A Wasted Journey

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 19th January 2007

Characters: Arateyka, T'kanu
Description: T'kanu talks to Arateyka about her wasted journey
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 1, day 25 of Turn 4

Arateyka caught sight of her father probably at the same moment he caught sight of her but where she just nodded, he spoke briefly to his companions, picked up his glass of ale and headed across the cavern to where she was settling down at a table with her late meal.

"What do you want?" the smith journeywoman asked as her father settled across the table from her.

T'kanu grinned at his daughter's wary question. It was his own fault that she was suspicious since he enjoyed his children but seldom sought them out.

"Nothing."

"What have I done, then?"

"Nothing."

"Something I should have done, then?"

The brownrider went to deny that guess, too, then hesitated. "You should have landed there," he said bluntly.

"Teykara told!" Sometimes she felt they were all grown up, all of T'kanu's children, but then when something happened the petty grumbles of childhood snapped back into place and reminded her that they weren't as much 'grown up' as just 'older'.

"She didn't come running to me telling tales as soon as I came through the door," T'kanu pointed out. It had been like that for Turns when he had visited Delhara and the children. Somehow he had become the preferred arbiter in all their squabbles, something he hadn't had much patience for, especially when Delhara had obviously found the whole situation amusing. "I asked if you'd won anything from her when Tey and Lhara didn't Impress, and she mentioned that you'd not only won, but already collected your prize."

"Which didn't tell you much," Arateyka pointed out.

"So I asked what, then where you had gone, and she told me, and commented that you were very insistent that Yeulanth didn't land there."
He shrugged. "It was a conversation. People have them."

"Nosy people have lots of them," she grumbled.

"You're suggesting I'm nosy?"

"Why not? You're suggesting I should have landed there. At the _Smith_Hall?_ Me, a journeywoman smith with rank knots on my shirt, under that jacket. I couldn't have walked around there pretending I wasn't wearing them, and they wouldn't have accepted me if they could have seen them. _Landed_ there – I can't believe I ever bothered to go and look at the place!"

"Yeah. That was a waste of a journey," T'kanu agreed, his tone as mild as he could make it. Poor Arateyka. The only one with the skills and inclination toward a craft, and the only one with so much conscience that she couldn't pretend. Apart from the Turn she had spent at the Technicians Hall she had hardly left the Weyr since she apprenticed; if she wasn't welcome somewhere while wearing her knots, then she stayed at home.

"Not what I meant." Arateyka could hear the childish sullenness in her tone and sighed. "It makes me so angry. That's why I shouldn't have gone, even just to look at it."

"Then you should have used the there-and-back journey to go somewhere that didn't make you angry. You could have gone North, to the main Hall up there. They would have been welcoming enough, surely. It's all the same to a dragon, so why not? Why ruin things for yourself? You didn't get your muzzle rubbed in the fact that you're not welcome outside the Weyr, you went and rubbed your own muzzle in it. _That's_ a waste."

Arateyka was drawing breath to argue the point when her mind caught up with her anger. Gone North? She could have, too. Gone to a Smith Hall were women were accepted as apprentices, journeywomen, and in turn got promoted to mastery. Why _hadn't_ she thought further afield? "Too much time spent here," she muttered, thinking that avoiding going outside the Weyr had narrowed only her views – and not affected those in power at the Southern Smith Hall one little bit.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing."

"Nothing?" T'kanu prompted, noting her abstracted expression. His daughter was certainly thinking about something.

"You know –" she waved her hand absently, "- a huge revelation that I've been wrong all these Turns and that yes, I did waste my there-and-back winnings."

"Ahh. That sort of 'nothing'," he said with a smile. "Well, all is not lost. Your sisters will undoubtedly Stand for the next clutch, though the outcome might be different then."

Arateyka nodded, then her expression sharpened and she eyed her father speculatively. "I don't suppose you'd care to bet on that?"

Last updated on the January 24th 2007

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A Wasted Journey