The Music of the Night (Silvio)

[Invisible]

(OOC: This takes place right after Missing Pieces)

There were still a hundred thoughts running through Genet’s mind and she had thought to go back to her brother’s weyr and think on them all before letting sleep claim her. Instead here she was walking across the bowl with a Caminar to go listen to their music. She definitely was not at home right now. At home she would never have been allowed any such fun. The former holder girl let Silvio set the pace for their walking content to just enjoy being outside in someone’s company. “I don’t know,” she finally answered to his question of her going home. “I don’t think I’d like it here much without my brother. As much as I dislike my family at least I have family there, right? Here it’s just me right now. I mean a couple friends, but it’s not the same.”

If anything had helped her realize it was not the same the talk they’d just come from with the Weyrleader confirmed it. Weyr life was taking longer to get used to than she had anticipated. It would come eventually she thought, but it would certainly come faster if G’tet were back. For tonight though she would try not to worry about those things. She would just go enjoy the music and hope she woke up in time for her morning duties the next day.

“I’ve never heard it up too close,” Genet told Silvio with a grin. “From across the bowl or something, but I tried not to ever intrude, you know?” Other than shopping, but business dealings were not intrusions. “If people in the Weyr get all bent out of shape if one of you comes to the Weyr it seems wrong to just assume they can intrude too closely on what you do.” She debated her next words, but finally decided the worst that could happen would she would make him mad and miss out on the music. “Have you thought of helping look for the missing kids? Or is it because they’re not Caminar that your people don’t want to help? I don’t mean to offend. I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. Please don’t get mad.”

[Alsivor]

The shimmering pinpricks of stars overhead gleamed in the irregular frame of the Bowl's Rim and Silvio's gaze was drawn upward briefly by the sight. Even the sky was smaller in the Weyr and the restlessness started to itch under his skin again. To be out under the open sky again would be so very, very good. Genet was speaking again though and he looked down and over at her, interest plain on his face in spite of the momentary distraction. "No, it's not the same at all. Forgive me if I seem distracted. It's -- difficult being between walls for so long. I -- well other than some of the very good business we've been doing and interesting people I've met, I can very much understand not feeling right, here. And he echoed his own earlier thought, gesturing to the sky above. "Even the sky is small here and for a Caminar that is just -- not right."

He was talking too much. Saying too much. But with Aleda gone and Milo still seemingly not quite right, it felt good to talk to someone this way. It wasn't the same as complaining in macho tones with some of his fellows in the Caminar camp, or telling his father he ached to be on the road again only to have Favio tell him to be patient. There was a certain freedom in speaking to someone he barely knew but instinctively liked.

"Up close it -- it gets in your blood. At least so I think." Silvio waited a moment then went on. "There will be dancing too. There is always dancing. And -- yes. I understand." His gaze focused more sharply on the young woman's face. "That is a very considerate way to put it. To think. To be." And he nodded once in acknowledgement then fell silent for her next question.

Softly: "Would we even be permitted to help, Genet? We are suspected. Also, what is there for a Caminar to do? We cannot question plan-- holderfolk. I do not know what my father thinks on this matter. He hasn't spoken of it except to say that it was too dangerous to be on the road this summer."

As they moved on ahead, the low beat of drums from within the camp rose in volume slightly along with the poignant wail of a single violin and the plucking fall of notes from several gitars. Shadows jumped in the glow of fires lit near the Bowl wall. Caminar music and dancing indeed.

[Invisible]

“Can’t you at least go outside the bowl?” Genet asks with genuine confusion. “Even I can go for walks out there on my rest day. I like to go looking for things.” Things could be anything at all depending on her mood. The important thing was to be doing something. “Someday I will discover something no one has ever seen before.” It may have been a childish dream carried into adulthood, but she sounded quite serious about it.

She didn’t really want to talk about important things right now. Genet wondered if people felt like this a lot? The desire to shove worries aside was always strong, but she wondered if she did the same if anyone would ever say anything? “I don’t know. There are some at the Weyr who think even an offer of help might be seen in a good light. Others…We’re not all the same any more than all of you are the same. There are plenty of people who could be behind all of this.” Shaking her head she cast off that subject for now and focused on a better one.

There would be dancing. Genet loved to dance it being one of the few girly things she had ever truly mastered. Oh, she doubted she would get to dance being an outsider, but just watching would be fun. “I am an excellent dancer,” she told Silvio with a wink and a laugh. “At least of holderfolk dances.” She did not doubt they were different but maybe they were similar enough she could follow along. It was only secretly Genet hoped to dance because she wondered if it might not get Silvio in trouble. The last thing she wanted was that. He had been one of the few who took her quest to find her brother seriously.

[Alsivor]

"It's not the same," Silvio murmured that restless edge creeping into his voice. "Aleda - she goes out like that. Gathering. Herbs. Barks. All sorts of things to make medicines. She's out almost every day." His words trail off and Genet might detect in his muted tone, how much he misses his sister though he doesn't voice it specifically aloud.

"Maybe," the young Caminar answered about the missing children. "It's not as if there's any one person who speaks for all of us though. Our way is not the way of the weyr or the hold. If my father decides my family will ask or offer, then that's what the family will do. But no one decides for all Caminar." He continues on in silence for a little ways, a certain tension knotting his shoulders. "Unless there's a particular person behind it, we value our little ones too much for it to have anything to do with us." And his tone took on a hint of distance, silence reigning again until she spoke once more.

A twinkle sparked in Silvio's eyes and he smiled over at the Genet. "Are you now? Maybe you could show me a thing or two then. Holder dances. Trade you for some of the ones I know." Unlike his companion, Silvio felt a little brash. Let them stare if he brought a plantado girl into camp. It would get easily written off as the foibles of a young man sowing his wild oats before a marriage was arranged for him.

[Invisible]

Genet considered traveling without a home and was unable to make sense of it. “I want to travel someday. How else will I discover something amazing? But I think I’d hate not having a home to come back to. I guess it’s how we’re raised.” That the Caminar did not have a leader seemed another alien thing about them. “How do you stay a group without someone in charge? What if there is trouble between families? Who mediates?”

Thinking she might be asking too many questions she grins. “Ignore me. I ask a lot of questions. It’s so much more fun than not knowing.” Genet feared it was starting to sound like she was interrogating Silvio and she didn’t want him to regret bringing her along. Not when she was going to get to dance after all it seemed. “Ohh! A trade! That sounds like a deal. I don’t know many of the fancy ones. Just the ones we do after a harvest or during a gather, you know.”

Peasant dances they’d be called somewhere else. While Genet’s mother had made sure her daughters learned a little of ‘proper’ dancing since their futures would require little of it she spent more time making sure they could not embarrass themselves at the smaller hold gatherings and celebrations. “The best thing about dancing, or so I get told, is that I am much too busy to pester with lots of questions.” If she was asking too many questions this seemed a good way to make sure she got to dance lots. Most men would do anything to shut Genet up after awhile. Dancing with Silvio was a fair trade she thought with a laugh.

[Alsivor]

"Home is wherever we are when we are, home is everywhere on Pern and nowhere at the same time," Silvio replied in a near sing-song, indicating perhaps that he was quoting from something, poem or song or lesson. Something. "Home comes with us, our wagons, our people." He looked over at her curiously. "We are ... a people. We know who we are and that usually suffices. Any disputes, there are -- hmm, let's call it rituals and rules I guess. A way of handling such things."

The tents and wagons were very near now and Silvio pressed onward, turning in betwen two outlying wagons to guide the way into the heart of the camp. The music was louder here, the thrum of the drums strong, the beat infectious, demanding almost of the movement of feet. Now and then a merry laugh rang out and distantly clapping might be heard. "It doesn't matter what kind, really. Just an even trade," Silvio stated with that mischievous twinkle back in his eyes. "I suppose I really don't know all that much about holder ways."

He smiled at her again. "I don't mind your questions. If you don't mind mine."

[Invisible]

With her head tipped over to one side and her gaze occasionally sliding upwards to the sky, at least until they reached the encampment where she would take everything in, Genet listened to Silvio. “Doesn’t sound like a lot of privacy. I’ve been sneaking off to sleep in my brother’s weyr because I never had a room of my own and it’s pretty nice.” Her family was much too big for her to have ever had space of her own.

One hand, the one not attached to the arm looped with Silvio’s, tapped against her thigh in time with the music when it got louder. “This is going to be so much fun!” she said as she looked at her escort and grinned up at him. “Thank you again! I’ll show you the best dances I know.” Best probably meant least boring in her vocabulary. The waltz was unlikely to make an appearance here. “Holder ways are bo-ring,” she said with a laugh. “But, I will tell you whatever you want to know. I don’t know much about weyr life yet to be honest, but I’m learning.”

[Alsivor]

The path through the wagons was dark, a star contrast to the warm firelight towards which they walked. "The wagons are for sleeping and holding things mostly. When the whole world, every field and tree is your home, there is privacy or company to find pretty much as you want it," Silvio said with a little grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Oh? What are weyrs like? I have never seen any but the one we saw today."

Further amusement, good-natured, registered on Silvio's face as he realized she was marking time with the music. "We'll see what I can come up with for you," he teased her back about the dances and then laughed. "Are they? I can't argue that most Caminar would think the same. As for the weyr ... I know very little too." He paused suddenly as the beat of the drums picked up suddenly and Silvio moved to seize Genet's hand to spin her out, impulsively.

[Invisible]

“I always think of walls as being private,” Genet said with a little laugh. “I guess it’s how I was raised again. Outside who knows who might sneak up on you. Inside you can be alone.” Asked about weyrs she gave it some silent thought before answering. “It depends on your status. Those with the more important dragons like bronzes get the nicer weyrs. G’tet’s a greenrider so he just has, well, it’s like a big stone room. He’s got a little stove like I hear most get up high. To keep the chill out come winter. There’s a couch for Kalpeth and that takes up most of the space. It’s just…dunno. Like a room. A big empty room only it’s not entirely empty cause of the stuff.”

Genet wondered if she was describing it well. She’d never been asked to explain what a room was like. They were all rooms. “It’s private though. And you can go out and sit on the ledge and look up at the sky and pretend like there’s no one else around. I like people, but I like em more if I can get away from them all for a bit.” She would add more, but she didn’t know what to add so she fell silent.

“Holders are boring,” Genet repeated with a little laugh. “Except me,” she added with a sly grin that turned into another laugh as she was spun out. “Maybe you’re good enough to keep up with me after all,” she teased. “At the hatching feast there were barely enough boys to give me a decent dance or two. Bad as holders they were.”

[Alsivor]

"Walls feel like prisons to me," Silvio tells her as he spins her back towards him. "I need free air and the road under my feet. Some of my people sometimes prefer to settle down. But my blood is Caminar through and through. I have no such desire. Neither can I imagine living in a hole in a high wall. I would feel so trapped I think, unless a dragon really makes so much difference." His thoughtful tone gives way to laughter.

"Oh is that so. Then all holders but you are of no interest to me. And we'll see who is keeping up with who at the end of tonight," he quips teasingly then tips his head towards the fire. "Let's go test that out?"

[Invisible]

“Well, I could hardly expect to hear the Golden Boy say that walls sounded good to him,” Genet said with a teasing smile. “But I hear dragons make it all worthwhile no matter what. Don’t figure it’s something either of us will ever know so we’ll have to make do with our roads and our walls.” The walls would always be better for her. Safe and secure with no endless mysteries like the outside world. Adventure in small doses was best for her.

Ready as she was Genet still let Silvio lead the way so when he gestured to the fire she waved her hair about in an exaggerated lofty manner. “Of course, of course, after you. I promise not to make you look too bad in front of your fellows. I’ll even teach you an easy dance to start with.” There was laughter in her words now as she spoke with the potential for fun forefront in her mind. This was turning out to be a good night after all. Let boring ole J’fel sit in his weyr if he wanted because she’d be out here having fun.

[Alsivor]

"Oh no? Got me pegged that soon?" Silvio quipped back with a disarming grin flashed Genet's way. "Mm. That does seem to be what every rider says. I guess that's something you can't understand if you're not one though." The Caminar shrugged about dragons. "I guess flying itself is a way of being free. But having to come back to all this stone ..." he looked around and shuddered, closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, re-focused on her and laughed as she swung her hair about.

"I wouldn't do that. Make you look bad. After that talk with his Weyrleaderness, this is about having some fun and shaking off worrying for a little while," he said firmly and drew her into the fray where dancers danced and musicians played and the fire and the music seemed to work together to make some kind of magic.

[Invisible]

“From the moment we met,” Genet teased back with another laugh. The night was definitely looking up. “There’s no thread I bet nothing says you have to sleep in a weyr,” she pointed out. “If you ever wind up with a dragon remember that. And repay me for the thought with something grand!” Just because it would never be happening doesn’t mean Genet wasn’t going to make sure if it did that she would get something out of it. Always thinking ahead is what helped make a person become great.

By the time the music was all around them Genet had no more thoughts for the weyrleader or worries about their conversation. She couldn’t erase the concern for her brother from her mind, but she could set it mostly aside to enjoy the dancing and the music and the new experience. If she didn’t try to enjoy it she was no better than her sisters who had been content to marry men they’d known all their lives and never leave home. Genet had come to the Weyr for adventure and if a night spent dancing with a handsome Caminar man was not adventurous then who knew what was?

[Alsivor]

"I will," Silvio promised as he swung in to join the other pairs swaying to and fro around the fire's circle. The Caminar dance in progress was a more unstructured thing than most holder dances, but somehow Silvio seemed to know it, how to move, or maybe it was just the beat that made it easy to understand.

"And I suppose a hammock strung up somewhere would do as much as any bed between stone walls," he mused in between beats about weyr sleeping arrangements. "Still, I am glad I am who I am. I've no wish to change a thing." Beat. "Except getting my sister back." Determination in his voice there but then he smiled and tried to surprise Genet with a spin. "So. What do you think of Caminar music and dancing so far?" he asked her with both tease and challenge in his voice.

[Invisible]

It’s possible that Genet might have done better picking up the dance if she were not so busy watching the other dancers as well. Not even to be learning, but just to be watching. The dance was certainly nothing she’d seen at her sisters’ weddings. Even so she managed to make a good go of it and after a minute to get her bearings she was able to be moving with the music in time to be prepared for the spin.

She laughed when she was facing Silvio again and gave him a wink. He wasn’t going to catch her off guard that easy. “I’m pleased with the way I am as well,” she said with a happy grin. “Only I could be shorter.” Well, it’s beyond a woman to admit to being happy with the way she is entirely. Being taller than most other women was not always a boon. To the subject of siblings she turned serious for a moment too. “G’tet will keep her safe,” she assured him before grinning again.

“I think it’s a lot different than what I am used to,” she told him with a laugh. “But I think I will get the hang of it.” Genet didn’t see any reason why she wouldn’t. Dancing was dancing and it was the one thing she knew she was always good at. “Besides I can’t make you look bad. Other than by being better.”