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 Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 10:40 am
She'd lost count of the days. They had never meant anything to her, but today she'd woken up and realized she'd lost count of the days. It had started as a mere thought and had grown in the way a paranoia would. With every step, every diluted, convoluted and spat out word, another layer of realization had piled on. Dread had formed by the time she'd thrown the first seed in the ground, and by the end of a candlemark, she'd felt more like throwing up than working.
She'd lost count of the sharded, ********, days.
Makereth's voice in her head had been no more than a haze. Reality had seeped out and gone away, like the rocks bled slowly into the river and left silt all along the floodplains.
And that's where she was now. The sun was lingering, teasing her, and everything was red. It was light fit perfect for a painting, with the clouds lingering overhead and the light breaking through only on the horizon.
Makereth was next to her, that faint grasp on the day, and the shoes that Avery had given her were behind her as she'd taken them off to dip her feet into the cool water. It hadn't been until she'd gone back to her place of stay that she'd realized that She was what this was all about. Uuni did not want to be at Ghenza for an eternity.
And shardit . . .
Why did she have to give me those stupid Faranth damned boots anyway? All they do is remind me of her. She probably planned it out that way, the skank.
Are you angry? If emotions were colors, you'd be a rainbow. There was a bump to her right shoulder as the blue rested his head in her lap.
He shouldn't have to deal with this. What would she feel like if Makereth went off and fell for some dragon? Perhaps a bit jealous.
It went on like this, for a while. Each time the curses filled with more vile words and the dread settled in a little bit further under her skin. By the time she broke down, her head was buried in her dragon's neck, Makereth's eyes were swirling yellow and grey, and her curses had left mental contact and gotten ******** this place. ******** Luci, ******** sharding D'astel for dying and ******** the plague. And ******** how Avery kisses like the Faranth be damned plague, too." She should have come. Avery had left with her to High Reaches, she should have come to Ghenza, too. Obviously, she wanted Uuni to suffer in this hell hole. That was her plan all along, of course! Nevermind the fact that Uuni would not have let her go with her even if Avery had wanted to.
I do not know what to say to make it better, ******** you, too, Makereth," was her imbittered reply, but, like the rest of her words, it was lacking in any hatred. It did not make her feel better, and it did not stop the tears.
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Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 11:02 am
"You're useless. Seriously. If there was an award for the most useless person on Pern, you would win it hands down. Remind me why I chose you again?"
F'al snorted and smacked his lifemate lightly over the head. "Hush," he commanded aloud with mock severity, "it could have happened to anyone, alright? Anyway, the reason you chose me was because I'm brilliant and you're stupid, and so you latched onto me to get through life."
"F'al. Love. You walked into a door. That could not happen to just anyone." The brown dragonet's eyes shone brilliant green, and he headbutted his rider hard enough to make him stagger. "And I'm not stupid but you are," he continued, "you're so people-stupid it's hilarious. That's probably why I chose you, for a laugh... You are okay? Your head made quite a crack against that door." He did love to tease, but only when His was actually alright. He thought he was alright, but it was best to check; he didn't want him to keel over or something like that.
"I'm fine," F'al smiled down at his lifemate and gave him a companionable slap on the shoulder, "the worst bruising was to my pride." Daft dragon, he would have said something by now if he wasn't alright. Still, it was good to be cared about.
"Well, that's alright then, so long as..." Dith trailed off mid sentence and came to a halt. "Do you hear that?" he asked as he turned in the direction of he noise he thought he'd caught. "It sounded like crying... Over there!" A girl he didn't know and a dragon he didn't know, but by the age of the dragon they must be Weyrlings from F'al's High Reaches place. "Come on," turning towards the pair, Dith set off once more, "we should go and make sure everything's okay."
...What? Oh. Great. Did they have to? He was awful at this sort of thing, really awful. Still, given that Dith happily chatted to anyone and everyone perhaps he could just sit back and watch the brown try to fix whatever was the matter with... Oh, that girl, he was close enough to recognize her but he didn't know her name. It didn't matter all that much anyway he supposed, once again Dith would take care of finding that out... It wasn't that he didn't want to help if something was wrong, he just didn't really see how it was any of their business. Who wanted a stranger rushing up to them when they were feeling down? He certainly wouldn't, but Dith was far too nosey and fixated with solving people's problems to think about that. Ah well.
They were quite close now, close enough for humans to call greetings to one another. As such, he rumbled his own to woman and blue. "Are you alright?" he asked once he had announced himself. The girl didn't look it, she was crying poor thing. "Can I help?" He hated seeing people upset, surely there was something he could do for her, even if it was just making a fool of himself to cheer her up a bit.
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Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:28 pm
What was it that she told Sharath all the time, every day? Oh yes, stay out of my head. So, here was this small, thing of a brown than trundled its way over, a rumble in its throat.
Uuni glanced over and sucked in the mucous that was building, trying to swallow it down but ending up half choking on it as she fought against the next wave of irrational sorrow.
Her body heaved and she waved a dismissive hand half-heartedly at the dragon. Another swallow and she sunk her teeth into the back of her knuckles.
"Can you kidnap me someone?" she asked, her lips breaking into something that resembled a smile, but was certainly not that, along with the poor joke as she dropped her hand to her lap. The tendons in her fingers stayed taught.
Makereth stood and stepped around His to approach the young brown. Mine is being very hard to cheer up.
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Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 7:01 am
"Kidnap?" Dith tilted his head on one side as he came to a halt. "I don't know, I might be able to; who, and why?" he asked as he sank to the ground. The poor girl really did look miserable, all the more so for trying to hold back her tears... He really hoped there was something he could do for her.
"So I see," he said privately to the blue, "I don't know if there's anything I can do for her, but I'll try."
...So what was he supposed to do? F'al came to stand just behind his dragon and tried to think of something to say.... Yes, naturally, his mind was a total blank so he'd just stand here like a deadglow.... He should at least say hello. "Hello, nice to meet you... Nice day, isn't it?" There! Communication!... Sort of. Vaguely. Well it was a start, surely.
Internally, Dith groaned. "You really are useless," he informed his lifemate privately before turning to address the unhappy blue rider again. "Pay no attention to him, I'm pretty sure he must have been dropped on his head once or twice as a baby. His name is F'al, though, and I'm Dith." Stupid, stupid F'al. 'Nice day isn't it'; seriously! How could anyone think that was a good think to say to somebody who was crying?
"It wasn't that bad," Fa'l retorted, he'd only been trying to make conversation... but he knew he was no good at that. Dith was probably right, it had probably been a really dumb thing to say... actually yes, it had, in her place he wouldn't have wanted to hear that. Blast.
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Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 7:51 am
Uuni could not take logic at a time like this. Hearing the word kidnap thrown back at her made her clench her teeth and turn her head away. And, when Makereth left, she dug her fingers into the moderately nice clothes she'd changed into in order to have something to hold onto.
Don't leave, Makereth. Please don't leave. Makereth wasn't actually going anywhere, only to make the distance to the small brown, but Uuni was more than a little disillusioned, and fear caught onto her and tugged, hard.
Mine, I am not going anywhere. The words did enough to halt him. Caught between the brown and Uuni's pressing words, he slunk backwards and returned to the position he had before. It was obvious he did not like this. Ghenza dragons were smart, weren't they? Exceptionally so? Please make it better, he requested of the brown. That extra mind-power would surely make them better able to cure someone of their ails, wouldn't it?
Despite her increasingly urge to throw all forms of civality to the wind and go crazy on Ghenza, Uuni managed a deep, tight breath when F'al spoke.
"Yeah, glorious." The words were a slightly higher pitch than normal and she could not look at the boy when she said it. The sarcasm would be more than obvious. The next phase was trying to whipe her face clear with the back of her hands and part of her garments. Everything was soaked full of tears or snot, or whatever else the ******** people drained out of their system when they were distraught. No wonder she absolutely refused, this was disgusting. She must have looked awful.
The action helped, however menial, and though her body shook on the next breath, she was capable of dousing at least some of the irrational doom that had settled into her mind. "I'm sorry," she sputtered off with a nervous laugh as she gave another whipe at her eyes for good measure. "I must look crazy. No kidnapping, please," she added as an afterthough. "Then I'd have to explain myself." That would be far, far worse.
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Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 8:41 am
"That's alright," Dith rumbled softly, "pretty much everybody looks a bit crazy when they're upset, right?" If she didn't want to explain, was there really anything he could do that her lifemate wasn't already doing, i.e. just being somebody to cry on? There must be something like... like maybe... Well, he didn't know did he? He supposed he could try standing up on his hind legs and trying to walk around; F'al had found that hilarious when he'd fallen over... Maybe she just didn't want to explain to the person she was upset with, if it was a person not a situation, or a number of people, or nothing very much at all. He supposed he might as well ask. "Do you want to talk about it? I could listen, if nothing else. I can even tell the idiot to butt out if you like."
Oh, thank you very Dith. F'al scowled down at his dragon, letting the brown know that he was just thrilled with the vote of confidence. "I'm sure whatever it is can be fixed," he said aloud, "probably just needs thinking about logically."
"Oh F'al do shut up, you big tailfork," Dith broadcasted his comment to everybody, and smacked his rider over the head with one wing, "believe it or not, logic doesn't fix everything. I swear, you really must have been dropped on your head, or maybe you ate something that completely shut down the bit of people's brains that stops them being an utter boob." Total, utter morn. He loved the idiot with all his heart, but that didn't make him any less of an idiot.
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Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 10:24 am
Now was not the time to be asking Uuni questions. For a moment, she tried to think on this seriously, only to realize it was rhetorical. In any case, she had affirmed that she looked crazy. This gave her an excuse to overexaggerate the roll of her eyes and the heavy sigh that followed as she rested her head on top of Makereth's nose.
Uuni did not register 'idiot' as F'al. Rather, she took into account the idea of 'the idiot' being Avery, as it was typical of most women to speak in angry tones about the boy's they'd fallen off with. Uuni did not like this idea. It was up to her to bash Avery's name to a pulp, but no one else was allowed to.
"You sound like Kesslan," she told F'al. The bitterness was rising again, and she half debated cussing them all out of her space. "Logic this, logic that, just admit your feelings!" There were a few dramatic waves of her fingers to go with this since she wasn't feeling up to waving her hands.
Two breaths and an overheard rider-bashing later, Uuni had regained a state of composure.
"I'm fine," she eventually decided. "I really am." Another sniff followed and she cleaned her face with the scarf she'd used to keep her neck from burning. After that, it was easy to stand up and force a smile. Makereth uncurled from around her and stood as well, shaking himself clean. His eye color, however, did not change. Whatever facade Uuni was putting on, it had not changed mentally. Later, later they'd have to go out for general prank-pulling and good fun. The distraction would be good for her.
It was time for a subject change. Right now. She was not going to talk about this to anyone save for maybe Roka and Kesslan. "You, uh, Impressed in this latest hatching, I see," Uuni pointed out, raising one brow at F'al.
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Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:50 am
Fine. Sure, and he was a beautiful gold. Still, if she didn't want to talk about it he wasn't going to push her... He really really wanted to. With an effort of will, Dith resisted the urge to ask more questions; she wanted to change the subject and that was her business. If the problem was really bad, she would come back to it, and then he could help her fix whatever was wrong.
"Err?" F'al blinked, a little blindsided by the sudden change in topic, not to mention the utterly useless observation. Still, upset people never did make any sense. "Yes," he said slowly after a few moments, "I, umm, I did, at last. This was probably my last chance, so I consider myself rather lucky... even if my dragon is very very strange and very very mean to me. Beggars can't be choosers, eh?" As he spoke however, F'al smiled softly and reached over to stroke his lifemate's neck fondly.
"Well," Dith gave a draconic grin and headbutted his rider hard enough to make him stagger, "if you weren't so useless I wouldn't have to be so mean in an effort to make you improve! You know what he did before we came out here?" Dith turned to Uuni with bright green eyes, "He walked into a door. Seriously."
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