Secrets

Writers: Anwen, Eimi
Date Posted: 29th November 2006

Characters: Maiz, U'kaiah
Description: The greenrider divulges not one, but two secrets.
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 13, day 27 of Turn 3

Though she had vowed not to tell anyone about her pregnancy until it began to show (afterall, she didn't want T'nac to find out right away) Maiz was itching to tell _someone_. She was too excited to keep it a complete secret. So, she sought out U'kaiah, hoping that her friend would share in her excitement of the joyous news.

U'kaiah got the message from his bronze that his friend would be coming over so he hurriedly ran around his apartment picking up scraps of paper, his empty wineskin, one sock... Shards, where was the other one?

Maiz knocked and waited patiently at the door. U'kaiah stashed all the odds and ends in his hands behind the sofa. "Come in!"

Now that she was here and inside Maiz was just a bit nervous. How did she tell him this news? Was it even appropriate to tell him? "Hi U'kaiah," she said, figuring that at least was the place to start when you first saw someone. The bronzerider smiled. "Hello! Come on in, sit down."

Maiz took a seat on the couch, but almost immediately moved to see what she had sat on. Laughing, she pulled a sock from the corner that she had sat in. "Oh. There it is," U'kaiah chuckled as he took the sock from her. He tossed it unceremoniously back over the sofa and turned to her with his full attention. "So, you wanted to talk to me?"

"I have some news," she started off carefully. "And I wasn't going to tell anyone, at least not for a while.
But I am so excited that I have to tell someone, and you're my closest friend here, so I was hoping you'd keep a secret..." By the time she finished she was talking very fast. "All right, calm down," he laughed, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. "I'll keep your secret! Now breathe!"

She took a deep breath and announced, "I'm pregnant."

U'kaiah grinned at his friend. "Really? That's great!" He look turned skeptical for a moment. "That is great, right?"

"Yes, its great," Maiz confirmed, a smile on her own face. "I'm very excited about this baby."

"Do you know who the father is?" He asked curiously, wondering if it was T'nac or someone he had not yet heard about.

"The father is T'nac. But we broke up recently, so he's not really in the picture."

"Oh." The bronzerider's smile fell a little. "I'm sorry to hear that, Maiz."

She shrugged her shoulders, dismissing it, though she too was sorry in many ways. "Well, that's my big news.
Anything new and interesting happening in your life?"

"Nothing to top your news," he smiled. "Just trying to prepare the weyrlings for the wings. And hopefully get my own back."

"Getting your wing back would certainly top my news,"
Maiz corrected. "Women have babies everyday... not many people get to lead Wings."

"You don't have babies everyday, and I think the top news was the fact that I lost my wing in the first place and have had to spend the last few months proving myself." An experience U'kaiah would not be repeating any time soon.

"You'll be my wingleader," Maiz said, laughing, hoping he didn't take that the wrong way.

"Oh, and you find that _amusing_?" he asked with a look of mock indignation.

"You don't? We're friends, and now you'll be in charge!" She subsided into giggles again.

"I was in charge of several of my friends. Several _intimate_ friends in fact. I'm comfortable being a friend to someone when the wing is dismissed as long as they respect my orders as their Wingleader. I don't see you as being such a problem. And besides," His smile deepen. "You're going to have to transfer into the Queen's Wing for the next few months anyway."

Maiz pursed her lips, she hadn't thought about having to transfer wings. "I don't want my pregnancy to be public knowledge yet. Like I told you, I'm keeping it quiet for now. Can I transfer without the reason being obvious?"

"You can get scored by Thread, but I highly recommend you don't. It hurts like you wouldn't believe," he chuckled. "But you know you have to transfer as soon as possible or risk loosing the baby /between/."

"I'm obviously not willing to risk that." It looked like her pregnancy wasn't going to remain a secret for very long. Which probably meant being confronted by T'nac about it. "Why do you want it to be secret?" U'kaiah would have thought everyone would be rather pleased.

"I'm a single woman and not weyrmated- some people might judge me badly because of that. And T'nac doesn't know yet."

"Well, I can understand that you haven't said anything to T'nac, but why would anyone judge you just because you're not _weyrmated_? This isn't a Hold, Maiz."

"I know," Maiz said, brushing an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "And even if they do think badly of me, I shouldn't care... but some part of me still does care."

"No, Maiz," U'kaiah leaned forward and rested his hands on her knees. "No one would think badly of you. This is a _Weyr_. Half the children born, even more, are born to women who are not weyrmated. My parents weren't weyrmated, I wasn't in a relationship with Kaiafel's mother... No one would look down on you at all. Holds might have hidebound prejudices but the Weyr certainly does not. Women can have a child anytime they want with whoever they want and its no one's business."

"What if I tell T'nac and he wants the baby? I know I'm stupid, and I don't understand all the differences between Weyrs and Holds. But, he couldn't take my baby from me, could he?"

"No, he cannot take the baby from you," U'kaiah assured her. "He can visit the baby at the fostermothers, but he cannot _take_ the baby anywhere. And I know T'nac. He's not a bad man. He would _help_ you." The bronzerider was beginning to wonder how it was that she had lived in a Weyr for so long and _didn't_ know. It was common knowledge. Or at least it sharding well should be!

"I'm sorry, I know I ask stupid questions," Maiz said quietly. "Its just that this baby means a lot to me, and I don't want anything to get in the way of that."

"Maiz, why don't you know these things?" _Everyone_
in a Weyr should know the rights granted them. How could it be that she did not?

"Well, its not exactly something they teach in weyrling classes!" the young woman hedged. It was true- they didn't, because they assumed that young riders already knew such things from the time they had already spent in the Weyr. "Yes, but you lived in a Weyr for turns before that..."

"H'kar wasn't a very nice person, alright?" she blurted out. "I was from a very isolated cothold and very young and very stupid when he 'searched' me. When he took me to his weyr rather than the candidate barracks I didn't know any better. How was I to know that men didn't own women in a Weyr just like they did in the cothold I came from? And H'kar was so good at keeping me isolated, at making himself the center of my very small, very lonely world. And I was entirely too stupid to know any different."

U'kaiah was momentarily too stunned to say a word. Someone had kept her isolated? At a _Weyr_? "I don't understand. A _dragonrider_ lured you to the Weyr under false pretences?"

Tears were running down her cheeks now, and she was sniffling softly. She merely nodded her head in reply to his question. "Sharding piece of wherry filth," the bronzerider muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. That a dragonrider could do such a thing was incomprehensible, and inexcusable. He wanted to know more, but first he wanted to comfort his friend. Leaning forward, he wrapped his long arms around her. "I'm sorry, Maiz. I'm sorry he did that to you."

Maiz buried her head against his shoulder, crying more forcefully and loudly now. "I'm sorry I let him,"
she whispered between sobs.

He rubbed her back soothingly, wishing there was more he could do. Obviously this was something that she had been carrying around with her a long time. "How could you know? You trusted a dragonrider, as you should have been right to do. How were you supposed to know he was the spawn of the Red Star?" The had never told anyone this, at least not the whole story. Certain people had figured out bits and pieces before she had moved to Dragonsfall, but she had never opened up to anyone about it. Now that she had told him part of it, she couldn't seem to stop herself from telling more. "He was so sweet to me, so loving. How could he seem so wonderful, but really be so horrible?" "I... don't know, Maiz," he whispered. "But it wasn't your fault."

"Of course it was," she disagreed. "He picked me because he knew I was stupid enough to believe him.
Other girls would have known better, or would have seen through his lies. I was just too sharding stupid to see how he was using me!"

"That's enough, Maiz. You're not stupid. I don't know why you hadn't been taught your rights as a child, but that's hardly because you were stupid." Not to mention the fact that the word of a dragonrider _should_ be infallible!

The greenrider didn't reply, just allowed her head to rest on his shoulder while she cried. She felt safe and protected with him.

Last updated on the December 1st 2006

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