Who

Th'bek, Zeyta, Tsantris, Harriet

What

It's Zeyta's party and she's not attending.

When

It is the eighty-second day of Autumn and 80 degrees.

Where

Cantina Back Alley

OOC Date 06 Jan 2016 05:00

 

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"Does that make you a liar or merely a hypocrite?"


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Cantina Back Alley

A little too quiet, a little too dim. The alleyway behind the Dustbowl is not…unpleasant, exactly; the tavern staff have a little raised garden, and the brickwork of the ancient buildings all around offers a subtle beauty, with raised arches leading into little courtyards. And yet. There's something uncomfortable about the way the shadows linger here. Something distressing about the stink of the place, quite unrelated to the midden that lies at its end. Whatever else this alley might be, one thing is as certain as the goosebumps it gives: it's not a place for good little girls and boys.


How appropriate, for so dark a day to mark so solemn an occasion. Igen descended into darkness around mid afternoon, the swirling clouds of a desert sandstorm ceding to the pitch-black of night. The eerie silence of the back alley behind the Cantina only breaks with brief interruptions of raucous laughter and spilled light from the bar when a patron stumbles out to take a leak or stumble home through the maze of archways. Beside the raised garden, one buttock hitched on its ledge, dwells Zeyta, brooding with visible frown in what is no doubt some stupid-expensive dress. Her earlier plan to sit inside all night with a three-tiered cake failed; it towers intact with the crowd she left behind, though who knows for how long. Possibly, she intends to return and guard it until its untimely demise. Or, she's given up, choosing fresh air and temporary solitude of lurking in the gooseflesh-raising atmosphere of the place beyond the drunken revelry.

It's quite telling, the smear of icing showing as sugared gilt at the end of Tsantris' index digit, sweetness stolen under the cover of darkness. If the Harper is swift to eat the evidence, it's due only to behavioral thrift: he is out here in the first likely bracket, a patron having had too much to drink. He comes unfortunately close to where Zeyta has settled herself as a gargoyle of the desert evening, light-blinded to his surroundings, before popping the topmost buttons of his pants. Does pissing on camera violate any decency rules?

Sandstorms are just for exfoliation. Th'bek, in a Lawrence of Arabia swath of cloth around his head and mouth, sees the world through a slice of an opening, the wind prying even at the dense material of his riding leathers, and the parcel paper under his arm. He started a stride with a bazaar dweller, body practically tingling at the thought of being robbed. By the man trickles back into the crowds as Th'bek nears the glow of the Cantina. "Must be some affair." Seeing his former wingleader, the party's debutante, outside rather than in. Tsantris is taken in by the default of proximity, but he isn't telling the man where to piss.

Harriet is using the alley as a shortcut to somewhere, moving with the quiet confidence of someone who has been this way many times before even in the darkness, despite its midden-ness and distressing-ness. People taking a break from parties (nature breaks included) are a common find; she essentially ignores them until her path brings her by Zeyta perched on her garden ledge. She pauses a moment, caught in an awkward 'should I say hello or would that be weird' thing, then errs on the side of politeness and offers a, "Hello again," to the apparently-always-spectacularly-dressed woman. She does stay well away from Tsantris and his public indecency.

The lopsided corner of a loose cobble jutting out from its cracked mortar casing enthralls Zeyta, gaze transfixed on that spot of the ground for several lingering self-absorbed moments after three interlopers break her lonely introspection. Chin jerking, bright-fire intensity kindles anew in the topaz cut of her eyes, quick appraisal meted to harper, brownrider and familiar stranger with flickering acknowledgement. With Tsantris so near, she mobilizes, little heels emerging from under her dress to clack against stone and push off, an affronted scoff sounded with a reproving, "These are not the latrines," before he whips it all out in the open to water the plants behind her. Th'bek and Harriet suffer only the unspoken enmity of her silence as she composes herself, ridding her external appearance of the melancholia etched in her loneliness.

Ignorance in the face of the law is no excuse, but Tsantris' surprised reaction is likely punishment enough as first Th'bek seemingly materializes in his general vicinity, then Harriet, and then Zeyta is proving to not be a snarl of stone posted to watch over the garden. He makes the rest of it short, tucks himself back into his pants, and doesn't offer to shake any hands. "Oh?" is what he responds to Zeyta, his own tenor an icy amalgamation of frostburnt embarassment and stolen indignation caught firm beneath iron control: "It doesn't smell that way to me." At least he didn't relieve himself in the middle of the alley like some drunken sot halfway down to the middens. He's still nightblinded, adapting slowly, but gives a single, civil nod towards Th'bek and Harriet in juxtaposition of his reaction to Zeyta's reproof.

Th'bek stakes a glance through the doorway at the party they're missing, the trailing end of his plaid headscarf caught by the wind and pulled to his back. "Here." The parcel is presented by one hand only, within a small jade box designed for powder, earrings, or some such female substances. "This is for you. Happy turnday, Zeyta." Once opened, the handle to grip looks dragon-like, but the Eastern type that Pern has forgotten in favor of their current fire-breathers. It has to be at least as old as Zeyta. "Man's gotta point there." +1 for Tsantris. A glance snaps over Zeyta's frame, not used to seeing a dress on her. It's unsettling, but less so than when he was seventeen.

Harriet doesn't follow Zeyta in her retreat exactly, but does move a few steps out of the way of the Splash Zone. "Evening," she offers to the others in her vicinity, unruffled by Tsantris' proclivities but keeping her gaze primly averted until he's finished his business. This gives her a clear view of the gift exchange, and a little of her polite coolness slips into genuine enthusiasm. "Oh! Happy turnday! Is that your party?" She gestures towards the boisterous Cantina, then cranes juuust a little, trying to see the gift a bit better.

"All of Igen smells like disappointment and soiled cloth," Zeyta denounces, waxing poetic as she hardens herself amidst unwanted company, steeling herself with the steady course of palms trailing down the ribbing of the corset pinching her waist. Once at her hips, they plant there, arms flared out, akimbo. The staccato cacophony of her feet continues through a slow revolution, petticoats spinning too, a tornado of tulle, georgette, and organza. Adjusting to the dark, it becomes clearer that she is supposed to be the guest of honor within, a role refused with her droll, icicle-candor contradiction of: "I don't believe in the celebration of one's turnday. It's not some hard-won accomplishment." Still, she's opening it, and there's a greedy glimmer of delighted surprise at the apparent age of the parcel's contents, although any reaction beyond the crinkling around the corners of her eyes is lost when Harriet ventures similar well-wishing. "No. It is not my party it is theirs. I was just an excuse to throw it," she grumbles. Her life is soooooo difficult.

The facial spasm that contours Tsantris' features into a rippling rictus of surprise and awareness happens abruptly and fades slowly. He'll thank the stars and crackdust for the cover of darkness, but it's still visible. "Turnday," spoken with the awareness of a man who stole frosting like a terrible toddler. It would be awkward with anyone else, but Harper-trained Tsantris is, and he flicks his adjusting eyesight to Th'bek for some level of understanding, a silent indicator of his status well-involved with habitual boy's clubs of information and solidarity. "Does that make you a liar or merely a hypocrite?" he smoothly inquires to Zeyta, gesturing with his chin to her get-up and shifting his eyes towards the festivities she's left within. The sharp jut of his teeth shine in the moonslight. When she grumbles the last bit, he gazes to Harriet momentarily, then back to the erstwhile wingleader, his question answered. "Harper's finest festivities to your natality, rider." Even the dress can't disguise her lot in life.

The gaiety spawning in the Cantina is palpable, Th'bek's feet sensing its rhythms through the compacted sand. Zeyta is right, the populace needs no excuse for a fete, but the spotlight could be hers if she could spurn the darkness. "Come now." Then, at Tsantris' question, the brownrider has a smirk under that wrinkled cotton protecting his face. "Evening," accepting Harriet though she could be a bazaar stray attracted to the lights and free food. "Don't ask how I got that." A half-hearted gesture to the relic, eyes still watching Zeyta's expression.

Sensing a whoooole lot of things that she is not prepared to unpack, were she even given the chance to do so (seems…unlikely?) Harriet just backs right off of all that Turnday well-wishing with a neutral, "Ah," to Zeyta, leaving a nice space for Tsantris to jump in with his opinions on the matter. The corner of her mouth quirks up ever so slightly at the harper's flowery turn of phrase, and her gaze rests on the brightness of the party within. Perhaps she is a stray, though let's be honest, she's not the one who stuck her finger in the cake.

"It's not even my turnday alone, though you wouldn't know it since my selfish twin is no where to be found." Zeyta directs her outburst to the winding alleyway over her shoulder, an eruption welcomed and coalesced into the shadows. A firm grip swings the jade box by its serpentine handle at her side, accepted into her inventory of antiques with begrudging, thankless silence. Like an uneven vessel, she threatens to keel as her foot snags, achieving equilibrium against with an indignant huff and sheer force of will. "I'm neither at the moment, and both when it suits me. I'm an opportunist." Still denying herself the celebratory spirit, she returns to her former post, a stable lean-to against the raised garden wall. "You, girl. Don't ever age, or at least never acknowledge that you do." Sage advice from an elder who smells *faintly* of wine.

The sensing of undercurrent is duly noted, else fabricated, and it takes only the barest of light to see dark brows crinkling on Tsantris' forehead. He wearies of the entertainment at hand, is the first to break back to the festivities within. "I need to wash my hands," is all that the man says before departing the olfactory nightmare of the back-alley for the party beyond the hemming doors of the Cantina. Exit Harper, stage left.

In a pocket of calm, Th'bek exposes his face to the open air, pushing the fabric to the boundary of his neck and shoulders until it will be required again. It will. Another peeling off from the avenue enters the realm of the Cantina, a place Th'bek thought he was destined to go but Zeyta's condition stays his step. So it's a womanly thing. "It's-" Tavuqth effectively dams the man's topic as ex-Arroyo rider Jokoll, recently weathering the death of his dragon, is on the rampage in Last Call. "Stay with her, hm?" A light tap to Harriet's shoulder, eyes earnest, and Th'bek adapts his walk to a run once given the clearance of crowds to do so.

Harriet barely keeps herself from looking around for some other girl upon whom Zeyta might be bestowing her advice, despite knowing that there are none. The first part she discards as a temporal impossibility; the second she gravely assents to. "I won't breathe a word about it." She seems earnest, if perhaps in the manner of someone who is trying to keep the peace until she can extricate herself. The shoulder tap startles her and she darts a confused look at Th'bek before he's off; there's no verbal assent but the woman turns back to Zeyta and squares her shoulders, shoving her hands in her pockets. Sooooo.

"I don't need supervision," Zeyta barks after her now superior, quick to grip her present tighter and cross her arms in petulant display. Instead, she shifts to pursue Tsantris, back into what is her party after all. There are cakes to tip, and brawls to be had. And pretty women like herself to fret over their own mortality in a room full of drunken strangers, eager to celebrate her approaching death.

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