueful. "I know I wouldn't mind, just now."
J'cor twists up a wry smile, shaking his head. "I do not cherish the uncertainty," he says, "but I think that such a system brings only more uncertainty. Once your fate has been predicted, if a poor one, do you dodge it? Stories tell us of those who have, and in doing so brought about their fates more surely than if they had ignored the prediction. Yet, accept that fate, and one is left simply to wait on it, wondering now not /what/ will come but /when/ it will."
"I find myself, currently, not wondering 'what' but 'when' anyhow, but we people...we are creatures of insatiable wants. We wish for what we do not have, and should we get it, we instantly regret it or immediately long for more. What is the phrase..." Roa tips her head, "'To lose your heart's desire in the having of it'. I think, often, it's true. Of course some might argue that to know what you want at all puts you better off than most."
J'cor considers her words for a moment, a smile tipped out over his lips. "Restlessness, then, or ambition. Having what you thought you wanted, you decide it's not enough and so seek more. I suspect that few people know what they want, even if they can put a name to it - leadership, for example; power. It is comforting to think yourself certain of your aim, but disturbing to acquire it and be yet unsatisfied."
"I think very few of us know our own selves as much as we wish to believe." Roa shifts to tuck her tissue away in her pocket again. "We shape our wants from who we think we are, and then we're surprised to find we were only fooling."
J'cor shrugs, his smile allowed to die quietly into sobriety again. "Are there better ways to know our own selves? It seems to me that either we must live with our errors, or turn our searches inwards, and perhaps find more personal satisfaction at the expense of public usefulness."
"I wish I knew," Roa notes with a flat little chuckle of her own. "Would full understanding be a constant search or a sudden illumination? Would knowing ourselves mean a better understand of others? I..." The tissue is reaches for quickly and brought to her nose just in time to capture a hearty sneeze. Sniffling, it's lowered to her lap. "What I do know is that I can't breathe through my nose. And I predict something hot to drink and a bed, in my own future. And sometimes, even I am happy to look no further than that."
J'cor's hands flip free, the palms held outward in a mollifying gesture. "I have kept you overlong, when you should rest. I do appreciate your coming, though, and your reflections on the current situation."
"I enjoyed the talk," Roa's scooting forward and off the couch, "and I apologize again for not speaking to you sooner. I'll see you tomorrow, then, sir?"
J'cor rises to his feet, to see her out. "Certainly, Roa." He nods. "And it was not a problem. Good evening."
"Good evening, sir." Her attention shifts briefly towards the bronze as she calls, "good evening, Karth." Then she walks with J'cor to the doorway, slipping through and beyond on her own.
Time: Evening on Day 26, Month 11, Turn 2
Players: J'cor, Roa, Karth
Scene: Roa makes amends and also makes J'cor sad.
Weyrleader's Weyr
Rank allows slightly more comfortable furnishings than can be found elsewhere in the Weyr. Done in warm tones, the walls have been white-washed and hung with sunny tapestries to match the shades of the area rugs and the bed coverings. Those rugs divide the room into sections. There is the seating area, suitable for conversation and informal meetings, with its couches and low central table. There is the working area, occupied by a desk and shelves for hidework. Last but not least, there is the living area where the Weyrleader sleeps and stores his clothing and riding gear.
The weyr has two exits. The first is a simple doorway that leads to the stairs and back down to the shared office. The second is a curtained archway that leads to the couch and ledge sized for a bronze dragon. The ledge is some distance above the bowl and accessible only from the air.
Though the usual smell of pipe smoke lingers in the weyr, it has thinned out and grown stale. The pipe itself lies abandoned on the Weyrleader's desk, J'cor having been distracted by the demands of his bronze. Karth has crawled off his couch to take up space on the floor, one foreleg held out (and carefully still) so that J'cor, perched carefully atop it, can reach an itch high up on his shoulder.
One of the troubles with being congested is that one cannot smell. In this instance, that may be a good thing. Either way, Roa taps lightly on the Weyrleader's door before nudging it open and stepping inside. Her nose is rather red, her features a bit pale, but other than that, the weyrwoman looks about the same. Her eyes go first to the desk, empty, and then she peeps around the room until her attention settles at last on Karth and his itchy needs.
Karth only seems like he's wholly wrapped up in the scratching: small as they are, he hears the the light tap of Roa's knock and the faint sound of a hinge swinging open. After a moment, he shifts his chin and turns a steady blue eye on the little weyrwoman. There's no sound exchanged, but then, there hardly needs to be; J'cor notices her a moment later, turning to blink at the door even as his hand draws back from Karth's shoulder. "Ah, Roa. Good evening."
Karth's scrutiny is met with a steady regard from Roa, one hand dipping into the pocket of her pants and drawing out a tissue. She nods to J'cor as he steps down from the bronze. "Good evening, sir," her voice is a little thick and clogged. "Do you have a minute to speak?" (hab a binude to speeg.)
J'cor tilts his head, registering the clogged voice and, belatedly, the smaller cues of her pallity and reddened nose. He eyes her for a moment before gesturing towards the seating area to her right. "Certainly. Have a seat." He does not bother to wait and see that his order (for such it is, though phrased as a polite offering) is obeyed: climbing down off Karth's forearm requires concentration, after all, lest he slip. He devotes himself to doing this.
She does as bidden, making her way to the sitting space and settling onto one of the couches. Roa leans back and seems about to tuck her legs up underneath her before she remembers the boots and they return to dangling once more. "I spoke with Miniyal, yesterday," she offers once J'cor is close enough that there is no need to raise her voice.
J'cor swings around his armchair, a hand placed on the back to claim it, as if he needed to. "Did you?" He lifts a smile to her at this statement, but it's empty of anything more pleasant interest. Come around to the front of his chair, he settles back and stretches his arms out along the rests.
A small nod. "I did. I didn't know you and she played chess but I suppose, all things considered, not knowing that still doesn't make us quite even." Roa's lips quirk upwards faintly, but the expression fades nearly as soon as it arrives. "She told me what she told you, and I wanted to apologize for not telling you first. Did you get a chance to look over the actual data?" Here Roa pauses to lift the tissue and blow her nose.
J'cor's arms, comfortably stretched out, must soon yield their position. He leans his elbows forward onto his knees, bringing himself closer while he listens and deciphers Roa's stuffed speech. There seems to be a bit of a translation day, the smile aimed for her second sentence not appearing till midway through her third. Yet he seems to get the idea. "Not in depth, but I did look at it. I am not sure what you plan to do with it, however." His eyebrow goes up.
"Well," (Bell) "there's not a great deal -to- do with it yet. It's a reasonable hypothesis that in influx of queens means they all rise more slowly, but," (bud) Roa sniffs, settling her hands in her lap, "it's not something to bring to a weyr council until we had some actual proof. I was going to ask Ginella for some assistance in that avenue, though it won't be enough. It will at least be a start." Her words slow a little, perhaps to allow J'cor a bit more time to understand them.
J'cor's other eyebrow joins the first at the mention of the council. "Even so, I wonder what it is you'd like to do with this start you propose. The council might send away the Caucus queens, whether by official decree or by the simple act of withdrawing their own golds." Still leaned forward on his knees, he manages a small shrug. "It would be effective, after a fashion."
"Except that we'd lose Caucus," Roa notes. "I'd rather not. Look, if this information is right, the other Weyrs shouldn't be losing clutches." She leans forward as well, elbows on her knees, peering up at J'cor. "The other golds still living in the weyr will adjust their rhythms to compensate for the one in Caucus. That's the whole problem. Each queen here thinks they're producing clutches for High Reaches alongside seven others. If they were right..." and here Roa arches a brow of her own, "we wouldn't have a problem."
J'cor says, "Ah." His hands fold over each other, creating a platform on which to base his chin. "Well, that would be a difficult sell. One that would have to wait, of course, until after the next senior here is chosen.
"Which is why, I suppose, I didn't bring it up earlier. There isn't much to be done except wait, just now." Roa studies her hands and avoids saying, perhaps, what all else could be said about the next leadership flight.
J'cor nods into platform of his hands. "Very well." A simple silence drops between them - if he has any thoughts about the next leadership flight, he's not jumping at the chance to discuss it, either - and he pulls a smile into it. It's a question: anything else?
The little weyrwoman seems about to shake her head but then she notes, "I think a trip to a warmer climate for a bit might be nice, considering." One hand lifts and briefly brandishes the tissue. "But I hope Shaya will forgive me, if I perhaps only watch the dance lesson tomorrow."
J'cor raises an eyebrow over this suggestion, but he concedes the point with a, "Perhaps," quietly murmured into the gap between her sentences. The brow drops back down and he shifts his smile into something more general after it. "Shaya will not mind, but you will have to endure numerous folk remedies, I'm sure, that she will want you to try."
"So long as the cure for colds is not quite so drastic as the cure for shortness," Roa struggles to fight down her smile, "I should be able to brave it. Foul concoctions are endurable, when one cannot taste." Snrrk.
J'cor drops his hands down to his knees, bracing them there as he lifts his chin to a regular level. He has, perhaps, adjusted to her current speech habits. "No, I doubt she will attempt anything so dire as swinging by the ankles. Though she might force oasis water on you: it is a panacea, that."
"Is oasis water different from other sorts?" Roa queries, "despite, of course, it's curative properties?"
J'cor lifts the fingers on his knees, giving them an uncertain little wiggle. "Realistically? No." The fingers drop back with a small tap. "Symbolically, it is life within the desert."
"Hmm," Roa's eyes close for a moment. "That makes sense. It holds power because it's necessary. And rare. I like symbols. What other symbols are important in the desert?"
J'cor gives out a low chuckle, leaning back into the cushion his chair. "That is a long question. Hmm." Tilting his chin up, he presses his lips together while he, presumably, gathers a few examples mentally. "The sun," he says finally, returning his gaze to her with a twitch of a smile to excuse his recent distraction. "Which symbolizes travel. The moon, but you had best ask Shaya about that. The eye is often evil, but the hand counters it. Animals each have their own significance, too many to list, but it usually a symbol of character: the snake, for example, would be cunning."
There is interest plain on the little weyrwoman's face as she listens. A small nod for the sun and a faint quirk of her lips for the moon. Animals have her brows lifting. "And I suppose the--" but there Roa stops, the little smile on her lips jarring away. "What about casting stones and reading cards? Where do those traditions come from?" she asks instead.
J'cor blinks suddenly, turning his gaze off towards Karth. The bronze still lies on the floor, still pointing a great blue eye at them. J'cor's hands lift off his knees, rubbing together absently as he holds them above his lap. "Yes," he answers absently, though it doesn't answer her question. He realizes this a second later, returning his gaze to her and clasping his hands into stillness. "Those come from old tradition, as well, but being more complicated, their symbolism would be difficult to trace. What they promise is attractive, so they are passed along."
She is watching J'cor through her lashes as he turns away and loses his focus, but when Roa speaks it is with a snuffly and congested ease. "I suppose we'd all like a way to know what comes next." Roa's chuckle is rueful. "I know I wouldn't mind, just now."
J'cor twists up a wry smile, shaking his head. "I do not cherish the uncertainty," he says, "but I think that such a system brings only more uncertainty. Once your fate has been predicted, if a poor one, do you dodge it? Stories tell us of those who have, and in doing so brought about their fates more surely than if they had ignored the prediction. Yet, accept that fate, and one is left simply to wait on it, wondering now not /what/ will come but /when/ it will."
"I find myself, currently, not wondering 'what' but 'when' anyhow, but we people...we are creatures of insatiable wants. We wish for what we do not have, and should we get it, we instantly regret it or immediately long for more. What is the phrase..." Roa tips her head, "'To lose your heart's desire in the having of it'. I think, often, it's true. Of course some might argue that to know what you want at all puts you better off than most."
J'cor considers her words for a moment, a smile tipped out over his lips. "Restlessness, then, or ambition. Having what you thought you wanted, you decide it's not enough and so seek more. I suspect that few people know what they want, even if they can put a name to it - leadership, for example; power. It is comforting to think yourself certain of your aim, but disturbing to acquire it and be yet unsatisfied."
"I think very few of us know our own selves as much as we wish to believe." Roa shifts to tuck her tissue away in her pocket again. "We shape our wants from who we think we are, and then we're surprised to find we were only fooling."
J'cor shrugs, his smile allowed to die quietly into sobriety again. "Are there better ways to know our own selves? It seems to me that either we must live with our errors, or turn our searches inwards, and perhaps find more personal satisfaction at the expense of public usefulness."
"I wish I knew," Roa notes with a flat little chuckle of her own. "Would full understanding be a constant search or a sudden illumination? Would knowing ourselves mean a better understand of others? I..." The tissue is reaches for quickly and brought to her nose just in time to capture a hearty sneeze. Sniffling, it's lowered to her lap. "What I do know is that I can't breathe through my nose. And I predict something hot to drink and a bed, in my own future. And sometimes, even I am happy to look no further than that."
J'cor's hands flip free, the palms held outward in a mollifying gesture. "I have kept you overlong, when you should rest. I do appreciate your coming, though, and your reflections on the current situation."
"I enjoyed the talk," Roa's scooting forward and off the couch, "and I apologize again for not speaking to you sooner. I'll see you tomorrow, then, sir?"
J'cor rises to his feet, to see her out. "Certainly, Roa." He nods. "And it was not a problem. Good evening."
"Good evening, sir." Her attention shifts briefly towards the bronze as she calls, "good evening, Karth." Then she walks with J'cor to the doorway, slipping through and beyond on her own.