boom to the oom, watch out be safe [siarryn]

[ASTROLOGICAL!!]

Run.

That's what her instincts say. Even if it is pointless, even if there is no particular reason, she bolts. Through the tunnels, down out through the caverns and out into the bowl-- she almost runs the soles of her boots raw, and still she keeps running until she's near the edge of the lake.

And only there does she stop, because her gait has been wrong since the start, and there's a stitch in her side.

But there's a momentary surge of elation that came from using her muscles, and the tiny girl flops over, hair bouncing, and she sighs, letting the exhaustion wash over her.

She decides not to sleep, though. Instead she sits up as Ceria flutters around her, scolding her for taking off like that. She might have knocked someone over in her recklessness!

"Like I care," she responds to the chattering Fire-Lizard as blurry images of caverns-women dodging her filled her mind. "I just want this wait to be over. I just want to get out."

Because she's aching right now for an open field, a sea of grass with nothing in view for miles. Just remembering the smell of her home makes her feel weak.

She needs to take Zayin to Garnet as soon as possible.

[redwerecat]

"Shaffit what in Faranth's name was-" Siarryn nearly toppled over as some drudge dived out of the way to avoid a blur streaking by. The young tailed man avoided having to dodge by virtue of being perched on a 'shelf' of rock about ten feet up the outside entrance to the caverns, but the shriek of the drudge woman had startled him so badly he'd nearly lost his balance.

Which pissed him off just a little.

"...rude much, dear?" He muttered, looking after the shape of the girl bolting from the caves toward the lake. He sniffed, and tried to be properly insulted, but had some trouble managing at first and gave up soon after. So he jumped down (giving the poor drudge a second coronary heart attack in the same amount of minutes) and trailed after the girl.

Curiosity killed the cat. Or Lemur. Whatever.

His own cleverness amused him enough that he was fairly grinning by the time he caught up to the girl. "Oi! Sug, want to tell me what had you pelting like a runner out th' mouth of a dragon back dere?" He called out, hands in his pockets, looking as nonchalant as he could manage for being...well. Him.

Gambit popped out of nowhere and perched on his shoulder, pawing at his ear once before he got brushed off, earning a grumpy look from the candidate. Sia stops a few paces from the girl, watching her carefully, and glances up at the sky as he waits for a reply. "Outta here, hn? I can sympathize, sugar." Oh, yes, actually, he had been eavesdropping as he'd approached.

[ASTROLOGICAL!!]

And there's a voice. She jumps. Someone had followed her, and she can't quite get a handle on her nerves. He's twice the size of her, isn't he? And his accent is strange. Aleiph brushes some of her messy hair out of her eyes and tries to size him up.

He's big. And probably fast, because size doesn't mean slow in humans, not like it means in dragons. And she's tired. But it doesn't seem like he's a bronze rider. The knots on his shoulder say candidate. She's safe, almost. She relaxes a bit, and her green Ceria lands on her shoulder, nipping her ear disdainfully.

"Ow," she says, then swats Ceria away and turns her eyes back to the other candidate.

"...Aleiph. My name's Aleiph, not sugar." Pet names bother her, especially from strangers. "And I just felt like running." Because she has cabin fever of the worst sort and even with spring in the air, it's not quite enough.

"And what's it to you if I want to leave?"

[redwerecat]

Siarryn only grins more as she jumps, amused by the reaction. And the careful once-over she gives him only makes him grin more, and he tips his hat to her sarcastically (it's a thing, really, and he has just proved it entirely possible to do) and spreads his arms to make it easier.

"Like what y' see?" He leers, though it's not particularly unfriendly. Just mildly bemused.

She's a slight little thing, tiny, even. And she could use a hairbrush, he decided, but she's pretty in her way. Just...teeny. Candidate, too, if he guesses right, and he should know this much, given the time his dad spent driving the information into his head.

"Aleiph." He says, rolling the name across his tongue as if it tastes good. He likes the way it sounds, he decided, and says it again. "Aleiph then. Don' like me callin' you sugar? But you' so sweet." He finishes with a little laugh in his chest, like he's keeping some secret, and shrugs it off.

"I din' say it was anythin' to me, sug- sorry. Aleiph. Just commentin' on what you said. This place can get claustrophobic if you're use' to a bigger place. Leas' the rider's got the sky..." A shrug, and the end of his tail dances in a loop behind him, like he's thinking about something else entirely. "You tried sneakin' out yet?"

[ASTROLOGICAL!!]

She puffs out her cheeks and looks away, her hair falling over her shoulder. She doesn't like the way he looks at her, like she's some piece of meat that could be snapped up by the dogs. "...No." She's not into men. She's not into women. She's not sure what she's really into. Maybe she's like Zayin, but she's not sure.

Aleiph hugs her knees, watching him carefully. She decides not to comment on his compliments, because she's really not sure how to respond. She's never really interacted with boys, even though when she was fifteen Turns, one of her friends said one of the boys that lived closer to the Hold's main was sweet on her. She didn't really think about it much then. She doesn't know what to think of it now. "Zayin's gonna get me a ride to the Hold. I don't need to sneak out. It's just a matter of finding with the dates line up."

[redwerecat]

Siarryn seems perplexed by the way she turns away, and he huffs slightly. One ear twitches in irritation and it takes all his self control to keep from looking put out. (Would be stupid, right, to look petulant just because she isn't all over him, even he knows that. Still, he's vain, and he knows that too.)

"If I weren' completely comfortable in my own ver' high opinion of myself I'd be offended." He says. "Fortunately I am quite self-confident and so I don; really care what you think of me." Partially true, but he really would like it if she didn't hate him outright. He's perfectly aware that she's keeping herself between them, drawing up her knees- not sure if it's fear or just a lack of comfort around him, but he sees it, and he doesn't make a move to get any closer.

"Got a ride, step one. I s'pose candidacy ain' a forced thing, right. Which hold?" He changes subjects like that, no warning, suddenly on something else entirely. "I'm bein' nosy, sure, but hey, maybe I can hitch a ride if it's somewhere interestin'. Hatchin' ain' for a while, might as well fin' somethin' to do with my time. Who's Zayin? Boyfrien'? Girlfrien'?"

Again, new topic with no prelude or warning. He can't help the slightly lascivious grin at the thought of course, but hey. He's a red-blooded male, what did they expect? "Or you single?"

[ASTROLOGICAL!!]

She doesn't hate him outright. She just wouldn't trust him as readily as she'd trust a woman. Aleiph has never had an easy time around men. It's almost as if she expects them to be dangerous, or to belittle her somehow. He seems friendly enough, but she's not sure if she should trust him quite yet. Especially with his arrogance. It's a bit of a turn-off.

She strokes her flitter's headknobs softly. "Garnet Hold. My father's a Master Beastcrafter. I used to help him with the dogs--"

Zayin. What is Zayin? Just a friend. Then why do Aleiph's ears go red? "...She's just a friend," she says flatly, not bothering to answer that last question. Let him draw his own conclusions.

[redwerecat]

For the record, Siarryn has this ridiculous thing about knowing exactly how much he tends to get under people's skins, and he doesn't care. He does what he wants and shard the consequences. If it means he's burnt a few bridges in his relationships in the past, so be it. He refuses to regret it.

Sia nods, as if that was the right answer. (It might as well have been, he didn't give one single damn how she'd answered- he'd been curious and any answer would have satisfied him...) "Garnet. Not bad, I guess. An' a dog can be a good pal, why not. You got a job back there then..." He trails off as he watches her go red at his next questions. It makes him smile, in a really probably very annoying way.

"Is she? Oh. alrigh', I believe you." He said, with that particular tone of voice that said as a matter of fact, no he didn't. Well, he might believe her, actually, but it was more fun to tease her. "Didn' answer my next question then, you single?" He continues, pursuing that angle with a single-minded insistence. "Oh, an' for the record, I ain't asking to prove a point or nothing. I jus' wanna know if I have a tread's chance between. Don' wanna waste this pretty face, do we?" He says, and the way he tilts his head and beams at her again, it's hard to tell if he was talking about himself... or about Aleiph.

"Of course you don' have to answer, I can always go in a different direction an' pester you on why exactly you wanna leave the Weyr." Talking, always talking. It put him at ease to have something to say, and he'd always found people to be a lot like wild flitters- if you kept talking, they eventually got used to the sound of your voice, and stopped being so skittish and on guard around you. Like this girl, who seemed to have her guard up against him more solidly than almost anyone he'd ever met.

[ASTROLOGICAL!!]

He talks a lot, doesn't he? And his tone is teasing and she thinks for a while about Zayin and how she's always so supportive and so friendly and polite. And Zayin had mentioned girls who liked other girls. Maybe-- maybe if she did think something, Zayin wouldn't push her away. Except no, what if Zayin didn't like her like that? What if Zayin laughs at her?

"...I've got no one in particular," she says, because strange thoughts about the feeling of Zayin's gentle fingers in her hair aren't the same as having a beau. She almost adds something about not being interested in men, but she can't say that because there was the strong silent young man back at Garnet Hold who would lift the foals in the stables with such care... He'd always been nice to her and had let her help him with the animals.

But she'd never acted on that, and this crude, coarse boy is not Therall. "I just want to run," she says, hoping that's enough answers for him. But as she speaks she realizes that this is one-sided. He's asked her questions, and now it's time for him to give her answers.

"What about you? What have you done to warrant your ego?" She tries to sound teasing. It probably doesn't work, because she still sounds guarded.

[redwerecat]

Sia leans back on his heels, smiling, and with an expression that says she's given him more than enough. "Hmm." He replies, not at all helpfully. "Okay, no one, then. If that's what makes you happy, who's gonna say anythin'?" He's still watching her the whole time, a bemused smirk never quite leaving his face and a deeply curious look in the red sparkle of his eyes. He wouldn;t press her, probably, and it doesn't immediately seem like she'd give him answers anyway, but he is, for a moment, curious about the way she seems to be thinking about something for a moment between her responses.

It almost makes him want to pick her brain just to find out what she's brooding about up in there. (And the information that she's single he files away for later, jut in case.) "Running is good." He says, flatly, and this time he looks up at the sky again, and his tail does a weird, lightly little curly-cue in the air behind him, like a cat watching a shadow on a wall. "Runnin' is a good answer."

He laughs, a short little breathy thing in his throat, and turns back to her as she throws a question back at him, holding a hand to his chest as if deeply wounded. "Oh, a blow to my very fragile pride." He says, winking. "And I done gotten away with plenty enough to warrant my very handsome ego, thank you. I'd tell you all 'bout it, but then I'd have t' kill you." He's joking, really, but he smiles anyway and shrugs, hands behind his back. "I been around, sug- Aleiph." (He should really stop with the nicnkames, but he finds it difficult.) "Here, there, enough of the world that I find my ego to be a healthy way to keep from hatin' everyone I meet, y'know? High enough opinion of yourself an' no one can knock you down, I figure."