Who | |
What |
And here we have three Candidates. Only one of which is actually doing what he is supposed to be doing. Cussing |
When |
It is midday of the tenth day of the sixth month of the tenth turn of the 12th pass. |
Where |
Jungle |
OOC Date | 17 Mar 2017 07:00 |
Jungle
As the clearing is left behind, a deep silence permeates and soaks into the very ground that towering trees grow out of, accompanied by the humid heat of the enclosed rainforest. The silence is broken by the chittering call of wild firelizards, the chirruping of distant avians, and the ominous rustling of large, feline predators that stalk the deeper, heart of the jungle. Vines drape from the trees, falling to the jungle floor, which carries the hint of decay. Water drips from the canopy above, the soft sound almost musical against the echoing call of the jungles denizens. Westward, with the tangled overgrowth and the shadows of the deeper rainforest, the forest looms dangerous.
The area is thickly forested with many banyan and sandalwood trees.
IT isn't night time. It's mid-dayish and the numbweed harvesting is in FULL SWING. And full sting. Everyone probably can't smell anything but the brewing going on. Yfana has managed to escape for a while though, and she breaks back into the clearing with a bit of a skip in her step that comes from being off in the jungle and a full bag over her shoulder.
You know what is ridiculous about jungles? All the noise! The smell of numbweed aside, there is a damn lot of chittering and whooting and chirping and buzzing and does this jungle ever sleep?!?! Not at night, apparently not during the day, you know what, harvesting Numbweed would be SO much nicer without the noise. And the bugs, no bugs would be nice. For all of the complaints Drex could come up with, he's not. He's currently considering the phesability of smoking numbweed. After all, drying them out wouldn't be too hard in this heat and he could do with a good smoke. Was that against the rules? He was starting to not care as he tended to get extra chorse regardless of following rules or not. Thank you Ko'an. Still need a his sword back. Really ought to stand up and get back to harvesting, but there was no one here and-fuck someone was coming. Drex pops up, bag hefted up in time to see… it's that annoying girl. The bag is dropped again and Drex plops down into the shade again, she wasn't worth the effort of hiding his current not-working state of being.
Ferdinand can't smell anything. His head is shaved. There are dark circles forming under his eyes because yes, it is indeed noisy as all get out here. But apparently the best way to avoid misery is to… work? Ferdi's been pretty much non-stop all day so far, taking on whatever task comes his way. There was a lot of cleaning, and then a lot of harvesting, and now he's stepping back into the clearing with his own stuffed bag. He stops to take in the others— Yfana gets a pass, but his tired gaze falls on Drex. "… Shouldn't you be doing something useful?"
Yfana is shaved too! They can be shaved buddies! Though Yfana probably looks a little more strange because of her hairless state. She probably would have walked right past Drex if Ferdinand hadn't said something. Her pep from being in the jungle is too much to stand back from joining in so she'll just step right beside Ferdinand and bend over to look at, "It is the bar-man with all of the colorful bottles. Who did not like them to be moved."
Oh. If he'd seen Ferdinand sooner, he would have maintained the fasade of working, "Yeah. I supposed I should be. However, if you keep up as you are, there won't be any work left for me." He shifts slightly, making more room at the base of the tree and nods toward it, "Why don't you have a seat?" The annoying girl remembered him. Drat. "Yes. That would be me. LUckily there are no bottles here. Needing to be moved or otherwise." Just a hell a lot of numbweed and noise. "You can sit down too, I suppose." However, he's not making room for her in the shade.
Ferdinand sides-eyes Yfana at her description of the other man. "Yeeaaah. That guy." I mean she's not wrong. He starts to walk past Drex, pausing briefly with a raised brow to consider the offered shady seating. Ferdi's body is /seriously/ considering it, but his brain wins out and he walks on towards a pot for some good ol' plant cooking goodness. "There's plenty of work left. There's /always/ work. If you're not going to do this, you can… organize some crap, or whatever. That's your thing, right?"
Yfana has no problem sitting herself right into the dirt. She's already got streaks of it all over her, so what is a little more? The bag gets pulled onto her lap and she opens it from within she pulls a redfruit larger than her hand and after shining it on her dubiously clean shirt she bites into it deeply. "It is okay to sit for a bit." See Ferdinand! Sitting is fine. "You could maybe ask to come with me? Francis said I could collect some other things so long as I stayed within earshot."
"Sure, that can be my thing." Drex doesn't move, eyes following Ferdinand in his determination to work himself to death. A'hali always did pick up the odded assortment of people. Granted, Ferdinand wasn't being hostile this time, so that was a plus. A cooler look is turned onto Yfana, "Did she now? Any mention as to what these 'other things' were? And how much?" Granted, Drex was not partifularly inspired to do much right now and smoking some numbweed still sounded pretty good. "And is there ever going to be an end time set to this drudgery?"
The terrible part of me really wants Drex to smoke numbweed so he can't feel his stomach for a while~
There's currently no A'hali around to protect, and he can keep a relatively decent eye on Sorvani, so Ferdinand is generally his normal level of hostile around Drex so far. He does… whatever prep numbweed entails, getting it into the pot to stir mindlessly FOREVER. "I guess," is his response to Yfana, aka I'LL SIT WHEN I'M DEAD- "Just don't let them catch you sitting too long." Ferdi's eyes drift off to stare into the distance, glazing slightly with exhaustion. "Candidacy is drudgery. And then you get a dragon and it's a different drudgery. It's /work/. Get used to it."
How high do you suppose numbweed could make a person?
"They will not yell if we rest." Yfana is sure of this. "So long as we do not rest a long time." She tilts her head slightly, then shifts herself so she can keep both men in view. There's normal-level-hostile between the two of them which is weird, because there hasn't been a lot of hostile in general. "You two do not like one another. Why?"
"I'm not opposed to Work. I'm opposed to pointless work." Granted, Numbweed was nice stuff when you had a knife in your gut. Drex would know. But this MASS PRODUCTION was dumb. Who on pern could possibly need THIS MUCH NUMBWEED!?!?!? "I don't like people who threaten and accuse others without ground." This is stated almost matter of factly, a shrug is offered, "It's nothing personal. Just the circumsances that I happened to meet that man." There is a general gesture toward Ferdinand and Drex selects one of his numbweed leaves and sniffs it.
Dragonriders.
Ferdinand rolls his tired eyes. "You're a pirate, you attempted murder, and you manipulated the nicest, most naive person to ever breathe air. I don't need any more reason than that." Well, this being Ferdi, he doesn't usually need /any/ reason to not like someone. "But," he says, settling into a good stirring rhythm, "We're stuck with each other for now. And maybe as weyrlings. And then as riders. So I guess we have to… cooperate. Or something." He doesn't sound particularly enthused.
Yfana's been more introspective lately but this has her FULL attention. She's munching on her redfruit as the talk goes from one to the other. "That does seem like many bad things. Especially the pirates. Did you kidnap my cousin?" It is said way too off hand for someone asking if they'd done something like that. And right on it's heels to Ferdinand, "Did he try to kill you?"
"Back to this again?! I had a trial and was punished for the murdering thing! Can we move on? I did not manipulate A'hali, he offered and I accepted. Simple." The cousin statement catches Drex off guard and he frowns at Yfana. "How should I know who your cousin is? We kidnapped a good many people and if you must know I murdered a hell a lot of people as a pirate that no one ever seems that conserned about. Just the attempted murder! You know what's funniest about that? Attempted means the person lived! People are more worried about the person who lived than the people who died!" Drex gets to his feet, agitation written into every movement.
"No, but-" Ferdinand pauses as Drex basically fills in the blanks there. He gestures to the former pirate, giving Yfana a look like 'see?' "He's killed and kidnapped people. What am I supposed to like about him?" Ferdi switches arms, letting the formerly stirring one just hang. So tired. "I mean, he's clean, I guess. That's about all he has going for him." Just gonna talk like you're not here, Drex!
"Rylov." Yfana will supply the name of her cousin. Despite the fact that Drex is all getting-up-to-probably-leave Yfana will supply the name with every expectation that he will answer. "So he did not try to kill you? Just these other people?" Disbelief colors Yfana's expression as she holds up an eyebrow and flicks away the poor remains of her snack. "I do not believe that he has done this. It is probably all talk so he sounds tough. My uncles do that at times, when they are preparing for a hunt."
Drex scowls at Ferdinand and his pack is slung up as he starts to stalk toward the other man's boiling pot. "Rylov? Yep, totally had that whining kid in my boat. Damn it, he wouldn't stop crying. And Isadora was no help what-so-ever! Even with the stupid cat." Drex is next to Ferdinand not, his pack lifted and the leaves within dumped into that whick Ferdinand is stirring so diligently. Drex offers him a bright smile, "And you know what? That uncle was so dim as to show up without payment that first time! I was there too~ Just to make sure the Fool didn't run off. I could have shot the kid then~" His words are directed toward Yfana, but Drex continues to grin at Ferdinand. "And yes~ I am very clean~"
"Lord Rylov is your cousin?" There's a tone of surprise there, eyebrows raised. But Ferdinand's attention whips back to Drex, a baleful glare directed up at his fellow candidate. His stirring ceases as the extra leaves are dumped in, and his grip tightens on the stick. "You're crazy, you know that?" he snaps. "One second you're supposedly on a path to redemption, and then the next you're spouting shit like that. What's wrong with you?"
All talk, Drex is. But when he says he WAS there and mentions an uncle.. (Though Renalde isn't an uncle, just… well, nothing now) Yfana has to put some weight into things. Slowly she stands and reaches into her bag. "Yes, Rylov is my cousin. My grandmother is his, and his aunt is mine. His father was my uncle." That's to Ferdinand, but her attention stays fixed on DRex, and it's him she'll address next, "My clan's honor says that I should try to kill you for that dishonor. But candidates do not do that to one another. So instead I will wish a feline upon your head, and this." She pulls out another plant, this one handled with a bit more care than the last. It's covered in needles and looks ALTOGETHER not fun to touch. Flinging it expertly the wildling lass throws the poison-ivy like plant at Drex. Hopefully he catches it, but if not, even a small little rub will do the trick and leave Drex itching for ~days~. Too bad the numbweed isn't all ready… he'll probably want the mass production of it!
And then Yfana leaves.
Drex beams at Ferdinand, "Please Define 'Redemption' and how talking of what I was changes it? I cannot deny piratehood any more than I can deny being a human. After all I'm not kiddnapping and murdering now am I?" He continues to grin at Ferdinand, until Yfana starts in on Honor. This gets his attention and his smile turns to her, "Felines, terrible things-" His words are caught off at the throw, and years of salioring kicks in. Drex does not dodge but catches the plant as if it where a thrown leanth of rope. It takes a moment to register and he yelps, dropping the vine and jumping away with a thinly consealed horror, "Damn Her!" Already he could feel the alergic reaction starting and skin starting to crawl, "AND MAY YOUR SHIP SINK IN EEL INFESTED WATER!" This is yelled after the retreating wildingly, hands already running over eachother in a shared distress and itch.
"No, you're not now. But it's going to take a real long time and a lot of work to ever make up for it," Ferdi says very matter of factly. He silently, slightly dazedly watches the catch, the yelp, the drop, followed by the frantic itchy hands. It takes a moment for the situation to sink into his tired, overworked brainmeats, but then there's a deep, oh so put-upon sigh. Which turns into a yawn as he stands, setting his stirring stick aside. "C'mon. We have all the numbweed /ever/ in the whole world, so. I'll find you some finished stuff and you can shove your hands into it." He turns and starts walking, shrugging as he goes. "It'll save you from having to do anything for awhile. Since I guess that's your thing too." Asshole Mother Hen…? He'll take care of you AND insult you!
Drex curses quietly, but silently follows Ferdinand to whatever finished-numbweed he knows of. The insults are not returned this time, but Drex will take them quietly. The kindness is aknowlaged with a single sentance, "I owe you one." before Drex lapses back into his stewing silence. Yep, that's why A'hali picked up Ferdinand. Drex gets it. Sorvani is the Sweetheart, turns out Ferdinand is too. If Drex deservces this kindness is debatable, but that Ferdinand was willing to give it speaks volumes about one of them.
I love this scene~