Log Date:
	6/9, 6/18, 6/20/99

Log Cast:
	Tance, Neva

Log Intro:
	Ever since the loss of his beloved Kesya, CS Tance Vokrim has retreated
to his old habits of skittishness around women--especially pretty young women
who seem determined to call him handsome. But he is not without his friends,
and his friends are determined to keep him from regressing to the wrecked 
state he'd been in after Kesya's disapperance, or for that matter the wrecked
state he'd been in long before he ever fell in love with his Jade. Rosa and
her Bear have consistently looked after Tance, winning themselves a solid 
enough place in the gruff old Singer's memory that he can now recall their
names. And Neva, who has taken enough to Tance to haul him off Shankill during
Passover and to save him from the mischievous pranks of Talaitha, has helped
him rediscover a long-forgotten love of books. Neva, therefore, has become
one of the few people to whom Tance feels comfortable talking.
	But Neva also has a way of keeping up with that disturbing trend of 
calling him handsome....

----------
The day has been a long one... and Tance Vokrim feels every hour he's spent of 
  it flying over the Milekeys, trudging over hillocks and wriggling through 
  underground crevices looking for traces of elusive crystal. Today, he's been 
  lucky enough to go more or less uninjured, though his head still aches where 
  he'd managed to knock it against the ceiling of a cavelet whose height he'd 
  misjudged in the gloom. But he's also gone without finding a single usable 
  vein. And so, feeling not only the long hours of the day's efforts but also 
  a good portion of the two centuries of age he has to remind himself every so 
  often he possesses, he stumbles blearily into the Singer Lounge.

Apparently--and, one might thing, somewhat maddeningly--Neva has had a better 
  day. She lounges on one of the couches, reading a book and sipping from a 
  mug of coffee as she does so. A glance might reveal that it is not, in fact, 
  an author which she has ever gifted Tance with; an unfamiliar title, 
  mostlikely. She does glance up, as he enters, frown creasing her lips as she 
  sets aside the coffee. "Ah... hi, Tance."

Weeeellll... considering the state of Tance's memory, the names of most 
  authors and most novels tend to elude him after two or three weeks. The man 
  couldn't keep a proper noun in his head if you paid him -- well, at least 
  not most proper nouns. One or two manage to stay lodged in his sporadic 
  recall, like the name of the young woman curled comfortably up on the couch. 
  Still, though, it takes him a moment or two of blinking tired brown eyes at 
  her before he rasps, "Hiya, girlie... Neva." He stumbles to a halt there 
  with his deactivated cutter slung off his shoulder, looking like a man to 
  whom standing still might be a foreign concept that he has to absorb for a 
  few seconds. But he then manages a small lopsided grin of satisfaction at 
  the recall of the name.

A smile, at that; then, with a bare moment passing, Neva slides over, leaving 
  a space there. "Why don't you sit down? You look beat. What've you been 
  doing to end up so..." A hand gestures helplessly, lacking the words to 
  describe it.

Sit. Down. Two of the sweetest words in the language, at the moment. A wan 
  light of gratitude at the offer flickers across Tance's dark eyes, and he 
  comes over to half-sit, half-fall into the now unoccupied portion of the 
  couch. He is still alert enough, though, to make part of the motion involve 
  swinging his cutter off his shoulder and down to rest on the floor, out of 
  the way; only then, with his head lolled back along the couch's back, does 
  Tance rumble hoarsely, "Long day in the Milekeys, girlie. I think I been out 
  for sixteen hours. Didn't find nothin', though... just feelin' tired, and 
  old..." He lifts up a hand, shoving it through his dishevled hair, seeming 
  ignorant of the small scrape of now dried blood across his brow and what 
  promises to be a bruise coming into life beneath it.

Neva, also being a Crystal Singer, doesn't even wince at spotting that; she's 
  had enough similar injuries to know it'll be gone before morning. "Nothing?" 
  This, she winces for. "Not a single vein? I usually get /something/ when I 
  go out..." But this, she finally realizes, is probably not the right time 
  for talk like that. "You're not old, Tance. Crystal Singers never get old. 
  'Swhy we become Singers."

The older Singer shifts his head around then, looking up at the young woman 
  beside him. Another smile tugs at the side of his mouth, but it's a sheepish 
  one. "Beat your symbiont up as much as I've done, girlie, you get old. They 
  tell me that often enough down on Twelve that even my karked-up brain 
  manages to remember it."

"Well, you don't /look/ old, anyway... shouldn't feel it," replies Neva 
  firmly. "Got a lot of life left." She sits up a little straighter, glancing 
  over at her coffee mug. "Would you like something? I think I need a new 
  drink, this one's getting cold."

"Might need some coffee to haul my bones to my quarters," Tance murmurs 
  gruffly, that grateful glint once more lightening his eyes. Then they close, 
  and he adds in weary tones, "You're good to me, girlie, but fact is, I'm 
  old, ain't nothin' wrong with sayin' the truth."

Standing, Neva moves to the catering unit, and keys in one order before 
  glancing back. "How do you take yours? Not like you have to go back right 
  away. After all, we've got this place to /relax/ in, right? Isn't that why 
  it's called a lounge?"

Take...? Oh. Right. Coffee. This means he has _options_ for how to drink it. 
  Tance grins tiredly, and calls over, "Uh... little bit of cream, I guess, 
  not much."

A few more keystrokes, and a moment spent pouring and stirring the stuff in 
  the little packet into the mug. Then, Neva returns, holding the slightly 
  less-black one out to him. "Hope it helps. I'm usually exhausted when I get 
  back, too." And irritable, but that goes without saying.

Tance sits up enough to accept the mug, and as he draws it up to drink, relief 
  softens his haggard, weathered features. A sigh escapes him, and then, 
  Vokrim looks over earnestly at the younger Singer. "S'good. Thanks, Neva."

Neva settles back into the seat next to him, sipping her own tentatively to 
  gauge just how hot it is. "No problem. If you're going to be old, I suppose 
  fetching coffee is merely your just desserts."

Tance snorts. "You make it sound like I got an option in the matter, girlie."

"Always got a choice." Neva sips again, and then smiles over at the old/er/ 
  Singer. "And you've already made a lot of 'em. After all, if you hadn't come 
  to the Guild, you'd certainly be long buried by now."

"Well, you gotta point there," Tance grunts out huskily. "My karked-up brain 
  handles that one just fine."

A little hand-gesture dismisses that thought immediately. "Anyway, Crystal 
  Singers are ageless. There is no time, for us. Notice that? No dates 
  anywhere... the rest of the universe lives by the clock, and we don't have 
  to care. Just gotta cut crystal... and the rest of our lives is how we like 
  it."

Tance considers this, the smile fading from his mouth, a shadow crossing his 
  eyes. "Mostly," he mutters, into his coffee.

"I'm saving up," offers Neva, an attempt perhaps to distract him from whatever 
  dark memory hovers near. "Going to get my suite redone /good/. Real 
  beautiful. Once I crack 40k..."

That does coax a hint of a grin to Vokrim's tired countenance. "Somethin' to 
  spend your credits on, huh, girlie?"

The red-headed Singer nods quickly. "Yeah. Think I need it; kinda running out 
  of things to put on my sled, and I don't eat /that/ much... and I'm not much 
  for /constantly/ going offplanet."

"Well... I guess if you gotta look at the same suite forever, makes sense to 
  redo the paint every so often." Tance doesn't actually chuckle, but at least 
  for a moment or two, his tired voice sounds almost wry. "Humor an old karker 
  and tell him about it?"

Pulling her feet up beside her, Neva settles in a little more, and sips from 
  the coffee. "I'm not really sure what I want to do, yet. I think I'm growing 
  out of the orange and purple phase." Finally? Thank whatever gods exist. 
  She's been that way since she Adapted. "Some plants, I think. Flowing 
  water... that's supposed to be good for relaxation. Although I don't know... 
  my last few encounters with waterfalls..." She shudders.

Tance's brow crinkles. "Yeah, I can do without waterfalls..." His tone turns a 
  little gruffer. "Streams're okay. But not waterfalls."

"I guess it's the sound that's supposed to be relaxing, anyway," continues 
  Neva along the same line of thought. "Figure, maybe varying shades of green 
  and blue... good, easy-on-the-eyes colors."

"Blue," comes Tance's even softer, gruffer mumble.

"I like both of them," Neva admits. "Will probably use a combination." She 
  tilts her head, looking at Tance. "Green's what you cut most, isn't it?"

Uncomfortably, Tance gulps down another swallow of his coffee, his gaze 
  tracking off across the room. "Yeah," he rasps out softly. "Mostly..."

Voice shifts down, into a gentler mode, as it often does when he begins to get 
  like this. "Don't you like green? I like blue... when it's up on the market, 
  anyway." Neva smiles, encouragingly.

Tance has not, in fact, cut a single crystal in three weeks. And so his memory 
  is as clear at the moment as it generally gets. He goes still, looking down 
  with liquid brown eyes into the only slightly paler liquid in his mug. 
  "It... it makes me forget, girlie," he mumbles. For three seconds, he's 
  silent, and then he adds in an even smaller voice, "Reminds me o' Jade."

"Neither of those things are always bad," reminds Neva softly. "Sometimes you 
  have to forget the bad things... and remember the good ones."

Alert enough to realize the contradiction in his own statements, Tance frowns, 
  and then peers over at the younger Singer, his expression awkward, pained. 
  "That's the problem... I... sing the green, girlie, I-I ain't exactly got 
  say over what I keep, and what I lose... y'know?"

And the younger Singer shakes her head. "Tance, we all have to worry about 
  that. And in the end, the important things, the things that /matter/ remain. 
  Maybe sometimes you'll forget what happened to her... but I cannot for a 
  minute believe that you'd forget her." Neva takes a deep breath, gathering 
  her thoughts for a minute. "We... Crystal Singers can't think of things in 
  terms of 'for a lifetime'. After all, we live quite a few of those. Love 
  comes, and goes... what's important is to remember being happy when it was 
  /here/."

For a very long span of seconds, Tance stares at the small red-headed Singer, 
  his eyes full of consternation. And then, his furrowed brow eases ever so 
  slightly, and something that might be humor enters his rough voice as he 
  murmurs, "Since when didja start soundin' like you got so much more sense 
  than me, girlie?"

This provokes a soft giggle. "You just lost some of yours along the way. And a 
  person can learn a lot just by watching..." Neva smiles.

"You ain't been watchin' _me_, I hope," Tance protests mildly, finishing off 
  the coffee. It's done him some good, apparently; a bit more life has entered 
  his otherwise worn countenance, and a bit more light has entered his eyes.

"Why not?" Neva tilts her head, still smiling slightly, the mug cradled in her 
  hands. "You seem to be a good example. Made it this far, haven't you?"

A suspicious reddening begins to take place in the color of Tance's cheeks, 
  underneath the tan and the five-o'clock shadow claiming his jaw. "Hah. You 
  ain't gonna learn nothin' from watchin' me except how to break every bone in 
  your body in the Ranges, how to spring holes in your head, and..." He trails 
  off, and then continues plaintively, "And... how to... not know h-how to get 
  outta..." His gaze wanders off across the room again, uneasy, diffident, and 
  he waves one hand around as if trying to pull words out of the air. Finally 
  he finishes, "... hurtin'."

"I'm already pretty good at injuring myself," offers Neva in helpful tone. A 
  hand reaches out, though it rests just a few inches away--more for the 
  gesture than for contact. "And sometimes... well... pain shared is pain 
  halved."

Having exhausted his store of eloquence by that one little admission, Tance 
  risks a peek back over at his companion, and the right side of his mouth 
  quirks up momentarily in a bashful little smile. Between that and the 
  lightening of his eyes, one might suspect he is beginning to feel better. 
  "Somethin' like that," he mutters.

A faint chuckle, as out of place as it may seem, emerges from Neva's throat. 
  "Sounded better when I read it, I suppose. Still good advice."

"Yeah... all the holes in my head, girlie, I need all the advice I can get. 
  Remind me o' that every so often, huh?" Tance's eyes, a little more clear 
  than normal, turn almost amused; his tone, however, remains a husky whisper.

"I will," promises Neva. Hand pulls back again, folding with the other in her 
  lap. "Although I think you don't do /too/ badly remembering things. When you 
  really want to."

The older Singer blows out a breath, his gaze wandering up to the ceiling, 
  uncharacteristically thoughtful. "Sometimes," he agrees. "If... I ain't cut 
  for a while. 'Specially green. Head gets clearer."

Another chuckle. "'Long as your credit's okay, no reason to cut, really. At 
  least, I don't, whenever I can get away with it," offers Neva. Then, a 
  moment of silence, as if she isn't quite sure what to say next.

Tance smiles that small bashful smile again, but it doesn't quite touch his 
  eyes. With that, he sits up on the couch, shaking his head, half to himself. 
  "Ain't much good for anything else anymore," he rumbles.

"Sure you are!" Neva frowns slightly--though more a worried sort of thing than 
  unhappy. "I certainly like talking to you and spending time with you--isn't 
  that something?"

Brown eyes turn to regard the younger Singer, solemn for all that that slight 
  grin is still tugging at Tance's mouth. "Bet you'd say that if you were 
  gonna go visit your grandpa, girlie," he replies, almost gently.

A smile tugs at the corners of her lips, but Neva snorts. "My grandfather--at 
  least, the one I got to see from time to time--was /old/. Not years-old, but 
  white-haired, stooped, and wrinkled... and he smelled funny." Well, at least 
  she's honest. "And he couldn't talk about anything but the 'good old days'. 
  Now, by contrast, /you're/ quite handsome, you smell nice, and... well, all 
  of that. Not like my grandfather in the least."

Tance shifts unsurely where he sits, perhaps suspiciously convinced that _he_ 
  ought to be sitting in a rocking chair babbling about the 'good old days'. 
  But when Neva hits the word handsome, a red flush darkens his battered face, 
  and he coughs out, "I-I _what_?"

A pause; voice shifts to a gentler tone. Always careful, always afraid that he 
  might run away like a frightened animal or something. "Well, of course. Why 
  not? You don't look more than forty, and good for that, even."

"Sixty," Tance uneasily argues. He's not running, but he's also not meeting 
  Neva's eyes. And he sniffs at his right bicep for a moment, his scent 
  reporting in weariness, and lingering traces of sweat and the places he'd 
  visited in the Ranges some hours ago... and, well, _him_. He smells a tired 
  Tance, and if there's appeal in that for this girlie, kark if he can see it. 
  "And your nose is off..."

"Look, Granddad smelled like vegetable /soup/, okay? The subsistance variety. 
  Anything's better than that." Neva mock-shudders once, and grins. "Anyway, 
  you do /not/ look sixty. Just a very... tired forty."

With that, Tance slowly sinks back down on the couch again, looking extremely 
  sheepish. "Fifty-six," he mutters.

"Still handsome," murmurs Neva quietly, smiling at him for a moment.

That flush returns to Tance's face, and his mouth draws up into a little stoic 
  line as he glances sideways at Neva. The fleeting thought that she might be 
  teasing him somehow, or worse, humoring him, crosses his mind; it doesn't 
  last long, though, as he catches a peek at her expression and finds himself 
  rendered tongue-tied for a moment while he tries to make sense of it. 
  Finally, all he can manage to say in reply is a hoarse and deeply mortified 
  "Th... thanks..."

Humor him? Hah. Neva sits up a little bit further, anyway. Rather than pushing 
  further, she asks, "Would you like anything else? Hungry, or something? 
  Another drink?" The easiest avenue towards a changed subject, it seems.

Vokrim's bemused brown gaze skims off to somewhere safe across the room, and a 
  hint of a blush is still lurking somewhere under his cheeks, though it's 
  hard to pick out with his tan and the shadow of a beard darkening the lower 
  half of his face. "Didn't eat much out today," he mumbles. "Forgot to."

"Now /that/," chides Neva gently, "isn't healthy." She stands, moving in swift 
  steps over towards the catering unit. "What do you want, then? On my credit, 
  'long as you share with me."

"Um... I dunno. Somethin'... snacky?" Tance would shrug, but he's 
  half-slouched on the couch; the effectiveness of such a motion is lost when 
  your shoulders are propped against the back of a plush piece of furniture. 
  So he waves one work-worn hand instead, indecisively. "Eat anything big, I'm 
  gonna fall right to sleep, girlie..." He may anyway; exhaustion still lines 
  his features along with his years.

Neva spins the menufax around to display the snack selections.

"Biscuits... Forellan biscuits." Something about that tugs at the mind. 
  "Didn't we have those, once?" Half a memory; even Neva can't always keep 
  hold of the little things. "What do you think? Okay?"

"Sure," rumbles the older Singer, eyes drifting shut, disheveled grizzled head 
  tilting back a little as he lets himself coast at least for a few moments in 
  the pleasure of doing nothing except lying still.

Neva peruses the selection of snacks, and orders the Forellan biscuits and 
  Aldebaran paste.
Neva takes the platter, returning with it to her seat, and holding it out 
  towards Tance. "Good stuff, these."

Tance's eyes open up again, and by way of thank-you another of his small 
  lopsided grins curls his mouth, growing larger as he scarfs up one of the 
  biscuits. As far as Tance Vokrim is concerned, food is good if it's there, 
  fit for human consumption, and plentiful. Anything above and beyond that is 
  bonus. "Yeah," he therefore agrees, features easing, almost boyishly 
  content. And once he starts in on the first biscuit, it becomes obvious that 
  he hasn't eaten much all day; it doesn't take him long at all to put a 
  serious dent in his share of what's on the platter.

Settling down, Neva spreads one biscuit with paste and nibbles on it, though 
  her appetite doesn't seem nearly what his is. After another, she leaves him 
  to the rest of the plate; if there are any left, when he's done, maybe 
  she'll finish 'em. "Anything else?"

With three biscuits left on the plate, Tance finally and drowsily shakes his 
  head, once more sinking back on the couch. "That'll do me," he murmurs, and 
  then he lifts a hand to his face as he is seized by a jaw-cracking yawn. 
  "Too tired for me. Girlie... I better sleep...."

"Neva," reminds the 'girlie' gently; after all, don't want him to go and 
  forget. "You need help getting back to your room, then? Bad idea to sleep 
  out here, even without Talaitha in sight."

Tance remembers the incident Neva's referencing before he properly recollects 
  the name of the young woman who'd instigated it; once that clicks in, 
  though, he sits up, slowly and stiffly, consternation creasing his brow. 
  "Right," he mumbles uncomfortably. "I'm okay though...."

"Sleep well, then, Tance," volunteers Neva, remaining seated. "I'll see you 
  later, okay?"

Vokrim turns towards the younger Singer, grinning a bit, as much as he can 
  manage. "Sure," comes his sheepish reply. "Thanks for the biscuits... and 
  the chat, and, um, well." He abruptly blushes again, shoving a hand through 
  his hair, unwilling to remind this here girlie of this apparent nonsensical 
  notion she's developing about his looks, but appreciating the thought 
  nevertheless. "See ya 'round... Neva." With that, he brings his hand back 
  down again, proffers forth a bit of a wave, and staggers off down to Level 
  11 and Ocher Quadrant.

[End log.]