Xanadu Weyr - Hot Springs
The warmth that flows from this cavern is almost overwhelming for some, the steam rising from the shimmering pools as thick as the morning fog that rolls in off the ocean. Numerous pools are scattered here and there with ribboned walls that are natural in their construction. The water has a somewhat green cast to it, but it is merely a reflection from the ethereal light which is the glow down here that was so noticeable from the Lower Cavern Tunnel. People can often be found down here washing themselves or just relaxing.
Situated along the walls are various racks covered in fresh towels ready for those who step out of the warm waters. A set of shelves have been installed towards the back wall, allowing people a place to put their belongings while they rest in the pools, and despite the white color that these have been painted, they are cast with that eerie green glow. Then, it's obvious. The ceiling of this cavern is covered in the fluorescent phosphorous matter that glows are made off. The mossy substance almost glitters and appears quite lovely.
Somewhere gold Luraorth and bronze Kanekith lie twined and sleeping, and soon all will know, as a few who ride dragons already do, that Xanadu Weyr has the same Weyrleader, but a new Senior Weyrwoman. In the caverns, a hot breakfast - a very hot one - has been served. Morning has come and gone. Lunch, attended by a trickle - mostly mothers and their children - has also come and gone. The Weyr… seems to be unusually quiet, although there are a few people out and about. There's a rope barrier across the tunnel entrance to the bathing caverns that states it's closed for maintenance, so at the moment, there does not appear to be anyone using them. This… may not prevent the determined from entering, however. The bathing caverns… is not in its usual state. For one thing there are shreds of clothing drifting about the bottom of one of the largest pools. That one seems to be backed up and overflowing somewhat. The racks it, where clean towels and robes are supposed to be ready, are empty. On the floor before them, a tumbled pile of white cotton. In the heap of white, bare toes exposed at one end - two sets by the look of them - at the other, tousled hair, silverblonde mingled with dark.
It is sufficiently warm here that those exposed toes are not, of themselves, particularly notable to those possessing them. Whether this is fortunate for them is yet to be determined, but it is certainly conducive to the continued somnolence of that pile of white cotton. The bathing caverns… certainly do appear to require maintenance at present; as such, it is appropriate that the sign is in place… as it has been since early this morning. The pools gurgle and drip, covering any sounds of breathing, but the pile of absorbent material is not entirely still; it shifts and subsides… or perhaps that's simply a trick of the glow.
There's mumbling and grumbling as a certain greenrider is chased out of the kitchens. But Keziah has managed to procure some rare cooked steak. There's a glance around the caverns and a disgruntled sound. She then sighs a little and casts a glance towards the bathing caverns. Another look around and then a smile. "Perfect." she murmurs and then slips past the rope and heads on in. She starts to eat one of the thin cut slices and licks the juices from her fingers. She stops, with a finger still in her mouth as she eyes the state of the cavern. A brow raises as she casts her gaze from one pool to another to the racks and to the… Toes. Toes? She glances back towards the cavern, the rope then the pile. A smile twitches and then she nudges a bench nearby, sending it sreeching along the floor. And then just watches the pile.
Just before that bench is nudged, one of those feet begins moving, pink-polished toes tickling at the sole of the larger foot. A muffled groan issues from underneath that pile, followed by a shift of towels and then a pleased mumble as, unseen under that heap, arms tighten and closer is sought. All is right with the world and sleep may be re-claimed. Only there's a screech of wood on stone that produces sudden flailing-to-awake. A head pops up - the silverblonde one - as the owner of the smaller toes props up on elbows. A towel shifts enough so that eyes are exposed, wide, disoriented iceblue ones, that stare uncomprehendingly between strands of tumbled locks at the source of the racket. A woman… squint-blink…who has been seen often enough before that she is recognized, but that's as far as cognizance works at the moment. Sleep-slurred and mumbled, the words are nevertheless clipped, "What. Are. You. Doing. Here?" Then a nudge to the towel-covered heap beside her, she asks, "Did we forget to lock the door?"
That foot curls as those toes tease along it, a soft murmur beneath the towels and robes providing an approximation of blankets of sufficient similarity that the current level of alertness of those beneath it is not sufficient to distinguish them. The third voice in this conversation - that of the bench - is just as nonverbal but rather less content. A moment ago, the foot curved; now the entire body curls inward, wincing as the sound penetrates a consciousness not yet entirely present but rapidly becoming so in response to that stimulus. Eyes open, body still tensed. "What?" he echoes, but his tone is more perplexity than accusation. He shifts, attempting to turn over. The multipart white covering them drifts dangerously as he moves, but is not wholly disrupted as he pauses to stare at the ceiling with a vague confusion. "Ah." The existence of blotches of light is correct, but the character thereof is… "Perhaps… not as such."
Keziah glances back the way she came, down at the pile again and oh look, there's a head that belongs to those toes. Or well, eyes at least. "Eating." she remarks as she takes another bite of the rare steak slices. "And yeah, the doors wide open. Quite the show really. Everyone's been in an out." Lies to be sure, but she's just in that frame of mind. She pulls the bench back in place and then settles herself down on it. "Quite the mess of things in here." she notes as she looks around "If I didn't know better, I'd say someone let loose a pair of wild felines. But I know there's none here." They'd be dead if Kezi saw them after all. "I must say though, you all look like you've made quite the nest. Should we be placing bets on a date?"
Not as such? "Whut? What does that- ?" She hasn't even looked at the ceiling. The headwoman's confused gaze swings from the steward back to the woman. Shapely brows rise, the look skeptical. Everyone? It's plausible that one person found the wrong cottage, but the whole Weyr? No. "Suuuure they have," she drawls sarcastically, flopping back beside the man and dragging another robe over her face to shut out the glow from above. Her bedroom's a mess? No surprise there! From the way she feels, putting clothing where it belongs was not a priority last night. "There's an AWLM in our bedroom," she mumbles. "Wake me when its gone. Long after." The chatter out there continues. From under her face-tent, she mutters an irritated, "Even the healers are unsure what the correct date is." Where were they-? Oh yes. Sleeping.
There may, in fact, be entire bodies in there somewhere, but they are thus far merely speculation even if the doors are quite open. There's a wince for that statement, a tensing of the muscles of neck and shoulders to accompany a frown. It remains unlikely that the preponderance of the Weyr has been present; for one thing, it seems implausible that they could have avoided waking him. Nevertheless, there is an existence proof of at least one - his head turns, frown lingering as he observes Keziah and her meal - which makes the prior presence of others plausible. It has been… an indeterminant amount of time; he does not know which meal it would be appropriate to deem this one. Jethaniel's frown deepens, though he has not yet assessed the current state of his surroundings for himself, and he glances back, reaching out a hand to brush against her over the top of those robes. "Ah…" he responds to her instructions, a minor protest given the evident complexities of the situation. His fingers stop entirely at Keziah's temporal query, and Jethaniel's silent for a moment, looking out across the bathing caverns. His head tilts down slightly as he swallows, and then his fingers slip to a different place on the tangled nest of white, seeking to hold it in an appropriate position as he sits up and regards Keziah. "Circumstances aside…" he begins. It's a good start; the issue is figuring out where to go from there, and he trails off in the attempt to figure it out with a still-fogged brain.
Keziah arches a brow "Your bedroom now is it?" she asks. There's a definate sound of amusement in her voice "Hmm, well. To be sure, it's a fine and warm place to be sleepin'." She looks around again and then pack to the pile "But, I do believe your choices of bedrooms is a pretty poor one." She finishes off another piece and casually cleans her fingers off again by sucking on the tips. She watches as Jethaniel sits up. She's still sitting there smiling. Enjoying herself. "But I suppose it could be worse." She continues "You might have drowned yourselves if you'ld fallin' asleep in the water. Doesn't take much after all, and with the place bein' roped off, might have been too late 'for anyone be findin' ya." There is a thoughtful look on Kezi's face though concerning an actual unknown date. Hmm. Good to know.
Darsce is quite accustomed to the 'ah' response. "Thanks. I love you," mumbles she from underneath the robe, sounding halfway back to being asleep. Only… those voices continue. "…'s a good bedroom," disagrees Darsce with more than a hint of irritation now, "he designed it". And here one slim arm emerges, disentangling itself from the towels to point somewhere beyond Keziah. With saccharine sweetness, "Down the stairs, hang a left and walk through the door. Be a doll and close it behind you, hm?" But water? What… water? That's when she notices that the towels underneath them are beginning to feel… damp. Or soaked. With warm fluid. And no one in this cottage wets the bed. Not yet anyway. "Oh my gosh, is that blood?" There is no slow sit up for Darsce. She flails up in an explosion of sheets - nowait, those are towels. And robes. That much penetrates her brain, though it confuses her moreso as she kneels there stark naked and stares at the nest she's just abandoned. Yep, she's hyper ventilating now as her hands reach for the remaining heap of white to paw through and seek his wound. Apparently also looking for red-soaked towels. Next It'll be to see if the intruder has a knife.
"I… designed our bedroom…" Jethaniel notes, his tone quiet and somewhat uncomfortable. This is fairly clearly - on further observation - not actually the bedroom in question. Darsce's directions may still be plausible, but would be more likely to send Keziah to the laundry room - perhaps she could get some clean (and non-torn) clothes for them while she's there? It would be useful, given the circumstances… which, Jethaniel is discovering, are rather difficult to actually set aside. "…drowning is… a known hazard," he admits uncomfortably, a flick of his eyes to the pool and the circumstances it represents. It would be easy to set the towels aside, but those he is more inclined to keep… along with whatever vestiges of his modesty may remain given those circumstances and Keziah's continued observation… and conversation which spurs Darsce to action as the circumstances become more persistent than a desire for sleep. The relative ease of casting away both circumstance and towels is demonstrated; Jethaniel half-turns to Darsce, reaching for her hands. "It is not." The towels are white, not red. There's a scrape on his shoulder from a rough bit of stone, but that is deemed insignificant - if he's even noticed it. It's probably, given his current rotation, more obvious to Keziah than to Darsce. He's turning his back on the intruder! …better that than exposing his front? "Nobody is hurt." Yet? Perhaps that's why the worried look in grey eyes regarding Darsce.
The amusement is plain to be seen as she listens to the headwoman, still determined that she's in her own room. She starts to take another bite and then that amusement quickly fades as her eyes wide and she stares at the headwoman, she's looking at the white. "Blood?" she asks as she holds that bit of dripping meat near her mouth. A glance towards Jeth, he's calm about it at least? A look towards Darsce and there's a shift of unease "You don't need me to get the.. healers now. Do you?" she asks. She'd do it, since they're not for her. But there's unease still, though maybe it's the blood? Or thought thereof… "I don't think a little nookie in the bathing chambers should cause a.." a pause and then a stab in the maybe illuminated dark "Miscarriage?" Then she murmurs "I really should keep up on gossip a bit more." Then she shrugs somewhat and stuffs the rest of the bite into her mouth.
Darsce is becoming more aware, thus that emphasis on our penetrates and she pauses in her scrabbling to peer around them owlishly. In that time, her hands are taken. This… is indeed, not their bedroom. Furthermore, she, upon glancing down at herself notes that she is sans nightshift. Of course she is, she'd never come here dressed that way! "Damn!" She gently disengages her hand and only when clear does she plunge for a robe, flail into it and belt it tightly. Not so much because Keziah is there, but from the wild glances up that tunnel, because others might be heading in. "No healers!" That's snapped at Keziah before she mutters in an aside to Jethaniel while her eyes now traverse the ruins of the hot springs, "Did I let you…nail me in here?" Subtle, thy name is not Darsce! Let, she says, though somehow…that's not quuuuite the right word. Her eyes jerk back to Keziah and she frowns, "There'd better have been no-" Well, gossip, she'd have said, but she's just noticed the juicy, rare meat the greenrider is eating; she heaves and looks away. Oh look, there's shredded material in the pool, how'd that get there?
Jethaniel is calm simply because he does not believe in the existence of blood exterior to their bodies. He has an alternative theory which explains the moisture beneath them and is congruent with the white state of those towels. He has not even considered the possibility of… miscarriage. He draws in a breath at that word, the concern of his expression increasing despite the lack of any visible indications of such an occurence. Darsce's extraction of her hands, he permits now that she's just reaching for a robe for herself instead of searching for signs of… certain undesirable occurences. Her denial of the healers draws a slight nod, unsurprised. "I do not believe them necessary." As for certain other occurences regarding desirability… "Ah." Jethaniel looks down, regarding the nest they've made. His memories are just as tangled, but given the preponderance of evidence indicating that certain things were not, in fact, dreams… "Yes." He is willing to hypothesize such. He observes those towels for a moment longer, then glances back to Darsce. She is now enrobed, and his gaze lifts again to Keziah. "There is likely more interesting gossip." He hopes so, at least!
Well, now that the crisis seems to be over Keziah settles back to finish eating her food. Well, that is until she notes Darsce looking ill at it. She huffs. "You think in a Weyr full of dragons, people wouldn't mind a little blood on their meat. Or on someone elses." she says with a bit of a sulk. Course, that attitude could be why she decided to slip into a closed off section to eat as well. Mild snit over, or maybe not as she pokes "Must not have been very good, how'd you put it? Nailing? If the two of you really don't remember it." she remarks and then eyes Jeth as if that would be his fault. "As for more interesting gossip. I'm sure, but that's elsewhere at the moment." There's an eye at Darsce and then she peers at her food again and sighs and sets it aside for the moment. Huff.
Darsce keeps her eyes fixed upon the overflowing pool until her stomach has settled. Yes, that evidence paints a fairly clear picture and she, while not quite wincing, nods at Jethaniel's answer before pushing to her feet. "I'm glad I… found you." Let's not think of what might've been if she didn't! "You'd think," the headwoman's voice is cool as she returns her attention to Keziah, "that people wouldn't make sweeping assumptions. Not everyone flocks to the feeding grounds to watch dragons feed." Gag, no! The look she gives the greenrider for her observation of a tryst that didn't include her is met with an icy smirk and a dangerously sweet, "Meow! Not getting banged often enough living in a harem, are you?" Rather than trade insults, the causal-seeming question she tosses out after might be a semi-attempt at a peace offering, "Who flew? And…" she coughs, "…more importantly, who won?" Since Keziah is a rider, she'd know. Or her dragon would.
Jethaniel inclines his head in a nod to Darsce. She found him, yes, and that metaphorical nail was… "Mmh." He glances up to Keziah, frowning slightly. "…if it was not satisfactory, that will be addressed at a future point. Elsewhere." Not here, particularly since the closing of the section appears to be… imperfectly followed. Not that his own status is exactly how things should be in here while the pools are being cleaned, and Jethaniel reaches for a robe, drawing it toward him efore pausing. The gossip is… elsewhere. "So it is." Jethaniel exhales in a slow and measured fashion, and draws the robe up around his shoulders. His gaze drifts to the pool, observing how the overflow laps against the edge. Was it like that before? Perhaps that's why the pool was closed for maintenance, but somehow… he doesn't think it was. He blinks at Darsce's commentary regarding Keziah's living arrangements, gaze lifting to the greenrider with an arch of brows, then nods and lowers his eyes at the question that follows.
Keziah can't help but smirk a little at the catty remarks and then she deliberately picks up a slice of the meat and swallows it down, savoring each little bit and then licking her fingers. "Oh, I get banged enough as you so eloquently put it." Which in her case, the harem works. It's typically only when she wants it, or when Alosynth is being as she is. "But to answer your question Luraorth rose and Kanekith caught her." She notes. Course, being an AWLM, it behooves her to keep up on those flights anyways. Course petty eating of her food aside, she nods a little to Jethaniel and doesn't poke at him again. Poor guy, to have to deal with Kezi.
Darsce simply rolls her eyes, sarcasm returning, "Suuuuuure you do." The snide remarks about performance coming from the greenrider came from somewhere. Darsce doesn't point out the obvious to the other woman though, that being whether a certain brownrider is up to it. Instead she awaits the answer to the flight, then sighs, and closing her eyes, she misses the pointed meat-eating Keziah displays. "Shit," she mutters, then kicks the heap of towels at her feet. Opening them, she directs a look at Jethaniel. "I should go get…dressed." Since, heh, she's apparently already bathed. "And see what the damage to the rest of the Weyr is like." She glances towards the tunnel entrance while raking her fingers through tousled hair. It's not like…people don't emerge from here to the caverns hair-mussed and towel-clad. Just not…Darsce.
Jethaniel… is very much not commenting concerning the maintenance of sufficient levels of things other than the water in the pool. Further, his commentary regarding that overflow is mostly limited to a frown before his attention is drawn to more aerial matters. "Ah," he says to that answer, then glances up to Darsce with a concerned frown. It's followed by a nod, and he rises with only moderate stiffness in his muscles. The robe is adjusted as the towel that was draped over him falls away, and then he puts his arm around Darsce. "I do not… expect there will be any staff meetings promptly." For that matter, there's a question of who will actually be retained as staff. "There will be time." He glances to Keziah. "Thank you for the nformation."
"It's a little bit after lunch." She offers as a way to give them some frame of reference. "It's fairly quiet out there, not many around." she adds. She's dropped the cheap shots for the moment at Darsce's obvious distress. There's a glance for Jeth and she nods "Welcome." she notes and then sighs "If you want, hold on a sec and I'll check and see if the coast is clear." she offers and gets up, with her food, and heads down the tunnel. After a moment she calls back "No one but the kitchen staff and I've asked them to get me some scraps so their in the kitchen again."
There'd better not be any staff meetings promptly! Darsce has already been to one of those dressed in what others might judge as inappropriate attire. Nevertheless, she leans into Jethaniel and nods. Her tenure at headwoman might very well be over, but she doesn't remark on that at all. Instead she…she will, continue to do her duties to her best ability until she finds the pink slip in her box… She blinks after Keziah, her expression softening in her wake and when the greenrider's voice reaches them, she reluctantly begins the trek to their cottage. "Thanks," she says gruffly, a reluctant smile tweaking the corners of her lips as she flicks a somewhat sheepish look sidelong at her as she passes the woman. "Seeya around." Next up? Inspection time! Of… public places.
Presumably.
…Levenshtein distances of one notwithstanding.
Damerau Levenshtein distance, however, might apply to inspection.
…of four.
Jethaniel frowns slightly for the assessment of their surroundings, considering on it, then nods as Keziah heads back up the passage. While she's heading up the passage, he brushes a kiss to Darsce's temple, then departs from her side to wade down into the water of that fabric-clogged pool. His attempts to adjust the robe to minimize the amount of water it absorbs are somewhat limited in their success - particularly given that he leans over and reaches into the depths in order to pull out his trousers. Not that they're in any wearable state, sodden and ripped in several places, but he carries them back to the steps so that he can dig around in the pockets and come up with… his keys. Those in hand, he frowns at the trousers then sets them down on the edge of the pool. They are - now - a part of the maintenance which has been scheduled for this locale. The inspection, when it occurs, will note such. For now, Jethaniel curls his fingers around those keys before offering Darsce his arm - never mind that they're both dressed in robes with tousled hair - and walks with her up the corridor. He inclines his head to Keziah as they pass. "Thank you." He'll be back soon in order to actually unclog that drain… unless, of course, things are busy enough that he's forced to delegate someone else to do it.
Keziah isn't always mean and snarky "Welcome." she replies back and nods to Jeth as she watches the two of them head off. There's a thoughtful look on her face as well now. "Forgot about some of the upheaval. Been a long time since Thea first took over." she murmurs to herself and then with one last glance towards the baths, she too heads out to her own place. "Will have to see what life brings, but for now. I eat!" This of course is to no one really but herself. She's her food, so she's happy. And down goes another slice of rare meat. There's a flash of green in the sky as Alosynth wings over towards the forest, enjoying a bit of a wing stretch. SHe's not glowing. Yet.