Matteo and Vatyri
hsprings.jpg

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.


From the green-ish hues of the multiple pools to the almost glittering ceiling, there seems to be nothing in this cavern; save for Vatyri, who's bent at one of the pools with a mound of clothing, scrubbing them clean. Off to her left side is a neatly folded stack of clothing, and on several empty racks are drying garments. Day or night, Vaty can be found doing her chores, most certainly - there seems to be no time left for play, only time to work and sleep.

Matteo deleriously wanders through the entry way. He'd spent almost all of the daylight hours by the shoreline, dozing. That was the closest thing he'd managed to sleep lately. It actually suited him pretty well, but it was in no way healthy and his complexion was to show for that- palid and drawn. He doesn't notice Vatyri at first as he takes up residence by a pool near hers.

Vatyri, her head bent down to observe the clothing she's soaping, doesn't take much notice to Matteo, either, even if he's in her close proximity. Furrowing her brows together, she lifts up the sopping wet tunic and puts it on her already wettened lap, scrubbing away at a persistant klah stain. "Sharding people who can't figure out how to keep their klah /in/ their mug, not on their shirts," comes the grumbling remark as she continues to make an effort at cleaning away the resident, quite likely failing in her task. With a sigh, she puts it over to her right to await further cleaning; picking up another garment to wash, she wets it and continues with her chores, her manner very diligent.

Matteo gives the pool a once over before sighing and taking off his sandles. At a comment heard his head comes up quickly. Vatyri sits cleaning away near by. To himself he gives a small smile and, barefooted, he commences a silent aproach from behind. He lowers his head down beside hers and says quite plainly. "I think they were trying to get it to their mouths, not their mugs… But I'm no expert. Don't care much for klah, that is."

Being one who can be quite easily startled, Vatyri gives a jump - and with that jump, the sodden piece of clothing goes sailing right into the air before starting on the plummet down. "My point being that it should either be in their mouths, or in their mugs, not on their shirts," Vatyri says, quite red in the face from the surprise of Matteo's approach; her left hand plucks at the sleeve of her tunic, now wet from a sudden splash when she was surprised.
With a casual outstrech of his hand, Matteo catches the waterlogged tunic and hands it back. "Hm, good point." He gives her his classic lopsided grin before starting back towards where his sandals are. "Do you ever stop working long enough to breathe?" He asks, tugging off his shirt and casting it a fair distance from the water. He was too tired to bother with any sort of neatness right now.

Vatyri reluctantly takes back the soaked garment before continuing on with her duties; soaping and rinsing the tunic, she then moves from the water to hang it on a rack already burdened with trousers. Matteo's query is meant with a look of indignation, and the girl narrows her eyes to answer, "I have chores to do. I'll do them. Even if I only get time to sleep, I'll do them." Faranth only knows what would happen if Vaty were kept from her chores - perhaps she'd drive herself right into the latrines from anxiety about not doing what she's supposed to do.

Matteo gives a sidelong glance. "They keep you rather busy then, don't they?" Then again he's sone his fair share, mostly SeaCraft stuff. He sits at the water's edge and undoes the draw string on his pants, sloughing those off. With that he hops into the water with a gentle "splish!" and stays at the edge, chin rested on folded arms. "I take it then free time is hard to come up with on your schedule?"

Vatyri now takes to folding the dried clothes, patting them down and stacking them neatly on top of each other. "No, /I/ keep myself busy. If I didn't, there wouldn't be much to do, and I kind of like doing the chores," she admits after a moment, picking up the stack and shifting them towards a far wall before going to retrieve the hanging clothes. "There's free time, on occasion. Not much until this is all done and over with, and then I'll be back in the 'Reaches," the girl says, giving the clothes a good shake to loosen any wrinkles before folding them as well.

Matteo frowns a little and pushes back from the wall, letting himself drift backwards. he could sympathize with the not being much to do. But that's from where his sculpting talents came. "Not staying here then after all of this?" That wasn't pleasing at all to hear and his face seems to show it. This passes quickly, however, as he ducks under the water for a second, coming back up and shaking out his hair. "You like it back there? At High Reaches?" What is this, Matt? 20 questions? He comes back to the edge, watching her with the clothes for a long moment.

"That first bit all depends on how things go this time around," Vatyri says to the obviously agitated Matteo, placing the pile of dried and folded clothes next to the other stack. As she walks around, collecting the garments she'd cleaned, bubbles rise up from her footsteps; evidence, apparently, that she had stepped on a bit of soap earlier. "The High Reaches is my home," she explains, settling down against the wall near the fruits of her labor, "and I've lived there for five Turns, or somewhere around that long. Wouldn't /you/ want to go back to the place where you came from?"

Matteo gives a laugh that echos a lot louder than he intended. However there's a bitter grin to that. "Where I came from I never really knew. So, sure, I guess some day I'd like to go back and see what I missed. But stay there? No… But maybe your life's been a bit more free than mine." He pushes back again, drifting the short length of the pool, diving under and swimming back. When he breaches he gives a shrug. "I always preferred other places. What less'd be expected of me in my profession." He's silent for a while, looking at the clothing with a blank yet thoughtful look. "You said…" He starts. "…this time around. Have you done this before? This standing business?"

Vatyri, clapping her hands over her ears from the reverbrating noise, peers at Matteo, a distant odd look in her eyes. "You've never known where you were from? Hmm." After a moment passes, Vaty places her hands down by her side and pushes herself up into a sort of crouch, her back firmly against the wall. "I stay there because my friends are there. Though, they are all leaving, for one thing or another. A lapse in her speech ensues, and as Matteo talks, she gives him an odd look. "I'd said that? Oh. That. I've stood twice before."

Matteo winces faintly at her reaction to the sound. "Sorry…" After a pause he shrugs. "I know of where I lived and most of the hold. But you see I was never allowed freedom there. That's what I mean." He treads water and lets himself drift without really caring where. "Friends are a good reason to stay any place when you have them." He hits the other wall of the pool with a grunt but ignores the pain of a sharp jutting rock against his head. "What's it like? The hatchings and all… I've never seen one."

Vatyri would ask exactly /why/ and /how/ Matteo is managing to hit his head against a sharp jutting rock in a smooth pool, but that's besides the point. "What do you mean, not allowed freedom?" Obviously, the concept itself is percieved as ludicrous, and Vatyri voices it herself. "That's not right, I would be out of there if I were restricted," she says with a bit of a sting in her words; not for Matteo but for what he says. "It's nerve-wracking, if you're the nervous type," she comments, again sliding to the floor besides the clothes. "Plus, the hatchlings are awkward, and they stumble around pretty quickly, so you have to be on your toes." Never in a thousand Turns would Vaty have expected that she would be informing another of what it is like to go through a hatching.

Matteo would inform her, should the question have arose, that it wasnt his fault that this second of the pool's edge had not been chisled out and that he'd do it with his own little knotting knife just to prove he could. But, being that this line of conversation never occurred, he instead shrugs off the comment of leaving his own home. "I would have. But my father made me promise not to. I know now why. He found be trying to sneak off one evening, with a small pack. This was when I was about 12 turns or so. But he stopped me, and I was crying up a storm, ranting to him about mother. Well, he promised me he'd get me out of there as soon as he could. And he did. 'Course that was 5 years later." He drifts back over by her, resting his arms upon the edge. Well, one, because the other goes to tend to the back of his head. "I'd imagine they'd be awkward little ones. Wings and legs and tails. I'd be akward if I were one of them. I'm akward enough as it is with two legs, no wings and no tail." He realized after a moment that this was not something to be proud of.

"They're ugly, too," Vatyri is quick to add, putting an elbow on her knee and cupping her chin in her hand, "all covered in goo, and such. They only look better when they start to get older," she explains, her expression one of mild boredom; not only has this subject been talked about to death, but there's other, funner things to do than worry about something that hasn't happened. "And what exactly was you're mother doing that was so horrendous, besides being restricted?" After posing this question to the other candidate, Vatyri gets to her feet and begins collecting the mounds of cleaned garments.

"Could you hand me a towel please?" Matteo asks offhandedly. "Well, she is responsible for my restriction. Wouldn't let me out of her sight for longer than 10 minutes. Or if she did… she had someone -else- watch me." A snort of disgust is emitted. "She'd also pick my friends practically. Whenever I made friends, if she thought they were trouble, she'd have their mothers keep them away from me. Not taht this always worked. I did manage a couple friends on the side, but you can't keep any sort of true friendship like that. I couldn't do many things because she either was worried I'd get hurt or that they weren't fitting for me to do. Thank Faranth for my father at those times." A dark glower from the topic of conversation seems to lighten at this.

Vatyri keeps her silence as Matteo explains the circumstances of his 'earlier' life and heads over towards the racks to collect him a towel before tossing it over towards him, where it lands near the edge of the pool. The clothes are pulled off of the racks and folded, placed with the other piles before Vaty picks them all up, looking a bit cumbersome. "I see. So, you took to the seacraft?" A lapse in her part of the conversation ensues before she jerks her head to indicate the exit. "I have to go put these where they belong. Are you going to stay in here?"

Matteo gives a mild look, taking the towel. "Yeah, SeaCraft…" At her question he eyes the many piles of clothes. "Well, long enough to dry myself off. Do you want any help with that…? no let me rephrase, do you -need- any help with that?" There's an undecernable tone about him, but it can be indicated that if she needed help drying would take only half a second. And had she not he might stay a bit longer. Such is the nature of young Matteo.

Seeing as Vatyri can just barely look over the top of the highest stack, help would be very much appreciated, and is, in fact, asked for. "Yes, a bit of help would be nice with this amount of clothes. I don't know how I even managed to bring it all out her," she says with a somewhat sheepish expression; if there is one thing that Vatyri is not likely to ask for, unless it's truely needed, is help with the simplest thing.

Matteo hides, or attempts to, the hint of a smile at this and vaults up out of the pool. It takes but two seconds to dry himself off and, for the sake of being a at the ready to assist her, he wraps the towel around his waist and slips on his sandals. He gingerly takes a pair of good sized stacks he's ready for where they might be off to. "Shards, woman! You did all this yourself? All alone in this little pool?"

Vatyri tilts her head slightly and, wrinkling her nose, answers Matteo, her tone one of complete astonishment. "You don't think I could have done it? Well, I did. And, yes, all by myself and in this little pool," she says; the independant streak just starting to come forth from amid all of the other characteristics that make Vatyri - Vatyri. As she makes her way towards the exit, the dried soap on the bottom of her battered boots makes squelching noises as it makes contact with the wet floor, the sound disconcerting in the cavern.

Matteo starts to laugh but sedates it to a chuckle. "No…" he says, hurrying after, attempting not to slip in the water. He'd in no way meant to insinuate that she couldn't have done it. Not at all. "It's just… how long did this take you?" He looks wonderingly at the amount of clothes then at the back of her head.

"All day," Vatyri quips, continuing on her way towards the exit, turning around once she gets there. "I /have/ had plenty of practice in the speciality of candidacy chores," she comments, winking at Matteo before turning around again and proceeding out the exit.

Matteo dispenses the clothes down. "All day? This is all you did all day? By Faranth…" He looks about for a second. "Well, I'm gonna go get dressed and see what my cousin'd like me to do. I know he had something but… all day…" He shakes his head… "All day… my my…" He resolves then and there to show Vatyri what else she might do with her time to have maybe more fun, perhaps? "I shall see you when I do… then." He checks that the towel is secure around his waist before giving a smile and wave and heading back to the hot springs for his clothes.

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