Questions and Answers (2)

Writers: Jane, Kaysea
Date Posted: 6th May 2007

Characters: R'haran, Taia
Description: R'haran's children find Taia working late and interrogate her on an unlikely subject.
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 4, day 2 of Turn 4

"I'd like a baby, eventually. Just not right now." Taia realised this conversation wasn't going to end, until Sahna had all the information she wanted. "Somehow I don't think your uncle would allow you a puppy, sweetling. I think he has more than enough on his hands with you and your siblings."

R'haran would have liked nothing better than to let them have a puppy but Sevilla had more than enough on her hands with her own sons and the five foster-children. "Why is she like you, Sahna?"

It was Iselen who replied with a grin. "Nobody wants her."

"But that's not true!" Taia gasped at the audacious answer from Iselen.
"How can you say that, with your uncle right there?" She looked from the boy to his uncle, to guage R'haran's reaction. Was it true? She wondered, but she could see from the look in R'haran's eyes it was so far from truth.

"Your father wanted you," R'haran corrected. "So did your mother, and then your grandfather. And now I want you. You haven't had nobody want you - you've had more than most." The words were easy enough to muster but he would make sure he found time to talk to them all about the time between the death of their grandfather and their delivery to the Weyr.

"We do seem to keep losing people who want us, then," Iselen said mildly.

"Well, since I don't fly against Thread I'm likely to be around long enough to see you all into adulthood. Now, are you going to play with this puppy and pester the journeywoman some more about her family plans?
Or am I going to have to take you back to Sevilla early?"

"R'haran!" Taia looked at him in shock. How could he dump her back in it again? "They can play with the puppy all they want, but asking me questions? I should have thought you would be more considerate than that." she admonished, while opening the latch on the fence and swinging it open, to show a hinged gate. "Okay, who wants to join her?"

The four older children scrambled through the gate and Tibby squirmed to be let down and follow. R'haran grinned as he moved alongside the journeywoman. "You think answering the questions about why you haven't got babies is hard? You should try answering them when you're me."

"I hardly think its fair to allow them to put me through the wringer, just to save your own skin." She gave a half smile, but still felt raw from their questions. "Why do they feel they're not wanted? Especially Iselen?"

"The funny thing is that Iselen would have been wanted by almost anybody at their home Hold. It's some of the others that weren't as sought after. The place lost most the menfolk in a storm at sea." R'haran shrugged. "Times got very hard for them all, I think."

"I can see how much you care for them already," Taia nodded, watching as the puppy woke and began to skitter around the small enclosure with the children. "You know you're always welcome down here with them, I...I just get a little touchy whenever anyone asks about me not having children yet."

"Why is that?" R'haran asked calmly.

"I get enough of that from those outside the Weyr, I shouldn't have to answer that type of question here as well." She used the most likely answer, one that most people accepted at face value, but it was something deeper in truth. She hadn't had too many involvements in her life, and those she had been in, had produced no offspring. She often wondered if she was infertile, but rather than focus on it, she continued with her craft.

"People are always interested," the greenrider said. "That's what makes a community. Sometimes it doesn't seem much of a blessing, but -" He shrugged. "Perhaps as you get older the nosiness starts to seem more like concern."

She nodded in agreement, "Maybe," but turned her head, not willing to let him see that the concern of others was already a concern of her own.
"though really, who's business is it anyway?"

R'haran remembered when he and Evielenth had been scored in the ill-judged jump in time to prove that Thread was returning. Theirs had been the first scoring of the new Pass and it had made him somebody everybody knew. The attention, the interest in his and Evie's injuries had seemed intrusive at the time, but time had mellowed his opinion and the sense people had that he was a public figure. Time, though, was something Taia didn't see the same way a man in his sixties did. "It's yours, of course," he agreed.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go on like that." she turned and smiled, "And I know it's just childish curiosity on Sahna's part. I guess I am little more sensitive than I thought."

"Everybody's sensitive about something," R'haran said easily, tacitly accepting her apology. "The children are very sensitive to any suggestion that I might not want them."

"But.. no one has said that to them, have they?" she turned again and watched as the children played happily with the pup.

"Bound to have. I'm a greenrider, after all. Being a father is not what people expect me to do."

With a heavy sigh, she nodded, "I guess I like to believe people can be nicer to children, than adults."

"And _nicest_ to animals?"

"Children and animals rate about the same, actually." she smiled, "I am envious of you in that way, you do have the cutest kids, R'haran."

The greenrider's cool blue eyes surveyed his new family and he nodded.
"I do, don't I?"

Last updated on the May 6th 2007

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Questions and Answers (2)