Back to the Mountains
Who: Ch'dais, Valandys
When: Month 13, 200th Turn of the 6th Interval
What: Valandys returned to Igen to be with her father before his death. After his passing, Ch'dais arrives to carry her back to High Reaches Weyr, and the Caucus.
A Hold
Three thick stone walls have been raised to form this broad courtyard; the fourth wall is composed of the cliff's rockface itself. Cold grey, the walls are of the same stone that covers the ground in a checkerboard pattern. The Hold's front gates are large enough to allow two wagons to enter at once, side by side, and are guarded by a pair of towers staffed at all times by well-trained guards. A wide flight of stairs leads to the doors of the Hold proper, sheltering the great hall that lays beyond. Several free-standing buildings populate the courtyard; there is a kennel for the Hold's whers, a shed for the guards and a stone-roofed stables to house the Blood's prized line of runners.
Contents:
Valandys
Out
The sun has hardly begun to rise in the sky, but the desert is already hot. The Hold has stirred itself into reluctant life, shepherds moving their flocks of goats out to water them while others begin the work required to keep a desert city alive. The courtyard was busy when the bronze and his rider arrived but most gave them a wide berth. Those that approached him did so with the few bags that hold his passenger's belongings but of Valandys there is no sign. "She rode out before dawn," one boy explains solemnly. "She's late in returning," another supplies. "The old trails, the patrol routes. There's an oasis an hour away." They're all too happy to provide the Reachian with a crude map, although the shine that comes from speaking with a rider, and one on bronze at that, is dimmed. Valandys is well-liked, and these boys show a pale reflection of the grief she must feel.
The map is only accurate by the largest stretch of the imagination but it isn't difficult to find the places where water lives, not here in the rocky wastes. A short flight will bring a patch of green into view, bright against the gold and grey below. There's a spring-fed pool, and strange bumpy trees with fans for leaves, lush for now with Thread still yet to come. The sun has risen high enough that the first heat shimmers have begun, but the winds are kind and the sky a cheerful shade of blue. Beside that oasis, a silver-brushed runner is ground-tethered, and a small fire has been built. The woman Ch'dais is looking for is seated beside that little spark of light and heat, a poor match for the sun. She's swathed in pale fabrics, her head covered, the lower half of her face veiled to protect it from sand thrown by wind.
Ch'dais took the offered map with what serves him as a polite smile-- a twitch of the lips, a wrinkling at the corners of his sea-green eyes, very little either of substance or form. Desert boys may dream on their own time; he's here with a purpose. And so he turned his broad back upon them, swung once more atop Arinth; with a scattering of sand the pair leapt aloft to begin their morning search.
Flying high, the oasis wasn't hard to spot. Ch'dais brings the ungainly beast to earth now, Arinth backwinging to a landing that crunches deep into the sun-swept dune. The bronze rocks forward, uncertain of his purchase on the unfamiliar sands, pinions flaring; after a moment he settles, allowing his rider to dismount. They've landed a good distance from the knot of alien palms-- careful not to frighten the girl's mount-- but their shadow across the turf, the reptilian chuff of the massive dragon's breath, are hard to ignore.
The runner, all high flagged tail and dished nose, with a body crafted for speed between, plays at startling in spite of the consideration shown it by the foreign pair. It throws its head, kicks its hooves, and rings a challenge out at dragon and man. Valandys secured it well, but hurries anyway to bring its head down in her hands and calm it until Arinth is settled. She's stroking its nose by the time the rider's feet hit sand and that's the sound that brings her around, overbright eyes showing her to be puzzled. "Why are you here?" she asks upon approaching, moving to meet him halfway. "Is something..." And that's when she seems to notice the way the day has swelled around her, and she lifts her hand to pull down the veil, exposing a look of worry and apology. "I lost track...I am sorry, Ch'dais."
"There's--" Ch'dais breaks into a cough, caught in a brief shimmer of wind-borne sand; he covers his mouth with the back of his hand, lowers his head until his vision clears. Eyes watering, he regards her once more. "No reason to rush, so long as we're off in the next few hours. It's the dark of night back at High Reaches, and I have a watch to ride on the morrow." This morrow. His lips purse, and he contemplates the brightening sands with mild bemusement. "Are you..." Finished? Awkward. Gently he concludes, "Is there anything you must look to, Valandys?"
Valandys lifts her chin and softly clears her throat as he coughs, blinking hard a moment before she summons a pale smile. "No. Everything has been done for days, and they are ready for me to be gone, I think. I have had more time than I knew what to do with, so I have no excuse now to have kept you waiting. To make you search for me." Her hands spread empty before her to complete the apology. Then a change of subject is offered, abrupt and clumsy. "Have you eaten recently? It is morning for us, night for you, but maybe you're hungry. I brought bread, cheese..." She turns, heels grating in the sand, and walks back to the smudge of green, the cooler air surrounding the desert pool. The runner nickers to her, having recovered from its fright.
Arinth peals a sour note, something like a large bell falling to crack flagstones beneath its weight. The sound rattles in the trees, and the great beast turns a pace to one side before couching with a distinct rustle of wings. Ch'dais casts a narrow-eyed look back towards his mate, then carries this same consideration to the oasis, the tethered runner, the blue morning sky. His mouth a thoughtful line beneath his beard, the man steps after his linen-swathed charge. "That would be nice," he concurs carefully. And then, "What brings you out here?" His tone is subdued, question answered in the asking.
"Is he alright?" She meets his question with her own, having turned to stare wide-eyed back at the mountain of bronze behind Ch'dais. Then she whirls away to attend the terrified runner, freshly frightened by the dragon's commotion and the rider is left to his own devices. The fire is there, and a saddlebag beside it, opened to reveal cloth-wrapped lumps- the bread and cheese she promised, as well as the neck of a fat waterskin. Only after the animal, her charge, has been calmed anew does Valandus return to the fire. She collapses to the sand to sit cross-legged, not reaching for the food she'd offered the man just a few minutes before. "She's my father's. We rode here. I thought I had the time, but...it is a poor time of the turn to court ghosts, even in memory. Some say they're stronger now, and will be until the turn ends." A handful of sand is tossed onto the fire, not enough to douse it, just enough to cause it to sputter and dance.
"You have the time." The words fall about the flickering fire, a benign fate, and Ch'dais follows them down-- palm and then rump-- to settle beside the desert girl. "And he's fine." The bronzerider casts her a sidelong glance, uneasy, and when Arinth puts in a milder, deep-throated hoot, he's compelled to explain, "Arinth would like me to know that /he/ flies on patrols, too, and that he /also/ enjoys breakfast. 'Ware your runner." The man's faint smile makes clear that he isn't serious, and he turns his gaze to muse upon the shadowed water of the oasis. "My father used to say that the ghosts of sailors gone before lived on in the winds off the Reaches shore. If we had fair breeze home to port, he would say, 'There's old Master Rafas, hurrying home to see his family.'" His lips curve. "He was a fine old liar, my father."
It seems a strange time, a strange mood, for Valandys to suddenly be struck by laughter but Arinth's translated remarks manage just that. She cups her hand over her mouth, though the sound is quiet enough, and looks again towards the dragon. There's gratitude in her dark eyes. "He would find her a rowdy mouthful. She'd kick all the way down and bruise his belly from the inside." When her hand lowers, her smile is stronger, less prone to sliding away for a second here and there. "You loved him for it. The stories." It's there to be seen in the way he speaks, and his expression, so it's phrased as an observation. A diplomatic one. "I like the picture of that. Old Masters speeding you home. I wonder if mine will help speed us away to the Reaches."
Ch'dais doesn't deny the observation, but declines to confirm it. He dips a toe in her amusement, lifting his head to watch her with a wan smile of his own. This fades, however, as that study persists, and when the intensity of his sea-gaze threatens discomfort, he leans forward to make a business of unwrapping one of the pieces of bread. "You don't have to go back, you know," he observes, all forced nonchalance. Careful folds of cloth away from the crust. "You say they treat you differently now, but you haven't been gone so long. Over a month, two.."
"No?" That he'd suggest this seems to surprise her. She'd met his eyes, steady but subdued, but when he says this last and looks away, the woman arches dark brows at him. "What would you do, Ch'dais, if your father told you he was proud of what you were doing? He was proud of me, to be learning side by side with those of Craft and Blood. A guard's daughter, holding her own in such company..." Something like pain flickers past her expression then, and she seeks to hide it by reaching out for the bread in his hand. A small curved knife is produced from beneath those layers of linen. "I have been marked in their eyes by the company I keep," Valandys says carefully, "And not a one of them realizes how poor a showing I have made of myself. And of them."
"I was at the Weyr when my father died. Perhaps he was proud of what I'd become; I never heard him say so." The phrases break harder over their conversation than he'd intended, and Ch'dais surrenders the bread with a look of apology. "I was at the Weyr when my mother remarried. Doubtless I'll be at the Weyr when my sister finds herself a man." There seems to be more, but instead the bronzerider falls silent, reaching for the water-skin. How to explain? "But if it's what your father wanted... well, give me a holder girl any day over these Blood." His lips turn down. "They preen for a season or two and then go home. Are they better for it? Do they care more?"
Valandys draws the little knife through the bread, slicing the heel off and dropping it into her lap in order to cut him a proper slice. The bread itself is dense and dark, the crust speckled with grains. The second piece is extended towards him, trapped between her thumb and the blade. "Your world moved on without you," she says, with the quiet voice of someone who understands a feeling to its absolute core. "The Caucus has not been improved by my presence, nor I by attending. I am failing at it. The classes, the work they require... so much of it is beyond me. Do you think I should have told him, before he died? Would you have told your father your failings before he was gone? I would have. He spoke first, and I couldn't speak after. Maybe it was better, your way."
Ch'dais looks from heel to offered round with a pensive air, as if perhaps the girl has made a mistake. Slowly, he takes the bread in one great hand. There's something in that drab grain, something to be considered; when he lifts his eyes to hers, there's a light gathering behind their cloud. "Well. /I'm/ glad you came." He makes himself say it. "I'm glad you're coming back." He turns his attention back to the water, bites into the bread with a certain agitation. Projecting annoyance at her circumstances, the bronzerider adds in a full-mouthed mumble, "And who's to say how well you'll do? You've barely gotten started. Do you know, I used to be a Wingsecond? They demoted me; /no one/ gets demoted, and there I was. Ripped the knot right off my shoulder." He offers a rumpled half-smile, a sidelong glance. "Arinth was ashamed." The bronze, having very little idea what shame might entail, merely snorts from his sand-couch across the dune.
"Wingsecond," she repeats, as if the word was foreign to her. Or perhaps it's foreign to her view of him, for her eyes don't shift once from his face, through all of his mumbling, and smiling, and glancing. "You have never seemed overfond of... mm. Responsibility? No. That isn't the proper word. Authority? Maybe that is the better one." The natural question, the one she might be expected to ask, goes unspoken. Instead Valandys looks down to saw through the bread again. It's absently done, with no real hunger for the morsel behind it. "I missed speaking with you," she eventually confesses. "So much of my time in High Reaches was unpleasant but you never were. You took care with me and it helped." She pauses, turning the fresh slice on the knife's blade. "It still does."
Ch'dais swallows thickly. Perhaps he's bitten off more than he can chew. Something in her regard makes the bronzerider look away, and he lifts the water-skin to his bearded lips to wash down his morsel. "I didn't ask to be a dragonrider," he explains, clear-throated now, as if the flat phrase might serve to cover all real and imagined ills. The man is silent for the space of another bite, knees drawn up and muscled forearms crossed, his gaze at rest upon the daylight creeping between bladed fern-shadows. "And I remind myself that you're a holder girl," he concedes. Repeatedly. "It's more than most are going to do, but you've proven able to take care of your skirts."
Valandys sets the bread, uneaten, down in her lap and the knife in the sand before the fire. She slowly scrubs her palms together then to remove crumbs and grit from them, making a ritual of the movement. "My life in these past months have been full of 'if's. If I were not my mother's daughter, if I were not at Caucus, if my father had not fallen ill, if you were not a rider. If you had not been flight-crazed, and me not weak from grief. If I fail, if I succeed, guard my honor or give it away," she says, and now it's she who looks away, looks down, focuses only on the dying flames and the glowing embers. "All of these ifs occur to me, and life grinds on anyway." She's blinking again, but this time it doesn't cover the sheen of tears. "Am I even making sense? All of these ifs, and grinding, and I'm left not knowing what I should do, or what I want. It was simpler when I -was- just a holder girl."
He's got hold of her hand before she's finished speaking, almost before she's rubbed them clean-- northern pale covering desert brown, but warm despite its hue. Ch'dais sets aside his meal, puts a palm against her cheek, clears a tear with the thick pad of his thumb. "You're going to come back to High Reaches with me, as your father would want it. You'll finish your term at the Caucus." He watches her steadily, grey-green eyes half-narrowed with resolve, or perhaps against it. "Then you'll come home and take your rightful place at the Hold." Find a husband. "Apply what you've learned. Look after your people." It can't help but hurt, and the sting weaves a little furrow in the bronzerider's brow, but his voice doesn't waver.
"Duty." A simple word, one that collects everything he says and wraps it in a tidy, simple package. Duty. But she's heart-sick, and disinclined to think charitably of duty, however devoted a follower she was of it before. Valandys' eyes close tightly, blocking the sight of him with the desert stretched behind, while reaching up to curl her hand over the one cupping her face. Her fingers are cool, even in the heat. Then she's pitching forward, shifting in, pushing herself into the circle of her arms to press cheek to chest. Whether she's looking for warmth or comfort or a place to hide is impossible to say, but there she is, arms tight about his waist.
"Duty," Ch'dais repeats, with thorough conviction. And at the same time his arms have grown about her like smooth coral, his sinews pressing her small body against his. Duty, and his palm is flat on the linen covering her back, fingers splayed; duty, his touch at the back of her waist, feeling the gentle swell above her bottom. Duty is the rough brush of his beard against the girl's dark brow, the damp of that briefest kiss, drying in the desert air. The bronzerider holds Valandys close, and quietly, and in the heat-shimmered distance his dragon turns up his burnished throat to the sky and trumpets all that he will not say. Echoes roll over the sands.
At last-- when he must-- Ch'dais breathes. She may feel the breath he takes, lifting his broad chest. "The daylight runs out ahead of us," he murmurs. "We must get you back."
And duty again. Valandys, reminded of it in the specific, lifts herself from him but not without offering one touch for the many gifted to her. Her hand lifts, the pad of her thumb runs soft and strong along the curve of his cheekbone through his skin. Then she's up, slippery as sand as she slides from his arms and scoops the knife up to return it to its sheath. The bread she leaves on the ground, the saddlebag she lifts to toss over one shoulder. "You said we have hours, or I have lost track again. Time is strange around you," she tells him, the smile resting over her lips a gentle one. "I will have to ride the silver back to the Hold; she'll go to another guard, rather than Arinth's belly. With him behind and above her, it should be a quick hop, before we can attend to our duty."
"Don't give me hours," Ch'dais answers, seeking solace in the wry remark, and summoned sliver of a smirk. He watches her cross beneath the shadows of the trees, watches her bend to retrieve the saddlebag, follows with great interest the details of its fall over her torso. And then, because he must, the bronzerider plants a hand in the sand and levers himself to his feet. "You'd best be started, then, Lady Igen," he rumbles. "Arinth can cover a lot of ground, aloft." There's a pause, and then his smile softens into one he's seldom worn. "Ride hard, Valandys. Like the wind. Make him proud."
"What would you have me give you, then?" she asks, attempting to mimic his tone and managing only a thin echo of it. The runner is already dancing when she crosses to it, hardly settling as the saddlebag is secured and its reins freed. Mounting the beast takes the twinkling of an eye, one smooth leap and pull bringing her into the saddle. There Valandys pauses, looking at him as the silver dances anxious underneath her. The smile remains, but thoughtful now. Then she digs her heels into the animal's sides and it surges forward, sending her thundering past him out in the desert.
When: Month 13, 200th Turn of the 6th Interval
What: Valandys returned to Igen to be with her father before his death. After his passing, Ch'dais arrives to carry her back to High Reaches Weyr, and the Caucus.
A Hold
Three thick stone walls have been raised to form this broad courtyard; the fourth wall is composed of the cliff's rockface itself. Cold grey, the walls are of the same stone that covers the ground in a checkerboard pattern. The Hold's front gates are large enough to allow two wagons to enter at once, side by side, and are guarded by a pair of towers staffed at all times by well-trained guards. A wide flight of stairs leads to the doors of the Hold proper, sheltering the great hall that lays beyond. Several free-standing buildings populate the courtyard; there is a kennel for the Hold's whers, a shed for the guards and a stone-roofed stables to house the Blood's prized line of runners.
Contents:
Valandys
Out
The sun has hardly begun to rise in the sky, but the desert is already hot. The Hold has stirred itself into reluctant life, shepherds moving their flocks of goats out to water them while others begin the work required to keep a desert city alive. The courtyard was busy when the bronze and his rider arrived but most gave them a wide berth. Those that approached him did so with the few bags that hold his passenger's belongings but of Valandys there is no sign. "She rode out before dawn," one boy explains solemnly. "She's late in returning," another supplies. "The old trails, the patrol routes. There's an oasis an hour away." They're all too happy to provide the Reachian with a crude map, although the shine that comes from speaking with a rider, and one on bronze at that, is dimmed. Valandys is well-liked, and these boys show a pale reflection of the grief she must feel.
The map is only accurate by the largest stretch of the imagination but it isn't difficult to find the places where water lives, not here in the rocky wastes. A short flight will bring a patch of green into view, bright against the gold and grey below. There's a spring-fed pool, and strange bumpy trees with fans for leaves, lush for now with Thread still yet to come. The sun has risen high enough that the first heat shimmers have begun, but the winds are kind and the sky a cheerful shade of blue. Beside that oasis, a silver-brushed runner is ground-tethered, and a small fire has been built. The woman Ch'dais is looking for is seated beside that little spark of light and heat, a poor match for the sun. She's swathed in pale fabrics, her head covered, the lower half of her face veiled to protect it from sand thrown by wind.
Ch'dais took the offered map with what serves him as a polite smile-- a twitch of the lips, a wrinkling at the corners of his sea-green eyes, very little either of substance or form. Desert boys may dream on their own time; he's here with a purpose. And so he turned his broad back upon them, swung once more atop Arinth; with a scattering of sand the pair leapt aloft to begin their morning search.
Flying high, the oasis wasn't hard to spot. Ch'dais brings the ungainly beast to earth now, Arinth backwinging to a landing that crunches deep into the sun-swept dune. The bronze rocks forward, uncertain of his purchase on the unfamiliar sands, pinions flaring; after a moment he settles, allowing his rider to dismount. They've landed a good distance from the knot of alien palms-- careful not to frighten the girl's mount-- but their shadow across the turf, the reptilian chuff of the massive dragon's breath, are hard to ignore.
The runner, all high flagged tail and dished nose, with a body crafted for speed between, plays at startling in spite of the consideration shown it by the foreign pair. It throws its head, kicks its hooves, and rings a challenge out at dragon and man. Valandys secured it well, but hurries anyway to bring its head down in her hands and calm it until Arinth is settled. She's stroking its nose by the time the rider's feet hit sand and that's the sound that brings her around, overbright eyes showing her to be puzzled. "Why are you here?" she asks upon approaching, moving to meet him halfway. "Is something..." And that's when she seems to notice the way the day has swelled around her, and she lifts her hand to pull down the veil, exposing a look of worry and apology. "I lost track...I am sorry, Ch'dais."
"There's--" Ch'dais breaks into a cough, caught in a brief shimmer of wind-borne sand; he covers his mouth with the back of his hand, lowers his head until his vision clears. Eyes watering, he regards her once more. "No reason to rush, so long as we're off in the next few hours. It's the dark of night back at High Reaches, and I have a watch to ride on the morrow." This morrow. His lips purse, and he contemplates the brightening sands with mild bemusement. "Are you..." Finished? Awkward. Gently he concludes, "Is there anything you must look to, Valandys?"
Valandys lifts her chin and softly clears her throat as he coughs, blinking hard a moment before she summons a pale smile. "No. Everything has been done for days, and they are ready for me to be gone, I think. I have had more time than I knew what to do with, so I have no excuse now to have kept you waiting. To make you search for me." Her hands spread empty before her to complete the apology. Then a change of subject is offered, abrupt and clumsy. "Have you eaten recently? It is morning for us, night for you, but maybe you're hungry. I brought bread, cheese..." She turns, heels grating in the sand, and walks back to the smudge of green, the cooler air surrounding the desert pool. The runner nickers to her, having recovered from its fright.
Arinth peals a sour note, something like a large bell falling to crack flagstones beneath its weight. The sound rattles in the trees, and the great beast turns a pace to one side before couching with a distinct rustle of wings. Ch'dais casts a narrow-eyed look back towards his mate, then carries this same consideration to the oasis, the tethered runner, the blue morning sky. His mouth a thoughtful line beneath his beard, the man steps after his linen-swathed charge. "That would be nice," he concurs carefully. And then, "What brings you out here?" His tone is subdued, question answered in the asking.
"Is he alright?" She meets his question with her own, having turned to stare wide-eyed back at the mountain of bronze behind Ch'dais. Then she whirls away to attend the terrified runner, freshly frightened by the dragon's commotion and the rider is left to his own devices. The fire is there, and a saddlebag beside it, opened to reveal cloth-wrapped lumps- the bread and cheese she promised, as well as the neck of a fat waterskin. Only after the animal, her charge, has been calmed anew does Valandus return to the fire. She collapses to the sand to sit cross-legged, not reaching for the food she'd offered the man just a few minutes before. "She's my father's. We rode here. I thought I had the time, but...it is a poor time of the turn to court ghosts, even in memory. Some say they're stronger now, and will be until the turn ends." A handful of sand is tossed onto the fire, not enough to douse it, just enough to cause it to sputter and dance.
"You have the time." The words fall about the flickering fire, a benign fate, and Ch'dais follows them down-- palm and then rump-- to settle beside the desert girl. "And he's fine." The bronzerider casts her a sidelong glance, uneasy, and when Arinth puts in a milder, deep-throated hoot, he's compelled to explain, "Arinth would like me to know that /he/ flies on patrols, too, and that he /also/ enjoys breakfast. 'Ware your runner." The man's faint smile makes clear that he isn't serious, and he turns his gaze to muse upon the shadowed water of the oasis. "My father used to say that the ghosts of sailors gone before lived on in the winds off the Reaches shore. If we had fair breeze home to port, he would say, 'There's old Master Rafas, hurrying home to see his family.'" His lips curve. "He was a fine old liar, my father."
It seems a strange time, a strange mood, for Valandys to suddenly be struck by laughter but Arinth's translated remarks manage just that. She cups her hand over her mouth, though the sound is quiet enough, and looks again towards the dragon. There's gratitude in her dark eyes. "He would find her a rowdy mouthful. She'd kick all the way down and bruise his belly from the inside." When her hand lowers, her smile is stronger, less prone to sliding away for a second here and there. "You loved him for it. The stories." It's there to be seen in the way he speaks, and his expression, so it's phrased as an observation. A diplomatic one. "I like the picture of that. Old Masters speeding you home. I wonder if mine will help speed us away to the Reaches."
Ch'dais doesn't deny the observation, but declines to confirm it. He dips a toe in her amusement, lifting his head to watch her with a wan smile of his own. This fades, however, as that study persists, and when the intensity of his sea-gaze threatens discomfort, he leans forward to make a business of unwrapping one of the pieces of bread. "You don't have to go back, you know," he observes, all forced nonchalance. Careful folds of cloth away from the crust. "You say they treat you differently now, but you haven't been gone so long. Over a month, two.."
"No?" That he'd suggest this seems to surprise her. She'd met his eyes, steady but subdued, but when he says this last and looks away, the woman arches dark brows at him. "What would you do, Ch'dais, if your father told you he was proud of what you were doing? He was proud of me, to be learning side by side with those of Craft and Blood. A guard's daughter, holding her own in such company..." Something like pain flickers past her expression then, and she seeks to hide it by reaching out for the bread in his hand. A small curved knife is produced from beneath those layers of linen. "I have been marked in their eyes by the company I keep," Valandys says carefully, "And not a one of them realizes how poor a showing I have made of myself. And of them."
"I was at the Weyr when my father died. Perhaps he was proud of what I'd become; I never heard him say so." The phrases break harder over their conversation than he'd intended, and Ch'dais surrenders the bread with a look of apology. "I was at the Weyr when my mother remarried. Doubtless I'll be at the Weyr when my sister finds herself a man." There seems to be more, but instead the bronzerider falls silent, reaching for the water-skin. How to explain? "But if it's what your father wanted... well, give me a holder girl any day over these Blood." His lips turn down. "They preen for a season or two and then go home. Are they better for it? Do they care more?"
Valandys draws the little knife through the bread, slicing the heel off and dropping it into her lap in order to cut him a proper slice. The bread itself is dense and dark, the crust speckled with grains. The second piece is extended towards him, trapped between her thumb and the blade. "Your world moved on without you," she says, with the quiet voice of someone who understands a feeling to its absolute core. "The Caucus has not been improved by my presence, nor I by attending. I am failing at it. The classes, the work they require... so much of it is beyond me. Do you think I should have told him, before he died? Would you have told your father your failings before he was gone? I would have. He spoke first, and I couldn't speak after. Maybe it was better, your way."
Ch'dais looks from heel to offered round with a pensive air, as if perhaps the girl has made a mistake. Slowly, he takes the bread in one great hand. There's something in that drab grain, something to be considered; when he lifts his eyes to hers, there's a light gathering behind their cloud. "Well. /I'm/ glad you came." He makes himself say it. "I'm glad you're coming back." He turns his attention back to the water, bites into the bread with a certain agitation. Projecting annoyance at her circumstances, the bronzerider adds in a full-mouthed mumble, "And who's to say how well you'll do? You've barely gotten started. Do you know, I used to be a Wingsecond? They demoted me; /no one/ gets demoted, and there I was. Ripped the knot right off my shoulder." He offers a rumpled half-smile, a sidelong glance. "Arinth was ashamed." The bronze, having very little idea what shame might entail, merely snorts from his sand-couch across the dune.
"Wingsecond," she repeats, as if the word was foreign to her. Or perhaps it's foreign to her view of him, for her eyes don't shift once from his face, through all of his mumbling, and smiling, and glancing. "You have never seemed overfond of... mm. Responsibility? No. That isn't the proper word. Authority? Maybe that is the better one." The natural question, the one she might be expected to ask, goes unspoken. Instead Valandys looks down to saw through the bread again. It's absently done, with no real hunger for the morsel behind it. "I missed speaking with you," she eventually confesses. "So much of my time in High Reaches was unpleasant but you never were. You took care with me and it helped." She pauses, turning the fresh slice on the knife's blade. "It still does."
Ch'dais swallows thickly. Perhaps he's bitten off more than he can chew. Something in her regard makes the bronzerider look away, and he lifts the water-skin to his bearded lips to wash down his morsel. "I didn't ask to be a dragonrider," he explains, clear-throated now, as if the flat phrase might serve to cover all real and imagined ills. The man is silent for the space of another bite, knees drawn up and muscled forearms crossed, his gaze at rest upon the daylight creeping between bladed fern-shadows. "And I remind myself that you're a holder girl," he concedes. Repeatedly. "It's more than most are going to do, but you've proven able to take care of your skirts."
Valandys sets the bread, uneaten, down in her lap and the knife in the sand before the fire. She slowly scrubs her palms together then to remove crumbs and grit from them, making a ritual of the movement. "My life in these past months have been full of 'if's. If I were not my mother's daughter, if I were not at Caucus, if my father had not fallen ill, if you were not a rider. If you had not been flight-crazed, and me not weak from grief. If I fail, if I succeed, guard my honor or give it away," she says, and now it's she who looks away, looks down, focuses only on the dying flames and the glowing embers. "All of these ifs occur to me, and life grinds on anyway." She's blinking again, but this time it doesn't cover the sheen of tears. "Am I even making sense? All of these ifs, and grinding, and I'm left not knowing what I should do, or what I want. It was simpler when I -was- just a holder girl."
He's got hold of her hand before she's finished speaking, almost before she's rubbed them clean-- northern pale covering desert brown, but warm despite its hue. Ch'dais sets aside his meal, puts a palm against her cheek, clears a tear with the thick pad of his thumb. "You're going to come back to High Reaches with me, as your father would want it. You'll finish your term at the Caucus." He watches her steadily, grey-green eyes half-narrowed with resolve, or perhaps against it. "Then you'll come home and take your rightful place at the Hold." Find a husband. "Apply what you've learned. Look after your people." It can't help but hurt, and the sting weaves a little furrow in the bronzerider's brow, but his voice doesn't waver.
"Duty." A simple word, one that collects everything he says and wraps it in a tidy, simple package. Duty. But she's heart-sick, and disinclined to think charitably of duty, however devoted a follower she was of it before. Valandys' eyes close tightly, blocking the sight of him with the desert stretched behind, while reaching up to curl her hand over the one cupping her face. Her fingers are cool, even in the heat. Then she's pitching forward, shifting in, pushing herself into the circle of her arms to press cheek to chest. Whether she's looking for warmth or comfort or a place to hide is impossible to say, but there she is, arms tight about his waist.
"Duty," Ch'dais repeats, with thorough conviction. And at the same time his arms have grown about her like smooth coral, his sinews pressing her small body against his. Duty, and his palm is flat on the linen covering her back, fingers splayed; duty, his touch at the back of her waist, feeling the gentle swell above her bottom. Duty is the rough brush of his beard against the girl's dark brow, the damp of that briefest kiss, drying in the desert air. The bronzerider holds Valandys close, and quietly, and in the heat-shimmered distance his dragon turns up his burnished throat to the sky and trumpets all that he will not say. Echoes roll over the sands.
At last-- when he must-- Ch'dais breathes. She may feel the breath he takes, lifting his broad chest. "The daylight runs out ahead of us," he murmurs. "We must get you back."
And duty again. Valandys, reminded of it in the specific, lifts herself from him but not without offering one touch for the many gifted to her. Her hand lifts, the pad of her thumb runs soft and strong along the curve of his cheekbone through his skin. Then she's up, slippery as sand as she slides from his arms and scoops the knife up to return it to its sheath. The bread she leaves on the ground, the saddlebag she lifts to toss over one shoulder. "You said we have hours, or I have lost track again. Time is strange around you," she tells him, the smile resting over her lips a gentle one. "I will have to ride the silver back to the Hold; she'll go to another guard, rather than Arinth's belly. With him behind and above her, it should be a quick hop, before we can attend to our duty."
"Don't give me hours," Ch'dais answers, seeking solace in the wry remark, and summoned sliver of a smirk. He watches her cross beneath the shadows of the trees, watches her bend to retrieve the saddlebag, follows with great interest the details of its fall over her torso. And then, because he must, the bronzerider plants a hand in the sand and levers himself to his feet. "You'd best be started, then, Lady Igen," he rumbles. "Arinth can cover a lot of ground, aloft." There's a pause, and then his smile softens into one he's seldom worn. "Ride hard, Valandys. Like the wind. Make him proud."
"What would you have me give you, then?" she asks, attempting to mimic his tone and managing only a thin echo of it. The runner is already dancing when she crosses to it, hardly settling as the saddlebag is secured and its reins freed. Mounting the beast takes the twinkling of an eye, one smooth leap and pull bringing her into the saddle. There Valandys pauses, looking at him as the silver dances anxious underneath her. The smile remains, but thoughtful now. Then she digs her heels into the animal's sides and it surges forward, sending her thundering past him out in the desert.