Dejarik and Tea (D1EN, LIMITED OPEN)

[Tenel Olon]

(open to ONE participant. Don't worry, this will be a daily thing!)

Olon sat comfortably in a chair in the common room, decorated to be as cozy and comfortable as the rest of the ship. A fresh pot of mild tea sat on the table next to the Dejarik board. Those more closely familiar with Olon would be familiar with this little ritual as well, when she would share tea, a game, and a bit of intimate conversation with members of her crew.

Who would stop by tonight?

[Kaddhur]

Kaddhur's capacity physical for grace is tremendous, but so is his capacity for getting in his own way. The clack-clack-clack of his talons against the deck plating of the ramp comes irregularly, his steps the unhappy children of a confident stride and an uncertain tip-toe.

"Matron Olon?" he says from the doorway, upright and with a studied tone of respect.

[Tenel Olon]

Of course, she knew who it was without the fairly obvious cue.

"Please. Come in." Olon said, smiling gently at Kaddhur, gesturing to the chair across the Dejarik table from her. "Join me. Would you care for a cup of tea? I think you would find it... refreshing."

[Kaddhur]

Permission given, Kaddhur stops lurking in the doorway. A less coordinated adolescent might have suddenly fallen forward, but his clumsiness is all in affect, not action. He takes a seat quietly.

"Yes, thank you, Lady Olon." He can never remember what she likes him to call her, if she cares, and he can never keep track of all the Basic honorifics in their complexity and genders and how they map on to what he would call someone of similar station back home. Not that there really was anyone like Olon, back home.

He removes his helmet, a somewhat complicated process due to his facial plumes. Too vain to hide their best features, Araran warriors wear them outside their armor, carefully feeding them through thin slits in their helmet's cheekplates. A human would have to wear their hair in four meter-long pigtails and modify their armor likewise to get the same experience.

The deed done, he places it carefully in his lap. Four eyes blink at Olon. His head is unusually still. Not totally, but not in the usual, almost frantic, way.

[Tenel Olon]

"Olon is fine, dear." She chuckled softly. Her eyes glinted curiously as he removed the mask, but there was no more clue than that to what she was thinking.

She poured the tea slowly; not leisurely, but slowly, as though savoring the experience of pouring. And, equally slowly she slid the cup across the table to Kaddhur. "You look like someone with something on his mind." She said, still smiling gently.

[Kaddhur]

"Yes, Olon. Thank you." Even if he can't remember what to call her, he remembers how to treat tea in front of her, aided by the memory of similar small rituals at home. He takes the mug in his talons, makes a mostly-genuine show of appreciating the warmth on his hands and the aroma in his nares. This also buys him time to try and master his thoughts. It feels like they are more often scattered than not, a herd of hydro-khoni buffeted by a windstorm. And right now, well. Like with many adolescents, having a maternal figure ask a vague, leading question led to reflexive spasms of guilt, even though he hadn't done anything wrong lately that he remembered.

"You have gathered many..." he begins, and trails off. It might be taken as a suggestive lead, but mostly his Basic vocabulary has failed to give him a sufficient noun to describe the mix of sapients the ship had played host to earlier in the day.

[Tenel Olon]

"Professionals?" Olon suggested with a gentle smile. She tilted her head, regarding him in an almost bird-like way. "Are you worried that they won't measure up... or that you won't?"

She waved a hand at the board. "Do you play?"

[Kaddhur]

"Professionals?" Olon suggested with a gentle smile. She tilted her head, regarding him in an almost bird-like way. "Are you worried that they won't measure up... or that you won't?"

Yesterday, Kaddhur might have shrunk in shame or taken defensive offense at the suggestion. Today, he has a jetpack, and confidence fills his breast and fluffs his feathers.

"I only hope that none of them expects to pilot the escape craft," he boasts.

She waved a hand at the board. "Do you play?"

He looks at the board with interest. Of course, Dejarik was played everywhere. "A little, Olon." He sniffs politely. "Of course, I'm most familiar with the Than Jar variant we play on Arar. It's more..." he trails off, unsure exactly how to assert its superiority. "I'm told it's very strategic," he finishes lamely.

[Tenel Olon]

"Indeed not." Olon smiled. "Everyone was carefully selected, both for their skills and their trustworthiness." Her lips pursed for just a moment. "That means you, and it also means them. Trust in their skill at their chosen task as you would trust my information."

She pushed a button on the side of the board. "I'm familiar with it." She pushed another few buttons, and the holograms shifted, some changing position, some changing size. More of the pieces became birds. "Shall we play a game as we talk? I find it to be an excellent mental exercise. Helps me to stay sharp." Another gentle smile.

[Kaddhur]

"Indeed not." Olon smiled. "Everyone was carefully selected, both for their skills and their trustworthiness." Her lips pursed for just a moment. "That means you, and it also means them. Trust in their skill at their chosen task as you would trust my information."

Kaddhur sips tea. One of the reasons he likes sitting and talking to Olon is the tea. Not that he especially likes the kinds of plants-in-hot-water she has (as he tells her, they are "fine" or maybe "good," at least to his undiscriminating palate). But whenever he's not sure what to say or feels like he might be about to say the wrong thing, he can drink tea and see if a response is really expected.

He drinks a lot of tea when he talks with Olon.

She pushed a button on the side of the board. "I'm familiar with it." She pushed another few buttons, and the holograms shifted, some changing position, some changing size. More of the pieces became birds. "Shall we play a game as we talk? I find it to be an excellent mental exercise. Helps me to stay sharp." Another gentle smile.

He pulls his head back without moving his torso, and his feathers flatten, a taking-broader-perspective gesture combined with the blankness or freezing of sudden emotion. He hadn't expected her to have it programmed, and seeing the familiar configuration fills him with a rush of feelings that he doesn't care to process right now.

"Of course, Olon," he says. He starts configuring the board for the start of game, giving Olon the first move. It was both the polite thing to do, given his nominally greater experience with the variant, and also a preemptive salve to his ego. He hadn't actually ever been very good at this game. Not awful, but prone to getting overexcited and overextended by the sudden, sweeping moves that the game offered. There were some people he didn't like to play it with at all.

"What kind of sharpness are you worried about losing?" he says, in an above-average effort at keeping the conversation going, but then realizes he didn't say it quite right. "There is the small blade," he makes an abbreviated shivving gesture, "the great," a slightly more extended, but not tea-spilling, running-someone-through motion, and then trails off. This is easier to explain in Mando'a.

[Tenel Olon]

"Interesting." Olon said, smiling at him. Her hands lingered over the controls for a moment, and then she moved one of the side-pieces forward. It was an unusual opening.

"Ha. You're young. As good as you are, and you are good, you have not yet reached your peak. I hope to be there to see it when you do." This time, it was her turn to take a sip of tea.

"I have reached mine. I can feel it. I have many years left..." She made a vague gesture with one hand, "-but this mission had to be now. When I am at my best. Before time and a life spent in the shadows catches up with me."

[Kaddhur]

Kaddhur nods with the polite incomprehension of a youth who believes in his own eternal life and vigor and has trouble imagining anything else. He's more interested in the board: she's made the kind of opening move that he might try. A wiser person might see that and think how it usually gets beaten, but Kaddhur feels the thrill that comes with the bold stroke and mirrors the move on the opposite side (although the pieces aren't exactly the same, Than Jar being one of the many variations on the game that isn't symmetrical).

He realizes he should say something, though, and then realizes that Olon is telling him an awful lot, at least by implication. "It is important because... revenge?" he says, choosing his words far more carefully than he's choosing his moves. "Or... vengeance?" The analogous words are distinct in Mando'a, a personal settling of scores versus a grander or more duty-bound evening of the scales, but when he's paying attention to what he's saying (and he usually is, one-on-one with Olon) he tries to avoid the faux pas of constantly having to translate himself.

[Hatoful GM]

"Revenge?" Olon chuckled softly. "No, no. Nothing like that. I learned early that revenge has a price, and I do not care to pay it. I've done this well through careful balancing, and indulging in something so base as that would surely put me in the red."

Her moves were... cautious wasn't the right word. Perhaps exploratory, probing his defenses.

She looked at him. "Tell me. You seek to prove yourself. Why?"

[Kaddhur]

Kaddhur's play doesn't have "defenses" so much as it is a probability cloud of possible offenses that might happen at any moment. Many of them would not be good offenses... unless, maybe, they were launched in reaction to his opponent moving in. If Kaddhur was playing against himself, the uncertainty and confusion would certainly overwhelm him, and he would either try to cut the knot with a bold but under-planned assault or be suddenly paralyzed a half-step in to such an assault, and stumble. Against a more patient or thoughtful opponent it is vulnerable to a strike that slips through the many but ever-changing holes, or to merely being waited out until the swirling motion stalls out and leaves an obvious opening.

This engages him enough that he answers without thinking too hard.

She looked at him. "Tell me. You seek to prove yourself. Why?"

"What profits me to remain unproven? No battles, no stories, unremembered, gone as soon as buried. Digar cuyir di'kut." The forgotten one was a waste of space.

[Hatoful GM]

"Hmmm." Olon murmured. "And do you ever think you will say 'well, that's good enough, I'm famous now, time to stop'?"

[Kaddhur]

"Glory is what you cover yourself with," he says by rote, "Honor is what is inside your armor." The phrase was drummed into every Araran, including as they learned Basic. He frowns and looks up from the board as he tries to think of a deeper answer. Olon, he realizes dimly, maybe deserves one.

"On Arar, if I am known, it is for my family," he says. His facial feathers flatten and the bare skin around his eye darkens -- the subtle Sathari blush. "I want to return from the stars as others from my people have." He hesitates for a moment, then chrirps out, "Or better, than, than certain others."

[Tenel Olon]

"Hmmm. Olon tapped the controls. "Yes. Shankhar." She looked up from the board. "As it happens, a piece of information involving her came across my feed recently. It's free, if you would care to hear it."

She made her move, beginning her attack. "That is, I will not charge you. Information is never free, no matter how much slicers may wish it to be."

[Kaddhur]

The Sathari of Arar think of themselves as apex predators, as many or most of their analogous non-sapient species are. Except when young, small predatory avians (or reptavians, or aviomammalians...) are usually far more trouble than they're worth, even for their larger kin. Like many sapient species, though, the Sathari have much more prey in their family tree than they'd like to admit.

When surprised by an bearsloth on their native Arbooine, Kadhurr's ancestors were likely to live long enough to earn that status if they either attacked fiercely and immediately with their beak, flapping and crying out to intimidate their foe and alert the rest of the flock, or taking wing immediately (while crying out etc.). A key part of both of those strategies is volume, both puffing themselves up to appear larger and being very, very loud.

Very little of this response seems appropriate to tea with Olon, so Kadhurr freezes (he does puff up considerably). If Olon were a bearsloth, he would not fare well.

Eventually, he gives a minute nod. Yes, please, ma'am.

[Tenel Olon]

Slowly, Olon nodded. "Very well."

She pulled out a datapad, pressing some keys on it. "The Outer Rim holds many that calls themselves pirate lord. I'm not sure how many are worthy of the title, but at least they tend to have the strength to keep others from claiming it."

She turned the datapad over to him, displaying the news article. "As you can see, she and her crew have defeated one, claiming the bounty on his head. Not the largest bounty, but enough to catch a number of eyes."

[Kaddhur]

Kaddhur lets out a distressed sound, a low wordless chittering. He takes the datapad in a swift but careful swoop of his taloned hands, and starts paging through the data. Who, how much, how bad is it... His eyes glance up at Olon. How did she know to look?