Shattered
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: Jane
Date Posted: 8th March 2007
Characters: R'haran
Description: R'haran thinks about becoming a father
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 2, day 12 of Turn 4
}:Shattered?:{ "Shattered," R'haran confirmed aloud. He was stretched out on the large, comfortable bed in the riders quarters and Evielenth was similarly stretched out in her weyr. The green was sleepy but interested in her rider's exhausted but busy mind.
}:The hatchlings?:{ "Yes, they're the reason." It wasn't the younger dragons and their weyrling riders that she was thinking of. He could see quite clearly in her mind the image of the five children when she used 'hatchlings' now, but curiously they were one group. As interested as she was she hadn't separated the group of five into individuals. Perhaps that would come with time and familiarity.
}:They have … a weyrlingmaster now?:{ The greenrider smiled into the darkness of his room. Evie's search for a word to reflect somebody who would care for them hadn't considered a mother because the relationship between a gold and her hatched off-spring faded quickly. A weyrlingmaster, though, as Evie well knew, looked after the young dragonets until they were mature. It was a nice choice. Not a rider, who would be with a hatchling for life, but somebody who provided care and guidance only up until maturity.
**Foster-mother.**
}:Yes.:{ "But still …"
The children were physically settled with their new foster-mother. They had rooms, somebody to supervise them while he was busy with his work, clothing, and probably more to eat than they had had at any time during the last Turn.
He knew a smidgeon more than nothing about children. Since he had known from an early age that he wouldn't father any he hadn't encouraged an interested in them within himself. No point in getting all desperate to father children when his preference was so distinctly for men. It wasn't practical and he was usually a very practical person. And now he was a father – effectively, if not in fact. That was what was exhausting him; trying to be a father to the children. To take an interest in more than just their physical welfare … to get to know them so that they would realise they always had somebody to turn to.
What he wasn't sure about was where that commitment came from, though perhaps it was from the discovery that his nephew had survived the plague. Rarwen was dead now, but for all those Turns when R'haran had thought himself the lone survivor of his family he had been one of two.
Though he would have been only eleven Turns older than his nephew, there was the feeling that he should have done more for the boy, but at seventeen what could he have done?
He could do something now. He could do his best to take the place that Rarwen had held in their lives after the death of their parents. He could provide that sort of certainty for them – Eventually.
It would take time and work, like all lasting relationships did.
No more dragonpoker evenings with his friends, no more playing music until all candlemarks of the night. Now, for the first time in his life, he had responsibilities to a family.
Evie's mind had slipped into sleep while his thoughts had been wandering so he was alone with his pride and uncertainty about his new life. And that exhaustion. Any moment now he would find the mental energy to get off the bed and out of the damp clothes that were the result of offering to get Tibby bathed and into bed.
What a handful the two-Turn-old was.
What a surprise the five of them were to a greenrider who had never allowed himself to consider being a parent, at all.
Last updated on the March 10th 2007