For You

Writers: Dana, Eimi
Date Posted: 31st May 2008

Characters: U'kaiah, Traelyn
Description: Traelyn and U'kaiah share a moment in the sun, but even the soothing environment doesn't keep Trae from wrestling with her thoughts
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 10, day 14 of Turn 4

Traelyn tilted her head back, allowing the sun's rays to beat down on her face as she sighed, languidly stretching out her arms, which were noticeably darker. Well, a day outside, tumbling in the sand with a man, boy, and puppy, not to mention jumping in the waves with the man as the boy and puppy lay napping in the shade further inland would do that to a person's skin. Her thick hair had long since dried, and it made a nice pillow as she leaned back against the smooth slab of stone, shifting as slightly as possible so she wouldn't disturb U'kaiah, whose head was resting on her thigh. She looked down at him. His eyes were closed...maybe he'd finally drifted off. Kaiafel was definitely asleep, passed out in his father's arms, and his own gangly ones were wrapped around Kal. Shards, she wished she could sleep too. Her body was tired, but her mind wasn't.

It had been easy to ignore the whispers of anxiety as she had played with U'kaiah and Kaiafel, but now that they were asleep.... Shards. She glanced down at her bare stomach. If she was.....if there _was_ life growing there, was it U'kaiah's? Or was it B'ram's? Shivering slightly, she placed a hand gently over her abdomen. She hadn't gone /between/ too many times since she had first suspected. If there was life there, it wasn't lost. And with a sudden, sharp pang, she realized that she didn't _want_ it to be lost. Not this time.

"You still awake?" U'kaiah mumbled sleepily, carefully turning on his back into a more comfortable position while not disturbing his son too much.

Startled out of her reverie, she looked down at him. "I thought you were asleep," she murmured back, hand moving to the top of his head.

He reached up and gently stroked her thigh with the backs of his fingers. "I was, but my arm was falling asleep."

Trying to shove down her thoughts, she ran her nails through his damp curls. "Mmmm." She could hear Nyith give a discontented grunt and Traelyn gently shushed her. She knew the queen didn't like it when she pushed things down--but now wasn't the time or place to talk about what had surfaced. "That gets uncomfortable."

He opened one eye to squint up at her. "How's your leg? Do you need me to move?"

She smiled down at him. "You're fine, love."

"We're being very poor company though," he sighed, wishing the sand, sun, and her fingers running through his hair didn't feel so sharding good.

She shook her head before grinning impishly down at him. "You can always make it up to me later, you know." Her fingers tightened slightly in his hair. "When we're alone."

"You know I will too," U'kaiah said with a mischievous squint and impish grin. "So is that what you've been doing while we've been sleeping? Imagining us alone?"

She snorted. "Sorry to deflate your ego, U'kaiah," she teased, "but no, actually. I was...." She paused, then continued, "I was just thinking about how much fun we had today. All of us." Which was kind of true. She _did_ have fun. And if she was, well, pregnant, would they have just as much fun with her child as they did with Kaiafel? Even if U'kaiah wasn't the father?

"It has been nice, hasn't it," he said turning to look down at his sleeping son's unruly mop of curls. U'kaiah reached over to smooth them back a bit, loving the fact that Kaiafel had inherited that feature from himself. There was never any doubt who his father had been. "He's growing so much, isn't he?"

Her eyes flickered to Kaiafel. "Every time I see him it seems like he's grown taller."

"I wonder if he'll be as tall as me." His mother was of average height, so it was hard to tell. "He doesn't seem tall compared to his classmates, but he might surprise us when he really starts to grow."

"He'll be tall," she told him. "Just like you. Remember, boys grow more slowly than girls. I was half a head taller than all my friends when I was his age. But no sooner had I gloated over the fact, they all went through a growth spurt and towered over _me_."

Trae had always been rather tall for a Pern woman. His eyebrows raised in surprise. "Are these friends you speak of boys? Or do they just grow the girls taller on Far Island?"

"Boys." Funny that he didn't know. And yet, she never had talked about her childhood much with him. "Just boys. I didn't fit in very well with the girls back then." And in a lot of ways, she still didn't. She could count on one hand how many women she spoke with on a regular basis.

"How could you not fit in with the girls?" No doubt the boys would have flocked around her, but she had seemed girly enough in all the right ways to attract a gaggles of girls as well.

She grinned at his expression. "Is it so hard to believe?"

"For me? Yes. I mean, you have always fit perfectly with me." He pulled her hand down to kiss her palm. "How could everyone not love you like I do, hmmm? It's impossible."

Shards. Her grin faded, throat tightening as her fingers traced his lips.
She couldn't help that pang of sadness that accompanied memories of her childhood, turning most of them bittersweet. But as she looked down into his warm eyes, she knew that with him her past didn't matter. None of it did. When he looked at her like that...shells, all that mattered was that he cared for her--_her_, the woman she was now, not the girl she had been Turns ago. Her fingertips trailed up his cheek, caressing. If she was pregnant...Faranth, she wanted the baby to be his. Not B'ram's. His. She knew that now...and hoped for it.

His lips curled into a smile as he leaned his face into her fingers. "What's that look for?"

"It's for you," she told him softly.

Last updated on the June 1st 2008

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