You and Evie

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 31st October 2007

Characters: R'haran
Description: R'haran is asked to do a favour for a friend
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 6, day 28 of Turn 4

Yesterday it had been snowing and blowing and R'haran and Evie hadn't even poked their noses (or one nose and one muzzle) out of the entrance to their weyr. Today it had been even colder but the snow wasn't actually falling and the wind wasn't actually howling around the weyrledge and they had had no excuse not to brave the elements.

And of course, the children had wanted some time outside on the restday.

The greenrider grimaced as yet another one of the dragonpoker group commented on how much he was wearing.

"In case I haven't made it clear," he grumbled, eyeing his cards with enough intensity (he hoped) to distract people from an interest in his clothing, "I am not shedding even _one_ item until I'm thawed out."

A brownrider nodded. "Quite right, too." He indicated he wanted a card and then settled back in his chair. "So that would be summer, would it?"

"Mid-summer. If you're lucky. I don't know what it is about snow that fascinates the children but they're going to be the death of Evie and me if they don't get over it."

"Do you know if they had snow where they came from?" one the two blueriders at the table asked, though the question was idle and his glance at the other players was keenly assessing.

"It's not that far from where I was born. Coastal and tropical,"
R'haran explained. "Right now I can't remember why I left."

"Something to do with not wanting to marry and have children?" another of the party suggested with a chuckle.

R'haran smiled. Some men who preferred other men did leave home to avoid such things, and if he had it would be ironic that he was now the adoptive father of five children. "Not me. I left the _SeaHold_
because I apprenticed. I was – er," he paused to make eye contact with the group, "- moved on from the Harper Hall because the Hallmaster thought the Weyr might 'suit my interests better'."

There was laughter at his comment. The easy camaraderie of men who lived under the threat of sudden death. Should he count himself among their number? He had faced Thread only once, and nearly lost his own and Evielenth's lives in the process. They accepted him, whatever their thoughts on his single encounter with their enemy.

"Well not many greenriders get lumbered with five children," the second bluerider said, waving a hand in acknowledgement before R'haran could speak. "I know you don't think you've been lumbered with them, but you surely didn't expect to be a father at your age."

"At any age," the harper greenrider admitted. "But it's ... It's good." He looked around the table. They had been meeting to play dragonpoker for many Turns, from before Thread fell. They were all close enough in age that they still thought of the Weyr as it had been; full of echoingly empty corridors and a handful of dragons. A Weyrhold; more Hold than Weyr, though they accepted the traditional additional duty of keeping dragonkind alive.

All but one of them was old enough that they had lived through the plague, through the explosion of draconic population, and through the return of Thread.

He smiled. "I never entirely believed the talk about wanting a child to carry on the family line – seemed a rather selfish notion unless one was a Lord Holder." He shrugged. "Now I understand something of that."

There was a pause in the conversation as bets were placed and the hand won. R'haran pulled the small smoothed shell pieces they used for betting toward his pile and rode out the usual complaints about his memory giving him an unfair advantage. At the end of the night they would push all the tokens into one bag, ready for the next time they got together, so nobody really minded who won or lost.

"They are your blood, aren't they?" the brownrider asked. "Would it make a difference if they weren't? If - for instance – one of us had asked you to take care of ours if we died?"

"Yours are all grown up," the younger bluerider pointed out.

R'haran chuckled along with the other men, for all of their children but his were adults with children of their own. "I don't know. I don't _think_ so, but who can say unless it's put to the test. Not that it's a worry for you."

As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them, seeing belatedly the colour in his friend's cheeks. He might have asked about it later, discretely, but the others noticed too and within moments had the reluctant admission:

"Yes, at my age. None of your business who the mother is, but she's a rider too." The brownrider's broad shoulders shrugged as he looked across the new hand at R'haran. "If anything happened to both of us -
It's different for you. You and Evie will last forever. Would you -?"

R'haran nodded. "Of course I would," he said, and then they went on with the serious business at hand.

Last updated on the November 3rd 2007

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You and Evie