Take Me Home

Writers: Devin, Miriah, Suzee
Date Posted: 9th December 2015

Characters: J'ackt, N'vanik, Cyradis
Description: J'ackt faces the past with some difficulty.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 3, day 7 of Turn 8

J'ackt

N'vanik

Cyradis

The Weyrleader smiled to himself before approaching the young man.
"How would you like to get out of the Weyr for a while?"

J'ackt looked up as he finished the final swipe of oil on Zith's hide.
Putting down the paddle, he studied N'vanik for a moment. "Did the
Weyrwoman okay it?" There was a trace of bitterness in his tone.

"Worried I might get scolded?"

He shrugged. "You have to work with her, not me." J'ackt turned back
to Zith, who was already peering at N'vanik with interest. "She said I
could if I have someone with me that was higher rank. Guess she told
you that."

"Do you want to go?" N'vanik asked. Then he looked up at Zith. "Want
to go exploring with me and Loseth?"

The opportunity to go outside of the Weyr was a welcome one, even with
the Weyrleader as a babysitter. "Where?"

Zith peered at N'vanik and bobbed his head immediately in interest.

"Where would you like to go?" N'vanik wanted to give him a choice.

J'ackt went quiet for a moment, fingers drumming on Zith's hide. "I
just want out." He paused, brow furrowing as his mind went immediately
to his former dwelling. He still had some things there that he had had
to leave behind. It wouldn't be so bad to see if they still were
there. "My cave." He said abruptly. "I want to see it."

"Can you come up with a good visual of it? Or somewhere nearby?" They
would need an aerial view for the dragons to follow.

"If you can get us to Emerald Falls, I can lead the way from there."

~*~

The two bronze dragons came out of /between/ beyond the edge of the
Hold proper. N'vanik was hoping they wouldn't be noticed by too many.
Dragonriders were a regular sight near a major hold but this was the
one place J'ackt really shouldn't go near. N'vanik signaled for the
weyrling to lead on.

It took J'ackt a moment to orient himself. Seeing the Hold from the
air was far different from the ground. It looked large, but not as
looming and dangerous as it had before he had come to the Weyr.
Getting his bearings, J'ackt oriented Zith towards the south east,
finding the familiar forest streams from the air with little
difficulty. Zith's flight wasn't as graceful as they flew on, picking
up J'ackt's growing tension and to J'ackt's surprise, they reached the
clearing far sooner than expected. He had half expected the flight to
be a very long one, but it was just under a candlemark. Had he really
been that close to the Hold?

As they came to a familiar cliff face, Zith banked low and circled
several times before coming to a landing in the clearing around the
cliff. He held still while J'ackt unstrapped and slid down, staring at
a small dark opening at the base of the cliff.

N'vanik came up behind him but didn't get too close. "So, this is
where you used to live?"

J'ackt didn't answer at first, still staring at the entrance to the
small cave. Finally, he nodded. "Yeah." He began to walk slowly
towards the entrance, confident that if someone had taken over, they
would have come out when the dragons had landed. **Do you smell any
animal near?**

}: Not a predator. There are some wherries in the woods, I think. :{

J'ackt nodded to himself and stopped at the entrance, then ducked and
slipped in. A sense of both homecoming and resentment filled him.
There was little light, but there was enough to see by. It was still
small, but it was obvious no one else had happened by it since he had
left. He crouched, looking at the remains of his sleeping mat and some
of the crockery he had pilfered. He picked a piece up, brow furrowed,
then put it down, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light.

The center of the small cave still had the ring of stones for his
fire. He felt the urge to light it, but refrained. He didn't need the
protection of it's flames anymore. But even so, he laid a hand on one
of the stones, lost in thought. The cave seemed so small now, much
smaller and far more bare than his weyr, but for so long, it was all
he had known.

N'vanik didn't go in but watched from the entrance. He thought about
J'ackt holed up in here, fending for himself. N'vanik's time as
Holdless had been a few turns. J'ackt had been Holdless much longer
with no one but his abusive father for company.

J'ackt held still for a moment, then his hand thrust under his old
bedroll, obviously searching for something. His brow furrowed as he
bent to search further, then his shoulders eased as he seemed to find
something. Slowly, very slowly, he pulled it out. In the darkness, it
seemed like thick length of cordage, but J'ackt's hand stroked over it
almost reverently. He caught himself, then hurriedly tucked it in his
pocket. He rose and didn't even glance at anything else; he didn't
need it anymore. He stepped out of the cavern, glanced at N'vanik and
spoke a bit roughly. "Just something else I need to do."

Zith was tense, but didn't move as J'ackt moved towards the treeline.
His tail tip flicked rapidly and his eyes began to whirl faster, but
he remained silent, his gaze never leaving his rider for a moment. }:
Loseth, Yours needs to stay with Mine. :{ The younger bronze exhaled
slowly even as he began to knead at the ground with his talons.. }: He
should not be alone and I can not follow him into the trees. He goes
for his dam and his sire. His thoughts are...not good. :{

Loseth passed on the message, though N'vanik had been planning to
follow him anyway. He wasn't about to let the boy wander off no matter
how much J'ackt wanted space. Keeping some distance between them,
N'vanik headed into the woods.

It didn't take long for J'ackt to reach his destination. It was a
small clearing with two piles of stone, one large and one small on
opposite sides of the area. He stopped at the sight and took a
shuddering breath. While the clearing was grassy, in the center were a
few old pieces of burnt wood. It was there that J'ackt went, and he
stared down at the scattered pieces; underneath his tan, he turned
pale, then flushed. Slowly, as though he really didn't want to go but
was forced to, J'ackt approached the smaller pile of stones and stared
at it.

He knew that N'vanik followed; he was far too alert to his
surroundings here. It was too engrained to ignore. He spoke softly.
"She was burnt here." His voice sounded dull. "Da, he put her and the
baby on a pile of wood and dried bone that would burn hot. I watched."
He crouched at the stone pile, and for a moment, his hand shook. "He
was just going to let what was left of her blow away in the wind, but
I couldn't let her." He glanced at the center of the clearing. "Came
out at night and gathered what I could of the ashes and bits of bone.
Some had blown away, but I got what I could. " He looked back at the
small pile of stones and laid his hand on it. He remembered that his
father had hit him multiple times for weeping that day. Even now, he
couldn't bring himself to cry.

Staring at the stones, J'ackt twitched visibly, his shoulders
hitching. Grief, unable to be released, turned to a hotly simmering
anger. His eyes swung to the larger cairn, eyes hot and face now
flushed. He didn't explain his sudden rage; he couldn't. Zith bugled
with alarm, then roared, echoing J'ackt's sudden lunge across the
clearing. With incoherent words, J'ackt kicked at the stones, punched
them and began tearing at the cairn with his bare hands. Outside of
the clearing Zith's tail hit the ground with a resounding slap, his
eyes whirling a maddened red.

N'vanik let him rage for a few moments while Loseth tried to calm the
young bronze. }:Yours is remembering old hurts, but he is not in
danger.:{

If it wasn't for Zith, N'vanik would have let him go on as long as he
needed to. "Hey, you're upsetting your dragon."

}: Flame it. I want to flame it. :{ Zith hissed. With claw, he
swiped at a young sapling and tore it down, echoing his rider's
movements in the clearing. He shifted from side to side, wanting to
go to his rider, but unable to.

J'ackt didn't respond to N'vanik's words and though they did penetrate
his mind, they were faint. He flung a stone out and then with a
shudder gave a hoarse cry, falling to his knees. He beat at the stone
with his hands, but it wasn't with the staggering rage. "Why did he
hate me? She was protecting me and he hit her. He hated me. He as good
as killed her." The words became a strangled cry.

N'vanik knelt beside him and wrapped his arms around J'ackt. "Because
he was a flaming bastard, that's why. You didn't deserve anything he
did to you." N'vanik wondered if his own father was still alive, but
didn't dare go looking for him. If he saw the man again, N'vanik was
afraid he might kill him. **If you weren't dead already I'd kill
you,** he told the pile of rocks. **Or I'd hold you down while J'ackt
did it.**

}:The one who hurt your rider is dead,:{ Loseth told Zith. }:You can't
flame him.:{

The embrace seemed to break some sort of wall within J'ackt. He was
unused to being comforted, pushed it away when it was offered. He
didn't know how to confront or deal with empathy from another. All he
knew at that moment was with a child like ache, he wanted his mother.
He wanted her to wrap her arms around him and tell him that all the
bad things he had seen and done were just a dream and that she could
make them go away. The strangled cry he gave dissolved into hoarse
tearless sobs, his entire body shaking. "My Mam....I want her back."
The wall built up by his father's insistence that he remain hard,
crumbled. Tears started, then flowed before he hunched into a shaking
ball as though expecting a blow.

Zith suddenly threw back his head and keened. It wasn't the shrill
keen for a lost dragon, but it was high and full of sorrow, echoing
his riders more hoarse cries. He could not bring back his rider's dam,
but he did the only thing he could think of...he mentally cried out
for his own.

Gold popped from /between/ and Cyradis flew from her back almost as
quickly as the huge mother dragon landed and twined necks with her
offspring. She was next to J'ackt and N'vanik almost before she
realized how she got there.

She saw the sobbing young man and N'vanik's arms around him. She knelt
on his other side, skirts billowing around her in the dirt and put her
arms around his neck pulling his head to her shoulder, "shhhhh now
sweeting," she said and begain to rock.

N'vanik gave her an appreciative smile before looking back down at
J'ackt. "I love you." He said it because he meant it, and it would
have meant so much to N'vanik hear that at J'ackt's age.

At first J'ackt jerked away from the comfort, unused to the
physicality of it. But, surrounded by both N'vanik and Cyradis,
feeling the embraces and the words, J'ackt couldn't help but release
the long contained grief. He sobbed out his yearning for his mother,
and with broken words told them of how she had been protecting him
until his father struck her, sending her into the labor that would
kill her and his unborn sister. That their deaths had been his fault
for not behaving and for making his father angry.

He cried until he was weak from it, slumping against the pair with his
head hanging down and his shoulder's rolled inward. His head pounded
and he was exhausted, unable to even lift his head.

Cyradis rocked and smoothed his hair. Her eyes caught N'vanik's and
her expression was sad and full of empathy for the young man in her
arms. "None of it was your fault J'ackt," she said softly. "You were a
small child. None of what happened was your fault."

"It's _his_ fault, all of it," N'vanik growled. "He blamed you because
that's what men like him do."

J'ackt was too exhausted to reply as he weakly shook his head. He was
too tired and wrung out to be embarrassed that he had let go in front
of them, too emotionally worn too argue. "I want to go home."

**Home,** she thought and her eyes turned up again to N'vanik. "Good
idea," she said and let go of him. The Weyr was now 'home' to him and
that was a giant step. "Let's all go home."

Last updated on the December 10th 2015

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Take Me Home