Dear Ketlyn

Writers: Yvonne
Date Posted: 22nd May 2024

Characters: Ketlyn
Description: Ketlyn receives a letter from home
Location: Barrier Lake Weyr
Date: month 10, day 11 of Turn 11

When Ketlyn found a letter on her bed after chores that evening she was off like a shot, racing from the Candidate's quarters down to the beach near the lighthouse so she could read it without having anyone peeking over her shoulder. This was private.

She slowed as she got to the beach and picked her way through stones and waterweeds on the shoreline. Several flits spiralled up chittering in admonishment as her shadow crossed their sun-warmed perches. The letter was crumpled by the time she found a rock to sit on.

'Dear Ketlyn,

We are all very glad that you are doing well at your lessons. Thank you for the work sheets. Verraki has decided that she wants to be a Smith too, but work with animals. We keep trying to tell her that's wrong but she wants to run off to the Weyr and live with you and be an Animal Smith. Think there's room for a five turn old under your bed?'

Her heart squeezed and in that moment Ketlyn would have given up a pinky finger just to be able to hug her littlest sister. Verraki was so funny, and she'd missed so much of her life... her sister had been just a baby when she'd left. Barely walking.

'The travelling Harper came for the last two sevendays. Minteran and Vekal are getting better at adding but I had to waste a bunch of time tracking Kevan down because he ran away and hid in the woods because he didn't want to go to lessons. Tris passed her geography test. Mil and I had to work in the far fields instead.'

It wasn't fair how Kemmin and Mil had to give up their learning in order to work on the family cothold. Guilt made Ketlyn squirm where she sat on her rock. She could go to classes every day while her family made do with a few sevendays here and there, if they had time to take in classes at all.

If she was home, she could have made Kevan see sense and maybe, just maybe, freed up enough time for Mil at least to learn. They were smart and with some education they could foster or get a job at a different cothold, or maybe even a Hold proper. If she gave up her future, her siblings could have a better life...

But she had no desire to go home. **I'm a bad person.** She returned to reading with a heavy heart.

'Ma is pregnant again--'

Ketlyn stopped. She read the letters again, hoping that they'd rearrange themselves into something that didn't taste like bile. Her mother was _pregnant_.

**Flame her to ashes!** Foul language curled against her tongue. **Shit, shit, scorch it!**

'Ma is pregnant again, about four months she thinks. She and Da are going to go visit her sister at Amber Hills Hold to take a holiday and maybe go to the coast. I'm thinking about proposing to Carillyn in the next valley just so I don't have to be around for the birth but lets face it, if I do then she'd be stuck here taking care of the baby and I'd still be knee deep in mud working in the field.

Don't come home, and come get me when you Impress your dragon.

All my love,

Kemmin''

Ketlyn read the letter twice and still came away feeling awful. Kevan being a brat, the kids barely getting any education, and worst of all an eighth sibling on the way. It was awful to hate one's parents, but Ketlyn hated hers. Their cothold barely functioned with six kids at home, they were having another child, and they were going on a _holiday_ and leaving all the responsibility of taking care of the kids and farm on Kemmin's shoulders.

Well, his and Tris'. Tris was fifteen now, a full two turns older than Ketlyn had been when she'd been Searched. Her sister had taken on Ketlyn's duties when she'd left... or rather, those duties had been reassigned by their mother. Their stupid, pregnant mother who was probably even now sitting with her feet up and yelling at Tris for not keeping the cot cleaner.

**I should go home,** Ketlyn thought. Kemmin and Tris could use the help. She stared out at the water without seeing the burnished golds and flower pinks of the sunset, or the flash of green dragon wings over the snowy white sails of the ships that came in and out of the harbor. There was absolutely no way that she'd go home. There were eggs on the Sands.

**Maybe this time I'll Impress,** she thought bleakly. Maybe then she'd be able to rescue her brother, and all her siblings. Maybe then she'd be able to do something right, and in doing so, ease the lump in her chest and the guilt in her heart.

Maybe.

Last updated on the May 24th 2024

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Dear Ketlyn