Moonshine

Writers: Iluva
Date Posted: 9th June 2025

Characters: N'mar, Jolara
Description: Neymar lends a hand with the laundry
Location: Barrier Lake Weyr
Date: month 7, day 10 of Turn 12
Notes: Mentioned: Aydhara, A’radess

N'mar

Having found her stooped on the stairs, nearly falling backward from the weight she carried on her shoulders, Neymar had been quick to offered his help with the laundry. The rest of the stairs weren’t difficult, the distance comparatively shorter to what she must have already covered, but he was not entirely sure where she found the strength to get it this far.

She looked like his grandmother, a grandmother; weathered hands as mighty as vice grips, the kind his father had from hauling in the nets every day, a spine wilted like a stalk, an alarmingly uneven gait that had her swaying side to side with each step. Her eyes were deeply set, bright in a matrix of wrinkles - from squinting, maybe. Leaning over tables and tags and names and mountains of clothing that must all blur together after particularly busy days. Hatchings must be a real nightmare down there, he thought.

“They try to keep me downstairs,” Jolara said with a note of disapproval tinging her cheeriness. “Always telling me ‘leave it to the drudges’, ‘leave it for the Candidates’, but why? It’s _my_ job, and there’s nothing wrong with me. Is there?”

“No, ma’am.” Neymar answered loyally.

“Look at me, I’m just as able as I was ten Turns ago. Twenty Turns ago. I don’t need to sit down and watch them muck and mangle it, unfold and wrinkle everything up. Mix up every tag. Get bold and cheeky and start going through other peoples’ belongings.” Jolara shook her grey-haired head. “This is easier.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Neymar must have showed his surprise, because she barked a laugh, wrinkles rippling to and fro.

“Oh, yes. Sticky fingers, too. Sometimes. Those rider marks always get put to good use.” They came to the girl’s side of the barracks and she hobbled in with a mountainous stack of clothes while he waited, shifting from foot to foot in the quiet seconds that dragged by.

More than once Neymar carefully adjusted the sacks filled with firmly pressed clothes, everything tagged and compacted for maximum efficiency. He wondered how many times she’d done this. How many loads had she sorted, shouldered, and delivered with this kind of happy exactitude? How many more had she told herself she’d do until something better came along? How many times had she turned around and found more wrinkles and fewer dreams waiting for her?

She had the place mapped out so well that if he hadn’t arrived Turns ago, just as the Weyrhold’s construction began jumping off the pages that held their plans, Neymar would have felt certain she'd always been here.

Reappearing with a smile, Jolara teased, “Not falling asleep on your feet, are you?”

“No, ma’am.” Neymar shook his head, straightening and following her until she halted and sorted and then sent him into the boys’ side of the barracks. He paid extra close attention to the tags, not wanting to mess up what someone had worked so hard to perfect. They were done up like birthingday gifts, he thought - the same sort of care he saw whenever his mother presented them with new sweaters, insisting on wrapping every new pair of boots, the sleek fishing rods and heavy paddles for the skiffs, the way freshly baked goods in waxed paper were tied with ribbons and scrawled with little messages of her - and Pa’s, too, of course - love.

She was wiping her brow when he emerged empty-handed and fairly sure everything had landed at their intended destinations. Neymar sighed his satisfaction. “There. All done. Is there anything else I can help you with, ma’am?”

“No, laddy. That’s about it for me. It’d take too long to explain all the things waiting for me downstairs.” Jolara patted his hand gratefully, a flood of heat radiating from her palm. Her blue eyes twinkled up at him, sensing his sudden hesitation. “You alright? You look like you just swallowed a flit.”

Neymar grinned sheepishly, flushing a little at her observation. “No, no. I was just wondering…”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever fished?”

That was not what she was expecting. Jolara blinked a few times and then laughed heartily. “Oh. Oh, yes. My family were all fishers, back in the Interval days. That obvious, is it?”

Neymar cocked his head to the side, intrigued.

Jolara seemed to know the next question before he did. “River Bluff,” was all she said. With a singular pat on his shoulder - which she strained precariously to touch - she hobbled off, waving over her shoulder. “Thanks for the help. And not a word downstairs about it, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“G’night, laddy.”

“Good night.” Neymar watched her until she’d finally made it back down the stairs and then wandered into the common room. A few other candidates sat sprawled in chairs, chatter churning through the air.

River Bluff. That was a sobering thought. She seemed like an old piece of driftwood, stripped of all her color, gnarled by the elements. And nature had taken her home, maybe even her children. He didn’t ask that, wouldn’t dare ask - it didn’t seem right. It wouldn’t be polite. It wasn’t his place to pry, anyway. But he couldn’t help the thinking that followed. Nature could take and wash away and swallow earth, destroy homes in just about any place, but it couldn’t quite catch up with her yet. The nature of ageing, glaringly obvious in her roughened, gravelly voice, still had not fully taken root. He refused to believe that anything could convince her to stop or slow down at this point.

A little while later he sat on his cot, feet aching dully from the long day. Finding a stylus and a piece of hide, Neymar tried to collect his thoughts for his letter. Shells, he needed to get his hands on a flit egg for himself, too. It’d make sending them home a lot faster, in some cases instantaneously - which was always the best way to send good news. Aydhara had that nice little blue now, but he didn’t know enough dragonriders with the time to take him out looking on restdays. He could ask Aydhara, he supposed, but she might want something in return,, and it was a little hard to read her sometimes.

His hand met the page, and he wrote,

“Dear Ma,

I spoke with a friend, A’radess, and he agreed to transport you here on Hatching day.” Neymar tried to retroactively jot ‘bronzerider’ in the little bit of space he’d left before A’radess’ name, but it came out too jumbled to be legible. He drew a line through it, “Just tell Pa that a dragon is more like a canine than a tunnelsnake - that might work long enough to get him here. Ha ha.”

He paused. News had been circulating like an angry gale over dinner that Imbeth had finally retreated to the Hatching cavern, so it would only be a few short weeks before it was Time. It felt forever away. Neymar’s stomach still fluttered about at thought, a surge of excitement washing over him as he gripped the stylus again.

“Tell Marellon he can come too, but only if you think he can behave himself.” His smirk tugged the corners of his lips, already anticipating how his brother would react to _that_. “I will send you another letter when the day is close and the Weyrlingmasters say it’s time and the eggs look ready.” Did eggs look ready? He didn’t know how else to phrase that, unfortunately. How to describe it to people who had set neither foot nor sail into a Weyr before.

Nevertheless, he continued, “Things are good here. I’m excited for you to finally see this place. There were these four huge ships in the harbour today, as full as the busy season at home - Can you believe that? All I could think about was Pa. He’s gonna faint. But he'll like that it smells so much like home. If you can think you can stay a night, you’ll get to see it all, but I think you’ll like the lighthouse, and the way the moons shine across the lake the best.

Love to you, and tell Pa I’m wishing him calm seas

Neymar”

He folded it up, tucking it safely under his pillow. A moment later and he stretched out on his cot, heart thumping gently in his chest. Whether he Impressed this time, or next time, or never, his family would be here soon. They would see the walls he called home. Neymar hoped it would stay that way forever, and perhaps for that reason he actually let himself believe that it would.

Last updated on the June 22nd 2025

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Moonshine