====December 26, 2013
====Cerise, Ellen
====Ellen emerges from the wilderness to check in with a friend.

Ground Weyrs
Neatly ordered are a series of ground-weyrs, each generic and functional rather than ornate. The caverns are unevenly staggered in a variety of sizes: some so small as to be a snug fit for the smallest of nowtimer greens, while others are roomy enough to fit two oldtimer queens. Each ground-weyr is fitted with a reed-strewn couch and a cozy nook with a bed and clothespress.

-- On Pern --
It is afternoon
It is 3:13 PM where you are.
There are 0 turns, 4 months and 15 days until the 12th pass.
It is the seventy-fifth day of Winter and 77 degrees. It is partly cloudy, but still warm and bright. Clouds have started to drift across the sky again. The jungles are almost dry.

There's something to be said for Southern winters when the storms settle and the skies clear. The humidity has dropped, the temperature hovers at a steady and pleasant midrange and everywhere one looks, there's the golden glint of sunlight off of something- rocks sparkle, greenery shines, even bare and hard-packed earth takes on a precious gleam. Ordinarily, to find someone seated with back against stone, just outside of the ground weyrs, they could assume that person was out enjoying a quiet moment, taking in the fresh air and relaxing at their ease. And at first glance, it does appear that Cerise is in fact doing so. Dressed in a weyrling uniform- which seems clean and crisp if one doesn't get too close- with her hair scraped up in a sloppy tail, she rests back against the wall with one knee hiked up and a hand holding a flask dangling loose over it. Her other leg is simply stretched out, booted foot canted at an angle. All very casual, aye? Until one notices there's something bobbly about her head, and that her eyes don't quite focus properly when she opens them to squint up at the sky.

There's always that come and go, in a civilized setting. That peripheral weighty clop of runner hooves and rumble of wheels across the distant bowl. It's all so Business As Usual, even now. Even with that sense of frequent pause, amongst those weyrfolk and visitors traveling outside, to look pensively skyward at intervals, chewing their lips or straightening their clothes before returning to their tasks at hand. To and fro, back and forth, there is one figure that travels perpendicular to the grain of weyr movement - here walks Ellen.

With her hands in loose swinging fists, her hair bound back in a braid, her attire is odd and patchwork between two worlds; some features modern Pernese, in her smith-quality boots and a shoulder sash of pouches, her belt knife. But it's partially lost, like a brick wall beneath overgrown vines, beneath a more feral preference; coarse leather jerkin, sleeveless to expose the hard slabmuscle in her upper arms, forearms encased in bracers. Three feathers stuck through her hair at the back, a small braid swinging alongside her heavily built cheek. Her heavy-lidded eyes fixed only on Cerise.

Rather than a greeting, she arrives before Cerise. And stands where she is, foreign somehow here. And gazing long down at the seated weyrling. At length, she says, "I heard."

The squint that brings her eyes to partial focus on the figure cutting off sight of the sun leaves one eye scrunched shut completely and the other slitted. It is not an attractive expressive, even if Cerise could keep her mouth from slacking open. "Who's that then?" she inquires- nay, slurs in full Bitran brogue, no accent better suited to the drunken slip that alcohol enacts on language. "Can't be Ellen. Ellen's shorter. And not so dark." But then, the girlchild (womangirl?) would be dark with the sun at her back. Still, the brew's put the ex-performer in a social mood and so she lifts the flask, one part flourish, two parts invitation. There's plenty wall to fetch up against, that dip of moulded metal and gurgling liquid says; come one, come all. "They've just cleaned her stump. It was all sorts of dripping and patchy but they've trimmed it back nice and neat and put the drains in again. I'm helping her sleep, I am."

"Ksh. Not so short." Ellen is nothing if not opportunistic; she'll take the invitation gladly, toppling down unceremoniously alongside Cerise, leaning back on one hand to prop herself up at an angle that bumps a shoulder up against Cerise's. And she'll take the lift of flask as invitation as well, apparently, because it's course will find itself smacking into her palm to see if she can't borrow it for her own perusal. Though she must be hearing, her eyes settled out along the bowl's distance, oddly casual-crooked smiling as though this were any other time, what she opts to ask is, "Dimi been by?"

The flask is given willingly enough, or at least her fingers don't clench against the metal to keep it from being taken. It slips quite easily away, in fact, leaving Cerise to drop her wrist against her raised knee again. "A bit," she says of Dimi. Her eyes close, her head tilts back against the stone until her face is bathed in mottled sunlight- a cloud's going over, stealing and then revealing the rays again. "But he and the rest have drills to see to, and skies to watch. They're kept busy. Did y'hear we made wingsecond? Just the weyrling wing but it was something. The knot was fancy, for the little while I wore it. Where've you been, then? Claiming the whole of the great wild for yourself, I've imagined. Any truth to it?"

"Might be there's one're two folk that'd fight me for it," Ellen slants up the side of her mouth harshly behind the opening of the flask when she pulls it to herself. "Be boring there weren't, yeh?" SNIFF? She gives the contents an absent whiffing, then an experimental swig? Brows furrowed? She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand while handing it back, "…y'saying 'was'." She observes. Past tense.

Whiskey is what greets both sniff test and tasting, whiskey plain and simple. "I had the shot o' fellis earlier. Just a tipple, enough to make me head loopy, aye? Jia rides it, when they're doing the cleaning," Cerise puts in, hand flapped at the flask before she exerts the concentration needed to curl her fingers. The proper shape for taking it back! As soon as its weight is in her palm, she tilts it to her lips and chugs a dram before dropping wrist to knee once more. "And for the aches after, mother's milk. Of course I'm saying was. Can't rightly lead a wing from an infirmary wallow. She'll be out for months or more and by then they'll all be in other wings, and us…who knows where. Certainly not to rank. The color of her hide was bad enough and now we're missing a chunk?"

"Jus' the bit off the end," Ellen presses the back of her wrist against the front of her mouth until she's certain her whiskey shot is staying where she /put/ it. Beyond this and a slight watering of eyes, it's all sort of tertiary. Koff.

"Aye but an important bit. She shoves off with it when we go aloft and there's no shoving off a stump. It's like poking a stick into mud. No support." Cerise would demonstrate but the rest of the flask isn't going to drink itself. She lifts it again, after a pointless- aimless- salute at the flawless sky.

"Nor will you," says Cerise, as sharply as the haze of booze allows. Her eyes snap open and lock on the girl beside her. "She's not a spectacle, Ellen. Not a curiosity. Something to point and marvel at, and be glad it isn't you or yours. The bloody thing is haunting her, and because of it, it's haunting me. So my life now is to make things easier for her, not to perform with her for others. Aye?"

Ellen listens solemnly, unshifting from her position sprawled back and leaning on the heels of her palms. "S'too late," she says, not unkindly. But without changing the loose steadiness in her gaze, "To avoid a spectacle, Cer." Just callous words. "People're gonna point, days t'come. Y'gotta be ready for that. Ready to take it. Don't," from beneath her amiably intent gaze, one hand extends to very suddenly seize onto one of Cerise's shoulders. Hard, "you ever let 'em see you bleed."

Seized, Cerise proves to be all sorts of floppy. The hard-won muscle of a life spent tumbling on stage, the strength built in weyrlinghood, all of it's burned away to bone and sinew, loosely lashed together. In short, she's all bobbly, and still she tries to swat that hand. "Y'know what? Fuck that, 'cuz I've spent a life smiling 'n bowing 'n eating other people's shit. Maybe it's time for no more of that, eh? Maybe I'm sick to death of taking it. She deserves better."

"So give 'er better." There's precious little to Ellen that is gentle, and there is none in saying this. If anything, she's braced in and seems perfectly intent on a fight. "I ain't saying smile 'n bow. I'm saying give 'em the fuckin' finger." The swat tossed at her hand is responded to with a perfectly unhesitating swat back, smacking Cerise's hand away like an errant gnat. "S' hard. But she's young, Cer. She'll adapt. But you gotta too." She says this with a rapid series of finger-snaps, to demonstrate just how quickly these things may change.

Cerise is terrible at fighting. Then, now and likely ever on into the future. Giving someone a quick knee to the jibblies and then dashing was always more her style. But Ellen lacks jibblies and Cerise is unsteady enough she'd likely only miss anyway. So she huffs instead, even while keeling a little to the side. Halp. "I hate you," she mumbles. The shape of the wall behind her back has pushed her head forward, chin down. It dampens the voice somewhat. "You've got no fucking idea. None. I'll adapt when I want to."

Ellen grins fiercely, as though 'I hate you' were a compliment, "Do ya?" It's not really a question so much as phrased fill-gap. And she goes about brushing some stray bit of seed pod fluff from the front of her jerkin. The grin slowly wanders off, distracted and quieter, time pools on until at length she asks, no humor now, "—how'd it happen?"

"Odd gust. Big clump. Came down, she zigged 'stead of zagged, it wrapped 'round her leg faster'n I could blink. Should've skipped, aye? That's the training. Y'skip, freezes it off. But she wanted home, and I couldn't bring the image of it up soon enough. So it sunk in deep. Eatin', the way it does. Eating in on her." Cerise remains slumped, moody eyes fixed on earth now rather than sky. She tiptilts the flask at Ellen in offer; not much is left inside. "We never have fussed at each other's minds. Not…sure it makes sense but all the others, they wrestled a bit. Figuring things out. We never did, 'til that Fall."

The flask's contents make a jovial little 'boip' sound, to slosh when Ellen takes it, tips it up to polish off the contents. Squinches up one eye to wrestle down the mouthful. Haah. "—'n now?"

Cerise snorts. Unfortunately, she's underestimated the fullness of her sinuses, making that gusty exhalation a rather messy one. Luckily she has a sleeve right there and she drags it beneath her nose to take care of the problem. "Now, she's a wonder. S'got the other weyrlings each assigned something to do to make them feel less guilty or worried. Has the Weyr's resident asshole dragon wrapped around the talons she's got left. Charmed the boots off of each and every healer."

"Ayuh?" The two make a curious picture, sitting side by side. Cerise and her neat uniform, her slender limbs and bold, features, darkly unhappy; Ellen all lumps and heavy shoulders and prominent pitbull jaw, blithe and hard and watching the sky. "Y'proud?"

"Of course I'm bloody proud. And shamed. Fuck it." Cerise's hand closes…but oops, she gave the flask away! The lack of more alcohol sees her flailing a little as she flops herself into a more upright position. One long breath is released, slowly, this time without the mess of the previous one. "What've you. Been gone awhile, most of a Turn. Dimi was starting to think the monster with baby-heads for hands had gotten you."

"It's welcome to try," side-slanted grin is /cast/ at Cerise, Ellen's crescent-squinted eyes hard and glinting before they drop to her belt pouch where she riffles around in its contents in search of — ah. A few ragged strips of jerky. She grips one hunk in her teeth, cud-chewing it in a slowmotion sideways manner. The other half she hands over to Cerise. "I been busy. Pushed a lil too far junglewards, hit a few snags with the natives, had'a be hashed out. Few times I been around," she jerks her head off, across the bowl, "I got a good deal with a few the crafters. Old Mister Aaron - y'know him, big meathead with the Smiths? - he trades me out, lessons for labor. A few tannin recipes. Some hides, sinew, other shit I might bring him in."

The jerky's taken, tucked between her teeth the way some might a cheroot. Cerise uses her lips to wag it up and down before pushing it deeper and to the side to tear off a hunk. "Aye, I know him. Jia's sweet on him, says it makes her feel smaller to see a human so large. Or it did. Maybe not so much anymore, she's near full grown. The folk out there savage?"

"Gimme time," Ellen settles back, chewing around the massive lump of meat pouched in the side of her cheek. She laces her fingers behind her head, "I'll get bigger'n him, some day. — S' a good guy. I run some of his deliveries to outter Holds for 'im time to time, too. 'd love to get him in a full nelson sometime, yeh?" Chew. Chew. She seems to take a longer time on the second question, settling hard and firm on her steady smile, "—Can be." She bares her teeth. "So can I. — How's that. Other girl, the wildgirl they brought in t'Impress."

"Maosa," Cerise supplies through a fibrous mouthful of meat. The chewy and the salt is just what she needs after getting her drunk on; it perks her up. "She keeps to herself, aye? Does her own thing. Makes sense though, I guess, us all being weird to her. And her blue being a little tetched." She taps her fingertip against her temple.

"Is he?" Open amusement here, Ellen's brows jumping up like 'no really. NO REALLY.' She doesn't have a dainty laugh. Even in a manner of chuckling, it's a deep husky sound that whuffs almost silently somewhere deep in her hearty chest. Hnhnhnhn. So loose and mild, it seems to mean nothing, to mean anything, the way her arm swings around. Hooks around the back of Cerise's shoulders and drags. Seeks to fell her, to pull her towards Ellen's lap.

"Aye," Cerise confirms, "Jia thinks he's lovely, all his interesting theories. Sign've a bright imagination, she says." Jiamoth would. But the green must be sleeping- hopefully is sleeping- because her partner makes no protest to being bowled over. She topples. Like a very sickly tree. She might even sleep too but not right away, because there's meat mush to swallow and a garbled statement to make: "Some fucking pillow you make."

Muscular thighs and solid bones, the smell of leather and jungle green and dirt and something tangier. Incense, perhaps. These are the things that make Ellen up. "Hate to tell ya, Cer." Ellen buries her fingers in Cerise's curls to muss them, draping her other arm loosely over the side of Cerise's hip. Solid and firm and proprietary, "But you ain't exactly lush yourself." And yes. She does also SMACK Cerise's side-of-hip, partly-ASS when she says it. If lightly. After a moment, she adds, "I'ma be here a while." It's hard to tell, as ever, what sentiment laces her heavy no-nonsense contralto. It all sounds conversational and somehow ambitious.

"Don't do that, you're gonna make me blush." A flat out lie given that Cerise has been incapable of blushing since before she was even Ellen's age. As for the girl's prospect of staying, the greenling mumbles a, "S'fine," but she's already losing focus. It's no longer being upright that's done it, all the booze in her bloodstream has rushed right to her head.

Ellen has no comment for this. Just an absent pat to Cerise's head, as she's patted so many other animals before. Her smile remains, but it's thin and grim, eyes fixed like a sight hound at the coming and going through the daytime hours of the Weyr. In a while, she'll pull out a spool of sinew from a pouch pocket, a slender green branch from the other, folding it over to make a hoop, tying it off. It takes just a faint - tug! - to loosen a few hairs from Cerise's head, and a few hairs from her own, running them pragmatically through her mouth to wet them together with her tongue. And, twisting hair and sinew together, she begins to weave a net into the center of the green hoop. In quick, rapid movements. Nipping it off with her teeth where it needs to be terminated.