The Past Won't Die
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: Yvonne
Date Posted: 2nd April 2007
Characters: Firsa
Description: Firsa receives a letter from Daremek, her old flame, and isn't entirely pleased by it.
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 3, day 2 of Turn 4
Dear Firsa, I wish you were here. Summer at the Hall is an amazing thing. So many things are growing! Green grass, leggy foals and lambs, herdbeasts are getting fat and running through fences and causing all sorts of troubles. I know you like the summer best of all, and it likes you. I love the way the sun makes your hair go red.
The work toward my Mastery is progressing nicely. The Hall has so much more to offer than the Weyr ever could. The wealth of knowledge.. it makes me realize how little I knew before, and how much potential there is in our Craft to influence Pern. Jyoti is pregnant. I can't believe that I'm to have a son!
Love, Daremek
~*~
The letter lay in a crumpled ball at the other end of her weyr, and Firsa sat in her chair, brooding. How dare he. How dare he write to her, to brag about his pregnant wife and his opportunities at the Beastcraft Hall. Daremek had left _her_ to do all those things, and he had no right to try to make her regret giving up all she had to follow him. After a moment she sighed and pushed herself to her feet. There was no use sulking in her weyr when she could be doing something useful.
And, like it or not, her weyr still felt haunted by Nineba, the drudge who had gone missing five months before. They hadn't found her and she seemed to have passed from the Weyr's collective memory. A shade of a woman, like a wisp of cloud over the sun: there, and then gone and forgotten. Her diary sat gathering dust on Firsa's shelf.
Maybe she'd give it to Corvera soon. Maybe she'd finish reading it, first.
For a moment she considered calling on K'far, but no - he was a problem unto himself. Instead the Stablemaster grabbed a towel and a bar of soap, and left her weyr for the relative haven of the nearest bathing cavern.
**I won't write to him.** Firsa nodded as she passed one of the tanners in the hall. **If I ignore him, he'll go away.**
But Daremek wouldn't, and Firsa spent what was supposed to be a quick bath and a relaxing soak in the steaming pool thinking about her ex-lover. It wasn't very relaxing at all, and she returned to her weyr in a foul temper. The crumpled letter lay accusingly against the wall as she wrapped her hair in a towel and picked up a pen and bit of paper.
'Dear Daremek,' she wrote, 'Don't write to me again. I admit it - I was in love with you. Maybe I still am.' The she frowned, crumpled it up, and exiled it into the corner that Daremek's letter had landed.
Ink had stained the pads of her fingers; her pen was leaking. She used it to write a new letter out anyway.
'Dear Daremek, It's good to hear from you. I'm glad that you and Jyoti are settling in so easily to the Beastcraft Hall - I know that it's what you wanted. Still, you are missing summer at Dragonsfall Weyr, and I still love the wild spaces in the canyons, or beneath the forest canopy, or the way the sun's heat lingers in swimming holes. The Hall might have great libraries and greater minds at its disposal, but there is only so much you can learn when all the land that you can see is cultivated. I've been busy. The foaling season has gone well, and I'm thinking of breeding Rainy this year, if I don't take her to Gathers to compete.
Firsa.' She almost wrote 'love', but didn't. The Stablemaster didn't like lies, and what was worse, she didn't know if she'd be lying to herself, or to him. She sealed it with wax and did her best to put the entire evening out of her mind.
Last updated on the April 3rd 2007