Threading the Needle (Sama'el)

[Dymphna]

20th of Fall, 510 AV It was with a studious mind that Dymphna sat down outside the Whitefeather Pavilion. She had a pair of pants on her lap that were nearly finished, though she didn't find herself very pleased with them. While her sisters had showed her how to carefully roll the seams and double back the needle to strengthen them, her stitches were uneven. And she was terribly, terribly slow. Her greatest enemy in the fight to learn sewing was in fact her impatience. She was ready to be good. She was ready to impress Sam with her great skills that would make her stand out from all the other girls... She thought that regularly, because she was as insecure as any lass her age, but when her mind went there she was quick to scoot it away. After all, she not only trusted her father in choosing a suitable mate for her, but she understood there was no point in putting up a fight over the situation. For some reason, though, she felt the urge to impress Sam. And that had, unfortunately, let to her volunteering to learn how to sew in order to make him pants. She set to this task in between jobs. Today while waiting for the deer tallow to render, she'd gotten a quarter of a leg seam done. The real problem, though, was getting the damned thread through the eye of the needle. She put the thread between her lips like she'd been taught, pressing the pieces down to make it thin enough to go through the tiny hole. She squinted, slowly pushing the fiber towards the little piece of bone. It pushed in the wrong direction, and went sliding to stick against her finger. She let out a heavy sigh, and by the fourth attempt at threading the blasted thing, her final sigh was decidedly twenty times more frustrated than the first. She was going to make a terrible wife...

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

Her reverie was interrupted by a peal of boyish, joyous laughter. Her would-be suitor was a man, perhaps, already riding his second Strider, but he was a seventeen year old man, and in many ways he had yet to grow up despite the hard lot life had dealt him. But now he was clearly reveling in the rapport a Drykas had with their Strider, more intimate even than his longer-standing relationship with Horse, the Windrunner. The golden mare, Dohaina, was trotting up to the Whitefeather Pavilion, her human barefoot and crouched on her back, getting his sea legs where surfing a horse's back was concerned, laughing at the challenge and his growing mastery. "Dymphna!" he called, a childish demand for attention. Look at me, look at me, look at me! his grin said, cheeks flushed, as he rose bit by bit from his crouch to a soft-kneed stance, his hands stretched out to his sides to aid his balance. He was no acrobat fit for a traveling circus, but it was certainly impressive enough. At least one skill the Drykas valued he had in spades. When Dohaina slowed and halted, he considered trying to do a flip off her back, but erred on the side of caution and simply crouched back down, planted his hands, and pushed off for a bit of lift before landing on the ground before her, his knees absorbing the impact before he stood up straight, still flushed with excitement. The mare, bareback and unbridled, whiffled at Dymphna, and then began nosing around for grass to nibble on. "Hi!" he said, unaware that in addition to lacking shoes, he was lacking a shirt. He had been fooling around with Dohaina, and not really paid much attention to anything else; perhaps it was the horse herself who had decided he needed to see the young redhead in a state of half-dress.

[Dymphna]

The scowl on her face quickly faded away at the sound of Sam's voice. Putting her less-than-handiwork down on her lap, she looked up with a grin. She took in the entire situation, from what he was doing to what he wasn't wearing, Though she blushed there was decidedly a twinkle in her eyes that hadn't been there before. She let out a delighted laugh at his act, saying quickly, "Do it again!" "Mama, Dymphna's suitor is doing tricks!" squealed a child's voice from the pavilion door. Roisin Whitefeather, a daughter of Daed's only a few years older than Dymphna, stuck her head out into the early fall air to cast a grinning glance at the young man. Then she looked at Dymphna, grinning even more. Unbeknown to the redhead outside, the women of the pavilion had started to talk and speculate. Roisin put her hand on the little boy's shoulder, the grin not falling from her lips as she said, "Come inside, Phelan. I have a bit of scrap for you to feed your new puppy..." But she didn't disappear before she could hide her chuckle. Dymphna sat there trying to figure out exactly why her sister was laughing, a quizzical look screwing up on her face. Wait, had her little nephew just called Sam her suitor?

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

His grin wavered a bit at being called out by a little boy and smirked at by a pretty woman, but he held fast to Dymphna's request. He liked making her happy, and so he got a bit of space so he could run and vault over Dohaina's rump and onto her back. His landing was a bit harder than he would have liked, and Dohaina quickly snaked her head around to gnaw on his ankle. He was no great acrobat yet, for sure. "Ow!" he yelled, then quickly bit off the unmanly scream. Blushing, he urged Dohaina to move again and, good-tempered, she did so, accelerating into a healthy canter in a wide circle so he could carefully match her stride with his body while changing position. His bare feet gripped against horsehide, finding just enough friction that he was able to crouch low over her back, the hair of her mane whipping at his pale feet. Grinning again, he slowly rose, accustoming himself to this faster gait. Her trot was awfully smooth, but her canter was yet smoother, and he laughed again. It was good to laugh, and to have Dymphna see what he could do.

[Dymphna]

Her mouth opened to say something before Dohaina turned her head to take a bit of Sam's ankle. A hand flew up to cover her mouth and muffle the little gasp it got. The tenderhearted thing was concerned both for Sam and his Strider; though she figured by the way she was moving, Dohaina was fine. His showing off was rewarded by another delighted giggle from the girl. Her eyes widened and lit up as she watched him move about. She even went so far as to clap for him, grinning from ear to ear. This all made her happy. She couldn't help but think back to just a week or so before. Sam was coming out of his shell as far as she could tell. When she'd met him, he'd not even claimed to be Drykas. He'd dressed like, well, he'd stolen others' clothes. But now it was a bit different, and even if no one else saw it, Dymphna recognized that he was starting to feel at home. And he was home - Where he belonged. The young herbalist, too hesitant to call herself a healer, had seen it from the start. Sam was an uncut stone, but a sapphire all the same. She wasn't completely certain, but she was starting to suspect that her prediction about his hair growing faster was coming to pass too. "You're quite good, Sam!" she called out before impulsively blowing him a kiss.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

He was quite good, or at least he showed a natural affinity for what he was doing. Perhaps because he thought of it as an extension of his horse riding skills, he was more confident than he would have been trying to pull some crazy acrobatic stunt on the ground. That he and Dohaina had some sort of bond was obvious, and they anticipated each other like a pair of twins. The movement of her muscles under the pads of his feet felt natural, almost like he was standing on steady ground. But when he saw Dymphna blow him a kiss, his equilibrium immediately began to go, and in an instant, he lost whatever rapport he had with the mare and, with a startled yelp, he fell off of her to land with an audible thump upon the ground. Pride goeth before the fall.

[Dymphna]

She was in the middle of continuing with her delighted giggle when Sam started to fall. Her mouth opened to give warning, but she realized that warning wasn’t going to be very helpful when he was already tumbling to the ground. So with a gasp of concern, she rushed forward. Her hand lifted up to Dohaina, managing despite her worry to say in a soothing voice, “It’s okay, Dohaina. It’ll be okay…” She bent down, moving to put a hand on Sam’s chest to hold him where he was. Her bottom lip was bit as she looked him over quickly, for once her mind was kind enough to not send her thoughts any place uncomfortable. Instead she brought her wide gaze back to his face, asking quietly, “Are you okay? What hurts?”

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"My pride," he groaned, hand covering his eyes so he couldn't see the look of concern in her eyes. He was also fairly sure that there would be an egg forming on the back of his head and he had that vague sort of feeling that it might be bleeding that was so often deceiving, but he wasn't going to mention any of that to her. "Actually, I think I'm all right," he said, glad that he knew how to take a fall from a horse. One didn't get to be good without several times making such catastrophic mistakes, and eventually one learned how best to fall to minimize damage to oneself. In fact, a Vantha acrobat he had met back in Syliras had told him that one of the most important bits to learn in order to be an acrobat was how to fall properly. It had made a sort of sense to the young horseman. He couldn't get up without shrugging off her hand, and he liked having it there. It wasn't until then that he realized he had forgotten a shirt. His nipples went instantly erect, and he would blame the chill wind if confronted about it.

[Dymphna]

Dymphna wasn’t about to confront Sam about the state of his nipples. After all, the fall wind had a certain chill to it, he was shirtless, and she was doing her best not to really study his body in a manner that allowed noticing. Instead she gave him a little look that said she wasn’t sure she believed that he was fine. She also didn’t want to wound his pride anymore. “Your head feels alright?” she asked softly, leaning in to gently push a bit of his growing hair back. She was pretty sure she’d seen it hit the ground. Curiosity got the best of the girl. Instead of removing her hand from him to help him up, she slid it over his chest over his shoulder then down his arm as she moved to take his other hand. It caused her to blush as her eyes lifted back up to meet his. “Let’s get you standing upright again…”

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

A line of warmth began to smolder in the wake of her passing hand, and all nerves seemed to tingle their way toward his crotch when she did things like that. He tried to avoid such thoughts, however. She wasn't like dear Merris, who would be happy to fuck for a tower of golden mizas, nor did he have the resources necessary for a pavilion, which would be necessary to truly woo her. He was fairly sure he wanted to woo her, if she wasn't already wooing him, or at least making his little Drykas go woo woo woo in his pants... "You're making me dizzy," he mumbled by way of protest, an admission he probably hadn't meant to make vocal, but then he had hit his head, after all. She was so close he wanted to vomit, but instead he struggled manfully to his feet with her help. Perhaps he needed a bit of steadying with the swimming way the world had about it just now, his strong legs a little shaky for the sharp rap to the head and the sudden rush of blood to places other than his brain. "I was having such fun... and then I wanted to impress you." Another admission, ill advised, but coming from that place where a mind knocked loose from its moorings truly believed that outright honesty was the best policy in all cases.