The Old Time (1/3)

Writers: Estelle
Date Posted: 8th December 2024
Series: The Missing Wingleader

Characters: M'gan, Nirzhaya
Description: M'gan remembers his trip to the past.
Location: Elsewhere on Pern, Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 2, day 20 of Turn 12
Notes: Notes: M'gan's past timing is council approved.

The star-pattern drawing had stayed in M'gan's pocket ever since the day he'd spoken to the traders. Through drills, Fall and duties, caring for Isarth and dealing with the daily challenges of leading a Wing, it never quite left his mind.

No matter how many times he went over the trader Hanayah's words, he couldn't come up with any other explanation that made sense. Nirzhaya and Lixanth, who'd gone /between/ one summer evening and never returned, hadn't been lost after all. She'd gone back again to that time before the plague, and somehow met Hanayah's grandmother. Given her his name and Isarth's, and told her to find them if she ever needed help - but not until after a particular Turn.

The day when they'd gone back, together, to visit the past.

*** 57 Turns ago ***

Isarth emerged from /between/ in a blast of frozen cold, his rider gasping, pulling in lungfuls of the warm, salt-tasting evening air. The old dragonrider's rhyme thrummed in his head with the pounding of his heart. Black, blacker, blackest... They'd never repeated it more than once before, never been in that senseless space so long that he'd felt consciousness begin to fade, clinging to the faint thread of his bond with Isarth.

}:I knew where I was going,:{ the bronze reassured him.

**You mean - we're there?** M'gan recovered himself enough to look around. At first glance, their surroundings were no different than the moonlit bay they'd left. The shape of the cliffs was the same, the waves still crashed onto the pale curve of sand nestled in their hollow. They appeared to have gone nowhere at all.

The longer he looked, though, the more he had a sense of things being out of place. The air was slightly cooler, the breeze stronger. The scatter of driftwood on the beach had changed, as if a great hand had gathered it up and thrown it down again. And when he tilted his head back, and looked at the stars, it hit him with a wave of disorientation, far stronger than when he'd jumped back to the Weyr ahead of Lixanth.

It was the pattern he'd memorised and focused on with all his strength as they vanished into the darkness of /between/.

Suddenly, he remembered. **Lixanth!**

}:She is here.:{

M'gan's gaze snapped around, to the land side, and to his unutterable relief he saw the green there, her wings beating slowly to keep her position. Faintly, he thought he heard a yell of delight.

**We made it!** Grinning wildly, he turned in his straps and waved. They'd gone back twenty Turns!

}:Lixanth says her rider is impressed,:{ Isarth reported, a fact that gave M'gan no small sense of satisfaction. }:But she wants to try the hold. To be sure.:{

The bronzerider's euphoria faded slightly. Nirzhaya was right, they'd definitely travelled somewhere, but there was no way to prove _when_ they were in from up here. For that, they'd need to find other people. They might have done the hard part, but interacting with the past held its own dangers.

**Let's fly straight,** he suggested. After the jump they'd made, he had to admit he felt shaky about going /between/ again in an unfamiliar time. **It should only take an hour, and if we are in the past then we don't have to worry about being late back.**

Isarth turned inland, gaining height so they could get an idea of the land below. It was familiar from sweeprides - he recognised the long curve of a river off to their left as it flowed to the sea, and the distant hills to the south. The differences came to him in little jolts of surprise. A sprawling wood had drawn itself back, revealing the neat lines of fields of crops. The scattered pinpricks of light that were cotholds dotted a landscape that had been all but empty before.

**Plague emptied,** M'gan realised, sobering. What had become of all of those people? He imagined abandoned holds, overgrown by trees and brambles, vines crawling over stone. How could they talk to them, knowing what they knew?

}:Lixanth says her rider wants to meet the holders.:{

**You're not worried?**

}:If we did meet them, then we changed nothing. What is to come has happened, and will happen.:{

Perhaps it all seemed straightforward to a dragon with the ability to slip between times as well as places. M'gan couldn't suppress his disquiet so easily. It occurred to him that he could order them to return to their own time. Would Lixanth obey a bronze, even a young one without rank? Would that be more dangerous still?

By the time they reached Holinbridge Hold, the place Nirzhaya had picked out, he'd not come to a decision. The hold was hard to miss; although it was now fully dark, it blazed with lights, strung out in glittering chains of hanging lamps around the Gather square and the stalls and trader wagons drawn up around it. Dance music drifted faintly on the night breeze with the scents of roasting meat and the low rush of the river.

They landed in a cleared area which looked as though it had been set aside for the traders to camp, causing some rustling and stomping among the beasts tethered there. There weren't any other dragons in sight, which was fortunate since he didn't know how he'd have explained their presence to a pair who lived before Isarth was hatched.

"That's an old tune," Nirzhaya said, striding over from Lixanth to meet him. He'd never seen her expression like that before, with pure gleeful excitement shining in her eyes, tempered by a craftswoman's playful scepticism. "So far, so good, bronzerider. Nothing to say we can't be in the past."

"Just don't ask anyone what Turn it is." Some of his doubts over whether this had been a good idea were assuaged, to see her enthusiasm. "And don't..."

"...mention the plague. I know." If she was troubled by the thought of what was coming to these unknowing holders, she didn't show it. "Come on! Let's visit the Gather."

Last updated on the December 27th 2024

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