
Xanadu Weyr - Weyrleaders' Office
Office and retreat, this is the domain of Xanadu's Weyrleaders. The door is in the southern wall, quite close to the western end while the northern wall is dominated by big, expansive windows, framed by sumptuous deep blue drapes edged with a brilliant gold braid and tied back with a thick rope of braided gold and blue cord. In between, the western wall is covered floor to ceiling with shelves that house all sorts of records, manuals and supplies that are used on a day-to-day basis.
The southern wall has the Weyrleader's desk — plain fellis wood, well polished and masculine. From behind his desk, the Weyrleader can look straight through the windows and out onto the main airspace of Xanadu. The eastern wall is where the Weyrwoman's desk resides: a lovely piece of furniture made of warm cherry wood. From her seat, a glance sideways gives her an equally good prospect out the window. There are a few other seats, some comfortably arranged around a low round table for small, informal meetings while there also some that can be drawn up to one of the desks.
On the west side of the door, the space is occupied by a low oblong table where refreshments can be set without someone needing to intrude. There is also an 'incoming' tray where incoming correspondence or similar items can be left.
Do you know how much Nessalyn wants to be here? NOT AT ALL. She may not explicitly know why she has been summoned to Risali's office (again), but she's almost certain that it's not to be given a pat on the back and an award for her community service. It's entirely possible that she's about to lose the knot she gained the last time she was here, and perhaps that's why there's a sense of doomed inevitability about her, as well as a hint of unwarranted aggression. She's entirely prepared for a fight that she's about to lose, but she's still going to get every possible swing in before she goes down. Ness bursts into the office without knocking, deflating slightly when no one is there. So much for a glorious entrance. With an annoyed huff, the techcrafter parks herself in a seat to wait, poking around at the things on Risali's desk to keep herself occupied.
Nessalyn is about to be even less pleased about being here, because guess who else is in it for a fight? RISALI. And she even gets the GLORIOUS ENTRANCE. The goldrider strides through the doors with more force than necessary, slams them behind her as if to announce her presence as well as her agitation, and takes strides that would be a hell of a lot more intimidating if she wasn't so damn short. It doesn't matter; Risali composes herself with an attitude and a confidence that translates into every. single. step. It's there in the set of her jaw, in those grey eyes that usually harbor a hint of mischief, a ready smile, a bit of awkward trepidation that means she doesn't always know what to do in social situations, but this. Risali wears anger well. She wears it in the rigid set of her spine, in the way she keeps eye contact with Nessalyn as she stalks around her desk, and jerks out her chair, and plants her body in it without ceremony. She doesn't stop Nessa from touching those things on her desk, but Risali does throw out a hand towards the cosmos, as if she might conjure up an image of the sands there for her to see. "Do you want to explain what the hell that was, Nessalyn?" And her tone is still hushed, but there's fury in her voice, in her expression, in every line of her body as she waits for an answer.
In Nessalyn's eyes, Risali is a perfectly normal-sized person, so those steps are exactly as intimidating as anyone else's. Except, of course, Nessalyn isn't the slightest bit intimidated. If anything, Risali's anger only draws hers up to the forefront, pushing her to ignore any semblance of logic or reason in favor of scratching the Weyrwoman's eyes out. Thankfully, she doesn't actually do that (yet). But she does jerk up straighter in that chair, as though drawn up by a string to better meet the other woman's eyes. She fixes Risali with that death-wish scowl, all sense of bonding gone and replaced by the worst parts of her. Does she want to explain? "No." It's stated in a tone which suggests she knows this isn't the right answer. It's quite deliberately the wrong answer.
And there. There's that frustration, Risali's jaw ticking as she takes in that deliberately incorrect answer and then… deflates. That tension leaves her shoulders, it eeks out of her expression to change into something else — something tired, something haunted, something that says maybe the woman that Risali was before they found Shia LaBeouf lurking in the woods is buried somewhere far, far, far beneath newly discovered demons. Those grey eyes close, Risali brings her hands to her temples as if to ward off a headache, and then exhales. "Nessalyn, I know that Leirith is…" words fail her here, her hands opening and closing as if she might grasp them, as if she might make some sense out of thoughts that she can relay to Nessalyn for understanding. "… kind. She is the nicest, warmest, brightest dragon that I have ever met. She has a way of… making you feel like whatever it is, it's okay." If you're a terrible human? YOU'RE PROBABLY A BADASS. Did you trip and fall on your face trying to do something SPECTACULARLY STUPID? You're probably a badass. Or a disappointment - but a badass one. "But she is a dragon. Do you understand?" And now Risali's opening her eyes again, fixing them on Nessalyn's face. "I am angry because I care about you. I am angry because you put yourself in danger." And then, softer, more of that anger softening into something else. "I don't get it, Nessalyn. Why don't you want the rest of the world to see you? Why do you push everybody away?" She doesn't think she's going to get answers, but damned if she isn't going to ask them.
There's a flicker of confusion which hides beneath that mask of anger, just barely visible through that red haze which clouds her expression. Whatever Nessalyn thinks of Leirith, it is not those adjectives. She may no longer greet the queen with pure disdain for her noise levels, but kind and nice are not attributes she links to the gold. It creates a moment of hesitation in which the next sharp word doesn't immediately come spilling from her lips, as she's too busy mulling over this new assessment of Leirith's character. But then Risali says she cares, and that hard edge returns immediately to Nessalyn's gaze. "I didn't ask you to care about me," she snaps, biting off her words as though each is a dart she might use to pin Risali in place. "Why do you assume that there's something else here? You don't care about me, you care about the idea of who you think I could be if someone could only get through to me and fix me."
"That's the point, Nessalyn," Risali snaps back. "You aren't supposed to ask people to care about you." That's not how friendship works. But Risali bites those words back, already knows what scathing denials Nessalyn will throw her way and so she reigns in temper and anger and - okay, maybe not. Not completely, anyway. "And I assume there's something there because I have never, in my life, met somebody who wasn't important," Risali answers. "Because if I don't believe something is there, then I have to believe that you run solely on pride and misery and nobody becomes a Journeyman or accepts a white knot if there is nothing to redeem them." A beat, and less angry, "And I don't want to fix you, Nessalyn. I'm doing everything I can to keep myself together. But at least we can agree on one thing, at least we can agree that you're broken." SLAM. That's her hands coming down on the top of her desk, half agitation with herself, half agitation with Nessalyn. She tries to diffuse it by pressing the heels of her palms back in against her eyes, by taking a breath and exhaling before she continues. Her words are clipped, but she's trying. "So is there nothing, Nessalyn?" It's a quiet question, one that comes from behind her hands, one that lingers in her eyes once hands finally drop so that Risali can fix her gaze on Nessalyn's. "Is candidacy just a joke to you?"
"Are you serious?" Nessalyn's hands have curled themselves into fists, but thankfully there's nothing nearby (aside from maybe Risali) that she can easily punch. Instead all of that coiled energy just stays there, locked in fists that clench and unclench in agitation. "How could you possibly know that? The fact that I want something, the fact that I set goals and achieve them does not make me a person worth redeeming. It just makes me a capable person." It seems for a moment that she might relent, might attempt to engage in a more rational tone instead of trying to drive each word home like the point of a knife. But then Risali call her broken, with that slam of her fists, and Nessalyn snaps out of her chair like she's on a spring-release. Her good leg kicks that chair out behind her, sending it crashing to the floor. "I am not broken. This is who I am, and if you actually cared about me like you claim you do, you wouldn't keep looking for a person who isn't there." She takes a deep breath, gritting her teeth as she struggles against the urge to try to truly demolish the woman in front of her. "I'm not going to apologize for not enjoying the shit those eggs are trying to put us through. I shouldn't have to apologize for that. I've seen what's been happening to the other candidates, and somehow I'm taking this as a joke because I'm pissed off about it? You're the one letting people get hurt again and then taking it out on the one person who dares to say something to you."
"And yet you contradict yourself in the same breath, Nessalyn. You're not a person worth redeeming, but you're not a broken one either. You are both." But the moment the techcrafter is out of her seat, Risali is out of hers, the fingertips of both hands pressed to the top of her desk, those grey eyes fixed on Nessalyn as she struggles and speaks and… there it is. Risali's regard has gone cool, that fire so quick to spark gone chilly. But she waits. It gives Risali the patience to hear Nessalyn through where normally she might interrupt, and this time when she speaks, her voice is calm. "Do you know what powerful people and fools have in common, Nessalyn?" It's a quiet question, spoken just barely above a whisper - dangerous, in its own right. "They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views. Maybe we're both stupid." And for a moment Risali simply watches her, perhaps attempting to reign in biting words, perhaps trying to collect her own thoughts just enough to make sense. "I don't recall ever saying that I was angry for how you felt about the eggs, and I don't recall asking for an apology either. I told you that you put yourself in danger by getting aggressive near a queen and her eggs, and that it was unacceptable." One, two, three - "Because I do care, Nessalyn. You can hate me if you want; it's okay. I'm used to that. But I do, and I will always care." Whether you want it or not.
"I meant as a general-" Frustration chokes her for a moment, and she makes an incoherent sound that's somewhere between a growl and a scream. "I wasn't referring to my personal worth. I was referring to the fact that you somehow correlated hard work with the ability to be redeemed, and they're not linked. Stop patronizing me." Nessalyn's hand twitches where it rests upon the desk, her less constructive urges telling her to sweep everything to the floor and then raise her fists to Risali. But she doesn't. She squeezes her fists tight, nails digging into the flesh of her palms until that urge becomes something she can easily control. "I'm not stupid. And I don't appreciate you bringing me here to tell me that I'm broken, because you don't like the person I am and you apparently can't grasp the idea that someone could be happy like this." Her voice is rough, gravel-edged with the restraint it takes to keep her from yelling in Risali's face. "I'm not damaged. No one ever hurt me. The worst thing that has ever happened to me happened in those woods. This is who I am, Risali, and I'm satisfied with it. If I want to risk my life, that's my choice. If you can't live with that, if you need me to be broken and secretly just waiting for the right person to reach out to me in order for me to stand, then here," she reaches up to remove the knot from her shoulder, offering it up, "take it back, because that isn't me. You can care all you want, but it's not going to make me into someone I'm not."
"I didn't bring you here to tell you that you are broken." And Faranth help her, but that's the track they ended up on anyway. Now the Weyrwoman is staring at that knot that Nessalyn is presenting to her, looking for all the world as if she is actually debating plucking that knot from Nessalyn's hands and returning her back to her life before all this - before dragons, and eggs, and the pressures of candidacy. "When you choose to be reckless with yourself, Nessalyn," this time it's soft, measured, "I don't care." And now those eyes are jumping from hands in possession of knots (that she has made no move, as of yet, to grab) to hold Nessalyn's gaze. "But when you choose to be reckless with other people," a beat, "when you choose to disregard their safety, it stops being about you or me and starts being about where I have to draw the line for them." And now Risali is shifting, tension bleeding from her as she settles into her chair. "I don't want your knot back, Nessalyn. Not yet. But I know you're capable of doing better." And now Risali is pulling over her own paperwork, offering a hushed, "We all are. Close the door on your way out." Because this conversation didn't go quite how she was hoping, and Risali isn't interested in pursuing
"I didn't bring you here to tell you that you are broken." And Faranth help her, but that's the track they ended up on anyway. Now the Weyrwoman is staring at that knot that Nessalyn is presenting to her, looking for all the world as if she is actually debating plucking that knot from Nessalyn's hands and returning her back to her life before all this - before dragons, and eggs, and the pressures of candidacy. "When you choose to be reckless with yourself, Nessalyn," this time it's soft, measured, "I don't care." And now those eyes are jumping from hands in possession of knots (that she has made no move, as of yet, to grab) to hold Nessalyn's gaze. "But when you choose to be reckless with other people," a beat, "when you choose to disregard their safety, it stops being about you or me and starts being about where I have to draw the line for them." And now Risali is shifting, tension bleeding from her as she settles into her chair. "I don't want your knot back, Nessalyn. Not yet. But I know you're capable of doing better." And now Risali is pulling over her own paperwork, offering a hushed, "We all are. Close the door on your way out." Because this conversation didn't go quite how she was hoping, and Risali isn't interested in pursuing more words to watch them be twisted.
Nessalyn is still debating simply slamming that knot down on the desk and abandoning it, whether or not Risali sees fit to take it away from her. Security is something she desperately wishes to feel again, but she's not sure it outweighs this. "I'm not the one who continues to put people in danger on those sands. Your candidates shouldn't be in the infirmary after touching eggs, Risali." And oh, there's more that she wants to say. Insults, every petty little grievance that has come to mind since she arrived here, all of it wants to spill past her lips. But she still has that knot, and possibly a posting here if none of the dragons choose her, so she digs her teeth into her lower lip and scowls down at the wooden surface of Risali's desk instead. Restraint isn't her strong suit, but she can summon it occasionally. Still, the dismissal is a relief, as her self-control is tenuous and liable to snap at any moment. "I'm really not," she retorts as she reaches the door. Whether she genuinely believes that or is simply incapable of walking out without the last word is impossible to say, because she shuts the door behind her seconds later. That went well.