Fond Memories of Home (2/3)
Dragonsfall Weyr
Amber Hills Hold
Vintner Hall
Healer Hall
Hidden Meadows
Dolphin Cove Weyr
Dolphin Hall
Emerald Falls Hold
Harper Hall
Printer Hall
Green Valley Hold
Leeward Lagoon Hold
Barrier Lake Weyr
Sunstone Seahold
Citrus Bay Hold
Writers: Duskdog
Date Posted: 10th December 2025
Characters: H'taysh
Description: H’taysh arrives at Tin Hollow Minehold… except it’s exactly as he remembers it, and that’s a problem.
Location: Elsewhere on Pern
Date: month 11, day 24 of Turn 12
They burst out of /between/ into thin, sharp air, the familiar sweep of hills rolling below. There was Tin Hollow Minehold, nestled in its narrow valley, just as he remembered: squat stone dwellings, smoke rising from cookfires, and the dark mouth of the mine that had killed his father, a stone scar at the ravine’s edge.
H’taysh sucked in a breath though for a heartbeat his chest seized tight. It felt like they’d hung /between/ longer than usual, and the cold of it seemed to linger, stealing the air from him, as though he hadn’t shaken it off properly. Selkirth’s wings beat steady beneath him, but the back of his neck prickled, and a strange hollowness shivered through his lungs before it faded.
}:You don’t feel right,:{ Selkirth murmured, her tone low and puzzled.
“Yeah,” he muttered, flexing his fingers against the straps uneasily. “Like I forgot how to breathe for a second.” He shook it off, forcing a grin, though his laugh was half-hearted and nervous. “Doesn’t matter, anyways. Look -- there it is!”
Tin Hollow spread beneath them, sturdier than the image he’d carried from his last flyover. The mill on the hilltop turned lazily in the wind, sails bright against the sky. He had been sure it was abandoned, roof caved in, beams sagging, because he remembered thinking of days on the hill lying on his back, looking up at the slow spin of the sails and had been sad to realize the place he remembered from his childhood had gone to rot. Yet now it stood as though freshly mended, its creak and groan echoing faintly upward.
“I must’ve got it mixed up with some other place,” he said, brow furrowing. “Thought it was half-collapsed. Or maybe somebody got her all fixed up, huh?”
}:If they had happy memories of it, as you do, surely they did,:{ Selkirth said happily, because that made sense to her. If something made her rider happy, then of course someone else would see to it.
Below, the cluster of cotholds seemed fuller, roofs unbroken, walls clean. Well… cleaner than his last view of it, anyway. There was no such thing as a _pristine_ minehold, in his experience. Everything everywhere was always covered in a layer of grime that never seemed to wipe away. But part of the reason he hadn’t been able to bring himself to stop on his flyovers before was because things had seemed like they had changed. It had been dirtier than he remembered, smaller, fewer people in the streets, homes less-maintained -- some of them abandoned. He clearly remembered his father lamenting how scarce the tin was becoming, wondering what would become of the mine once it was gone. Had that happened?
Evidently not. It was just as he remembered it, after all.
A handful of children scrambled along the narrow lane toward the stream, their laughter carrying even above the sharp sound of pickaxes and rumble of distant minecarts. Something inside him jolted at the sound -- sharp and intimate, like an old song half-forgotten.
His gaze snagged on one figure among them: a boy no more than five, quick-legged and with a mop of dirty red hair, trailing a worn leather ball. Two older girls ran after him, one calling for him to stop, not to chase that ball into the stream. The boy’s tumble of laughter wasn’t musical, but _hitching_, hiccupy -- like his own, or close enough to make his breath catch.
He closed his eyes for an instant, dizzy with the pull of it. Memory and reality overlapped too neatly, as if the place itself had stepped backward into his childhood to greet him.
“Selk,” he whispered, not daring to name what he saw. “It’s just like I remember it. Nothing’s changed.”
Her eyes whirled fast with unease, unable to comprehend why his words and feelings didn’t match up. }:Is that not… good?:{
She banked gently, circling lower. The sweep brought the main hall into view, its broad stone front catching the light. Among the people there, a woman stood just outside, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a basket of linens braced on one hip. She paused to shout for the children, reaching up her free hand to wave and beckon them in. The wind took her words so that he couldn’t hear the names, but something gave him pause, nonetheless.
H’taysh froze.
Even from above, he knew her. The tilt of her head, the loosened strands of red hair tugged by the breeze, the way she shifted her weight against the heavy basket -- all of it lived in his memory, softened by turns until he’d thought the details gone. Before now, even when he really tried, he couldn’t quite remember her face. But there she was, whole and solid, exactly as she had been when he was small, and he knew -- he _knew_ -- all the details that he’d forgotten, even though he couldn’t see them clearly at this distance.
His throat closed.
Selkirth’s thought brushed him, feather-light, cautious. }:You know her?:{
He swallowed hard, words scraping raw. “That’s… that’s my ma. My ma. She died. She died a long time ago…”
}:But there she is…?:{ Her confusion was clear. Usually she was hesitant to question things that she didn’t understand, self-aware enough to realize that there were things that she just didn’t know, and she trusted him to tell her the way of things. But what if even _he_ didn’t know? She didn’t know what to do.
The air seemed thinner again, H’taysh’s lungs refusing to draw enough of it. He gripped the straps until his knuckles blanched. He had forgotten her voice, but he hadn’t forgotten that laugh -- carried faintly upward as she yielded to one of the girls’ teasing, tossing her head back for a brief moment of unguarded joy.
It was a sound he’d thought lost forever.
Selkirth’s wings held to a steady hover, but unease thrummed through her. }:This feels wrong to you…?:{ She tried to puzzle it out. }:H’taysh, I’m afraid…:{
H’taysh couldn’t answer. He could only watch, aching and disbelieving, while the woman below gathered her children and turned toward the hall.
And there behind her, the red-haired little boy carrying his ball, stopped suddenly, as if seized by a feeling he couldn’t name, and turned, looking up towards the sky.
It must have only been a few seconds, but it felt like hours that they looked at one another. It was too far away. He couldn’t really discern the expression the boy was making, or make out the details of his face, but for an instant he was _sure_ they were both holding their breath.
After a pause that seemed entirely too long for an excitable child spying a green dragon in the sky, the boy pointed to him. “Dragon!”
Most of the people within earshot stopped what they were doing to at least glance up at the sky. The woman and little girls turned, too, and then their eyes were on him.
Something icy squeezed at his heart. It was hard to breathe. Panic rose in him. **Selkirth!** he thought, unable to form the words aloud even though he usually spoke to her with his outer voice. **Go! Go!**
The green’s own unease spilled over into panic, too, and she wheeled to turn away from Tin Hollow, then flapped her wings hard to gain height. He managed to present her with an image of the Barrier Lake star stones -- thank Faranth for weyrling drills hammering it into second nature -- and together they winked /between/ to home.
Last updated on the December 21st 2025