Shooting Stars [Mi'rah]

[Ruby]

Tenlie swallowed hard, standing outside the door and clutching her starviewer in her hands. Mi'rah hadn't come to find her after Selenitas and Burimyu had merged, and there had been that moment at the salamandyr hatching. Ten had agonized over that for a few weeks, tried spending time with Jazz and Ruliana and even C'oar to get her mind off things (she'd even eaten a meal or two with T'ke, the bluerider she kept running in to at hatchings). None of it had helped especially, and Mi'rah had been busy or making himself scarce or something, which just made Ten more anxious.

Eventually, Rajnith got tired of hearing about it, and talked Hers into doing something about it.

So here Ten was, after several hours of agonizing about wardrobe, makeup or lack thereof, even whether to bring pets, and if so, which ones. In the end, she'd left everyone at home (not that that stopped Big Brother and Cujo from following her anyway, but she'd tried) and settled on a practical pair of pants, a sort of airy silk sleeveless shirt, and a light jacket to keep off the slight chill that had seeped into the mountain air after dark - and to cover up the scars she'd gotten in her time at Burimyu, the one down her arm from the tithe theft and the deep gouges in her shoulders from a feline Rajnith hadn't quite managed to kill fast enough. Both had scarred badly, due to Burimyu's lack of healing supplies, and Ten hadn't quite come to love them yet. She felt better with them covered up.

She even had a bit of a speech prepared - something about how it didn't matter, their years apart, she still wanted to be his friend if nothing else, blah blah blah. Trying not to think about it, she stuffed the starviewer into the small bag she carried, squared her shoulders, and knocked on the door to the Bronzerider's weyr.

And promptly forgot exactly everything she had planned to say.

[Lotty]

It was the most horrible sound he had ever heard. A knock at the door. Oh how he had dreaded this moment; all of his most tragic weaknesses were prodded at and even the confidence of his dragon did so little to galvanize him as he stared at the closed portal. He was far from psychic, but he knew that his time was running out, and that this would be the moment that he had to confront his fears and stop running - or well hobbling - away from Tenlie. After a twinge in his chest and a labored exhale he called in answer, "Coming..." He was most definitely feigning some ignorance here, trying to paint himself as an innocent that hadn't actually been torturing himself for the past few weeks over how he was going to bandage the wound left gaping in their absence from each other.

Really, the most logical part of him didn't understand the issue. In two turns one could safely assume that the girl had moved on. Was he supposed to assume the woman practiced abstinence in their time apart and deny himself? Why did he want to be such a goober about this? Why did he want to admit everything and beg forgiveness? When did he buy into the idea of romance? Twitching even as he reached for the handle, he found that some wires in his brain had crossed and just about nothing would compute. Sucking in one last breath of air - and patting down a stray hair - he opened door to see Tenlie, much to his faux surprise.

"H-h-hi."

It was extremely suave. Could you expect any less from Captain Stutters? He was a master of the Pernese language, "I've...." he tried not to quiver in the entrance to his own weyr, but human interaction was just so incredibly hard, "missed you..." even though he didn't greet her upon his arrival by way of running across a field and sweeping her off her feet ala storybook fantasies. That being said the bronzerider filled in some silence with an "ummm" and a glance up at the ceiling before finally coming to the conclusion that he should probably invite her in, though even that didn't come out completely right, "Sooo uhm... did you want to talk to me about something?" Hopefully she wasn't curious as to what he has been doing for the preceding months.

[Ruby]

In the seconds between when Mi'rah announced that he was, in fact, at home and when he finally opened the door, Ten had time to imagine a whole slew of possible greetings. Her favorite scenario involved her throwing herself into her Bronzerider's arms (Mi'rah was distinctly more muscular in these imaginings, and his limp was somewhat more charming than it was a serious disability) and kissing him, or something. Once she got past the initial kiss things got fuzzy. Regardless, her heart seemed to migrate up into her throat as she heard his uneven steps coming her way, and her stomach seemed to have left the premises.

And then there he was, stuttering and faking surprise. Before Burimyu, Ten would have been completely taken in by his fabrication, but she'd learned some things in the two turns they were apart, and there was something off about his delivery. Not that she minded, or suspected anything more than nervousness under the 'surprise', it was just interesting to note. Then, while she was still smiling up at him like an idiot and trying to figure out if he could actually hear her heart trying to beat out of her chest or if that was just in her head, he said he'd missed her. He actually missed her. That was plenty to send the girl's brain off into nowhere land.

While Ten was attempting to master her wayward thoughts, Mi'rah somehow managed to make everything awkward. Ten had to take some of the blame for that, since she couldn't seem to make her head and her mouth connect, but he'd asked if she wanted to talk about something, and that wasn't the point. Why would he ask that? "No! I mean, yes, I do, but you... you do owe me a." Date. "Stargazing. You do owe me stargazing. We never went." Now that her brain and her mouth seemed to be working somewhat in sync again, she reached back into her bag, pulled out her starviewer, and looked up at him, meeting his eyes. They'd always been her favorite part of him. "I did have it with my glasscrafting tools, so I brought it with me when we left Selenitas. We can share, if you do no have yours." She glanced down at the starviewer, then back up again. "I did miss you, too. A lot."

[Lotty]

Stargazing. Oh yes, he hadn't forgotten about that, though he slightly hoped that she had if only because his star scope was left behind in the rubble of the old Selenitas. He had considered fetching it when he returned to the half collapsed room to fish out what personal scrolls and notes he could... it seemed important at the time, for as many things as he tried to commit to his memory he knew there was no way to keep it all contained. Unfortunately the seeing device didn't come out so lucky as his written thoughts; whereas parchment and hide could be wrinkled and ripped without much consequence, the slightest crack ruined the integrity of glasswares. So it was that digging deeper and pulling out the stargazer from under that rubble just seemed like.... well like a bad idea.

"I'm sorry Tenlie," he blushed and nearly whimpered as he bit his lip in remembrance. She didn't like to be called by that name, a fact that had so quickly been lost in their time apart; when he chanted her name in the back of his brain for those first few days of absence not a syllable was cut short lest her memory be pruned too. Trying to recover from his fault without looking all too obvious he offered her an explanation instead, "I'm afraid that my starviewer was lost in the earthquake, I'll just have to...share with you," surely he probably had her going there for a moment, and tricked into thinking that he was about to deny her the rendezvous under the night sky. Of course he could never do so such a thing no matter how afraid he was of how awkward the initial re-meeting would be.

"We're going now y-yes?" He turned to look over his shoulder into his room. Luckily men did not quibble nearly as much as women when it came to appearances and Mi'rah had not many worries about whether he looked alright, since he did after all consider himself a lost cause at this point. With that in mind, he stepped out from the doorway and offered the woman a hug, reaching out with his arms to wrap them around her, bag and all. For a moment then he didn't very much car if she wanted one or not, bronzeriders sometimes needed such comfort as well, "Did you really miss me? I c-certainly wouldn't think you had the time to. Always on the run.... y-you um disappeared so quickly at the gather."

[Ruby]

This time he had her. Even the use of her full name went ignored in favor of her eyes widening and her tentative smile faltering as what he was saying went further and further towards rejection... but no! At the last moment, his story changed, and Ten let out the breath she'd been holding with a little laugh. Her relief was obvious, palpable, and she clutched the starviewer a little tighter, but she was smiling now. A little shy smile, and she was half trying to hide it, but it was there.

"Yes, I do be ready to go if you are, unless some other time do be better? And you are welcome to share, of course," she added, a touch self-consciously, then tucked the starviewer away again just in time to be swept in to a hug. "Oh!" she exclaimed, then shifted a little to free her arms so she could wrap them around his waist, too. Oh, that felt good. Her head tucked perfectly into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck, and she laced her fingers together behind his back, not quite ready to give him up yet. She'd given him up so easily before, and the gather - and apparently he had noticed, which made her cheeks color slightly - she wasn't about to give him up easily now, not when she had absolutely no reason to. They had all night to go look at stars, what would a few more minutes matter?

So she leaned back slightly, enough to look at him, but kept her arms around him to reply. "Aye, I really did. You can ask Raj, or Jazz, both of them did hear plenty of me fretting about your wellbeing. I was so afraid you had died, all of the other Bronzeriders did make it out, but not you. Seeing you at the gather... I half believed I did be seeing a ghost. And then..." She dropped her eyes, remembering. "And then I did realize the Selenitans wanted to kill us, and they nearly caught the Weyrwoman, too. I had to go. I knew you would no do anything to me, but I worried for you. To be seen with one of us, the exiles..." She shook her head, then glanced back up at him. "How DID you survive?"

[Lotty]

It occurred to the bronzerider that if neither of them were willing to let go, that the two of them very well could be standing there, halfway in the hall, all night long. Mi'rah for his part however, was not going to be the first to let go. He needed this hug, it was the first one he had in such a long, long time. Well, the first real one anyway. S'rei's decidedly did not count, since it obviously was from another man, and just... let's say Mi'rah just had his natural biases; a curious mix of Northern, holdbred, and bronzerider culture. As such Tenlie made for a very appropriate specimen to cling to, even if approximately ten minutes earlier he was absolutely sure that the woman hated him.

Looking down at her as she explained, he found himself paying less and less attention to the words she was actually saying, to instead spend more time looking over her face, finding visual match ups to his memories, and conveniently pushing away any signs of difference or change that may have developed in the two turns they had been apart. Ever hopeful, the man just wanted to pick up exactly where things had left off and pretend that he too didn't age at all... at very least he didn't think that he'd collected any new injuries even in the earthquake, but who exactly knew how much of a toll the time under Wasteland took on him. Sneaking around at all hours of the night... fretting about everyone else except for himself... not to mention losing Doppelganger. He was sure that his insides were wrecked even if he looked no worse for wear.

There was a question though. She asked a question and he found himself stalling for a moment as he tried to come up with an answer, eventually just letting the first words that came to mind slip out for him, "W..which time?" He had so many close calls in his life that he was pretty sure that his mere existence was testing fate. As his friend once said, they were both cursed, "I can't tell you... for sure why they didn't kill me during the invasion... Sadly enough, I. Well I think it's just that they knew me from Benden..." and that was all he was going to offer about that one, "It's just a lot of luck... at the gather... I uhm. I don't know how I survived that either," because they honestly could have killed him that time too. Pretending to have captured Meira was a pretty ballsy for someone typically rather mousy in demeanor.

[Ruby]

Ten laughed - more relieved than amused, but it was very much like Mi'rah to escape death for no apparent reason when people were being slaughtered all around him - then gave her Bronzerider (yes, HER bronzerider once again) a squeeze and finally let him go, suddenly feeling flushed and somewhat overheated. It surprised some people that cheery Tenlie wasn't an especially touchy girl, and honestly she'd hardly been touched at all since Rajnith's last flight. Jazz. That made her flush even worse, but by now Mi'rah must think her cheeks were permanently pink, so no harm done.

"Well, however you managed it, I do be glad," she offered, then lapsed into a momentary silence. The enormity of this meeting had finally hit her. Mi'rah, her long time crush and one time lover (yes, just thinking that made her blush even worse) who she had barely seen in two turns. What if he'd changed? What if she had changed? It had been so long, she could hardly imagine that he hadn't found someone else. He claimed to miss her, but he'd hugged her, nothing else. And his stutter was worse than she remembered, a sure sign that he was nervous. Every possible worst case scenario flashed through her head, no doubt brought on by her unnecessarily fluttering heart. Dropping her eyes, she opened her mouth to break the silence, totally unsure of what she was going to say.

Luckily, Rajnith took that moment to interrupt, or who knows what nonsense would have come out of Ten's mouth.

I am coming over there, TenlieSlaveLove. I will not have you messing this up, I refuse to hear another word about how much you want this Bronzerider. Just take him and get it over with. Ten felt her Green take off, then Rajnith looped Kierjaarth into the conversation, too. Kierjaarth, Mine was hoping to take Yours somewhere. May I share your ledge until they sort themselves out?[/i]

Ten, who had been standing there blankly while she listened to Rajnith, finally closed her mouth and smiled again. Most of that had to do with her Green shoving a Queen's-worth of self-confidence into her brain, but Ten had gotten used to that long ago. Rajnith was good at getting what she wanted. "Erm... I do believe Rajnith is on her way, but if I do know Rajnith, she will have to cuddle with Kierjaarth for a bit before we may go anywhere. Should we maybe sit in your weyr for a bit? Catch up?" Get out of the awkward-inducing hallway?

[Lotty]

Having been released from the hold she had on him, the bronzerider stood there still, looking a little bit bewildered about all that had passed in the past few minutes. Stuck in the headlights so to speak, Mi'rah could only manage to reply, "Yeah me too..." because at the time he would prefer not to die. Yes, sometimes when he was wallowing by himself it sounded like a splendid idea, but that was just him being morose. He was convinced that in part, his uncanny ability to survive had something to do with a stubborn will to live that until recent turns he didn't even know he had. Self-preservation instincts seemed to manifest in very strange ways.

Meanwhile, laid out languidly as he was on his perch, looking out across the way as best a dragon could in the dark, Kierjaarth was cut from his usual neighborhood watch by the familiar voice of a certain green queen. In a near purr he replied to Rajnith, I suppose you can if you find a spot to lay on Rajjjnith. He was being purposefully tricky now, stretching out even further to leave only a little slab of rock for his visitor to land on, but hogging as much of the rest that he could to make things difficult. If she wanted to lounge she would just have to do so on top of him and he somehow doubted that she would skip such an opportunity.

Still he had to come with something better to say than the lame response he did manage, and was similarly saved by Rajnith's interjection just as Tenlie had been. Picking up on the suggestion, Mi'rah lit up just a little bit in agreement and turned to the door that was hanging open just a crack. Scooting away from Ten just slightly he pushed the door all the way open to offer her a way in, "Oh yeah...uh after you..." with a light sweep of his arm he ushered her into the room, a hand brushing along her back before he recoiled, too busy cringing a bit at the sight of unsorted papers and other miscellanea scattered about his living space. There was however, seating on his couch, "We can sit over there...if you want. Do you need anything? How have you been?" He was flummoxed by his own question then, "D-did I already ask you that once?"

At least when Tenlie blushed it was lost in her perpetual tan. Pale as Mi'rah was his own nervous energy was a bright pink on his skin. Upon realizing that men shouldn't flush the color of carnations, he only began to quake a little bit more until he resolved to sit and hide his jitterbugs.