12/24/01
Logfile from reiko

Quiet Corners
Thick woolen tapestries dull the noise from the rest of the caverns, turning this well-lit little room into a welcome escape. The stairs up place it against the bowl wall somewhere above the living caverns, carpeted against the winters chill or left as cool stone floor in summer. Some high and narrow windows can be opened to the world outside, or secured with their heavy metal-sided shutters and blue-threaded curtains.
Glowlight gleams, brightening the well-cushioned stone couches and lighting the weyr residents half-finished projects: knitting undone, sewing only started, leathers being worked soft, and even a hide of sketches or half-finished Thread-chart spread out across one of the tables.
Curled up amongst the baskets of wool are Sahara, Eclipse, Zauberer, and Samedi.
Lis is here.

Lis lingers in the shadows afforded by dying glows, not yet replaced by the morning shift. The barest light picks out human features: a forehead, a nose, cheekbones and chin. Otherwise, everything is submerged in darkness, save for the shaft of light spilling over the knuckles of fingers cupping a mug which she slowly brings towards the void of her mouth.

Reiko makes her way up the stairs, klah pitcher in one hand, mug dangling from the fingers of the other, her step none too quiet despite the rather early hour. Someone's /awake/. She moves through the shadows with practiced ease, being quite familiar with these quiet corners by now, settling herself into a comfy sofa with a sigh and filling her mug at long last. As she lifts the mug to her lips, that shaft of light catches her eye, and she squints a bit until she makes out.. "Lis... morning." She offers a twisted little smile which may or may not be visible, depending on the angle of the light. "How are you?"

"Been better," Lis rasps, her unused voice certainly sounding as she says. Her klah mug disappears into the shadows again for some time, and afterwards her voice does sound a shade more human. "Thanks for bringing up the klah. I knew I'd need some eventually, and I really didn't have the heart to get any." Melancholy, much?

Reiko arches a brow and pushes the pitcher across the table toward Lis. Just because she hadn't /intended/ to share doesn't mean there's not /enough/ to share. "Something wrong?" she ventures carefully, curling back into the couch with her mug cradled between both hands.

Lis pours herself a polite ammount, keeping a careful eye on the level of liquid in the klah pot as she fills her own mug. Pouring not to much nor too little, she pushes the pitcher back towards the middle of the table and replies, "No more than usual. I've just had better days. Worse, too."

Reiko nods, unwilling to press the issue. "Well, it's early yet," she observes briskly, her fingers drumming idly on the sides of her mug. "Perhaps it'll improve. The fog could lift... the sun could shine..." Her voice trails off, and she shrugs indolently, fixing a wicked smirk on the Lis-shadow. "Or not."

"I think," Lis declares slowly, stretching her words for emphasis and time to pick out new ones, "that a foggy day would be just wonderful. They've been too sunny lately, don't you think?" A passing drudge finally gets around to fixing her glowbaskets, muttering to herself worriedly, and the greenrider squints in frustration at now being appropriately-lit.

Reiko arches a brow, leaning forward to top off her mug. "Not really," she says mildly, ignoring both the drudge and the change of lighting. "Winter's altogether too dark, too long, and too cold." She curls back again. "A little light and warmth will do all of us good. Maybe even you," she adds teasingly, a bit of a gleam lighting her emerald eyes.

Lis snorts cynically, lasping into silence for lack of anything constructive to say, not to mention her rapidly-cooling drink. Cold klah is never good klah. "Any wagers as to what'll come out of Cagwith's eggs? No gold, of course, but..." At least it's a less-morose subject than before, even if a number of those eggs are an unholy shade of pink.

Reiko cares very little about the temperature of her klah... or the amount of time it's spent congealing on the night hearth. The fact that the beverage in her pitcher is drinkable at all is something of a minor miracle. "What were there... fifteen? Sixteen?" She'd watched the clutching, but of course given it about the same amount of attention as most things, and forgotten the details nearly as quickly. "How about another clutch of blues? That should please Pyrene." She slumps deeper into the couch then, her lips twisting in a sly little smirk. "I don't know that I'd risk marks on it, though."

"Aye, me neither." Lis gusts a sigh to follow her word, slumped shoulders and chest heaving slightly with the effort. "Sixteen," she corrects, having noted the number of such monstrosities. "All blues, but a bronze from the dancing furball egg," is her prophecy. "Bronzes always come out of distinctly-patterend eggs."

Reiko laughs. "Dancing furball? That'd be the one that wasn't pink, I take it." Weren't they all pink? She shakes her head slowly. "I didn't know they /came/ in pink. But I haven't seen all that many clutchings." Most notably, the one that spawned Cerdith.. the others, she didn't pay much attention to. "I'd think there'd be a green or two, though." If only for someone new to chase. Ahem.

Lis rolls her eyes ceilingwards as she recollects: "I had a red and white one in my clutch. And one that was pinkish-yellow-white-green. Like little candies." The comment about greens causes the rider to quirk lips into a sickly twin of a smile, and she agrees, spinning her klah mug between her fingers. "There always are. Mostly because we're expendable."

Reiko doesn't know quite what to make of that last remark, as evidenced by the thoughtful frown that creases her features momentarily. "Is that the reason?" she muses, glancing up to fix a rather searching gaze on Lis and blinking at the greenrider's expression. "Expendable... to whom?" Certainly green dragons are a very necessary part of a fighting wing, and Reiko's never been terribly skilled at deciphering unspoken implications.

Oh, they're important, alright - but not as individuals. "Expendable because there's so many of us. To lose any rider is a tragedy, but there's more greens than any other kind of dragon. Lose a queen, all of Pern mourns. Lose a green, and everyone's very sad for a moment." Teeth bare in a strained sort of grin. "Greenriders are just around to get into trouble; eventually we'll die off and be replaced."

Lis said that.

Reiko eyes Lis evenly. "Queens repopulate the Weyrs," she says reasonably. "Of course losing one is a tragedy." For all of Pern, in fact. "You think Pern would mourn Cerdith's loss? Or even Dsalth's?" Although quite a number of people in and around Reaches would miss that old brown, it certainly wouldn't rate as a Pern-wide Tragedy if he were lost. She shakes her head, setting her mug down with an emphatic little bang. "Anyway, greenriders aren't that much trouble." In fact, considering the rumors and legends, Reiko might be feeling just a bit shortchanged. Or perhaps she's just been looking in the wrong places. Or... not looking, as the case may be.

"Oh, really? Have you not been around the weyr lately?" Lis raises one brow as her voice pitches higher, sarcasm straining along with the note. "We're a bunch of immoral adulterous hussies, spoiling every man we touch and spreading corruption to the holds we vist." The words taste bitter in her mouth as she speaks them, so she quickly gulps down a mouthful of klah.

Reiko smirks lightly, unfazed by the outburst. "And what's being said about blueriders, pray tell?" She stretches indolently and settles back again. "Nevermind. I'm sure it's even less pleasant. If it's not true, why do you let it bother you? And if it is..." she shrugs lightly, letting her words trail off and reclaiming her nearly empty mug.

Lis grips her mug with whitened knuckles as she tells Reiko flatly, dispassionately, "It is." She wants to see Reiko point out those alluded-to consequences of it being so.

Reiko drains her mug and lowers it to her lap, then takes another look at Lis, her expression rather more amused than shocked or censurious. "Then it is," she says simply. "If I don't care to change they way I am--" and truthfully, she doesn't-- "I can hardly complain if people feel like gossiping and making assumptions." She lowers her voice a bit, but not that piercing gaze. "And if who you are makes you unhappy, change it. You can't have it both ways."

"Lovely words," Lis drawls, "but they don't really /mean/ much when you get down to it. Or tell you what to do about it, either." In frustration, the greenrider childishly wings her mug across the table, but friction trips it and sends it rolling in a circle before it can go over the edge.

Maybe it's because Reiko has been practicing exactly this philosophy since she left her home hold, that it seems so simple and obvious to her. She watches the mug-flinging operation without comment, holding her tongue until the last echo stops clattering about the room. "Do about what?" she asks at last, her voice quiet. "Changing? Surely you haven't been the same person your entire life." A vague memory tickles at the edges of her consciousness--a sense of deja vu, perhaps, involving discussing the Ghosts of Lis Past? She can't quite put a finger on it.

And to think, this is someone who was raising three children, at one point. Good thing Lis dumped them on the nannies. "Oh, of course not. It's been a gradual degredation of my character over the Turns, and I've just reached a new low points. Who knows how many more lie in store?" And they probably /have/ had this conversation; Lis is an awfully complaintive person.

It was probably a different conversation. In any case, Reiko isn't likely to remember unless the complaining is either constant or violent. Such things stand out, after all, even to the unobservant. "I see," she says mildly. "Just now? This minute?" There's that amused little smirk again... but it dissolves momentarily into a vaguely perplexed expression. "I don't see what's so complicated. If what you're doing makes you unhappy, don't do it." She's probably underestimating the effect of being lifemated to a dragon like Alymath.

"It's not that simple!" Lis explains in exhasperation, her head finding a cradle in her waiting hands. "I /do/ things, and regret them, and then forget the regret and do more things. And they get worse and worse, over the Turns. Breaking rules by accident, then on purpose, then spurning lovers, getting knocked up by a fling and finally, planned adultery!" That's the latest sin that's sent Lis into a funk. "It's delightfully sordid, isn't it?"

Reiko considers that for a moment without any visible reaction to the outburst. "I suppose I don't let myself regret many things," she observes quietly, setting her empty mug on the table. Nor does she seem particularly affected by the relative sordidness of Lis' extracurricular activities. "It helps, I suppose, that I don't think too much about them." One shoulder rolls in a lazy shrug, and she curls back on the couch, drawing her knees up to her chest and looping her arms loosely about them. "It's nothing that unusual, really, is it? I thought only Holders were caught up with chastity and monogamy." One reason this Holdbred girl moved herself to the Weyr in the first place.

Lis points a finger at herself as if to say, 'Holdbred, right here'. "I suppose you're right, though..." she sighs, bowing to Reiko's superior wisdow; heck, she's ready to bowl to anyone's superior wisdom right now. "Just carry our heads high and tell the nosy people to char it, eh?"

"More or less." Reiko's lips curve in a twisted little smile, and her tone is wry. "Or just ignore them. I do." She drops her feet to the floor then and pushes herself off the comfortable couch with a reluctant air. Just before she turns to leave, though, she pauses to face Lis with an almost curious expression. "Did you enjoy it?" This presumably being the planned adultery.

"Er..." Lis was caught off-guard by that last question, and finally stops to ponder the act, rather than its social implications. "Kind of... yeah. It was terribly exciting." And she means 'terribly' in the sense of 'terrible', rather than 'very'.

Reiko's smile warms by several degrees at the admission. "Best kind," she purrs, giving the greenrider a casually appraising once-over. "Enjoy it, love. Nobody expects a greenrider to be chaste... or if they do, they're fooling themselves." And with that little bit of wisdom, she slips back down the stairs and back to whatever occupies her free time.

Lis is comforted, in some odd way, by Reiko's approval of her indescretion, and grins sheepishly under the younger woman's gaze. "Thanks," she calls after the rapidly-disappearing bluerider, settling back with considerably fewer black clouds on her mind.