Talking point.
The scoop: R'vain summons T'ral for a conversation about recent events, and the way they're being interpreted in various quarters. If you were to ask these two men what happened during the course of this conversation, they would give you entirely different answers. Oh, and uh, Ginny, my love? Run.
Weyrleader's Weyr
Rank allows slightly more comfortable furnishings than can be found elsewhere in the Weyr. The walls have been washed in warm medium hues of brown and beige and red; very little in the way of ornaments obscure their surfaces, though an odd piece of smoky burgundy art glass has been hung up above the mantel over the hearth. Area rugs in organic hues matched to the walls 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 is the off-alcove that serves as the Weyrleader's bedroom, dominated by a large bed with a trunk at its foot, a double wardrobe, and storage for riding gear and such. There are no plumbed baths in weyrs this high, but the staff provides hot water for a small tub when required.
A door leads out of the sitting area into the passageway out to the office and a curtained archway leads to the couch and ledge. The ledge is some distance above the bowl and accessible only from the air.
Contents:
R'vain
Ruvoth
Obvious Exits:
Northern Sky (NS) Out (O)
Days enough have passed that the sense of hysteria is gone. What remains is a deep, underlying tension; it makes the bronze's sending seem flattened, solemn, pained. Maybe Darageth felt a spark of awareness, the night of the keening; maybe Ruvoth almost, /almost/ reached for the Benden-born brown then. Maybe the racket he was making in his rider's mind only leaked. There is no trace of that burning brightness now. Ruvoth is dampened, pulled down by the weight of anxiety. It has nothing to do with what he asks for: that is easily said, and contains only urgency enough to convey importance while falling short of command. << Mine requests yours, when he is able and available. Soon. >>
'His' waits, after that, in his weyr. That detail may be acquired from Ruvoth, but it may be acquired also from just looking in from the ledge (where the bronze waits, leaving plenty of room for company to land)-- the drape is pulled open, though the other door (to the office) is closed, and just inside that drape R'vain stands, leaning against the couch where Ruvoth seems rarely perched. Where once a case of wine bottles perched instead. There's a dead flower laying there now.
Darageth so rarely speaks, though he rouses himself with respectable speed at the touch of the bronze's mind, offering a shadowy, wordless affirmative. Further confirmation of obedience comes when T'ral appears on his ledge a few moments later, still clad in his riding gear. His dragon still wears his straps, and after an automatic tug to check them, the bulky brownrider swings up. The trip down to Ruvoth's ledge provides insufficient time to order himself, and it's after he hits the ground that he pauses, one hand running through his close-cropped curls, the other coming up to rest for a moment on his dragon's shoulder. Then, with a nod for Ruvoth, he walks in past the drape, turning his head to look for the Weyrleader.
Ruvoth watches. His seeming is often a morose one; the dignity ascribed bronzes is rare, though not entirely unknown, in the Weyrleader's beast. A low rumble moves through him, conveyed into the ledge beneath his feet as he hunkers belly-to-stone.
R'vain shoves better upright from his back-bent leaning on the couch as T'ral comes through the drape. In leather from the waist down and something silkish from the waist up, therefore all systems normal, the Weyrleader puts on a grin that requires a little more care than it should. "Didn't have t'come running," he points out, "hope th'big lump made that clear. You got a little bit?"
"Yes sir, he did," T'ral replies, reaching up to begin unbuttoning his riding jacket. "Just finished with drills, rest of the day's our own." There's no query at all in the brownrider's tone -- he's treading a line. Respectful, but without his salute. Present, but not actively curious. But interested, fixing his gaze on the Weyrleader, as outside his brown subsides next to Ruvoth, head angled against the wall of the weyr.
"Well, I won't stop you from gettin' t'th'rest of /your day/ f'long," rumbles R'vain in a good-humor tone that is, this time, less forced. He lifts a paw and, turning inward toward the part of the weyr meant for his occupation rather than Ruvoth's, gestures a follow-along over his shoulder. "Just bend y'ear a bit. Or you bend mine. Don't matter. I'll getcha a drink, y'want."
"Right," T'ral agrees, and though behind R'vain's back his mouth moves, and makes the beginning of the word 'sir', in the end it dies away unspoken, in favour of a reflective expression. This, in turn, is chased away by one of the good-natured grins in which he specialises, produced and donned as he moves further into the weyr. "Whatever you've got, thanks."
Whatever R'vain has got may seem specially arranged for the occasion. It would seem so most because it is already decantered, awaiting on the desk, a single low glass beside it. The Weyrleader stalks to it without hesitation and dumps a generous splash into the glass. "Darageth been a'right? Aneleth?" He swipes up the glass and puts down the decanter with the other paw, turning to scope out where his guest's come in to or gone so he can swagger over and deliver the drink. "Since. How's th'weyrlings look, back home?"
"Fine, yes," T'ral replies, sauntering slowly across the weyr in the other man's wake, so it will only take a few steps to deliver his drink. He cooperates, by closing the gap. "Still pleased about the hatching, Ane knows she did well." The next question is considered, his head tipping to one side. "Looked like stunned kids and sticky baby dragons, last time I saw them. We didn't stay past the celebration that night." And abruptly, as though some thought has struck him, his mouth shuts, while his hand comes up for his drink.
R'vain hands off the glass, brows drawing as the brownrider clams up. It's a good time to make missteps, though, while the Weyrleader's distracted. And he is. A split-second's dedicated to looking at T'ral from beneath those heavy, ruddy brows, perplexed; then the big red man turns away, head shaking. "S'how they are," he agrees, low. "Goin' t'be good for Benden, sure. Good f'Aneleth. Good f'you." His paws find his pockets. They do not fit well there; he lodges the thumbs into them and lets the fingers hang, stalking for an armchair, drinkless. Then he stands there and looks down at the chair. Yup. Chair.
T'ral's prompt to pull a face as the red man turns away, frowning down at his drink. For a man who left Benden right after that party, he sure took a long time to show up at High Reaches. A couple of days. The brownrider doesn't seem to feel the urge to elaborate, and insead lifts his glass, swallowing a gulp before he moves after R'vain. His steps aren't quick -- as though what he's thinking slows him up. "Very good for Aneleth," he agrees. "I suppose the better odour Ginny's in, the more likely they are to take me back, when she goes." T'ral signally fails to sound as pleased about this as he should. Or indeed, pleased at all -- he opts, instead, for blandly non-committal.
Bland as T'ral's tone may be, the Weyrleader's expression does not grow milder for it. R'vain stares at the chair with an intensity that might endanger upholstery; the chair, for its part, struggles to resist bursting into flame. "Good f'you," he growls at the seatcushion, nose wrinkling. "She lookin' forward to it?"
"I don't know, sir," T'ral replies, cautiously reinserting his superior's title in there once more, coming to a halt behind his own chair, resting one large hand on the back of it without sitting. "We haven't talked about it much. By the time she's finished at Caucus, we'll both have been here longer than we were at Benden."
"Seems like a talkin' point," R'vain informs the chair before him, untucking the left paw from its pocket to flip off a little wriggle of fingers. "Suppose I understand avoiding it. Makes it awkward f'you either way, though." The other hand comes free and does the same wiggle, and the Weyrleader turns around, frowning in the brows still, but grinning a little in the teeth. "You 'specially."
Usually so quick to reply with something cheeky or cheerful, T'ral is this time silent for a moment, studying his drink. "Yes sir," he replies after that, with a slow nod. "It is." With an air of 'that's that', he lifts his head, and squares his shoulders. "Right now, I'm Reaches."
"Right now," R'vain points out, grinning a little wider and frowning absolutely no less, "Reaches is a bit of an up-in-th'-air, won't y'say?" A beat, and the grin vanishes; there's little joke here to be had and the red man gives up trying for something so far out of reach. "You'd be safer at Benden, both'you. How long she got in Caucus?"
As R'vain's grin goes, T'ral's appears -- his usual, good-natured offering, taking possession of his face once more as it settles back into where it belongs. "Sir, I got here just a couple of months after the start of the Pass. I've never seen Reaches anything but up-in-the-air." His broad shoulders lift, then fall. "I am where I am, and it so happens I'm where my friends are, and my -- Ginny is. We've kept safe so far." His brow creases in brief calculation, before he supplies his next sentence. "She's done three turns so far, sir, almost exactly. One to go."
"Your Ginny," R'vain says, after a beat. It's what he picks out of all of that, and it earns a grin-- and better. The Weyrleader does shake his head once, brusque, 'don't that beat all,' but then he rumbles and drops into the chair at last. "Siddown, I didn't mean t'bring you up here and make y'uncomfortable. Not, y'know, worse'n you should be. Wanted t'ask you what you make of th'latest, and what your Ginny makes of it," of /course/ there's a little emphasis on 'your Ginny,' because it is now her /title,/ and let T'ral live that down if he likes, "and y'friends, and th'like. Because D'ven, y'know." A rippling shrug, easier than it should be, goes through those broad shoulders as the man settles into his chair, knees wide, elbows on them. "He'd probably rather not say."
There's a brief, rueful glance down at T'ral's glass that might imply that the brownrider anticipates some trouble living this one down. he moves forward, easing down into his chair, leaning back against it. "It's a mess, is what we make of it. No different to anybody else, I don't think. Sending them back is harder, now, with Nenuith, and it's only a short term solution. She'll rise again, even if she takes a while." He shrugs, a broader, slower movement than R'vain's. "I haven't talked to D'ven about it, yet. He'll say the same, though. It's a mess. We don't know how they're treating their weyrlings." He's more confident in these opinions than in others that went before them -- now, finally, he has been told the purpose for his visit.
To T'ral's tactical summary, R'vain murmurs restrained agreement-- little more than the smallest of rumbles, noncommittal, in his throat. His eyes do narrow upon the brownrider over there, but what thoughts they have of what 'they' think are held somewhere behind that keenness. "S'true," he remarks, of how they're treating their weyrlings-- though to that issue he adds a slightly belated wince and a grumble, "'Cept that they're pushin' 'em hard." Too hard, by a particular count. "Ginella's /goin'/ t'finish out her fourth turn, s'far's she knows?"
"Except that," T'ral agrees, glancing down briefly -- a heartbeat of silence, for riders he didn't know. The next glance summons his gaze once more, and it lifts abruptly, brows going up. "Nobody said otherwise when we were back at Benden," he replies. "It's done her good, anybody can see that. If they didn't pull her out through all the rest of it, I don't think they will now. For what it's worth." His glass comes up, and he disposes of the rest of his drink in one long swallow.
"That was--" Sevens before /this./ But T'ral goes on, and his Weyrleader does not, in this space which is so many words away from the last 'sir' the conversation held, make good on that threat of interruption. That broad mouth presses flat, however, and when the brownrider drinks, the bronzerider looks away. His green focus finds the red glass above the cold hearth. "What kind of good? Didn't-- know her, really. Not t'say I do now. But even less, when she was fresh into classes."
T'ral has found the place again in which he speaks to the Weyrleader without that title, and despite the glance away, despite the mouth pressed flat, he replies, turning his empty glass over in his fingers, and watching as the single remaining drop rolls down one side to hit the rug. "She's more sure of herself, now. She's a better weyrwoman, simply put, though perhaps I shouldn't say it. I think she understands better that whether she wants this role or not, everybody else will conspire to put her in it, so she might as well make the best of it. And she does now, I think. Make the best she can of what she's given. She's happier."
"Weyrwomen, like most riders, got more t'learn than weyrlinghood'll teach 'em." There, right there, catch him while he's at it-- R'vain playing at wisdom. He shoves up out of the chair all at once, like by being physical he can close off the sudden attack of brain, and comes over to swing out a paw, offering it for the glass. "Happier's a good way t'get there. She talk t'M'arik when she's there?"
"That's true," T'ral replies, handing up his glass obediently. "Weyrwomen more than most. I had a shorter distance to go than her, from where we were -- what we were -- before we impressed." He turns his head, to study his red Weyrleader as his glass is surrendered. "She talks to everyone. Reaches is up-in-the-air, everyone has questions."
There's a twist of a smile for T'ral having less far to go than Benden's junior weyrwoman-- not most junior, of course, now-- but it's fleeting. R'vain takes the glass away to the desk to refill it. "Questions," he notes, along the way. Unrhetorically.
The brownrider interprets that one word, and after a moment, supplies an answer. "Next time, it'll be the same question as yours. What do we think of it, from where we sit. Last time, what did we think of Reaches. Of you, of the Weyrwoman, of D'ven's position, of the Caucus, of the wings, of everything. Everybody's curiosity is the same. Ginny has it far worse than I do." He looks back, to stdy the place above the hearth that held R'vain's attention before. "This clutch was the first time I've been back to Benden. She's had most of it."
Above the hearth hangs red glass, shaped loosely like a flat, broad bowl-- a salad plate, a soup bowl, sized for a giant-- smoky, dark, rich. It is a singular object; nothing else in the room exists so purely and plainly for decoration. "Don't mind, whatever y'want t'say 'bout me, of Roa, of D'ven. We'll stand f'ourselves. Caucus, f'itself. Th'wings, you know." R'vain pours drink again, then turns from the desk and comes back to return the glass, full, to the brownrider's care. "Maybe I should talk t'her."
T'ral studies the bowl, so long that it takes him a moment to realise that the glass is waiting for him, full, and he reaches out to take it a couple of seconds later than he ought to have done. "Thank you," he replies, looking up to the other man for a moment. "I'm sure she'd be happy to. Ginny's a Bendenite weyrwoman sent to Caucus, though. I'm a rider in Reaches' wings, and to my mind, there's a difference. When we're asked those questions."
R'vain looks down at the brownrider, his wingrider, for a moment, expression fallen blank; his mouth sags a little in the middle, teeth barely glinting between loose lips. The moment is short. In a snap he grins, inclines his head, lets go of the glass and steps back. "S'why I realized I probably ought t'talk t'her." He turns and prowls down his chair again, the topic apparently resolved thus, as far as he's concerned; he drops into a seat and stretches out his legs this time, crossed at the ankle. His paws drape over the chair-arms. "Course, y'Ginny," her new name, "has t'watch what she tells /me,/ bein' Benden's weyrwoman and all."
R'vain is treated to a steady glance across the rim of T'ral's glass, as the brownrider at least lifts it to his lips, though there's only a small corresponding swallow. "I suppose she does," he replies, as the glass comes down. "I haven't talked to her about it." Those words are more neutral than any before -- they take on an air of wariness, in the absence of T'ral's default good-naturedness.
The Weyrleader's freckled nose wrinkles and smooths in a flash-- a gesture, seeming, more than a response. Dismissive, a little bit distasteful, an agent against wariness. "I ought t'ask her this, see," he explains, rumbling, lifting a paw from its drape to open a palm. This is an example, offered. "Whether M'arik expects her t'answer things 'bout Reaches. Rather he asked me. Realize it don't always work that way. But if I did ask her--" The paw turns back over and flops back down on the chair's arm. "Well, it wouldn't be right t'ask her in th'first place."
"With respect, any man who sends a student to Caucus, and doesn't ask him -- or her -- what he makes of Reaches, and of every student in it, and of all the rest of us, is a fool. M'arik will ask her, and he'll ask the bronzes he sends, and so will all the other Weyrleaders as well." T'ral cuts himself off abruptly, and looks down from the lion opposite him to his glass. "If he values his envoy's opinion, at any rate." A beat of silence. "It took M'arik a long time to start asking Ginny what she thinks." Those words are a contradiction, careful, yet rushed, just a fraction of a degree faster than they should be, his Bitran accent abruptly clipped. "I'm not a Caucus student, but perhaps that affects the answers he gets. I don't know."
To what T'ral says first, of Caucus and fools who might send students there, R'vain replies again with a murmur, a little rumble, an agreement that can barely be pinned to that name. It cuts off as abruptly as the brownrider's words do; when T'ral falters-- or simply stops-- his Weyrleader attends, some times more obviously than others. This time it becomes obvious slowly, and might be mistaken for attention to the things the Benden-made rider says next, rather than to the rider himself. Still, they happen. R'vain's eyes narrow once more; his nose wrinkles and his upper lip twitches; he leans slowly forward and draws back his boots toward the base of his chair until his knees are parted and he can drape a paw over one. He bends forward a great deal, then, so that his pose is one of deep interest by the time T'ral's focus might shift forward again. Two beats in silence after the other man seems through, then R'vain just allows, gruff, "Might."
It's as far as the brownrider's going, at least without a further prompt than that one word. His brown eyes flick up, take in R'vain's new posture, and then shift away to the red glass. His own glass, smaller, and mercifully full, comes up for a mouthful, in the wake of which he speaks, briefly. "Yes."
"Yeah." R'vain roughens up that statement and tosses it back in a rumble, but it's rhetorical. It serves only to clarify what he said a second before, his
previous monosyllabic response-- by making plain that it is not a question. Not any longer, at least. Then he pushes up out of the chair and stalks over toward the desk, toward the bottle, without T'ral's glass. "R'hal took th'Weyrleaders word pretty much like what you've probably heard. Lord Sorel asking th'questions, doing th'right thing, none of us want t'hurt anyone innocent, and people at Five Mines t'consider, and Nabol's lands like they are, etcet'ra."
He plants a hand on the desk and leans into it, looking at the decanter. He's grinning; when did it happen? "If M'arik don't ask me I figure he'll ask someone else. Th'only one who will. Anything you need t'know 'case it's you?"
T'ral listens, and eases forward in his chair, to drain his glass while his gaze tracks the Weyrleader's retreat. He rises from his seat, making that slow turn and rise into one continuous movement, and takes the step sideways necessary to set his glass down on the mantlepiece -- above the hearth, below the red glass. "No sir," he replies, tugging his jacket down as he moves away from his chair, and back towards the bronzerider. Then, after a visible hesitation, "As
I said though, I'm Reaches. I answer to my own Weyrleader." Another two steps forward, and his fingers pause at the fastenings on his jacket, ready to fasten them, though unmoving.
R'vain's head, bowed a little in his consideration of the decanter, swings up. A moment, then he presses up from his paw, straightening before he can tuck his thumb into his pocket. "As y'said," agrees T'ral's Weyrleader, a bit grinning. "G'wan. Don't tell 'er I'm coming 'less y'think it's better. I wouldn't make her wonder, m'self." A jerk of his head, a whip of a nod-- it'll do, for dismissal. The red man turns inward, facing his weyr. He puts his arms up after a moment, stretching through a yawn. In so doing he leaves the brownrider to show himself out, past the dead flower, the drape, and the dragon.
Weyrleader's Weyr
Rank allows slightly more comfortable furnishings than can be found elsewhere in the Weyr. The walls have been washed in warm medium hues of brown and beige and red; very little in the way of ornaments obscure their surfaces, though an odd piece of smoky burgundy art glass has been hung up above the mantel over the hearth. Area rugs in organic hues matched to the walls 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 is the off-alcove that serves as the Weyrleader's bedroom, dominated by a large bed with a trunk at its foot, a double wardrobe, and storage for riding gear and such. There are no plumbed baths in weyrs this high, but the staff provides hot water for a small tub when required.
A door leads out of the sitting area into the passageway out to the office and a curtained archway leads to the couch and ledge. The ledge is some distance above the bowl and accessible only from the air.
Contents:
R'vain
Ruvoth
Obvious Exits:
Northern Sky (NS) Out (O)
Days enough have passed that the sense of hysteria is gone. What remains is a deep, underlying tension; it makes the bronze's sending seem flattened, solemn, pained. Maybe Darageth felt a spark of awareness, the night of the keening; maybe Ruvoth almost, /almost/ reached for the Benden-born brown then. Maybe the racket he was making in his rider's mind only leaked. There is no trace of that burning brightness now. Ruvoth is dampened, pulled down by the weight of anxiety. It has nothing to do with what he asks for: that is easily said, and contains only urgency enough to convey importance while falling short of command. << Mine requests yours, when he is able and available. Soon. >>
'His' waits, after that, in his weyr. That detail may be acquired from Ruvoth, but it may be acquired also from just looking in from the ledge (where the bronze waits, leaving plenty of room for company to land)-- the drape is pulled open, though the other door (to the office) is closed, and just inside that drape R'vain stands, leaning against the couch where Ruvoth seems rarely perched. Where once a case of wine bottles perched instead. There's a dead flower laying there now.
Darageth so rarely speaks, though he rouses himself with respectable speed at the touch of the bronze's mind, offering a shadowy, wordless affirmative. Further confirmation of obedience comes when T'ral appears on his ledge a few moments later, still clad in his riding gear. His dragon still wears his straps, and after an automatic tug to check them, the bulky brownrider swings up. The trip down to Ruvoth's ledge provides insufficient time to order himself, and it's after he hits the ground that he pauses, one hand running through his close-cropped curls, the other coming up to rest for a moment on his dragon's shoulder. Then, with a nod for Ruvoth, he walks in past the drape, turning his head to look for the Weyrleader.
Ruvoth watches. His seeming is often a morose one; the dignity ascribed bronzes is rare, though not entirely unknown, in the Weyrleader's beast. A low rumble moves through him, conveyed into the ledge beneath his feet as he hunkers belly-to-stone.
R'vain shoves better upright from his back-bent leaning on the couch as T'ral comes through the drape. In leather from the waist down and something silkish from the waist up, therefore all systems normal, the Weyrleader puts on a grin that requires a little more care than it should. "Didn't have t'come running," he points out, "hope th'big lump made that clear. You got a little bit?"
"Yes sir, he did," T'ral replies, reaching up to begin unbuttoning his riding jacket. "Just finished with drills, rest of the day's our own." There's no query at all in the brownrider's tone -- he's treading a line. Respectful, but without his salute. Present, but not actively curious. But interested, fixing his gaze on the Weyrleader, as outside his brown subsides next to Ruvoth, head angled against the wall of the weyr.
"Well, I won't stop you from gettin' t'th'rest of /your day/ f'long," rumbles R'vain in a good-humor tone that is, this time, less forced. He lifts a paw and, turning inward toward the part of the weyr meant for his occupation rather than Ruvoth's, gestures a follow-along over his shoulder. "Just bend y'ear a bit. Or you bend mine. Don't matter. I'll getcha a drink, y'want."
"Right," T'ral agrees, and though behind R'vain's back his mouth moves, and makes the beginning of the word 'sir', in the end it dies away unspoken, in favour of a reflective expression. This, in turn, is chased away by one of the good-natured grins in which he specialises, produced and donned as he moves further into the weyr. "Whatever you've got, thanks."
Whatever R'vain has got may seem specially arranged for the occasion. It would seem so most because it is already decantered, awaiting on the desk, a single low glass beside it. The Weyrleader stalks to it without hesitation and dumps a generous splash into the glass. "Darageth been a'right? Aneleth?" He swipes up the glass and puts down the decanter with the other paw, turning to scope out where his guest's come in to or gone so he can swagger over and deliver the drink. "Since. How's th'weyrlings look, back home?"
"Fine, yes," T'ral replies, sauntering slowly across the weyr in the other man's wake, so it will only take a few steps to deliver his drink. He cooperates, by closing the gap. "Still pleased about the hatching, Ane knows she did well." The next question is considered, his head tipping to one side. "Looked like stunned kids and sticky baby dragons, last time I saw them. We didn't stay past the celebration that night." And abruptly, as though some thought has struck him, his mouth shuts, while his hand comes up for his drink.
R'vain hands off the glass, brows drawing as the brownrider clams up. It's a good time to make missteps, though, while the Weyrleader's distracted. And he is. A split-second's dedicated to looking at T'ral from beneath those heavy, ruddy brows, perplexed; then the big red man turns away, head shaking. "S'how they are," he agrees, low. "Goin' t'be good for Benden, sure. Good f'Aneleth. Good f'you." His paws find his pockets. They do not fit well there; he lodges the thumbs into them and lets the fingers hang, stalking for an armchair, drinkless. Then he stands there and looks down at the chair. Yup. Chair.
T'ral's prompt to pull a face as the red man turns away, frowning down at his drink. For a man who left Benden right after that party, he sure took a long time to show up at High Reaches. A couple of days. The brownrider doesn't seem to feel the urge to elaborate, and insead lifts his glass, swallowing a gulp before he moves after R'vain. His steps aren't quick -- as though what he's thinking slows him up. "Very good for Aneleth," he agrees. "I suppose the better odour Ginny's in, the more likely they are to take me back, when she goes." T'ral signally fails to sound as pleased about this as he should. Or indeed, pleased at all -- he opts, instead, for blandly non-committal.
Bland as T'ral's tone may be, the Weyrleader's expression does not grow milder for it. R'vain stares at the chair with an intensity that might endanger upholstery; the chair, for its part, struggles to resist bursting into flame. "Good f'you," he growls at the seatcushion, nose wrinkling. "She lookin' forward to it?"
"I don't know, sir," T'ral replies, cautiously reinserting his superior's title in there once more, coming to a halt behind his own chair, resting one large hand on the back of it without sitting. "We haven't talked about it much. By the time she's finished at Caucus, we'll both have been here longer than we were at Benden."
"Seems like a talkin' point," R'vain informs the chair before him, untucking the left paw from its pocket to flip off a little wriggle of fingers. "Suppose I understand avoiding it. Makes it awkward f'you either way, though." The other hand comes free and does the same wiggle, and the Weyrleader turns around, frowning in the brows still, but grinning a little in the teeth. "You 'specially."
Usually so quick to reply with something cheeky or cheerful, T'ral is this time silent for a moment, studying his drink. "Yes sir," he replies after that, with a slow nod. "It is." With an air of 'that's that', he lifts his head, and squares his shoulders. "Right now, I'm Reaches."
"Right now," R'vain points out, grinning a little wider and frowning absolutely no less, "Reaches is a bit of an up-in-th'-air, won't y'say?" A beat, and the grin vanishes; there's little joke here to be had and the red man gives up trying for something so far out of reach. "You'd be safer at Benden, both'you. How long she got in Caucus?"
As R'vain's grin goes, T'ral's appears -- his usual, good-natured offering, taking possession of his face once more as it settles back into where it belongs. "Sir, I got here just a couple of months after the start of the Pass. I've never seen Reaches anything but up-in-the-air." His broad shoulders lift, then fall. "I am where I am, and it so happens I'm where my friends are, and my -- Ginny is. We've kept safe so far." His brow creases in brief calculation, before he supplies his next sentence. "She's done three turns so far, sir, almost exactly. One to go."
"Your Ginny," R'vain says, after a beat. It's what he picks out of all of that, and it earns a grin-- and better. The Weyrleader does shake his head once, brusque, 'don't that beat all,' but then he rumbles and drops into the chair at last. "Siddown, I didn't mean t'bring you up here and make y'uncomfortable. Not, y'know, worse'n you should be. Wanted t'ask you what you make of th'latest, and what your Ginny makes of it," of /course/ there's a little emphasis on 'your Ginny,' because it is now her /title,/ and let T'ral live that down if he likes, "and y'friends, and th'like. Because D'ven, y'know." A rippling shrug, easier than it should be, goes through those broad shoulders as the man settles into his chair, knees wide, elbows on them. "He'd probably rather not say."
There's a brief, rueful glance down at T'ral's glass that might imply that the brownrider anticipates some trouble living this one down. he moves forward, easing down into his chair, leaning back against it. "It's a mess, is what we make of it. No different to anybody else, I don't think. Sending them back is harder, now, with Nenuith, and it's only a short term solution. She'll rise again, even if she takes a while." He shrugs, a broader, slower movement than R'vain's. "I haven't talked to D'ven about it, yet. He'll say the same, though. It's a mess. We don't know how they're treating their weyrlings." He's more confident in these opinions than in others that went before them -- now, finally, he has been told the purpose for his visit.
To T'ral's tactical summary, R'vain murmurs restrained agreement-- little more than the smallest of rumbles, noncommittal, in his throat. His eyes do narrow upon the brownrider over there, but what thoughts they have of what 'they' think are held somewhere behind that keenness. "S'true," he remarks, of how they're treating their weyrlings-- though to that issue he adds a slightly belated wince and a grumble, "'Cept that they're pushin' 'em hard." Too hard, by a particular count. "Ginella's /goin'/ t'finish out her fourth turn, s'far's she knows?"
"Except that," T'ral agrees, glancing down briefly -- a heartbeat of silence, for riders he didn't know. The next glance summons his gaze once more, and it lifts abruptly, brows going up. "Nobody said otherwise when we were back at Benden," he replies. "It's done her good, anybody can see that. If they didn't pull her out through all the rest of it, I don't think they will now. For what it's worth." His glass comes up, and he disposes of the rest of his drink in one long swallow.
"That was--" Sevens before /this./ But T'ral goes on, and his Weyrleader does not, in this space which is so many words away from the last 'sir' the conversation held, make good on that threat of interruption. That broad mouth presses flat, however, and when the brownrider drinks, the bronzerider looks away. His green focus finds the red glass above the cold hearth. "What kind of good? Didn't-- know her, really. Not t'say I do now. But even less, when she was fresh into classes."
T'ral has found the place again in which he speaks to the Weyrleader without that title, and despite the glance away, despite the mouth pressed flat, he replies, turning his empty glass over in his fingers, and watching as the single remaining drop rolls down one side to hit the rug. "She's more sure of herself, now. She's a better weyrwoman, simply put, though perhaps I shouldn't say it. I think she understands better that whether she wants this role or not, everybody else will conspire to put her in it, so she might as well make the best of it. And she does now, I think. Make the best she can of what she's given. She's happier."
"Weyrwomen, like most riders, got more t'learn than weyrlinghood'll teach 'em." There, right there, catch him while he's at it-- R'vain playing at wisdom. He shoves up out of the chair all at once, like by being physical he can close off the sudden attack of brain, and comes over to swing out a paw, offering it for the glass. "Happier's a good way t'get there. She talk t'M'arik when she's there?"
"That's true," T'ral replies, handing up his glass obediently. "Weyrwomen more than most. I had a shorter distance to go than her, from where we were -- what we were -- before we impressed." He turns his head, to study his red Weyrleader as his glass is surrendered. "She talks to everyone. Reaches is up-in-the-air, everyone has questions."
There's a twist of a smile for T'ral having less far to go than Benden's junior weyrwoman-- not most junior, of course, now-- but it's fleeting. R'vain takes the glass away to the desk to refill it. "Questions," he notes, along the way. Unrhetorically.
The brownrider interprets that one word, and after a moment, supplies an answer. "Next time, it'll be the same question as yours. What do we think of it, from where we sit. Last time, what did we think of Reaches. Of you, of the Weyrwoman, of D'ven's position, of the Caucus, of the wings, of everything. Everybody's curiosity is the same. Ginny has it far worse than I do." He looks back, to stdy the place above the hearth that held R'vain's attention before. "This clutch was the first time I've been back to Benden. She's had most of it."
Above the hearth hangs red glass, shaped loosely like a flat, broad bowl-- a salad plate, a soup bowl, sized for a giant-- smoky, dark, rich. It is a singular object; nothing else in the room exists so purely and plainly for decoration. "Don't mind, whatever y'want t'say 'bout me, of Roa, of D'ven. We'll stand f'ourselves. Caucus, f'itself. Th'wings, you know." R'vain pours drink again, then turns from the desk and comes back to return the glass, full, to the brownrider's care. "Maybe I should talk t'her."
T'ral studies the bowl, so long that it takes him a moment to realise that the glass is waiting for him, full, and he reaches out to take it a couple of seconds later than he ought to have done. "Thank you," he replies, looking up to the other man for a moment. "I'm sure she'd be happy to. Ginny's a Bendenite weyrwoman sent to Caucus, though. I'm a rider in Reaches' wings, and to my mind, there's a difference. When we're asked those questions."
R'vain looks down at the brownrider, his wingrider, for a moment, expression fallen blank; his mouth sags a little in the middle, teeth barely glinting between loose lips. The moment is short. In a snap he grins, inclines his head, lets go of the glass and steps back. "S'why I realized I probably ought t'talk t'her." He turns and prowls down his chair again, the topic apparently resolved thus, as far as he's concerned; he drops into a seat and stretches out his legs this time, crossed at the ankle. His paws drape over the chair-arms. "Course, y'Ginny," her new name, "has t'watch what she tells /me,/ bein' Benden's weyrwoman and all."
R'vain is treated to a steady glance across the rim of T'ral's glass, as the brownrider at least lifts it to his lips, though there's only a small corresponding swallow. "I suppose she does," he replies, as the glass comes down. "I haven't talked to her about it." Those words are more neutral than any before -- they take on an air of wariness, in the absence of T'ral's default good-naturedness.
The Weyrleader's freckled nose wrinkles and smooths in a flash-- a gesture, seeming, more than a response. Dismissive, a little bit distasteful, an agent against wariness. "I ought t'ask her this, see," he explains, rumbling, lifting a paw from its drape to open a palm. This is an example, offered. "Whether M'arik expects her t'answer things 'bout Reaches. Rather he asked me. Realize it don't always work that way. But if I did ask her--" The paw turns back over and flops back down on the chair's arm. "Well, it wouldn't be right t'ask her in th'first place."
"With respect, any man who sends a student to Caucus, and doesn't ask him -- or her -- what he makes of Reaches, and of every student in it, and of all the rest of us, is a fool. M'arik will ask her, and he'll ask the bronzes he sends, and so will all the other Weyrleaders as well." T'ral cuts himself off abruptly, and looks down from the lion opposite him to his glass. "If he values his envoy's opinion, at any rate." A beat of silence. "It took M'arik a long time to start asking Ginny what she thinks." Those words are a contradiction, careful, yet rushed, just a fraction of a degree faster than they should be, his Bitran accent abruptly clipped. "I'm not a Caucus student, but perhaps that affects the answers he gets. I don't know."
To what T'ral says first, of Caucus and fools who might send students there, R'vain replies again with a murmur, a little rumble, an agreement that can barely be pinned to that name. It cuts off as abruptly as the brownrider's words do; when T'ral falters-- or simply stops-- his Weyrleader attends, some times more obviously than others. This time it becomes obvious slowly, and might be mistaken for attention to the things the Benden-made rider says next, rather than to the rider himself. Still, they happen. R'vain's eyes narrow once more; his nose wrinkles and his upper lip twitches; he leans slowly forward and draws back his boots toward the base of his chair until his knees are parted and he can drape a paw over one. He bends forward a great deal, then, so that his pose is one of deep interest by the time T'ral's focus might shift forward again. Two beats in silence after the other man seems through, then R'vain just allows, gruff, "Might."
It's as far as the brownrider's going, at least without a further prompt than that one word. His brown eyes flick up, take in R'vain's new posture, and then shift away to the red glass. His own glass, smaller, and mercifully full, comes up for a mouthful, in the wake of which he speaks, briefly. "Yes."
"Yeah." R'vain roughens up that statement and tosses it back in a rumble, but it's rhetorical. It serves only to clarify what he said a second before, his
previous monosyllabic response-- by making plain that it is not a question. Not any longer, at least. Then he pushes up out of the chair and stalks over toward the desk, toward the bottle, without T'ral's glass. "R'hal took th'Weyrleaders word pretty much like what you've probably heard. Lord Sorel asking th'questions, doing th'right thing, none of us want t'hurt anyone innocent, and people at Five Mines t'consider, and Nabol's lands like they are, etcet'ra."
He plants a hand on the desk and leans into it, looking at the decanter. He's grinning; when did it happen? "If M'arik don't ask me I figure he'll ask someone else. Th'only one who will. Anything you need t'know 'case it's you?"
T'ral listens, and eases forward in his chair, to drain his glass while his gaze tracks the Weyrleader's retreat. He rises from his seat, making that slow turn and rise into one continuous movement, and takes the step sideways necessary to set his glass down on the mantlepiece -- above the hearth, below the red glass. "No sir," he replies, tugging his jacket down as he moves away from his chair, and back towards the bronzerider. Then, after a visible hesitation, "As
I said though, I'm Reaches. I answer to my own Weyrleader." Another two steps forward, and his fingers pause at the fastenings on his jacket, ready to fasten them, though unmoving.
R'vain's head, bowed a little in his consideration of the decanter, swings up. A moment, then he presses up from his paw, straightening before he can tuck his thumb into his pocket. "As y'said," agrees T'ral's Weyrleader, a bit grinning. "G'wan. Don't tell 'er I'm coming 'less y'think it's better. I wouldn't make her wonder, m'self." A jerk of his head, a whip of a nod-- it'll do, for dismissal. The red man turns inward, facing his weyr. He puts his arms up after a moment, stretching through a yawn. In so doing he leaves the brownrider to show himself out, past the dead flower, the drape, and the dragon.