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[SOL] Guess the Rumors are True... [Okassis/NPC Jaenel]

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Arrien

PostPosted: Fri May 15, 2009 10:18 pm


((Note: I've got some personal stuff to establish with Okassis during the Gather, so rather than clog up the main thread with it, I decided to split off into this thread. If other people want to overhear/join in on things, it's totally welcome and you don't even need to ask permission - but I'm not expecting it.

(EDIT: Finally got this planned out in my head, so this part here is a solo thread~)

Okassis posts in black. Jaenel posts in blue.))


It had been a pretty fardling bad day for Jaenel. Actually, if you had to get right down to it, it'd been a pretty fardling bad month. Everyone had it bad these days; that's the way it worked when the caravanmaster was out for blood. No small transgression was overlooked, and no minuscule delay was forgiven.

Everyone kept telling him, "be patient, be patient, things will get better once he cools down", but Jaenel wasn't convinced. The old man was cooling, but that didn't mean he was lightening up. The bruises went away, but his face seemed uglier with every passing day, more tormented and furious. He was less unpredictable than he'd been at first... but he seemed even more dangerous now, somehow. Like he was planning where his wrath would fall next, instead of letting it loose whenever anyone in the caravan did something dimglowed.

Honestly, Jaenel was beginning to doubt that there would ever be a recovery. He was starting to think it was time for him to start looking for another caravan... but the very thought infuriated him. This was where he'd grown up! His father, his brothers, his mother, his sister, all of them were with him. Every memory he ever had came from the road with these people. How could he turn his back on them, even if it seemed like the beginning of the end?

It's not fair, he thought bitterly. Everything was fine, until that two-bit ungrateful wretch had gone traitor, and now his entire life was falling apart....

Wait. Was someone calling his name?
PostPosted: Fri May 15, 2009 10:40 pm


"Jaenel! Jaenel?" Blast the shell and sear the skin, why were there so many fardling people in the way?! Okassis was a big guy, at least, and had plenty of crowd-shoving Turns under his belt. Without mercy or hesitation, he plowed his way down the packed street, leaving angry shouts and disparaging yelps in his wake. But he was getting closer, and he could get a better look now - yes, it must be, he was sure of it!

"Shards! It is you, Jaenel!" Catching his friend's shoulder from behind, Okassis split into a huge grin. He'd known it, he'd just known it! It was his best friend among the traders - the boy he'd grown up with, gone running recklessly around Hold after Hold with, explored all the tiny trails of Pern with! He'd known that the caravan might be in Ista - heard rumors, at least, but with the Gather, it only made sense that someone would be coming by the Hold - but he hadn't been sure whether to hope or dread running into someone he knew. But Jaenel? Jaenel was one of three on his list that he absolutely, positively, unhesitatingly had been hoping to see!

Pulling in front of the trader, Okassis beamed. "I was hoping I'd see you - fardles, Jaenel, are you busy? I mean, of course you're busy, but can you get away from it? We should go find someplace quiet, talk for a while!"

Arrien


Arrien

PostPosted: Fri May 15, 2009 11:09 pm


Oh. It was. Hm. Uh. Well, shards. Okassis....

Jaenel tolerated the bigger boy to hold him by the shoulder, but that wasn't to say he was being complacently friendly. His back and shoulders were stiff, his eyes hard as topaz; it was only with wrenching effort that he could get his jaw to unset, hissing beneath his breath an inaudible "You got some balls...." before he could talk effectively at all.

"A'course I'm busy," he echoed the Candidate, brushing the boy's hand off his shoulder sorely. "Some'a us still work for a living, y'know."

If he had any sense of self-control at all, he'd have left then, shoved off before things got out of hand. Instead, though, he stared. His friend looked... different. The short hair was one thing - he couldn't imagine what had possessed Okassis to hack it off, he thought that the boy's face looked like a fat tuber without it - but there was something else that Jaenel decidedly disliked about the way Okassis carried himself now. Or maybe that was just the reek of Weyr on him, making him seem witless and lazy. Even worse than usual, anyway.
PostPosted: Sat May 16, 2009 1:28 am


Okassis pulled back slightly, bemused. Some of us still work for a living? Ouch... but there wasn't much else he could have expected. He certainly couldn't say that he'd had hard living at the Weyr - on the contrary, he'd never had so much down time in his life! No stands to attend, or places to rush off to, or camps to set, or bargains to pick out of a crowd. He didn't have to wait until the entire Hold was asleep to have some free-time, and he could enjoy holidays like Gathers without being forced to do business.

For how many years had Okassis been griping right along with Jaenel about the soft living of others? It wasn't so surprising that his friend should be angry, really. But they were still friends; this wasn't going to get in the way!

"So let me pay for your meal," he offered. "I've been running a bit of a side business in the Weyr, maybe you can get in on it, right?" There was a sure bait - dangling profit in front of a trader, how could he go wrong?

Arrien


Arrien

PostPosted: Sat May 16, 2009 6:26 pm


Okassis had chosen the wrong thing to say. In the Weyr- shards, what was wrong with him?! Years - they'd been friends for years! Jaenel had been so sure that he'd known, beyond any doubt, the sort of person that Okassis was. And someone who just up and left his friends and family without warning, to chase after a gilded life that lived off society's fears, was not who he'd known. Did Okassis really care so little about it - what he was supporting? What he'd left behind? Who he'd left behind?!

Pressing his lips tight together, Jaenel shook his head. "I got no interest in your Weyr business, Okassis," he spat out in a low voice, "and you'd better not go around to the other caravanners, either. You and me've always been friends, but you'd better watch your back if you talk like that around anybody else." He wasn't sure himself if he was trying to warn his old friend or threaten him, but his unflinching glare was the same, with only one message behind it - you fardled everything up, you wherry hen!
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:43 pm


Okassis was generally a pretty mellow guy. Sure, he had his interests, and his passions; he could work up the energy to go full-tilt on a harebrained scheme, from flat to insane in half a second if he had to. But when it came to people, he liked to think he got along with them. If someone rubbed him the wrong way, sure, he might get his dander up a bit. If they ran off their mouth, he didn't have too many qualms with giving them a few lumps to remind them of their manners. But for the most part, people simply didn't have reason to do that to him. He was friendly, easy-going, personable....

But why then was his friend, one of his closest friends on the entire Northern Continent, talking to him with that sneer? Biting off words? Shoving threats in his face? And how was Okassis supposed to respond?

The Candidate leaned away from Jaenel, even as his shoulders pulled back and he drew himself larger. Where Jaenel was lean and quick, Okassis had bulk and strength; it was easy for him to make the other boy seem smaller, less intimidating. It didn't do a thing to removed the confusing hurt that Jaenel's attitude had inflicted on him, but at least Okassis didn't seem as suddenly insecure as he felt.

"Yeah, well, sorry for trying to give a friend a shot at a couple easy marks," the blond replied stonily. "Always seemed to me that nobody ever cared about the Weyrs when there was profit involved, anyway.'

Arrien


Arrien

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2009 6:08 pm


The guy just didn't get it, did he? Jaenel looked on scornfully as Okassis carried out with his posturing, his pretending, his poorly aimed jabs. He'd always thought he was hot stuff, Jaenel recalled - no doubt, Weyrlife had only made a worse dimglow out of him. At least while Okassis had still been with the caravan, his ego had been countered by his usefulness - now, it was just painful to watch him carry on like he was still needed.

He was done. He was sick and done. Even as he wanted his adventurous friend back, the one that had gone with him to chase a thousand different rumors through dozens of Holds, Jaenel knew there was nothing to salvage. He'd known it from the day he'd heard that Okassis had left for the Weyr, of course - everyone in the caravan had. But now it was a certainty, inescapable and undeniable. His friendship was over.

"You're sharding lucky Gemea isn't here to see you go on like this," Jaenel muttered with spitting savagery, "let alone your old man." He didn't need any more of this. Anger and spite writhing inside him, the Trader shoved past his one-time childhood friend. It was like he'd said - some people had work to do.
PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2009 6:41 pm


"Gemea?"

For a moment, Okassis's face was laid bare. There were only a few things that could shock him right out of his mind; evoking the disapproval of his big sister, even imaginary, was an easy one. Faced with the unexpected anger and viciousness of his former friend, it was such an easy path to follow, to apply those same qualities to his sister. He'd earned her disappointment plenty of times in his life, sure - he still poignantly remembered her wrath when he'd been messing around with the campfire, and accidentally flicked a coal into the lap of her favorite skirt - but those were little things. If she thought even a fraction of him what Jaenel seemed to think....

The braid-haired youth shoved by him. Tense with worry, flush with anger, Okassis grabbed him again by the shoulder. "Hey!" he snapped, not about to let Jaenel leave after throwing something like that at him. "You don't talk for my sister, you got it? You don't talk about my sister!"

Arrien


Arrien

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2009 6:50 pm


All that soft living hadn't worn Okassis weak yet, it seemed. Feeling a rough wrench on his shoulder, Jaenel was pulled back - the Candidate's face was reddening, the lines hard. He was trying to take control, trying to enforce. Trying to be the leader that said what and how and when, like he'd always been. When they were friends.

Jaenel wasn't doing this, though. Before, he'd let Okassis call the shots out of friendship, and respect. That was gone, but the fearless leader was still trying to have his way, act like he was the caravanleader. But Jaenel wasn't putting up with this. Okassis didn't have any power over him! He couldn't tell him what to do, what not to do. Things were changed now, and if Okassis couldn't fardling realize that, then Jaenel would teach him right fast!

The reaction was immediate; sucking in a breath of air, Jaenel growled out, "Get your hands off of me!", and drove both palms into the older boy's chest in a heavy shove. His eyes were narrowed, his heart beating fast, his mouth tight and pulled down. This was it - this was his stand. His moment of independence. From Okassis. From the Weyrs. He was a Trader, and he didn't need either of them!
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Holds and Halls

 
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