Upside Down

Writers: AL, Cali
Date Posted: 24th February 2009

Characters: F'gol, Ri'len
Description: Ri'len is woken up by F'gol.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 13, day 26 of Turn 4

The darkness was interrupted by something. Ri'len jerked awake, knowing he had heard a noise, but wasn't sure what until it resounded once more. The bronzerider sat up in his bed, eyes blinking in the blackness that surrounded him. Shadows filled the room, the lumps of prostrate forms in various beds. There it was again and as Ri'len's mind slowly managed to process the information it was receiving, he realized it was coming from the bunk to his right, the one that belonged to the bluerider who had so suddenly and unexpectedly impressed at the hatching.

Ri'len glanced around, but none of the shadows moved. He eased out of bed and slipped over to F'gol's cot. "Hey." He whispered, his tone gentle, "What's wrong?"

F'gol froze, the sob instantly cut off. He thought everyone was asleep. It was the only reason he'd let himself indulge in his misery. Stuffing the scribbled on hide he'd found in his Hall belongings under his pillow he shook his head, "Nothing's wrong."

"Something's wrong." Ri'len insisted, shifting slightly as if in discomfort. He was used to dealing with crying girls, not so much boys. "Anything...I can do to help?"

Shards, he'd heard him. He was so embarrassed. Ri'len seemed the nice sort, but he was sure he'd blab about it to all the other riders tomorrow. He wiped away the tears on his cheeks and tried to think up some excuse other than lamenting over a scrap of unfinished tuning. "My ah, nose. I ah, hit it I think while I was sleeping."

"Is that so?" The guy might be a harper, but he was a bad liar. Ri'len settled down on the floor, his back leaning against the side of the bluerider's bunk. "You want to talk about it?"

"Nothing to talk about." he mumbled. It didn't look like he was going to leave him alone, but what could he say that didn't make him appear weak? He'd been told to watch out for the bronze and brown weyrlings, that they liked to pick on the blue and green weyrlings, and he didn't want to give him anything that could be used against him.

"Nothing I can do to help?" Ri'len pressed gently? He hated seeing the boy so upset. F'gol had seemed so lost ever since he had impressed so suddenly and expectantly - Ri'len couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

Did Ri'len really care? "I gave as good as I got." he mumbled again. And he had, while he'd left with a bloody nose, Larathey had gotten it in the eye _and_ the ribs.

The bronzerider went silent for a few moments. F'gol wasn't being very forthcoming and Ri'len couldn't really blame him. They worked together as weyrlings, but they hadn't been weyrlings that long and really, they hardly knew one another. He cast a sidelong glance at the dark form and sighed. "It's not easy is it?"

"What?" F'gol asked, feeling like he'd missed part of the conversation. He looked over at Ri'len, glad of the near complete dark that could hide the blotchiness of his face.

"Being a dragonrider." Ri'len stated slowly, "When all you ever wanted to be was a harper."

Hearing him say that made his eyes tingle. He wished he wasn't so tired, because then maybe he'd have the stamina to hold the tears back. "No, it's not easy."

"I didn't plan on being here either." Ri'len admitted with a small smile that only the darkness could see. "Not really."

F'gol frowned, confused. He could have swore he'd heard that Ri'len chose to Stand because of his wife, the greenrider Sorsha. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, all my life I expected to live at my hold. Live, work, get married, have children, die there." Ri'len looked over toward his area where his dragon lounged and slept so peacefully. "Then...Sorsha came into my life. Things changed."

F'gol watched the rider for a moment. He'd never really thought about other people having to leave stuff behind. Somehow, he didn't feel quite so alone knowing other people were missing out of life dreams and goals too. He slowly took out the old hide from under his pillow and handed it to Ri'len. "I found it in with my clothes. I wrote it."

Ri'len tried to make sense of the lines and notes that danced across the page, but he had never learned to read music, not that it was easy to see in the gloom of the barracks. "You have a talent that I'll never possess."

F'gol snorted, "I have a talent that'll never be used. That's worse than not possessing it. That was going to be a teaching song I think, but now it'll never get finished so I'll never know for sure."

"You should finish it anyway." Ri'len suggested as he held the page out for F'gol to take it again. "Yes. Yes, finish it."

F'gol shook his head and took the sheet, folding it before putting it back under his pillow. He could feel his eyes prick again but blinked the tears away. "It's not that simple. I had two journeymen helping me with my last composition. And I worked on it near a month straight. I'm not good enough, I don't know enough, to finish it on my own."

"If you think that's true, then it's going to be true." Ri'len mused softly. The boy needed more confidence in himself, though Ri'len wasn't sure how he could help to instil that. "I think you should try anyway."

Ri'len just didn't understand. F'gol could appreciate him trying to help, but it wasn't practical. He was a dragonrider now, he'd never take another harper class, never have a session with a journeyman to discuss phrasing or dynamics. All he had to look forward to was a life of drills in order to just stay alive. Frustration building again, he rolled away from Ri'len. "We'd better get some sleep. The dragons will be awake in a few hours."

"Yeah." Ri'len was probably going to regret getting up in the middle of the night, but he couldn't have let F'gol simply wallow in his sorrow alone. The bronze weyrling pushed himself up to his feet. "Still...think about trying to finish it. You could use your free time to work on it. You could go to the Hall and ask for help during that time too."

F'gol knew that Ri'len just didn't understand. It wasn't about free time to work on it, it was about his dreams and plans for his life being ripped to shreds and replaced by a future he didn't want. Still, it was nice to know that he wasn't the only one who had his life turned upside down.

Last updated on the February 24th 2009

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