Homesick

Writers: Rochelle
Date Posted: 8th September 2007

Characters: Ariau
Description: Ariau realizes what she has been denying since her arrival at RBW
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 5, day 8 of Turn 4

The sky was black and moonless, dotted with flashes of bright light flickering in the humid haze rising over the bowl. Automatically, Ariau turned to the north, looking for the guiding constellation -and whimpered, clenching her fists. It wasn't there. She'd forgotten for a moment that she wasn't at Fort anymore.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat, feeling her heart squeeze and sink as it hit her, _really_ hit her, for the first time. This was the Southern Continent, literally the other side of Pern from the continent where she had grown up. Nothing here was the same, not the people, not the sea, and not even the stars. She was well and truly away from her family and everything familiar for the first time. It was the adventure she had been wanting.

So why did she want to cry?

Blinking hard to hold in the tears, her throat burning, she tried to pick out some brighter stars she could use as directional guides, maybe make her own constellations until she could find out the ones used in the South, but her vision blurred too quickly. Doubt quickly assailed her.
Since it was the bottom half of Pern, maybe they wouldn't circle the North like she'd always been taught? Maybe they'd circle the south instead?

Her knees were feeling unsteady now, so she staggered over to a nearby rock and sat heavily, wincing as the uneven surface poked her in the butt.
Why was she so upset? She'd been away from her family before. When she moved to the weyr she'd left behind all the friends she'd made at the Hall and her aunt and uncle and cousins. Her grandparents had ridden off with Jaurin when she entered the Hall after the Pass began. Even when she'd been living with her grandmother on the road, there had been times when she would leave them at a friend's and come back a few days later. It wasn't the first time.

Homesick. The word hit her like a blow, and she was suddenly obscurely glad that she had already sat down or she would have fallen over. She was homesick, just like the apprentices she had known at Fort. But how could she be homesick? She'd never really _had_ a home. Just places she lived until she moved on again. She'd visited the Harper Hall at Fort frequently, even lived there for a while, but it had always been her uncle's home, not hers. Fort Weyr had come closer, but it hadn't been home either, just a holding area for her to stay while she waited for a dragon to find her. The longest she'd ever spent anywhere was the hold with her parents, and she hadn't really been sorry to leave there. They had never really belonged there, just had been accepted as part of lower caverns, like a piece of furniture that no one was quite certain where it belonged so it might as well stay where it was. Not a home.

But it certainly felt like she was homesick, so maybe she was. Homesick for something familiar, for something that worked the way she knew it should. But here the weyrbowl was a valley, women had to escape their homes to craft, and even the sky was wrong, upside down, leaving her truly lost. She'd always felt lost, ever since her parents died, but not like this. Now there was no one familiar, no one to tell her that she was doing the right thing.

She sniffed, staring out over the river. Maybe that was it. She was alone here. It had been one of her goals of moving, to get away from the family that had tried so hard to compensate for her lost parents. There had always been someone around before, a brother, an aunt or uncle or cousin, or a grandparent, even when they were traveling across terrain she'd never seen before. She could always rely on finding E'laj to talk to, Jaurin to fuss over, or a cousin to play with. Even at the weyr with her grandparents traveling with Jaurin and E'laj busy with weyrlingstaff duties, she could always take a runner down to visit her uncle's family and some of her old friends at the Harper Hall. She'd never been completely cut off before.

She hugged herself, sniffing as she tried vainly to keep the tears inside.
She'd gotten what she wanted. A new life to explore, away from the watching eyes of her family, where she had a chance of being someone other than another one of Master Shaelis's grandchildren, or Journeymen Shaeo and Balari's niece, or E'laj's sister. Where she could stand or fall on her own as Ariau. She'd gotten what she wanted.

She buried her face in her arms, feeling the tears leaking past her closed eyelids as she sobbed and hiccupped past the burning lump in her throat.
She'd gotten what she wanted. So why was she miserable?

Last updated on the September 13th 2007

Welcome to Triad Weyrs!

Homesick