An Old Friend (part 1 of 2)

Writers: Rochelle
Date Posted: 29th February 2008

Characters: R'syl
Description: R'syl gets a visit from an old friend, and they discuss his lost wife and children.
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 8, day 26 of Turn 4

"Sohhen!" R'syl said warmly as the older woman slid down the side of her green. She peeled off her riding helmet, revealing a head full of short, tightly cropped silver curls. She smiled at him, and accepted his offered hug.

"It's good to see you too." She commented, moving back toward her green and unfastening the straps. "Ah. Here."

Reflexively, he caught the bundle of letters she tossed him, and stepped back as he rifled through them, looking, looking....

He tucked them under his arm reluctantly, feeling his heart sink a little, although it had no right to. The letters were a mix of official documents and letters from friends and acquaintances. But he'd known that what he really wanted to see, the handwriting that he knew so well, wouldn't be there. He knew, and yet...

"All right. Go and have fun with Usaeth for a while." Sohhen told her green with a hearty slap. "I'll call you when I'm ready.

R'syl could hear the distant echo in his mind of Usaeth conferring with Sohhen's green, and then the green took flight, joining Usaeth as the bronze fell off the cliff edge he'd been perched to soar over to the feeding grounds. He suppressed a snort. You'd think the dragons were dating -but Usaeth had only ever tried to fly Sohhen's green once, and the wily creature hadn't let him catch her.

"She's not...?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.

Sohhen shook her head. "No, not for another month. If she rises. We're getting old."

"Never." He said with a smile. Sohhen had that strangely immortal quality of a strong-minded woman. Somewhat like Tsaera, actually. He'd always admired that in her, and her soft curls and warm smile had lured many a weyrling into thinking she was a sort of greenrider grandmother -a notion they were quickly abused of when she took control of a class.

"Don't try that gallantry on me." Sohhen pointed out, her voice wry. "You are the same age as my dragon. We're both old."

"Physical age has nothing to do with it." He said with a smile, offering her his arm to escort her from his ledge. "You're only as old as you feel, and at the moment I'm feeling about twenty-nine or so. Are you really in that much of a hurry for her to stop mating?"

"I am, but she isn't." Sohhen admitted with a sigh. "Although how she can still be interested in males at her age, I'll never know. I'm just looking forward to waking up every morning and not having to watch some young twit hurrying out of my weyr because he wakes in bed with an old lady. Or worse, the woman who terrorized him during his weyrlinghood." "I have to admit that's always awkward." R'syl said with a sigh. he'd had his share of young grrenriders in his bed at Telgar after they graduated.
For a while, he'd accused Usaeth of taking perverse pleasure in only flying greens that they'd trained.

"Yes it is." Sohhen said definitively, admiring the Usaeth's spacious weyr as they progressed toward the door to his part of the weyr. "So this is where they stuffed you two. It looks nice -I like the color. It's much warmer than at Telgar."

"It's limestone, I think." R'syl said, following her gaze up to where some broken stumps of stalactites were just barely visible in the shadows of the ceiling. He'd never really paid attention to the color before. He'd just hung some tapestries to get some color on the walls and called it done, just like he had since he'd cleaned out his first weyr after Masair died.

Sohhen shrugged. "Whatever it is, it's pretty. But are you sure you're actually living here?" She asked, eying the living area. "It's so clean."

R'syl ignored the comment, and steered her over to the sofa, before veering over to set the letters on his desk. "So how are you doing, Sohhen?" He asked as he continued the trip over to the drink cabinet for wine and a pair of glasses. "Anything exciting going on at Telgar?"

"Just the usual." She admitted. "Weyrlings being idiotic, ridiculous, and downright cute. One of the blues from this last clutch seems to think he's a bronze -literally. He just doesn't want to understand the color hierarchy, deliberately. And there's one girl... gah! I've caught her sneaking out almost every night." She finished with exasperation.

R'syl chuckled, ouring the glasses as he listened to the familiar rants of all weyrlingstaff everywhere. There was always something going on, and like any large group of small children, there was always a story somewhere.

"But what about you?" Sohhen asked when he handed her the glass of red.
"Surely you've got a few new stories to tell. You've got a young gold!
What's she like?"

"Alabieth is..." R'syl reached with his mind, trying to find a good summary for the young queen's personality. "... a gold. She knows she is a queen and tends to use it to get her way. But Ariau is a good match for her. She keeps her reigned in, and Alabieth seems to be learning quickly.
She isn't naturally manipulative, just... gold." He finished, thinking about the way all the dragons automatically deferred to the queens, even the very young ones. It was an easy habit for humans to acquire too.
"Although I think they won't be in the weyr much once they're out of weyrlinghood. They both have a thirst for flying. You would never believe that Ariau is craftborn they way she talks about places she's been." He admitted after a sip.

"Mmm." Sohhen murmured, savoring the wine and watching him with cool gray eyes. "That's not going to satisfy the nosy ones."

"It's not supposed to." R'syl admitted. The two grinned at each other. "I wonder if I should request you to be the message carrier from Telgar in the future." He mused aloud.

"Don't you dare." She said simply. "I'll happily visit, but too much humidity and I'm going to putrefy like a redfruit in the sun."

Last updated on the March 2nd 2008

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An Old Friend (part 1 of 2)