The Captain

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 9th September 2007

Characters: Lineal, Rahona
Description: Lineal returns to his room after his father dies.
Location: Elsewhere on Pern
Date: month 6, day 3 of Turn 4

It wasn't until he got into the wide bed and snuggled around Rahona's curved body and slid an arm between her arm and waist to rest on her stomach that he finally felt like it was over. The last few days of just plodding on while the inevitable happened were over, and tomorrow would be the start of a new part of his life. This time now, with his nose buried in the braid of Rahona's hair and his body close to hers, was something between one part and another.

"Are you all right?" Rahona whispered into the darkness, rubbing her palm against the hand on her stomach. "As all right as you can be?"

"Mmm. Tired." Not sleepy, just very aware that he had been carrying on for days by force of will. "It had to happen and it has."

He would have – anybody would have – preferred that Jesten hadn't died but that wasn't a choice they were given. Jesten's heart had been failing, there hadn't been any other ending that was possible. They had all just had to manage the best they could to get through.

Rahona wriggled backwards, pushing herself more tightly against her husband and pulled his hand up to tuck it under her breasts.

"Should we have come back sooner?" she asked, voicing something she was sure he had been thinking, though he had never said.

Lineal found himself smiling. Lovely Rahona, always worried about doing the right thing for everybody. "He wrote to me when he wanted me to come home - and we came. The timing was his decision."

"He thought you belonged here."

"And _we_ do." He was in a stateroom like the one he'd grown up in, with his children sound asleep in the small beds further along the wall.
He and his wife were covered by a quilt his grandmother had made, an heirloom in the pattern 'Paddlewheels' that was a favourite among riverboat folk. He was back where he had started out, and tomorrow he'd be the Captain of the Sungazer, the job he had most likely been born to do, despite his twenty-five Turn distraction in the form of seacrafting.

Once the thought of being on the Sungazer as she paddled her way endlessly up and down the Nettleweed had seemed like the bleakest future he could image; now he couldn't think of anything better for himself and his family.

Perhaps it was having a family that had changed his mind, or knowing his father wanted him back to take up the position as Captain. Or perhaps he'd just grown older – grown up, he supposed – and been able to see the his childhood on the river for the wonderful lifestyle it was.

"We do, don't we."

"We still don't have to stay, Rahona," he said, reaffirming the promise he had made to her back at the Weyr when she had been worried about moving herself and the children away from the only place and life they knew.

"We'll stay. Of course we will. I love it here and the children do too." She patted his hand again in wordless sympathy as she added sleepily: "And you're the Captain now."

He nestled in closer to her and nodded, trying to remember if he had ever wanted to be captain as a boy. If he had he couldn't recall it, and possibly he never had. Growing up with no mother and the knowledge that the captaincy could only come to him at the death of his father, he might never have wanted to consider such a role. Now it was his.

He was the Captain of the Riverboat Sungazer, taking over at his father's death as Jesten had taken over from _his_ father. It was sad, but that was the way the captaincy passed down the generations. If Lineal hadn't wanted the job at thirteen when he had gone off to be a seacraft apprentice, he was proud to take it on now.

Even accepting that, sleep still eluded the Sungazer's new Captain for much of the night.

Last updated on the September 13th 2007

Welcome to Triad Weyrs!

The Captain