Worst Case Scenario
Who: Gans and Ella
Where: Gans and Miniyal's room
What: Ella asks about being a dragonrider or, more accurately, about no longer being one. Curse words within. Also, this is unfortunately not me on my best game, and I appreciate Ella's patience with me, and I ask that the reader be forewarned that some patience may also be required.
The hour after tea is reserved, typically, for Caucus students to drop by and ask questions pertinent to class; occasionally the former weyrleader has other company during this time, and quite often he has none at all. Rarest of all is Miniyal, who tends to return for dinner, Caucus-avoidant. Today is a none-at-all day, and the door next to the plaque that reads 'Ganathon' is open a little bit to welcome visitors, or merely prying eyes. Within he may be glimpsed, from just such an angle as prying eyes or certain passersby might catch, in repose on the divan, legs crossed, leant back into the corner of the seat, a book propped in the splay of long fingers.
Navigating through weyr tunnels is a pain in the ass. Moreso if one doesn't know the tunnels well. Moreso yet, if one if not even entirely sure where one is headed. So, by the time the plaque that announces Ganathon's door comes into view, Ella is in a fine and foul mood, hands clenched at her sides, brows drawn low in a scowl. She almost storms past the necessary door, but that it is open catches her eye and she halts, doing what the opening is designed to allow, and peeps inside. Her dark eyes flick to the name and perhaps the first thing the man within will hear of his visitor is this: "Fuckin' finally." What she /intends/ to be the first thing the ex-weyrleader hears is a clear but gentle knock at the door.
And yet, the voice that responds is all grace, mild and calm and pitched precisely to fill the room and leak through that gap into the hallway: "Come in." His gaze stays on the page for a short time, long enough to reach the end of a sentence or a paragraph. Then he closes the book up in the fold of his hand and rises easily to his feet, so he can stride across the room to meet this unfamiliar-voiced guest with a bit of a one-sided smile and a raised, pale brow.
Well, then. Ella pushes the door a bit wider to peer up at the long and lean gentleman who glides towards her. She clears her throat, sniffs once, and asks, "S'cuse m', sir. Don' mean t'intrude, but...are y' Ganathon, sir? An' if y'en't, can y'tell me where he might be? Cuz the tunnels en't talkin' an' I been walking 'round 'em f'a whole lot longer'n I should'a'been."
The other brow slips up to match the first for height, sending light curves up the span of endless forehead; yet fine creases feather the corners of his eyes, betraying some smile withheld, an amusement suppressed. "I suppose I must be," he replies, the tug of the right-hand-side of his mouth lending his voice wry sparkle. Another man might check her shoulders; he only lifts his chin a little and looks at her for a silent heartbeat from this altered perspective down the rather impressive courseway of his nose. "And you?"
"Y'd know better'n me if y'en't or y'are. Sir. I jus' read th'thing by th'door. It says y'are. Dunno. S'ppose y'could check, y'write y'name on y'undershorts're sumthing." But then the short-haired woman clears her throat and looks down. "Sorry, sir. M'Ella. M'jus visitin', sorta. Only, guess m'livin' here an', well, I was told I could maybe, well, stand. F'th'eggs. But. Wanted t'know more 'bout it b'fore I said a'right, an' I was told y'were someone t'talk to bout that. Sir."
It's going to be one of those afternoons where the limit of eyebrow-raising is pressed. Already the creases arching up the length of G'thon's forehead in little curved echoes of the shapes of the brows themselves have become persistent enough to carry past what would have once been a hairline, if one could be imagined there. "Imella?" He knows, instantly, the effort's incorrect; he smiles a little more for it, and backs up a step, holding out an arm, an open palm, an invitation farther into his room, to the furniture within. The other hand, slim and secret, goes to the back of the door, already prepared to shut it on what will be, then, a private conversation. "Were you, then." Bemused. "Might I get you a cup of tea?"
"Uh..." Ella steps inside so that the door might be shut without her still being outside in the hallway. "Tea'd be nice. Thank y'sir. M'Ella," she says again and then tsks softly as she hears not the sounds she meant but the name she invented, and she tries again. "M'name. Ella." A small nod for that improved clarification.
"Ella, then." G'thon's book-holding hand is the one that nudges the door shut by means of knuckles and thumb; the other, done now with welcoming her, goes out to offer for hers. Should she take it the gesture will be brief, smooth; then he goes to the the teacart that resides on the opposite side of the smallish room (with table and chairs) from the divan and desk and chair and stove. These latter are arranged in a more or less inviting, sitting-room manner, but everything is overshadowed by the bookcases, ceiling-high and imposingly full. The former weyrleader begins the tea-process with a question: "So who suggested you to me...?"
It is the large bookshelf, dominant as it is, that draws the skinny woman's attention as she drifts towards the table and chairs. "Y'got a lotta books," she murmurs, more to herself then to the man who owns all of said books. Then she shakes her head slightly, glancing over her shoulder at the Caucus instructor for a moment, before turning back to the bookshelf. "Oh. Th'weyrlead'r." The words are mostly distracted.
"Ah. I suppose you asked him about standing, then." There's an unspoken 'but' after this; G'thon does not hurry to explain the hanging note in the air, however. He instead performs the ritual of tea, slender hands moving in pale concert, a task they've completed thousands of times: leaves and such, silver teaball, hot water from the stove. He finishes by overturning two cups into saucers, ready for the moment the tea's steeped; that moment is not now. "But you said you're only visiting," he muses at last, glancing up, regard light but measured upon the woman who drifts through his room with such eyes for the bookcase. "So perhaps it was not quite like that."
She drags her eyes away to watch the tea ritual of Ganathon's before she pulls out a chair and seats herself. "That sumthin' I'm s'pposed t'be'tellin'y? Sir?" There is only a quick flash of fire in her black gaze and Ella lowers her lashes to obscure most of it. Her own hands, with their blunt fingers, rest on the table and pluck at its cover as she waits for the drinks.
G'thon withdraws his hands from their idle perch at the edge of the teacart and slips them behind himself. So arranged he looks upon his guest for a moment, one-sided smile perfectly able to withstand a little dark flame. "I shall ask a different question," he provides, voice droll. "How come you to know our weyrleader?"
"Worked at'a'bar'n Tillek. H'drank there." Ella blinks up at Ganathon, waiting patiently. Next question?
"And how you come to be considering standing for the clutch?" One hand slips out from behind his back and tarries atop the lid of the teapot. There is zero chance it has steeped adequately in these few seconds; he does not check. But the hand tarries, and his head tilts slightly, uplifted brows and dry half-smile inquisitive if far too dry.
Ah. Another easy one. "Got asked," Ella informs the once-weyrleader before lapsing back into silence.
"By?" Dentistry does not seem to bother G'thon, as long as the patient remains willing to give up teeth to the pliers one by one.
"Th'weyrleader," Ella replies, one more tooth clinking into the proverbial bowl.
"Then he must hold you in some esteem," observes the man who held that title three turns ago, though by force of will alone. He leaves the teacart and steps around to what will be 'his' side of the table for tea, perhaps, across from Ella; there he folds those slender, overlarge hands atop his chair's backrest and looks down at her with smile twitching, as if it might like to increase or depart, and neither is quite permitted. "If you are a friend of R'vain's, you must call me Gans."
"Uh..." Ella blinks, frowning faintly as she peers over at this very long and very perplexing man. "A'right. So. How d'we do this, then?"
"Typically," replies Gans, the smile drifting higher up the right-hand side after all, eyes suddenly far too sparkling like some sort of gold-green bubbly spirit, "you ask me whatever questions you have and, in the course of answering, I determine what I think of you. We shall drink tea; I shall offer you amendments for it, but that will wait since it has not yet steeped. Ah, but I forget - " One hand lifts, overturns in a wave, and drops back over the other's knuckles. "I do have some sweets, if you might like something to nibble on."
These answers cause a responding grin from Ella, although hers is not quite as discreet and sparkling. It's a broad thing, flashing teeth and lighting her face for the moment that it lasts. "Sounds fair t'me. An'm'fine f'food. Just et not s'long ago." She presses her lips together. "En't a rider. En't presumin' I un'erstand't. Things I wanna know, but en't sure I gotta right't'ask 'em. I say thin's I shouldn', y'tell me. Right?"
"Ask anything," replies Gans with another of those hand-overturning gestures of goodwill. "I expect my perspective is, if not unique, extraordinarily uncommon."
"S'why I came t'talk with'y. Th'uncommonness." Ella blinks up at the dragonless man, as if simply looking at him might provide answers to questions not yet voiced. Then, "What'd't feel like?"
'Ask anything' evidently did not mean to predict such a forward question so soon; Gans' spine stiffens visibly, his shoulders draw back, his chin lifts the slightest increment. He does not need this excess height; he does not need this posture to be imposing, strange, other. It emphasizes these traits already evident. "Ah," he says first, lightly. "Ah." A little heavier, that time. "I assume." He assumes she means this, and does not explain precisely what this is; instead he just describes: "I was unconscious, falling as I understand it, badly wounded, in the exact moment. When I awoke I felt hollow, as though I had been emptied by the healers while I slept - like everything within had been carved out by the scalpel." Somewhere along the way that smile got away from him; the light in his eyes remains, unsparkling but bright, a witness cold and peaceful, but not at all distant - a thoughtless beam Ella must either meet or withstand. "I couldn't understand why I was alive."
As Gans stiffens and straightens, the posture is mimicked unknowingly by the seated woman. Her shoulders draw back, chin comes up, jaw squares. If he's readying himself to speak, she readies herself to hear. Ella holds that eerie gaze with her own dark eyes, listening as the answer is offered. There is a tiny nod, all of that tucked away, before the girl from Tillek speaks again. "Th'say, rider loses's dragon, h'goes crazy r'dies. Y'didn' do neither, far's I kin tell. How'd y'manage?"
Although his posture remains prim, the light in Gans' eyes gentles to the least degree and his mouth twitches once, a smile deferred, at this question. "I would argue that 'crazy' is a word interpreted far too radically. I am a different man than I was before. Those who knew me both before and after might consider the change to be great enough to suggest a certain - alteration of the mind." His shoulders lift and fall, and in that gesture comes at last the relaxing of his body that should have followed the bemusement in his countenance. He tips his head in one deflective little nod before going on. "I manage, quite frankly, by going on."
Ella goes still again and then sniffs sharply and nods. "Jus' like anythin' big'n'bad, I guess," she murmurs. Someone else would fidget or look away, but Ella only frowns slightly, brows hitching down a bit. "F'get bein' a 'leader'n'all that. 'F it was just 'bout you an' y'bronze, 'bout what y'had an' lost, an' y'could go back t'do't diff'rent, y'still go out on'th'sands?"
The spark dies; Gans looks at her for a moment, then through her, then some small part of his mind registers that he's doing that and he lifts his head so he can look through the wall on the distant end of the room instead, more polite. "Yes," he says in a while, but the voice is small, hardly a fraction of what power should be behind it. "I would do that part, yes." He moves now, returning to the teacart in a couple of gliding steps, where slender hand can lift the lid of the teapot and excuse his lowering of empty gaze.
She listens. She watches. Ella is good at reading body language and the unsaid things behind it. Her old job required that she be. But, when Gans turns away the Tillekian woman scowls. One hand comes up to ruffle her short locks and she stares at the older man's back as if it would offer better understanding than his front. All she says, though, is, "What part wouldn' y'do?"
"I would have prepared us differently," Gans says. The words are easy; they cover, in a simple and relatively unloaded statement, any number of regrets, of errors, of misjudgments. Evidently the tea, unlike his preparations for the Pass, meets with his approval; he replaces the lid and keeps it in place with two slender fingers while pouring. As predicted: "I have sweetener, cream and milk. Shall I just bring them all over?"
"Sure, 'f'y'like," Ella says with a little shrug. There is, in these simple words, the implication that Gans should bring what he'd choose rather than what might please his guest. "Thanks. F'sayin' all that. Feel like I outta talk'y'back down, only 'm not s'good't that bit." She smirks, looking down at the wood of the table. "Seyra did that, mostly."
Gans pulls out from the second tier of the cart the amendments aforementioned. They come in two little pitchers that he can hook fingertips through the handles of and a little cup for the lumps; these occupy one hand, and in the broad sprawl of the other he holds the cups and saucers. "No need," he murmurs, turning about; he has managed to dig up a little trace of his one-sided smile to regard her with as he returns to the table. He bends, stretches out a practiced hand and gracefully lets down one of the saucers with its cup before Ella, then unbends a little to deposit the amendments. "Your bar had two women among its tenders, then?"
As a woman who's had to handle her share of plates, glasses, and bottles all at once, Gans' display of balance earns him a small and impressed laugh from the girl at the table. She picks up the fine china cup set before her, the delicate thing looking a little mismatched with such blunt worker's fingers. "'leven of us, count th'owner," Ella notes idly before she takes a sip. Or rather, her head lowers as the cup lifts, as if she plans to take a sip, but then she freezes midway through the motion, and after a beat, her eyes close. "Aw, fuck," she mutters.
Gans overlooks the laugh; he might be thought to overlook her reply, until he draws back and sinks into his chair and levels his thoughtful gaze upon her. He is clearly unsurprised by her second statement, blue as it is, though one brow does twitch with a suppressed desire to arch in bemusement. "I see," he says, and lifts his cup so as to blow across the surface, at the same time leaning back in his chair so he can cross his legs and balance the saucer on his knee. "How unusual."
"Guess so," is Ella's slightly glum rejoinder, though whether it's for his seeing or the bar's unusual staffing, the woman doesn't bother to clarify. Instead, she sips the tea, and never mind that it burns her tongue on the way down.
And that's all, then, because Gans takes a sip as well - more cautiously, perhaps - then asks, over the rim of the cup, "Haven't you any other questions about dragonriding? I believe most people considering the risk ask about - let's see - having a mind shared with one's own; the sensation of Impression; the social ranks and interactions unique to riders." Just a moment's pause for smirking. "Perhaps you've asked these already of him."
"Well," Ella licks her lips, trying out that injured tongue, "got other riders'm plannin' t'ask 'bout that. Girls. En't asked -him- nuthin'. En't gonna. Wanna hear from someone who en't got a reason t'care one way'r'nother 'f I stand'r not." She sets the tea down. "Y'wanna talk 'bout alla that, though, won' say t'stop."
The pale brows slide right back up on 'reason t'care one way' etcetera, and Gans is looking at the woman on the other side of the table with a rather level regard. "He has a reason to care one way or another?"
"H'asked'm, so, I gotta 'ssume so." Ella frowns again, faintly, into her cup, but this time she is a little wiser about sipping. She blows on the surface first and takes only a tiny, soundless slrp.
"I see." The worst thing about these two words is how much it sounds like, when he says them, that he really has seen. With brilliant accuracy. And this is an accuracy of which those words are completely self-certain; he tends to smile a little in their speaking. "I think I have probably told you the most you might wish, at this time, to hear from me; I have no urgent desire to tire you with the stories of an old man. You will probably get more balanced perspectives from others you speak to, as well." His brows twitch a bit here, then fall into place, reserved and relaxed. He sips tea.
The girl keeps her eyes on the tea, barely drunk, held in her hands. If she cannot control her glares, she can at least orient them onto objects, rather than people. "Y'been real good t'tell me alla that." Ella's cup is set down with a soft *tnk* of china meeting china. "Should let'cha get back t'...not talkin' t'me. Whatever y'were doin'." She pushes her chair back from the table. "Been helpful."
"Ella," Gans begins, although he unfolds his legs and leans forward so he can return his tea to its saucer and the saucer to the table in turn, then rise from his chair. "Will you do it, do you think?"
"Dunno. En't done askin'." Ella shrugs and pushes her chair back in after she rises from it. Making her way to the door she adds, a little softer, "Prob'ly."
Gans is tall; slender; swift. He has long legs and makes use of them; no young woman is showing herself out of here unless she's leaving in a huff. He uses long strides to head for the door, intent to pass her up on the way there. "If you might like to discuss further after your other interviews," and here one of those gestures of overturned, welcoming hands might slightly suggest she pause a moment before the door to hear him out, "you are more than welcome. I would be happy to put on tea for you any time."
"'ll think on't," is Ella's reply to this offer. She sniffs again as she lingers by the door, waiting for it to be opened. "Nice'v'y," she notes, although her tone suggests that she doesn't quite believe the words even as she utters them. "Well. G'bye."
Gans' brows sink a little, but of course he opens the door for her. His farewell comes after a moment's blinking silence, and carries with it a certain sense of impulse: "Good luck, then, and fair skies."
Where: Gans and Miniyal's room
What: Ella asks about being a dragonrider or, more accurately, about no longer being one. Curse words within. Also, this is unfortunately not me on my best game, and I appreciate Ella's patience with me, and I ask that the reader be forewarned that some patience may also be required.
The hour after tea is reserved, typically, for Caucus students to drop by and ask questions pertinent to class; occasionally the former weyrleader has other company during this time, and quite often he has none at all. Rarest of all is Miniyal, who tends to return for dinner, Caucus-avoidant. Today is a none-at-all day, and the door next to the plaque that reads 'Ganathon' is open a little bit to welcome visitors, or merely prying eyes. Within he may be glimpsed, from just such an angle as prying eyes or certain passersby might catch, in repose on the divan, legs crossed, leant back into the corner of the seat, a book propped in the splay of long fingers.
Navigating through weyr tunnels is a pain in the ass. Moreso if one doesn't know the tunnels well. Moreso yet, if one if not even entirely sure where one is headed. So, by the time the plaque that announces Ganathon's door comes into view, Ella is in a fine and foul mood, hands clenched at her sides, brows drawn low in a scowl. She almost storms past the necessary door, but that it is open catches her eye and she halts, doing what the opening is designed to allow, and peeps inside. Her dark eyes flick to the name and perhaps the first thing the man within will hear of his visitor is this: "Fuckin' finally." What she /intends/ to be the first thing the ex-weyrleader hears is a clear but gentle knock at the door.
And yet, the voice that responds is all grace, mild and calm and pitched precisely to fill the room and leak through that gap into the hallway: "Come in." His gaze stays on the page for a short time, long enough to reach the end of a sentence or a paragraph. Then he closes the book up in the fold of his hand and rises easily to his feet, so he can stride across the room to meet this unfamiliar-voiced guest with a bit of a one-sided smile and a raised, pale brow.
Well, then. Ella pushes the door a bit wider to peer up at the long and lean gentleman who glides towards her. She clears her throat, sniffs once, and asks, "S'cuse m', sir. Don' mean t'intrude, but...are y' Ganathon, sir? An' if y'en't, can y'tell me where he might be? Cuz the tunnels en't talkin' an' I been walking 'round 'em f'a whole lot longer'n I should'a'been."
The other brow slips up to match the first for height, sending light curves up the span of endless forehead; yet fine creases feather the corners of his eyes, betraying some smile withheld, an amusement suppressed. "I suppose I must be," he replies, the tug of the right-hand-side of his mouth lending his voice wry sparkle. Another man might check her shoulders; he only lifts his chin a little and looks at her for a silent heartbeat from this altered perspective down the rather impressive courseway of his nose. "And you?"
"Y'd know better'n me if y'en't or y'are. Sir. I jus' read th'thing by th'door. It says y'are. Dunno. S'ppose y'could check, y'write y'name on y'undershorts're sumthing." But then the short-haired woman clears her throat and looks down. "Sorry, sir. M'Ella. M'jus visitin', sorta. Only, guess m'livin' here an', well, I was told I could maybe, well, stand. F'th'eggs. But. Wanted t'know more 'bout it b'fore I said a'right, an' I was told y'were someone t'talk to bout that. Sir."
It's going to be one of those afternoons where the limit of eyebrow-raising is pressed. Already the creases arching up the length of G'thon's forehead in little curved echoes of the shapes of the brows themselves have become persistent enough to carry past what would have once been a hairline, if one could be imagined there. "Imella?" He knows, instantly, the effort's incorrect; he smiles a little more for it, and backs up a step, holding out an arm, an open palm, an invitation farther into his room, to the furniture within. The other hand, slim and secret, goes to the back of the door, already prepared to shut it on what will be, then, a private conversation. "Were you, then." Bemused. "Might I get you a cup of tea?"
"Uh..." Ella steps inside so that the door might be shut without her still being outside in the hallway. "Tea'd be nice. Thank y'sir. M'Ella," she says again and then tsks softly as she hears not the sounds she meant but the name she invented, and she tries again. "M'name. Ella." A small nod for that improved clarification.
"Ella, then." G'thon's book-holding hand is the one that nudges the door shut by means of knuckles and thumb; the other, done now with welcoming her, goes out to offer for hers. Should she take it the gesture will be brief, smooth; then he goes to the the teacart that resides on the opposite side of the smallish room (with table and chairs) from the divan and desk and chair and stove. These latter are arranged in a more or less inviting, sitting-room manner, but everything is overshadowed by the bookcases, ceiling-high and imposingly full. The former weyrleader begins the tea-process with a question: "So who suggested you to me...?"
It is the large bookshelf, dominant as it is, that draws the skinny woman's attention as she drifts towards the table and chairs. "Y'got a lotta books," she murmurs, more to herself then to the man who owns all of said books. Then she shakes her head slightly, glancing over her shoulder at the Caucus instructor for a moment, before turning back to the bookshelf. "Oh. Th'weyrlead'r." The words are mostly distracted.
"Ah. I suppose you asked him about standing, then." There's an unspoken 'but' after this; G'thon does not hurry to explain the hanging note in the air, however. He instead performs the ritual of tea, slender hands moving in pale concert, a task they've completed thousands of times: leaves and such, silver teaball, hot water from the stove. He finishes by overturning two cups into saucers, ready for the moment the tea's steeped; that moment is not now. "But you said you're only visiting," he muses at last, glancing up, regard light but measured upon the woman who drifts through his room with such eyes for the bookcase. "So perhaps it was not quite like that."
She drags her eyes away to watch the tea ritual of Ganathon's before she pulls out a chair and seats herself. "That sumthin' I'm s'pposed t'be'tellin'y? Sir?" There is only a quick flash of fire in her black gaze and Ella lowers her lashes to obscure most of it. Her own hands, with their blunt fingers, rest on the table and pluck at its cover as she waits for the drinks.
G'thon withdraws his hands from their idle perch at the edge of the teacart and slips them behind himself. So arranged he looks upon his guest for a moment, one-sided smile perfectly able to withstand a little dark flame. "I shall ask a different question," he provides, voice droll. "How come you to know our weyrleader?"
"Worked at'a'bar'n Tillek. H'drank there." Ella blinks up at Ganathon, waiting patiently. Next question?
"And how you come to be considering standing for the clutch?" One hand slips out from behind his back and tarries atop the lid of the teapot. There is zero chance it has steeped adequately in these few seconds; he does not check. But the hand tarries, and his head tilts slightly, uplifted brows and dry half-smile inquisitive if far too dry.
Ah. Another easy one. "Got asked," Ella informs the once-weyrleader before lapsing back into silence.
"By?" Dentistry does not seem to bother G'thon, as long as the patient remains willing to give up teeth to the pliers one by one.
"Th'weyrleader," Ella replies, one more tooth clinking into the proverbial bowl.
"Then he must hold you in some esteem," observes the man who held that title three turns ago, though by force of will alone. He leaves the teacart and steps around to what will be 'his' side of the table for tea, perhaps, across from Ella; there he folds those slender, overlarge hands atop his chair's backrest and looks down at her with smile twitching, as if it might like to increase or depart, and neither is quite permitted. "If you are a friend of R'vain's, you must call me Gans."
"Uh..." Ella blinks, frowning faintly as she peers over at this very long and very perplexing man. "A'right. So. How d'we do this, then?"
"Typically," replies Gans, the smile drifting higher up the right-hand side after all, eyes suddenly far too sparkling like some sort of gold-green bubbly spirit, "you ask me whatever questions you have and, in the course of answering, I determine what I think of you. We shall drink tea; I shall offer you amendments for it, but that will wait since it has not yet steeped. Ah, but I forget - " One hand lifts, overturns in a wave, and drops back over the other's knuckles. "I do have some sweets, if you might like something to nibble on."
These answers cause a responding grin from Ella, although hers is not quite as discreet and sparkling. It's a broad thing, flashing teeth and lighting her face for the moment that it lasts. "Sounds fair t'me. An'm'fine f'food. Just et not s'long ago." She presses her lips together. "En't a rider. En't presumin' I un'erstand't. Things I wanna know, but en't sure I gotta right't'ask 'em. I say thin's I shouldn', y'tell me. Right?"
"Ask anything," replies Gans with another of those hand-overturning gestures of goodwill. "I expect my perspective is, if not unique, extraordinarily uncommon."
"S'why I came t'talk with'y. Th'uncommonness." Ella blinks up at the dragonless man, as if simply looking at him might provide answers to questions not yet voiced. Then, "What'd't feel like?"
'Ask anything' evidently did not mean to predict such a forward question so soon; Gans' spine stiffens visibly, his shoulders draw back, his chin lifts the slightest increment. He does not need this excess height; he does not need this posture to be imposing, strange, other. It emphasizes these traits already evident. "Ah," he says first, lightly. "Ah." A little heavier, that time. "I assume." He assumes she means this, and does not explain precisely what this is; instead he just describes: "I was unconscious, falling as I understand it, badly wounded, in the exact moment. When I awoke I felt hollow, as though I had been emptied by the healers while I slept - like everything within had been carved out by the scalpel." Somewhere along the way that smile got away from him; the light in his eyes remains, unsparkling but bright, a witness cold and peaceful, but not at all distant - a thoughtless beam Ella must either meet or withstand. "I couldn't understand why I was alive."
As Gans stiffens and straightens, the posture is mimicked unknowingly by the seated woman. Her shoulders draw back, chin comes up, jaw squares. If he's readying himself to speak, she readies herself to hear. Ella holds that eerie gaze with her own dark eyes, listening as the answer is offered. There is a tiny nod, all of that tucked away, before the girl from Tillek speaks again. "Th'say, rider loses's dragon, h'goes crazy r'dies. Y'didn' do neither, far's I kin tell. How'd y'manage?"
Although his posture remains prim, the light in Gans' eyes gentles to the least degree and his mouth twitches once, a smile deferred, at this question. "I would argue that 'crazy' is a word interpreted far too radically. I am a different man than I was before. Those who knew me both before and after might consider the change to be great enough to suggest a certain - alteration of the mind." His shoulders lift and fall, and in that gesture comes at last the relaxing of his body that should have followed the bemusement in his countenance. He tips his head in one deflective little nod before going on. "I manage, quite frankly, by going on."
Ella goes still again and then sniffs sharply and nods. "Jus' like anythin' big'n'bad, I guess," she murmurs. Someone else would fidget or look away, but Ella only frowns slightly, brows hitching down a bit. "F'get bein' a 'leader'n'all that. 'F it was just 'bout you an' y'bronze, 'bout what y'had an' lost, an' y'could go back t'do't diff'rent, y'still go out on'th'sands?"
The spark dies; Gans looks at her for a moment, then through her, then some small part of his mind registers that he's doing that and he lifts his head so he can look through the wall on the distant end of the room instead, more polite. "Yes," he says in a while, but the voice is small, hardly a fraction of what power should be behind it. "I would do that part, yes." He moves now, returning to the teacart in a couple of gliding steps, where slender hand can lift the lid of the teapot and excuse his lowering of empty gaze.
She listens. She watches. Ella is good at reading body language and the unsaid things behind it. Her old job required that she be. But, when Gans turns away the Tillekian woman scowls. One hand comes up to ruffle her short locks and she stares at the older man's back as if it would offer better understanding than his front. All she says, though, is, "What part wouldn' y'do?"
"I would have prepared us differently," Gans says. The words are easy; they cover, in a simple and relatively unloaded statement, any number of regrets, of errors, of misjudgments. Evidently the tea, unlike his preparations for the Pass, meets with his approval; he replaces the lid and keeps it in place with two slender fingers while pouring. As predicted: "I have sweetener, cream and milk. Shall I just bring them all over?"
"Sure, 'f'y'like," Ella says with a little shrug. There is, in these simple words, the implication that Gans should bring what he'd choose rather than what might please his guest. "Thanks. F'sayin' all that. Feel like I outta talk'y'back down, only 'm not s'good't that bit." She smirks, looking down at the wood of the table. "Seyra did that, mostly."
Gans pulls out from the second tier of the cart the amendments aforementioned. They come in two little pitchers that he can hook fingertips through the handles of and a little cup for the lumps; these occupy one hand, and in the broad sprawl of the other he holds the cups and saucers. "No need," he murmurs, turning about; he has managed to dig up a little trace of his one-sided smile to regard her with as he returns to the table. He bends, stretches out a practiced hand and gracefully lets down one of the saucers with its cup before Ella, then unbends a little to deposit the amendments. "Your bar had two women among its tenders, then?"
As a woman who's had to handle her share of plates, glasses, and bottles all at once, Gans' display of balance earns him a small and impressed laugh from the girl at the table. She picks up the fine china cup set before her, the delicate thing looking a little mismatched with such blunt worker's fingers. "'leven of us, count th'owner," Ella notes idly before she takes a sip. Or rather, her head lowers as the cup lifts, as if she plans to take a sip, but then she freezes midway through the motion, and after a beat, her eyes close. "Aw, fuck," she mutters.
Gans overlooks the laugh; he might be thought to overlook her reply, until he draws back and sinks into his chair and levels his thoughtful gaze upon her. He is clearly unsurprised by her second statement, blue as it is, though one brow does twitch with a suppressed desire to arch in bemusement. "I see," he says, and lifts his cup so as to blow across the surface, at the same time leaning back in his chair so he can cross his legs and balance the saucer on his knee. "How unusual."
"Guess so," is Ella's slightly glum rejoinder, though whether it's for his seeing or the bar's unusual staffing, the woman doesn't bother to clarify. Instead, she sips the tea, and never mind that it burns her tongue on the way down.
And that's all, then, because Gans takes a sip as well - more cautiously, perhaps - then asks, over the rim of the cup, "Haven't you any other questions about dragonriding? I believe most people considering the risk ask about - let's see - having a mind shared with one's own; the sensation of Impression; the social ranks and interactions unique to riders." Just a moment's pause for smirking. "Perhaps you've asked these already of him."
"Well," Ella licks her lips, trying out that injured tongue, "got other riders'm plannin' t'ask 'bout that. Girls. En't asked -him- nuthin'. En't gonna. Wanna hear from someone who en't got a reason t'care one way'r'nother 'f I stand'r not." She sets the tea down. "Y'wanna talk 'bout alla that, though, won' say t'stop."
The pale brows slide right back up on 'reason t'care one way' etcetera, and Gans is looking at the woman on the other side of the table with a rather level regard. "He has a reason to care one way or another?"
"H'asked'm, so, I gotta 'ssume so." Ella frowns again, faintly, into her cup, but this time she is a little wiser about sipping. She blows on the surface first and takes only a tiny, soundless slrp.
"I see." The worst thing about these two words is how much it sounds like, when he says them, that he really has seen. With brilliant accuracy. And this is an accuracy of which those words are completely self-certain; he tends to smile a little in their speaking. "I think I have probably told you the most you might wish, at this time, to hear from me; I have no urgent desire to tire you with the stories of an old man. You will probably get more balanced perspectives from others you speak to, as well." His brows twitch a bit here, then fall into place, reserved and relaxed. He sips tea.
The girl keeps her eyes on the tea, barely drunk, held in her hands. If she cannot control her glares, she can at least orient them onto objects, rather than people. "Y'been real good t'tell me alla that." Ella's cup is set down with a soft *tnk* of china meeting china. "Should let'cha get back t'...not talkin' t'me. Whatever y'were doin'." She pushes her chair back from the table. "Been helpful."
"Ella," Gans begins, although he unfolds his legs and leans forward so he can return his tea to its saucer and the saucer to the table in turn, then rise from his chair. "Will you do it, do you think?"
"Dunno. En't done askin'." Ella shrugs and pushes her chair back in after she rises from it. Making her way to the door she adds, a little softer, "Prob'ly."
Gans is tall; slender; swift. He has long legs and makes use of them; no young woman is showing herself out of here unless she's leaving in a huff. He uses long strides to head for the door, intent to pass her up on the way there. "If you might like to discuss further after your other interviews," and here one of those gestures of overturned, welcoming hands might slightly suggest she pause a moment before the door to hear him out, "you are more than welcome. I would be happy to put on tea for you any time."
"'ll think on't," is Ella's reply to this offer. She sniffs again as she lingers by the door, waiting for it to be opened. "Nice'v'y," she notes, although her tone suggests that she doesn't quite believe the words even as she utters them. "Well. G'bye."
Gans' brows sink a little, but of course he opens the door for her. His farewell comes after a moment's blinking silence, and carries with it a certain sense of impulse: "Good luck, then, and fair skies."