The More Things Change

Writers: AmajoS
Date Posted: 2nd August 2007

Characters: Benna
Description: Benna contemplates how her life's changed, how she hopes it will change further, and how some things stay the same.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 5, day 2 of Turn 4

Benna ate her breakfast quickly, which was nothing new. Having nine older brothers meant that she'd learned how to eat fast. Boys were as bad as newly hatched dragons when it came to food and nine of them?
Anything sitting on the table was fair game, even if it was already on a plate! So, eating quickly was nothing new for Benna.

What was new was the amount of people she was eating with. Breakfast with her family was a noisy affair, yes. Twelve people, ten of them male, just don't eat quietly. Sometimes there were even more. Her father still hired a hand or two during the peaks and her mother always invited them to eat with the family. So, eating with a crowd wasn't new exactly, but the size of the crowd certainly was!

There was well over a hundred people milling about, probably more than two hundred. Maybe even more than that. She'd seen that many people and more at Gathers of course, but for something as simple as breakfast? And everyday? It was slightly mind-boggling.

Not even to mention the sound of the dragons. Even here, ensconced as she was by stone walls, the bugles and roars of the dragons were audible. A constant background noise that rose and fell behind the higher-pitched rumble of the conversations of the people filling the Dining Cavern.

She vividly remembered seeing all of them when she'd first arrived.
The bitter, cold, nothingness of /between/ vanishing in an instant and replaced with the view of dragons sunning themselves in the last rays of the day. Ledges draped with magnificent beasts, their green, blue, brown, and bronze bodies shining. She'd even spotted a gold near the water. It had been breathtaking, seeing all those dragons.

Not that flying on one, even as a passenger, hadn't been exciting, of course.

And to think, she might Impress one of those glorious creatures. She might get to spend every day with one, she'd have the freedom to go anywhere and the love of a creature who was part of her own self. She, like any other child, had imagined being bonded with a dragon. For her, the dreams were passing fancies. It hadn't ever occurred to her that it might -actually- be possible.

When the dragon had landed at her family's cothold and the rider announced that he was there on Search, she'd thought one of her brothers had been chosen. The burst of longing she'd felt had surprised her. Not as much as when her father and the rider had approached her and not one of her brothers though.

Of course she was homesick, she'd never been away from home overnight in her life before she came here. And she'd only been here a short while; only a little over a sevenday. She missed her parents and her brothers. Especially her brothers. She missed the fields and the quiet punctuated by bursts of noise that marked her days before. It was certainly never quiet at the Weyr!

Since she'd been here, she'd gotten lost on an almost daily basis and she still hadn't been able to remember most of the dozens of names she'd been presented with yet. She'd been busy enough to fall asleep exhausted every night, from classes and chores and wandering about trying to figure out her way around - she was making -some- progress there at least.

She loved it.

She loved the energy of the place, which was different than the feel of a farming cothold. She loved the constant noise. The hustle and bustle of hundreds of people who all had some task or destination in mind. The dragons and scores of flits that added to the organized chaos. She loved that the people here didn't behave at all like her parents had tried to teach her to behave. She even enjoyed her classes and if that wasn't saying something, Benna didn't know what would.

The queen would be clutching soon she'd been told. She couldn't wait.
Though she'd never seen a dragon egg, every night her dreams were filled with them now. The very thought of the eggs and the dragons within filled her with so much excitement and joy she could barely stand it. She wanted to Impress more than she'd wanted anything ever in her life.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a change in the bustling motions of the crowd came to her attention. Groups of people were headed out of the Dining Cavern. She needed to hurry up and finish too. She had to find her way to the laundry rooms - she was only slightly sure she could find the way - and start her assigned chores for the morning.
Some things in life didn't change at all, it seemed. No matter if you lived on a farm or in a weyr… laundry needed to be done!

Last updated on the August 2nd 2007

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The More Things Change