hexarchate_rpg | on the nature of oaths

zuhrovet posting in

[In the current move, Sasha has just accepted an oath of service from Jedao, a relationship Reshad believes is coercive. I'm not sure whether this properly counts as character rp or a new half-move, but I think we all need some new space to deal with the fallout!]

Sasha is waiting outside the antechamber. She has tied her scarf again, and looks as put-together as she ever does. "Are we having this conversation in my office?" she asks Reshad. "Or over tea, with everyone?"

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From:

venndaai

[You guys have been going pretty fast lately, so I just wanted to let everyone know this is a busy time for me and I'll only be posting every other day.]

After Sasha steps out of the airlock, Sulen says into her ear, "Well, that's not how I intended this to go, but it seems to have been productive."

From:

zuhrovet

"I hope so," Sasha tells them. "I think I had to, but I don't think Reshad saw it."

The momentum of the ceremony is wearing off, and she's uncomfortably aware of how much sleep she hasn't had in the last twenty-five hours. She fishes in her jacket pocket for her scarf.

From:

hoardingpearls

"Let's debrief with everyone." Surely, surely she is not the only one with questions, or responses, or... Something.

"But first -" Reshad steps close. She looks up into Sasha's face, expression unflinching, and her voice drops to a biting, private tone. "Do not assume you know anything about Temuy culture."

She steps past Sasha and calls back: "I'll be there in five."

Edited Date: 2019-09-18 02:36 am (UTC)

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha braces automatically as the taller woman steps toward her--Reshad could slam her head into the wall, it's the obvious attack--and then relaxes, very slightly, as she speaks. It's easier, somehow, when they're not pretending to be friends. "Understood."

Sasha should know something about Temuy--'do not bargain without data' is a lesson that was fucking ground into her--but the fault is not entirely hers. "In return, do not pretend you comprehend a binding, when you do not. What you just said to him was cruel, even if you cannot feel it."

[Is Temuy an ethnicity, or a place, or both?]

From:

hoardingpearls

That flinch - telling. Sasha fears her, fears her physically, despite this being the first true hostility Reshad has shown.

She has a brief, spinning moment of wondering if this is what it takes. If aggression in response to aggression is the answer. Distasteful, but - this is not home. This is no assignment, where she can afford to assume and shuck identities like an out-of-fashion robe. Learn faster.

Reshad steps back, trusting her point to be made. "Would you care to explain, then." It's flat, less invitation than statement; the flare of anger is not yet gone, although a bladed protectiveness has risen in its place. "How offering hope that things are different in the rebellion than the Heptaechate is cruel; how undercutting it is not."

[Temuy is a culture, one of many on Aiwui before its fall, about which more soon. Reshad is Temuy.]

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha has promised to assume good faith, so she meets Reshad's eyes and tells the truth. "You understood, I think, that the way the Shuos heptarch bound him was not clean. She used his strength against him, and she hurt him. I cannot guess the method, but that much was very clear, from how he spoke. You think, if you tell him it should not have happened, it will be a comfort. But it was his strength. He is the person that she aimed at, and he is the gun she aimed, both together. When you say this should not be, you tell him he should not exist. I cannot stand by and let you do that. Not to anyone, but particularly not to him."

Reshad has a perfect diagram, now: she has seen every knot in the net of Sasha's current loyalties, and she knows the shape, if not the details, of the ways Sasha has been hurt before. Of course, if Reshad uses this to bind her, it proves Sasha was right all along. She smiles a bitter half-smile: that's a stupid way to win.

From:

hoardingpearls

"Yes; she hurt him." Simple confirmation; Reshad holds Sasha's gaze, not least because her training demands it. History alone would illuminate the surface of the wound, and seeing Jedao's reaction to it plumbs some of the depth. And - she cannot help but see that Sasha projects something of herself into the situation. More than something.

"You are correct that I intend to comfort. I can only hope that he did not hear what you did, but rather that the rebellion is not the Heptarchate."

"I will ask you more about your binding when we debrief. Such ties should be well understood by those who need to work with them, and I am not convinced he knows Naxorian culture." She meets protectiveness with protectiveness: Jedao is not a thing, not a toy, nobody's possession. "Shall we?" A graceful gesture, toward the Cantata's conference room.

"And after, I will inquire, and see whether I've done more harm than good."

[Is anyone else around?]

Edited Date: 2019-09-19 02:46 am (UTC)

From:

zuhrovet

"I would have sworn to the Nirai, had they accepted me. I thought about the nature of the oath."

Sasha walks toward the common room, hands in her jacket pockets. She knows where Reshad is walking--she can't help but monitor--but she forces herself to move at an even pace, without checking the corridors or asking the grid to map the ship's inhabitants, as if everything here is safe.

[I'm going to assume we'll meet Ione, and maybe Sulen, in the common room.]

From:

kese_seyli

[Seyli very well could pass everyone on on their way to the shooting range, but would ignore any attempts to stop them unless presented as a forceful order.]

From:

kese_seyli

Seyli ignores everyone and everything to make their way to the range and arm themselves for the first time during this whole fiasco. They set up to their preferred specifications, make sure the range is secure, and begin unloading their feelings into a target. It's almost like meditation, the whole of their focus on hitting the target, letting the world and their mind narrow down to nothing more than aim and ammunition.

From:

zuhrovet

[I think the debriefing conversation will be more interesting if we make it really cross-cultural, so do please join in!]

Having attained the common room, Sasha liberates a clean teapot. She asks Reshad, "Do you like black tea, or green? Or I suppose there's coffee?"

One of the blue hatchlings crawls out of the nest, presumably curious about the noise; another hatchling is poking its nose out. Sasha's first instinct is to shush them, but she knows it's doomed. Hatchlings need socialization, and she is the available adult. Instead she whistles softly and looks for an appropriately squashy banana.

From:

hoardingpearls

Reshad is moving about tidying the sitting area when Sasha, to her surprise, asks about tea preference. "Green would be nice, thank you." She offers a small smile, a measure of peace.

But as she looks up, a cheeping sound, a whistle - Sasha has a banana in hand, unexpected - and a tiny blue nose, not belonging to Fluffy, makes an appearance in Fluffy's nest.

Moving softly, she comes up beside Sasha. "What's this?"

The color and movement resolves itself as she approaches, into what have to be hatchlings. Reshad's mouth makes an 'o' and her eyes go wide. "Oh! You're as cute as a mothling," she informs the baby. Her hands go behind her back, an instant response to the desire to touch.

From:

zuhrovet

"I know I'm terrible at this shit, but I wasn't actually raised by wolverines." Sasha isn't quite smiling, but her eyes crinkle at the corners.

Though she doesn't usually drink green tea, there's a setting for it on the hot-water dispenser, and the grid will time the steeping. She mashes the banana into a bowl with the back of a spoon. "Chahle, baby frog, who's your friend?--You can go ahead and pick one up. It's good for them, to get used to humans."

[I'm not actually sure whether the Cantata's cutlery collection favors chopsticks or forks! Though Sasha's from a knives-spoons-fingers culture anyhow.]

From:

yhlee

[Heh, h*archate would favor chopsticks, but there would be local variations from the low cultures, and anyway, the matter printer can provide whatever cutlery y'all like!]

From:

bariolage

Enter Ione, who looks a little frazzled - her hair is down, and she's changed gloves - and may or may not seem surprised to see other people there. She's just overall somewhat shaken for the time being, but Fluffy's nest is what first gets her attention. Cooing over babies and petting them, and taking the silvery one that's taken a liking to her up onto her arm, comes first.

They're soothing.

"Hello," she says, once she's gotten her pseudo-dragon bearings, and the unnamed silver nestling is trying to eat that hair she hasn't put back up.

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha isn't looking at Ione, not directly. She's not watching Reshad's cautious advance toward the nest, either. Instead, she's balancing Chahle and a spoonful of smushed banana, and hoping desperately that the warmth in her face looks like some sort of reaction to the steaming tea.

She isn't touching the teacups, either, but the one that judders off the shelf and smashes on the galley floor is definitely her fault.

From:

bariolage

It startles Ione, who spins around to look, then glances really quickly at Sasha as if she's trying to confirm the origin; but psionic abilities are a form of medical information, and she doesn't want anyone else to think she's surmised any sort of correlation.

Everything told to her is in confidence unless otherwise specified. Which does not mean she isn't super curious what incited that reaction. She might have to ask later, how awkward.

The silver pseudo-dragon shrieks happily at the smashing noise and tries to imitate it. Ione covers her face with her hand very briefly and holds back a sigh.

From:

hoardingpearls

"Of course not." With a faint, rueful smile, Reshad turns to help with the preparations. "Wolverines can't make tea for anything." Her tone is conversational, but she darts a sidewise glance, gauging how the joke was received.

Five minutes, after all, do little for tension.

At the suggestion to touch the hatchlings, she gives Sasha a delighted look. "Thanks - I wasn't sure it was all right. I don't know much about reptiles, if they're reptiles." She clucks at the blue one, then its silver sibling as Ione lifts it away, and wiggles her fingers at the dragonets beneath.

Her head whips around as a cup smashes, leaving her hand suspended near the nest. A quick assessment shows no threat in evidence, only Ione with hand over face, Sasha blushing - nobody near the cup.

She's distracted from further investigation by a sharp nip. "Oh! Rascal," she laughs, and her attention is suddenly back on the nest entirely.

From:

yhlee

Gerae enters shortly afterward, looks around at everyone's faces, bites his lip, then occupies himself helping feed hungry hatchlings banana-tuna mixture.

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha shuts the cupboard door, passes Chahle to Gerae temporarily, and cleans up the mess. In the middle of that process the tea alarm goes off. By the time she manages to recover Chahle and bring everyone a cup, it's definitely oversteeped. But then, it's green, so it still doesn't taste like much of anything.

Sasha pets Chahle along the spine, for luck maybe, and then asks the question she should have asked first, if she hadn't been so distracted by her own stupid lack of self-control: "Ione. Are you all right?"

From:

bariolage

At first, Ione is going to say something like I was just facepalming because of the fact that the pseudo-dragons think that breaking cups is a noise to mimic but she realizes that's not the question being asked, exactly. Her immediate response to the hatchlings isn't what they're talking about so much as the fact she looks like she hasn't slept in a year.

"Tired," she answers instead, but she's smiling faintly. "Kind of emotionally fatigued because it's -- there was a lot. These guys help." There's another scritch for her friend she hasn't named yet, who has stopped shrieking, and then she turns the smile onto Gerae briefly before focusing it back on Sasha. "Are you?"

From:

zuhrovet

Green saint, Sasha cannot do this, nothing this good can last. She's going to break something else, and she doesn't know when or how.

She watches Chahle decorously inhaling banana for a moment, just to compose herself, and then shrugs. "I'm fine. Nobody has tried to assault me for weeks, it's probably a record. I guess--should we get started?"

From:

bariolage

"We should be aiming for longer than weeks," Ione says softly, but doesn't protest the idea of getting to discussion.

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha's smile translates as "How is Ashari supposed to relax?" but she has enough sense not to say that out loud.

"Ione, if you can give us a more detailed assessment of Jedao's emotional state, that would be very much appreciated. Reshad, I know you have questions. And Gerae--are you part of this meeting or not?"

From:

yhlee

Gerae straightens his posture and almost drops the hatchling he's feeding, who yawps in protest. "I'm paying attention," he says, hastily catching and patting the little dragon.