One Last Chance

Writers: Jane, Vix
Date Posted: 27th May 2007

Characters: Ayona
Description: Ayona visits her former mentor and discovers they still disagree.
Location: Garnet Valley Hold
Date: month 3, day 27 of Turn 4

Turns ago Ayona would have ignored the request to visit her former
mentor at the Minecraft Hall. That he was dying wouldn't have softened
her attitude. He had made and supported a decision she would oppose for
life and for most of her life that would have been enough to have
ignored the letter.

Getting old, losing her brother, seeing the return of Thread; so much
had changed and now she found herself listening to the woman who had
been nursing the very elderly man, nodding when the woman assured her
that he would be fine to talk, as long as they took things slowly. It
was hard for the old man to breathe - lungs, it was always about lungs
when masons died - but he was fine in his mind.

Taking a deep breath and wondering if she was ready to make her peace
with the master mason Ayona stepped into the room.

Synzon had been near to dozing - an activity in which he spent far too
much of his time, considering how little time he probably had left to
him - but started at the sound of a different footstep. He tried to
turn his head, but ended with a bout of coughing. His body was racked
with the spasms that originated deep within his chest, yet did not
alleviate the feeling of something lodged within throat and lungs,
blocking the flow of air.

As the spurt of hacking ended, he called out a hoarse, "Come,"
punctuated by a few residual coughs.

"Master Synzon?" Ayona moved further into the room. She had seen the
man a few times since she'd been back on the Southern Continent. Times
she'd been visiting her brother at the Hall. She had seen Synzon; they
had exchanged nods in passing. But this man was older. Much older, as
if illness had done what time alone had been unable to achieve and
reduced her former mentor to a frail old man.

"Who is that?" He turned his head, squinting in her direction. "Oh --
you." Though the words were not the type to invite, there was no rancor
in his voice. He looked her over, his breath wheezing in and out of his
mouth before offering his opinion. "You look older."

"Not as much older as you do," Ayona commented mildly. In the past they
had been friends, then enemies - or was that only on her part? He had
defended his decision and she had argued ... argued until she had
thought she would go mad. And got nowhere. Got nowhere and gone
somewhere. Left the Hall and made a new home in the North where she
felt her voice would still be heard.

But now? So many Turns had passed. She knew she had mellowed though
her beliefs hadn't changed. Her behaviour had, perhaps, and her
tolerance had increased. She had learned to get along with people with
whom she didn't agree.

She sat herself down in the chair facing the bed. "Sorry to hear about
the lung disease." It was always fatal. No point in pretending otherwise.

He gave a half shrug, all that he could manage without risking another
coughing fit. "I knew it would take me some day. I'm surprised it held
off for so long." His eyes studied her face, still seeing in it the
young girl who had wanted so much for herself, so much that he had
denied to her - and for so many reasons - and knowing that the same
arguments still rested within her and the same justifications within
him. "It's one of the things I had hoped to spare you." He coughed
once, then felt his lungs settle to a temporary calm. "It's bad enough
for a man to cough himself to death. No woman should have to suffer the
same fate."

"It was my choice." She waved a hand dismissing that. "I had made my
choice long before it was taken from the rest of the women of the
Continent."

He cleared his throat, a phlegmy sounding undertaking. "You still don't
understand why that had to be, do you?"

"I still don't believe it had to be done at all," she said, skirting
around the emotive word 'wrong'.

"It was necessary," insisted Synzon. "Women hold too vital a role and
needed - still need - to be protected.

"Protected? They were stifled. Banned from the crafts, and that was
just the signal men all over this Continent needed to justify treating
them women poorly. _Not_ protecting them. _Mistreating_ them."

He shook his head and found himself in the middle of a coughing fit.
His hand brought a handkerchief, damp and wrinkled by being clutched in
his hand, to his mouth, covering it as his body shook with the spasms
within his lungs. When his body quieted, he waited a moment before
speaking.

"Some may have. . . some. . . but many of those would have been abusive
anyhow." He took a deep breath, pausing before letting it out to assure
himself that his throat and lungs were capable of what he had to say.
"Women had a higher calling, a task that men could not do. We had to
rely on them for our continued survival. If they had been risked to the
deaths associated with so many of the crafts, we would not have produced
enough offspring to carry on. If we had not concentrated on
procreation, there would not have been enough to face this Pass."

"They died in childbirth, too, and you had no idea - none of us did -
that there would ever be another Pass." She couldn't remember if she had
even known the meaning of the word forty Turns ago.

"No, we didn't know. But we knew that there were risks - perhaps
another plague or some other form of devastation. We had to continue
the race and the only way we could do that was through the females."

"Women _can_ craft and have families." Ayona had chosen not to, but her
niece had four daughters. "You could have made that easier for them,
instead of banning them."

"We knew the most urgent need - and it wasn't to have women craft. We
did it to help those concerned make the correct choice and not to shirk
what was the necessary duty to all of us."

"Funny how only women needed to make sacrifices, wasn't it? Only women
suffered. You are _still_ blinding yourself to the fact that you could
have had the same effect by encouragement and support. You could have
introduced fostering as the norm in Halls, as it is in Weyrs, and _then_
encouraged every crafter women to have a large family."

"Men made sacrifices as well. They had to become the sole supporters of
their families and to take on all of the craft tasks while they had
until then shared those jobs with the women. As to the Weyrs - we do
not live in the Halls as we do in the Weyrs, nor would we want to do
so." The thought of what went on in the Weyrs set him into another
coughing fit, this more violent than the ones that had preceded it.

Ayona shook her head. "Why are we having this arguement _again?_ Do you
want me to get somebody?"

He lay back against the pillow, eyes closed, but his head moving
slightly to indicate a negative response. "Nothing they can do." He
took a tentative breath, held it and let it out, and then a deeper one,
before opening his eyes and seeking her once more. His voice was
hoarser than before, his throat irritated by the continual bouts of
coughing, air wheezing with his words. "I'm dying. I wanted one last
chance, one last chance to make you understand."

"I won't understand," Ayona said bluntly. She thought of Synzon being
dead and realise that she would miss - Not him, exactly, for she had had
very little contact with him over the Turns. The knowledge that he was
still in the world. He had been an important part of her most formative
Turns when she was learning her craft, a craft that much of her love for
had been fostered by this man. It had made what she had seen as his
betrayal even more bitter. Did that matter now? He still believed he
was right; she still disagreed. In a few sevendays, perhaps less, there
would only be her left. One half of an old argument. "Did you think I
would?" she asked more gently, putting out a hand to touch the emaciated
one of his that lay on the coverlet.

His reply was barely audible. "I had hoped so. Watching you, I knew
what we were losing by not allowing women to join the crafts. But it
was necessary, and you reminded me that sometimes we need to make tough
choices to serve the greater good."

Did making tough choices for the greater good make them the right
choices? She didn't believe so, but Master Synzon did. "I managed.
And all the time women had made to the Weyrs if they were determined."
And lucky. "When the time is right there will be women to come back
into the crafts," she assured him.

"When the time is right," the old man agreed. He stared toward the
ceiling and nodded. "When the time is right."

Last updated on the June 1st 2007

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One Last Chance