Who

Elle, Il'ian

What

Il'ian was just trying to enjoy a restful afternoon at the oasis. Elle comes by and causes mayhem.

When

It is evening of the twenty-fifth day of the eighth month of the second turn of the 12th pass. It is the fifty-fifth day of Summer and 101 degrees. It is a hot, miserable night.

Where

Lost Oasis, Igen Weyr

OOC Date

 

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Lost Oasis

Blocked from view in the south by one of the largest sandstone formations jutting from the desert, this lovely oasis is truly a hidden jewel in the sand. Leagues away from any trace of civilization, it boasts a tranquil blue pool of fresh water and shallow stream fed by an unseen spring beyond a dark crevice in the bluff. Trees spring up against the rock, providing merciful shade and filling in the narrow recesses surrounding the water. The height of the outcropping funnels a near-constant light breeze through the place, cooling the air considerably in comparison to the desert beyond.


Summer's wrath is softened here, distilled into a heat that's much more bearable with the hint of moisture that clings to air made a few degrees cooler by the presence of water. Even three degrees is enough to bring discomfort from the triple digits to the double digits and save the leeching dryness from destroying the soft tissues of lips and hands. On the horizon a cloud might be gathering, but thus far that view is sheltered by the large sandstone formation that encircles this jade-like cup of water that gathers in the palm of the desert's hand. Il'ian, stripped bare to the waist with leathers and goggles and other accoutrements that come with riding gear left into a pile to the side, is wading right into the water. Sunlight glances off blond hair that stands in disarray from where goggles were yanked off. Sargaeroth lurks off to the side, a seething cloud of ill-gotten menace though his eyes whirl a sapphire blue — red muddies as it always does — so the bronze doesn't appear to be in danger of ripping heads off. "I can do what I want." Defiance is what strikes the words, lobbed as verbal volley ball, given to the bronze.

Above, a striking appearance of a sapphire blue, Rukbat gleaming against glossy hide: the rider circles lower, lower, finding a perch on the sandstone formation itself, not minding that a bit of it crumbles precariously under his claws — and weight. One passenger disembarks, small of figure, laden with various bags and cases. "Give me… two candlemarks?" Elle can be heard calling up to her escort. "I'll send message to you if I need you before then." If she's concerned about Sargaeroth and his ilk, she doesn't show it, waving off the bluerider's momentary concerns about leaving an unescorted woman with some half-naked bronzerider just yonder. Elle, in typical Elle fashion, hasn't really paid much attention to what's going on over in Il'ian-world. "You are in my way." Elle is announcing this to Sargaeroth *after* her ride has left, tilting her chin and looking up at the bronze with great affront.

Sargaeroth watches the proceedings with ill-disguised curiosity, for it breaks the air of bored menace that lurks around the sharply weaponized bronze. Talons clench, digging into the sandstone and rock while teeth bare for the slip of a girl is barely more than toothpick sized. She would fit nicely into the spaces between his teeth. A low-toned rumble is felt more than heard, the breaking of a world encapsulated in the throat veined in what must surely be fel-potion. The bronze does not look to be about to budge even the smallest of inches, evident in the way wings rustle and partially fan out. Il'ian, for all of this, is none the wiser — or he's faking it hardcore, as if by pretending the problem will go away. Instead, he is luxuriating in the wealth of blue-green water and splashing it across his shoulders to allow it to trickle down his back, between the flex of shoulderblades, in mini, delicious waterfalls that pool into the waistband of his belted trousers.

"You. Are. Rude." That's right, Elle's willing to go toe to toe with this tooth-baring monster bronze, her chin uplifted in pure and utter(ly senseless) defiance. "Go ahead and make yourself look even bigger. Are you compensating for something there?" Her teeth, when she bares them, may not be as large as Sargaeroth's, but they encompass just as much menace — and perhaps just enough willingness to use them to be mildly alarming.

Unconcerned with the feelings of a slight, tiny human girl, Sargaeroth merely rumbles but again does not budge. Ire bubbles within, however, for the bronze is a very real menace and not for the faint of heart, although the fact that Elle seems capable of using those teeth of hers gives the briefest measure of pause. Much as one would consider eating the 'beast that exhibited mad cow disease. This is when Il'ian clues in that someone is trodding upon dangerous ground. "I wouldn't if I were you." Il'ian. You hero. That is all that he calls out to the starcrafter girl, half turning to present a front as wet as his back, pale eyes squinting against the sunlight.

"And are you going to control your beast, there, bronzerider?" Elle still has narrowed eyes up at Sargaeroth. That's right. She is tiny but FIERCE. "I guess you are doing well if you've potty-trained him." The starcrafter dismisses him - the fel-iron giant looming overhead - with all the talented aloofness of a naaru if embodied in physical form. Instead of moving around him towards the oasis, the starcrafter unslings one canister and strides towards the other end of him, tailwards. Surely she isn't planning some kind of sabatogue back there, right? Surely. "You're going to burn yourself silly!" she shouts in Il'ian's general direction almost as an afterthought, pausing to unscrew the end of the container, ignoring the bronze an armspan to her left.

Il'ian narrows his eyes at Elle, although that could also be the effect of the sun. "You're the one being rude," the bronzerider grunts, when he is pulled from his little cool-time pool sojourn which causes a SULK. Waving off Sargaeroth who battles wills for a moment — he will CRUSH you little Naaru — before taking off. The beat of wings and the collection of parts that surge towards the skies all see fit to drive sand of Igen's hellfire penninsula straight towards Elle. "Yeah? You care about my skin, eh?" Half-bending as he walks, the bronzerider scoops up the limp form of a cream-colored tunic that he balls in his hands. By now, he's close enough to Elle that his shadow is cast across her, the set of his features into something akin to annoyance flavored with something else.

Sargaeroth definitely has the last laugh here, because Elle's triumphant expression lasts ONLY long enough to get plastered by sand. She belatedly throws an arm up to cover her eyes, but she's still spitting sand and dourly staring after the fel-iron bronze when Il'ian approaches. The starcrafter has forgotten what she came to do, apparently, because she just eyes the bronzerider as if this is all his fault. "What?" She sees that face. Her eyes narrow briefly. "You are going to burn." Mama Elle for a minute here.

Sargaeroth's mirth must be echoed in Il'ian's look, for there exists a singular level of dry humor that's cast upon the man's features. "My skin." Muffled the words come because he's tugging on the shirt, though the brief shirtlessness shows a darkly silvered chain — more like pewter — with a pendant dangling from it, the details of which are hard to see before the shirt covers it up. And everything else too, including his precious skin. "Is fine. I've got a cream." Makes it better, right? Squinted as his eyes are, Rukbat's bright light shafts into the irises enough to light up the hue of his eyes to the vibrance of tropical seas. "Why're you so riled?" His chin nod towards the cannister seems to imply her infatuation with this spot rather than her temperament, although it could be that too.

Il'ian shirtless is a nice sight. Elle must have some kind of mental toughness skill going on because she manages not to look outwardly affected by it. (But seriously, is he photoshopped or something?) "A cream." She sounds… a little doubtful. (Seriously, is he photoshopped? What the eff.) When he looks up towards the skies it seems to shake her out of … whatever it was that she was previously afflicted by. Sargaeroth's disease, perchance. The starcrafter half-turns to go back to the spot that she's been hunting, withdrawing from the case a complicated gizmo that she deftly unfolds: it has three legs like a tripod, and a strange housing affixed to a hand-crank. "I'm a starcrafter, not a miner." Earthquakes make her cranky? Rudimentary paleoseismology isn't quite a Miner's purview, either.

Il'ian is either dense or he's very good at hiding any notice of her slight distraction. (He totally is photoshopped, no one — ahem.) "A burn cream." Unrolling the end of his shirt down so that all of the flesh is now covered up and even his belt is hidden from sight, the young man follows her, all up in her grill. "Doesn't mean you aren't riled up on this spot." When she starts pulling out all of her complicated … things, the bronzerider shoves his hands into his pockets, but he's not above watching Elle. Does she feel the weight of his eyes? "Felt good rubbed on." Because breaking a conversation up like that really makes it easy to keep track of the threads of them. Stingy with words, Il'ian's inflection is still weighted as each word is chosen carefully. On purpose.

It's okay, you can finish it. NO ONE LOOKS THAT GOOD other than Charlize Theron when she was stealing everyone's life-force in that one movie where Chris Hemsworth *really* looked like K'ane. Effing Il'ian. Stop looking so tasty. Elle does pause with her placement of this insane little device to stare over at the bronzerider for that 'felt good' comment, uncertainty on her face. Notably (and belatedly) she is dressed for success today: no more of her typical baggy tunics, she's equipped in a slim-fitting shirt and dressy pants with hardy boots. There's evidence of a matching jacket that has been removed, since it hangs folded from the strap of one of her bags. A heavy lock of hair falls over her eyes as she squints at Il'ian, but she doesn't move to shift it. "Did I interrupt you?" Maybe he was about to get his freak on in the oasis. She could possibly be *truly* inconsiderate right now, after all.

Il'ian shifts his stance lightly, rolling his shoulders (making himself even more tasty). "Interrupt me?" It's unfair how easily boys can manufacture an expression that somehow seems to blend confusion and interest in the same vein in a way that possibly and potentially easily distracts the fairer sex. Not always, mind. "I was just escaping the weyr." You know, the broken one. The one that's on the verge of getting pelted with a giant stormcloud of sand, not that they are all that far away from that either. Just sayin'. Her instruments are still eyed with suspicion, but that suspicion is edged with curiosity. Is it purposeful the way he stands so that his shadow is cast over the girl and her work? "Suits you better, you know." As always, the words giving are only part of the thought as a whole.

It's so unfortunate. What is? A lot of things. Most of them express across Elle's face in a complicated and nuanced miasma of dismay and variants thereof. It happens briefly enough. "Well. You look…" Elle tilts her head to one side and studies him momentarily. "Pissy. Or you did." She manages to make 'pissy' sound unbelievably elegant in that high-class voice of hers, only redemption to the whole statement. Elle frowns down and finally places the instrument, standing on two of the elongated feet and starting to work the hand-crank — a core sampler revolves down from the middle housing, slowly destined for the ground. "What?" She didn't catch that last, peers almost-sideways at him as if not quite certain she should look at him or not.

Girls. They are the epitome of the definition of confusion, and thus Il'ian keeps careful hold of himself and his words. Rather than immediately reply, he watches Elle quite like she might actually grow a second head full of teeth and come to chomp off his important bits. It is this almost careful expression that she's afforded when she looks at him, yet the boy still carries the confidence of one who is secure in his rank and position in life. "Mmm. You'd know if I was," deadpan dry the humor that collects like dust upon the smooth baritone, "'pissy'." Tone inflects in perfect mimicry of hers, as if at some part of his life, he had learned to mimic a Fortian accent to perfection. Squatting when the core sampler slowly edges towards the ground, the blue eyes sharp with the sudden intensity of one who thirsts for knowledge. For all wheels that churn behind that fairly neutral expression, the words he actually gives her are, "Not wearing baggy sacks." It is careful, this intelligence that lies beneath the tight-lipped reserve.

Elle is just a teenaged girl in some ways, and she pulls a face at Il'ian's mimickry of hers in ONLY the way a teenaged girl could: full of eyerolling and weird lip twisting. Elle works the hand-crank with the measured pace of someone too accustomed to this… which would make sense because she has a quiver-like pack slung over a shoulder full of slender cylinders just the right diameter for the core sample that she's excising currently. "Tunics are more comfortable," Elle responds. "These are always… binding." She shifts her shoulders as if to demonstrate. With an eye to his clothes: "Not like you have any room to talk."

With elbows resting on his thighs, Il'ian balances his weight on the balls of his feet, watching the starcrafter work, brows drawing in. Her response to his mimicry earns the quicksilver flash of boyish grin as if he won something in this encounter. The blond hair has settled as the wind tousles it about, sometimes falling across his forehad, sometimes not. The backs of his ears and neck toast a little, turning a soft salmon pink. Attention flicks from what she's doing to the girl herself, and long does he consider her. In a silence that seems to hint at some thoughts swimming beneath the surface. About to say something, for the shape of his mouth changes when what he finally says starts with an obviously different sound, "My shit fits." He plucks at his shirt, looking down before raising his eyes, brows lifting. Unspoken the query, 'What?'

"Laugh it up, bronzeboy," Elle grumbles, mostly to herself. The brunette seems locked in place for the moment — this hand-crank isn't necessarily the speediest of ways to excise long pieces of earth, especially when slabs of stone are incorporated within the sample. She grits her teeth and bears down on one particularly rough spot, then throw Il'ian a look of muted — outrage? Ire? Something. "All of my clothes fit exactly how I want them to. Excuse me for not wanting to be seen as a whore or an Oldtimer." Aren't they synonymous, after all?

A single brow lifts as Il'ian regards Elle with the preciseness that a starcrafter would examine some very tricky, very hard-to-understand charts. "My shit fits," he states again, droll and dry, "Is an accurate statement and all that I require in articles of clothing." Strung together like popcorn on tinsel at turnover, the bronzerider weights his words so that the baritone sinks into what could be bemused annoyance. "Din say nuffin' 'bout no oldtimers." Muttered, mumbled, mangled; the words are a direct counter to the verbal masterpiece of mere seconds before. She put those words in his mouth! However, the moment's past when those blue eyes of his narrow and his attention is focused on the thing she's cranking. With this hands dangling relaxed between his knees, he holds his silence. As if all the words he gave her at the beginning have exhausted his verbal mana stores. It's regen time, see.

And well Il'ian does, for Elle is thrice-complicated than her most arcane charting of the most obscure constellations. The starcrafter is focused on her work and not on Il'ian in this moment, cranking down with all the force in her slender frame. She leaves the bronzerider in silence, not pushed nor goaded into filling it. It's companionable, this verbal regen. Like sipping a pleasant beverage, almost.

When given a choice, Il'ian won't breach a silence and chooses instead to let that companionable silence linger, stretch and fill the spaces between them. Idly, he reaches between his knees to dig fingers into the grit and sand and dirt, sifting through the rubbled bits with an intensity that one might see more in someone panning for gold. Dusting his hands off, with attention slipping more inward, the guards that mask much of his expression slip a bit, softening so that when he glances off to the horizon is profile is less pensive and more easy. Like one that's finding solace in the silence of the desert; it is clear that the man holds a great love of the land in which he was born.

This is not a heat that Elle was born to, and perhaps that informs her response to it — generally an ill-settled irritation that only rarely bubbles to the surface. Now, however, the focus of her aggravation is the last few inches of this core sample - she's hit rock and it takes more effort than ever to get past it, even with the circular blade of the sampler itself. She breaks the silence but unwillingly, or perhaps unconsciously, a grunt of effort as she sholders into it.

Pulled from the quiet introspective of whatever mysterious thoughts scatter around the bronzerider's mind, Il'ian turns his head and once again regards Elle when she makes that grunting sound. In a rare moment — for he is generally neutral in terms of giving others aid — he asks, "Need help?" Almost more of a grunt than the fluid eloquence.

"No, thank you." Elle doesn't dismiss him out of hand - though she COULD have, the kind of man to let a woman labor in front of him without helping! - but is distracted by the last little bit. She… almost… has… i — there, the housing bottoms out with a clear bell-toned click, and she huffs her relief in a sigh. "So why are you out here?" The question comes out of the clear blue as she pushes down the close-valve, that which will enable her to take the whole sample without disturbing the sequence of layers.

"I like it here," Il'ian answers after considering whether or not to answer her, although he doesn't shift his position from the squatting pose he's taken up. Maybe he's afraid Elle would bite him if he tried to take over. His eyes narrow a little, head angled away from direct sunlight, as he takes in the movements she makes, intent upon getting her noodle of the earth. "And you?" He gestures vaguely to her apparatus, "I thought you studied stars. Not earth noodles."

"Like it here enough to bring your rude lifemate and rub cream all over yourself," Elle mutters more to herself than to Il'ian — what kind of mood is she in? One irritated by manual labor, perhaps. She finally removes the entire core, handling the metal tube carefully, affixing a note to the top and scrounging out a stylus from a pocket to jot quick data on the tag. "Earthquakes normally do not fit under our purview, no. But the miners here don't make a study of them like they do at minerhall, so…" Bitchgirl Elle to the rescue.

In one fluid motion the bronzerider stands and affixes Elle with a shuttered look. "The cream is if I burn." Let's be clear here, he's not out here spanking the monkey (although, he could, he supposes). Il'ian seems poised to leave, eyes narrowed and annoyance truly flicking across his features. "Judgmental female," he mutters as he half-turns, angling his body in the direction of the Oasis. For once, words slip out without the weight of careful consideration, it is (for him) an exhalation of irritation. "Good luck, then." He can sense when his welcome is overstayed. Igen's women are hella confusing.

"You're weird!" Elle calls at his back, scowling down at the sample in her hands and grumpily turning her back on the pretty, pretty bronzerider. (Pretty obnoxious bronzerider, that is.) "Men," she mutters to herself. Does anything else need to be said, really?

Il'ian gets nothing but flack from Igen's women! Elle is waved off with a dismissive flare of his hand, as all of his attention is focused on relaxation at the pools. At least, until that sandstorm hits and then he'll be hating life, but what male thinks that far in advance? Really?

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