It's A Sharding Celebration

Writers: Eimi, Emma
Date Posted: 25th November 2008

Characters: U'kaiah, Teseada
Description: U'kaiah finds Teseada in the Record Room during the Hatching Feast and they drown their sorrows together
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 12, day 5 of Turn 4

Teseada

U'kaiah swore as his shoulder scrapped against the doorjam. The heavy
wooden door sprung back towards him, bumping his other arm and causing
him to spill his drink over his hand. "Sharding Faranth's Flamming
Egg," he grumbled before licking the liquid from his hand. Looking up,
he was surprised when his eyes caught a glimpse of a goldrider staring
back at him. It wasn't any goldrider he would have
expected to run into in the Record Rooms. Jaela dead, Trae was
likely screwing her brownrider's brains out, and Kapera probably had
never set foot in the place. "Teseada?"

"What?" There was an odd tone to her voice, one that implied she perhaps
was not in the mood for talking or sharing anything.

"You're not working are you?" he asked as he took a step forward,
letting the door slide off his shoulder and close behind him. "You know
there's a party going on downstairs. People tell me they're having a
good time."

"I needed some time."

"I need this day to be over," the bronzerider said and then spread his
arms wide, sloshing from both glass and bottle. "But don't you know,
this is supposed to be the proudest day of my life. For both of us.
It's a sharding celebration!"

"Yeah, one that got rocked at the seams as badly as a threadscore."

Th bronzerider snorted as he set the bottle down on the table. "Tell me
about it," he muttered before downing what hadn't escaped from his
glass. "What a pile of crackdust this day turned out to be. Our
beautiful Hatchinglings excepted, of course," he noted, raising his
empty glass.

"And that's the problem," she said harshly, aware that he'd wonder why.
"My father," she spat out. "He failed to tell me he had another family,
and a brother, and that's who impressed the last little bronze."

U'kaiah closed his eyes and let out a long slow breath as he considered
her words. Tried to arrange them into some semblance of order in his
fuzzy brain is more like it. "Your father has a family and a brother
and you're mad at him
because he didn't tell you about that?"

"Because he'd have had to have cheated on my mother to do it, he's not
quite a turn younger than I am."

"Wait a minute," he said, setting his glass on the table and bracing
both hands on the top. "Whose not a turn younger? Your father or your
father's brother?"

That earned the bronzerider a glare. "My father's son."

"Ah, so you didn't know _you_ have a brother," the bronzerider nodded,
finally connecting the tattered threads enough to catch up.
"So you're mad at your father because he had a son?"

Teseada rolled her eyes, then took a deep breath before continuing. "He
has a son and another woman in a hold somewhere, someone who's not my
mother."

U'kaiah still couldn't say for sure why that should be upsetting.
Chances were he had brothers or sisters somewhere out there on Pern.
But the hearts of women were a mystery to him, and never more so than
this evening. It was easier to just accept that she was a fellow
sufferer wallowing in misery. He set his glass in front of her and
splashed a bit of alcohol into the bottom of it. "This will help."

She eyed the glass warily. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"It's a start."

She took the glass and sipped from it. "It can't make it any harder to
deal with."

"That's the spirit," the bronzerider nodded as he hitched a leg onto the
table. "It can only get better from here. That's what you have to keep
telling yourself. You can face the truth when you're sober."

"The last thing I want to do right now," she said tossing the rest of
the glass back.

"I hear you," U'kaiah nodded refilling her glass before taking a swig
directly from the bottle. "I'll never forget every one of those eggs
that cracked. But shards, I don't know if I'll ever be able to think of
that without thinking of the steaming pile of wherry dung that came
after.
Thank you, Trae." A longer pull from the bottle followed.

"Tomorrow's another day, right?"

U'kaiah wasn't sure if that old adage was helpful or ominous in his
case. Tomorrow he'd be sober. Tomorrow he'd have to wake up knowing
that after drills, he would not be going to Dolphin Cove. Tomorrow his
first thought when opening his eyes would be that Trae was in the arms
of the man she loved, and it wasn't him. "Yeah. I don't want to think
about tomorrow. I don't want to think about anything except where I can
go to find another one of these," he muttered as he lifted the bottle to
his lips once more.

"The party more than likely."

The bronzerider shook his head. "I don't want to go back there. Not
yet. I just... I can't pretend to smile anymore tonight, you know?"

"Then perhaps we should stay here and finish this." Teseada raised her
glass and drained it.

"That won't take long at this rate. I think I have more in my room."
U'kaiah added a bit more to her glass and then raised his bottle.
"Let's toast. It's our sharding celebration anyway."

"To us!" Teseada raised the glass. "To us and the messes we make."

"And to the messes we just seem to step in," the bronzerider nodded,
clinking the bottle against her glass.

Last updated on the December 1st 2008

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It's A Sharding Celebration