Learning to Breathe

Writers: Heather
Date Posted: 15th May 2024

Characters: A'ris
Description: Aedris is tired of suffocating and decides to take a chance on breathing.
Location: Amber Hills Hold
Date: month 11, day 18 of Turn 11

A'ris

Hills upon hills upon hills. Endless hills. Aedris rested his chin on his hands, which were propped on a fence post that encircled the family garden. Would he ever see anywhere else? He knew every hill, tree, and divot on the horizon in all directions from their minuscule patch of land. He knew there was more out there. He'd seen his sisters leave to never return. They had to be happy with their lives in the outside world to have stayed gone all these Turns.

"Boy? Boy! Quit with your dillydallying and get back to work!" Drisveraen grumped with a disgusted shake of his head.

Aedris sighed and slipped his work gloves back out of his pocket and onto his hands. Picking up the shovel, he began digging the next fence post hole. Was this all he could expect from life? Waking at the crack of dawn, working on his father's pathetic excuse for a farm, and then dropping into an exhausted sleep after the evening meal?

He wanted more. He _felt_ there must be more out there. What could be out there, he had no idea. He knew crafts existed, of course. One of his sisters had left claiming that she was going to be a harper. He'd never heard from her again and didn't know if she had achieved her goal but... It was something, at least. Sometimes his mother sang old harper ballads that she'd learned at the Hold, about dragons, but he'd never met one, and he'd only seen them from such a faraway distance in the sky that they were nothing more than specs.

How free that must feel, being able to mount a great beast with wings and fly wherever the wind listed.

There was no point in even dreaming that grand, however. Something Aedris thought he might be able to feasibly do was _sail_. They didn't live near any major bodies of water, but his father said his uncle was a seacrafter who spent his time on a ship at sea. Drisveraen thought a man's worth, however, was intimately tied to the land, so he didn't hold much stock in sailing, and that had never been presented as an option for his sons.

**I guess I'd have to learn how to swim,** he reasoned, sinking the tip of the shovel down into the hard clay dirt. He would be a very poor sailor indeed until he learned how to swim.

So maybe not sailing then, but sailing presented the best opportunity for him to travel and see new things. **Or maybe a runner,** he considered this with a lift of his eyebrows. Sometimes there was a runner who came by their way to carry letters. He was sure the runner was able to see a lot of places.

But he'd never been the best endurance runner, and it seemed a little late to start training for that anyway.

His thoughts turned to Amber Hills. He knew where the crosswords were that led to the main hold. His father had sent him with the family wagon on more than one occasion to deliver crops for sale to the trader that met them there.

The sun glinted on the dented and tarnished metal roof of the small hut where he lived with his family. He remembered being little when his father had painstakingly installed the new roof fixture when Thread returned. Living so far out from the main hold made the metal necessary to protect from Threadfall. They'd rarely had need of it, though, thanks to the Dragonsfall dragonriders. Sometimes he secretly wished that thread _did_ fall closer to his home, then the dragons and their mythical riders would be even closer so he could see them better. There were times, when he saw their specs flying around in the sky, that he dreamed he could hear them up there fighting thread.

The ringing of the dinner bell intruded into his thoughts. After depositing the shovel back up against the side of the barn, he tromped inside the hut. His youngest sister, Meris, was seated with a book open before her at the dining table. He watched her enviously as her eyes roved over the words on the page. How nice it must be to escape their farm through the pages of a book.

They didn't have many books, in fact, they had a grand total of five, and all five were well worn by the female members of the family. His mother had tasked herself with teaching the girls of the family to read and write as well as take care of a family. His father, however, had found reading to be a needless skill for a man who earned his keep tilling the ground, and so the sons of the family had missed out on the literacy lessons.

"Aedris," Meris frowned, "you're standing in my light. I can't see the page."

"It's not like you don't have it memorized anyway," Aedris pointed out, moving out of the way in favor of washing his hands in the nearby basin.

"True, but this is my favorite part. The part where the Lord Holder declares his feelings for the kitchen drudge and elevates her to the rank of a Lady." There was a dreamy tone in Meris' voice.

"That would never happen," Aedris snorted.

Meris' brow peaked into an angry 'V' as she snapped the book shut forcefully. "Yeah? Well, what would you know about it, anyway, _Aedris_? When's the last time you saw a Lord or a Lady, huh?"

"She's got you there, Addy," Imeryali tsked, whirling from the oven to set a pan of fresh bread on the table.

Aedris rolled his eyes. Imeryali and Meris always took each others' sides when it came to a sibling squabble. Probably because they both could read and enjoyed squealing and giggling over the same stories over and over again.

"Sit down all of you and let's eat," their mother's voice commanded.

-----

That night, as Aedris lay peering out the cracked shutter covering his window, he considered the stars. So vast and varied in the sky, they were. He wondered if they looked the same everywhere on Pern.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the image of his sister sitting at the kitchen table with the book flooded his mind. To escape like that, to have that kind of power, made him feel restless. If he stayed here he would suffocate, he was sure of it.

The crossroads that led to Amber Hills flashed before his mind. His heartrate increased, hammering loudly, so loudly, he was sure everyone in the house could hear it.

**Go,** his mind seemed to say to him. Rolling out of his cot, Aedris pulled out the solitary drawer beneath his bed that held his change of clothes. Stuffing those into a sack, Aedris pushed his feet into his shoes, and then hesitated. How would he let them know he'd gone? He couldn't leave a note...

Taking one of his work gloves, Aedris crept into the girls' room. Meris and Imeryali were both sound asleep in the narrow bed they shared. He smiled a little when the moonlight revealed that Meris was asleep with the book from earlier tucked against her chest. Gently, Aedris took one of his work gloves from his sack and tucked it into her arms beside the book.

Imeryali and Meris had been his constant companions and friends growing up, as the three of them were close in age. His other siblings were all considerably older and had moved on already. He would miss his sisters, but he hoped they understood....

Climbing out the low window, Aedris picked up the pace as he raced across the farmyard, not wanting to draw his father or mother's attention. His father wouldn't understand at all, he would only see Aedris' leaving as a betrayal, and his mother would be sad.

As he crept along through the night, a sense of excitement slowly began to blossom in the pit of his stomach. When he arrived at the crossroads to Amber Hills, he paused for a moment and looked back at the wagon path behind him. This was as far as he'd ever been in his entire life. Once he crossed this path, everything would be new.

"Here goes," he whispered, then laughed at himself since there was no one around. All of Pern was open to him now, and for the first time in his life, Aedris felt he could breathe.

Last updated on the May 16th 2024

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Learning to Breathe