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Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 17th February 2008

Characters: Arateyka
Description: Arateyka and her family celebrate Tey moving into her first weyr.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 8, day 20 of Turn 4

Arateyka had to admit she had been watching for any sign that -

Was it childish to be worried that she wouldn't be her father's favourite now that her sister had Impressed?

Not that T'kanu's favouritism amounted to much, but the family was comfortable in their places; Arateyka as her father's favourite, Lhara as the youngest and their mother's favourite, Teykara as the eldest, Delhanu as the only boy, Tey as the girly-girl.

Still.

While many of the female weyrlings completely gave up worrying about pretty dresses and dressing up to spend the evening out, Tey hadn't.
Sitting between Delhanu and Teykara – both in clean but plain work clothes – Tey looked lovely in her dress dyed an uneven mix of teal shades.

"You'll be walking dragonlengths every time Isleth goes to sleep,"
T'kanu commented and Arateyka's wandering thoughts were shepherded back to where they started. That was just T'kanu; no special tone, no special familiarity because he and his second youngest child were now both dragonriders. Just commenting on the location of Tey's first weyr.

"It's not like I had a choice," Tey pointed out, smiling and wrinkling her freckled nose. "Do you think they give the most convenient weyrs to new weyrlings?"

"Did you get one with a bathing room?" Delhanu asked, that being his own ambition. "Some of the new ones don't –" The young man broke off and sighed at his sister's smug expression. "Shards. That's just not fair.
It's not like I didn't _try_ to Impress."

Arateyka laughed with the others. Delhanu's grumblings covered a happy nature that wasn't in the least affected by having to walk to a communal bathing room and necessary.

"Is it big?" Lhara asked, knowing curiosity would prompt her soon enough to make the trek through the long corridors and up the many flights of stairs to see her sister's new room.

Tey shrugged. "It's much bigger than what I had before I Impressed."

"You slept in a storage room before you Impressed," Delhara complained as she had many times on her daughter's behalf. "I don't know what possessed the assistant Headwoman to assign it to anybody."

"Well, the rider's quarters are bigger than that," Tey assured her mother. "And Isleth's weyr is plenty big enough, even if she grew into the biggest green on Pern."

"Which she won't."

"No," Tey agreed with her older sister and the other of the siblings to be a dragonrider. "Though she's not going not going to be leggy, either, so the weyrlingstaff keep saying. Do you think they're trying to tell me she's going to get _fat_?" she asked her father.

"Stocky, I think. And that's good for a green. Stops those wing strain injuries the more lightly built ones get in high winds. She'll be fine.
Don't worry."

Arateyka imagined she could see the concern evaporate from her sister's expression and thought that was typical of her family. They weren't great worriers. Easy-going, placid - they were both of those. But worriers? No.

And that made her something of the odd-one-out because she did worry.
Not only about things that affected her directly (which her family could manage if they _had_ to) but about wider issues. Did any of the rest of her family ever do that? Did it do them any harm not to?

They lived good lives, her family. Doing the work required of them, rubbing along well with almost everybody they met. Having kind hearts and the familial loyalty that came from a happy childhood shared.
Perhaps the two dragonriders - three once Tey graduated - had a nobler calling than the rest of them, but there was never any sense of that within the family.

"We should visit your first weyr," Lhara told her sister. "Not tonight.
Tomorrow evening? If some kind dragonriders would save us the walk."

"Ailinth and I will take Arateyka and Delhara."

The journeywoman smith's smile was a little smug, reassured that all was right in her world. Her father had always preferred to take her on Ailinth; that was how everybody knew he liked her best of his children.

"R'harne's sure to want to come," Lhara said, catching her eldest sister's eye to make sure that Teykara invited her weyrmate. "So I'll go with him."

Delhanu sighed and looked at Teykara. "I'm always the left-over. Would Yeulanth be happy to take me?"

"She would," the greenrider assured him. "And I suppose I can put up with you, too."

Last updated on the February 21st 2008

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