Everywhere but Here (1/2)

Writers: Iluva
Date Posted: 23rd June 2025

Characters: R'fayne
Description: R’fayne’s first visit to his mother since Impression prompts some reflection
Location: Emerald Falls Hold
Date: month 6, day 4 of Turn 12
Notes: Mentioned: S’kand

R'fayne

Riding jackets - like the finely woven garbs worn by lord holders and high-ranking crafters - weren’t really clothes at all. They were status symbols, as much as knots on shoulders were, and just as recognizable even from a distance. R’fayne didn’t immediately shed his, leaving it open as he buckled his helmet to the riding straps until they were ready to slip /between/ again.

The heat today poured in slowly across Emerald Falls and a yellow sun shimmered playfully across the water, spikes of sunlight that lit Skadith’s great wingsails like the ocean wearing a freckled face.

There was always a smell missing from here, a presence. Noticeably absent throughout his visits, but never more than right now. It was pinned in his memory , because it was everywhere - the smell of copper and iron. Firestone and smoke. The dust of charred death floating in the tired air. The smell of life in its most sacred, most indivisible form. The smell of dragons. It was everywhere -- but not here.

The winds from the South East brought only farmlands and sweet pollen and Emerald Falls looked the same as it always did - as warm, as blindingly bright, and certainly as bustling as the Weyr. It was oddly comforting and unbelievably irritating. But of all the places they could grab a visual and slide through the cracks of /between/, Emerald Falls was rarely high on R’fayne’s list.

Even in dark, stolen, solitary moments of wanting to escape, to be someone else in those first few months of Weyrlinghood, he hadn’t found himself missing the place.

And, now that he was here, he still didn’t.

But he couldn’t delay it any longer.

The letter had come more than a week ago. He'd read it once. It still rang with her measured voice in every word, prim and precise, expectation curling between the fancy looping of her handwriting. It still sat on the table of his weyr, wedged between pages of a book he couldn't seem to get into and didn’t find all that interesting.

He could’ve written back an excuse. The easiest, quickest, tidiest, least painful solution would have been to spin some bullshit lines about his Wing obligations, even rope in S’kand, or transport, or watch duties if it came to it. Tell her Skadith was scored and grounded and oh, that's too bad. Maybe in a few months. He thought about it. More than he liked to admit, it had been more tempting to pretend it hadn’t arrived in the first place. She wouldn’t know the difference. But R’fayne didn’t. He was trying not to accept it from himself - trying to cut that urge to avoid her at the quick. And it wasn’t like she would have accepted it, anyway. The letters would have just kept coming. More at first, then probably less. The knot in his stomach would only twist itself tighter.

He wasn't a coward, he’d done this before.

**Just act like you aren’t here.** Not much of a stretch, really.

The last time he’d been to Emerald Falls had been with Veserith. Another lifetime ago, distant, barely extant at this point. C’fayne had slid down his bronze’s hide with surprising ease for someone whose protesting joints had battled all the wear and tear incurred as a much younger man, decades before R’fayne’s time. C’fayne had smiled wide, his eyes twinkling with the usual humor about his son’s lack of enthusiasm for the place.

More and more, R’fayne missed that face; it was rarely anywhere but against a pillow, his breath rolling faint and soft - softer and fainter by the day.

His dragon cast a knowing eye in his direction, mind pressing gently across the uneasy ripple of his thoughts, before his great head swung high, observing a small crowd of children gathering. Skadith regarded them with only passive interest, neither opposed nor in favor of getting closer - merely accepting that they were there, and he was here.

A moment later Skadith twisted his head back. He tried to shake out an itch from /between/ but it was an itch only R’fayne could scratch, as if completely unaware of the curious and hopeful glances pulling in their direction. Skadith groaned in relief under his fingers, just as immune to any sense of urgency emanating from his rider. His eyes whirled a soft, slow blue. It was his steadiness that truly gave R’fayne’s spine its steel.

As R’fayne vaulted down, the package safely in his pocket and the knot in his stomach still stubbornly there, he touched it through the fabric, just in case, then strode far enough to make some short introductions for the little crowd.

It took a little longer than he expected, inundated with questions.

In Threadfall, time compressed and blurred by the demands of the moment. Catching firestone, feeding firestone, relaying commands, picturing coordinates, and scanning the skies. There was rarely a chance to notice what they were shielding below. Emerald Falls felt different flying over it, protecting it. Innocuous, distant, flat. The problems of the place stayed solely on the ground and were for the people stuck on it to deal with. Time in the air blurred by in a rush. Here, it stalled.

It was disturbing to even consider that he could have grown up here. Raised to accept he might never leave. Bound to the slow-moving rhythms of Hold life and confined by words and expectations and the unceasing flow of the water. A life lived tied to the ground and amongst people who closed themselves away during Threadfall, having no choice but to wait and pray for someone else’s goodwill in the sky to save them.

He thought the first time the air of Emerald Falls hit his dragon’s wings they’d glitter like the sun. Flanked now by dark midnight blue sails and a huge, blocky head on a thick neck, a few more people did pause to admire. Some looked up from their work and away from conversations, and only a few quietly frowned. Perhaps they thought he was on Search. Here to coax their well-behaved and mannerly children into pledging their lives and service to the Weyr. Perhaps they thought something else.

Veserith had always drawn crowds, their awe and wonder made plain. But crowds were the last thing R’fayne wanted here. A small gaggle of children chatting excitedly amongst themselves was fine: young and uncertain, hovering at some invisible boundary and avoiding the hands trying to lead them off into the next part of their day.

Poor kids. The Hold and Weyr were closer than ever now that they were in the Fighting Wing, but he couldn’t see much appeal for the place; it still felt like the other side of the world, like another planet - a hole in the ground where life stagnated. Ideas slow to change, minds barely even able to open.

With Veserith, it all seemed so much easier. The bronze obscured that truth to some degree, catching the sun and every wide-eyed gaze around them. Maybe they were only staring at their own reflections in the giant mirror of his molten hide. Maybe they didn’t see the dragon, nor the man sitting astride his neck at all.

Back then, R’fayne didn’t quite recognize the silent subtext lurking just beneath all that admiration. The implication: _here_ are men of restraint, power, and ability. These are the men chosen by dragons for their strength and leadership. Bronzeriders. It had made his visits here easier than he remembered, and blindly so. Although all dragons flew in the protection of Pern - only a bronze offered that kind of shield.

Eventually the questions ended, and R’fayne took a long, deep breath.

Further out in their pens, herdbeasts and caprines bleated in tentative terror. Threat was threat and dragon was dragon to them after all. Shiny-coated runnerbeasts stood freshly groomed, the bay stallion closest. They all breathed in heavy unease. The whites of their eyes rolled as they shifted nervously, flanks twitching and heads tossing. They knew. All potential prey instinctively knew death waited for them on tooth or talon. But Skadith only looked at them as he had the little crowd, bemused and silent.

Though R'fayne didn’t show it, it was harder than he thought, hurt more than he imagined to know what people thought of him and his potential with just a glance. And she wouldn’t come out to greet them. She was somewhere within the Hold proper, unconcerned with seeing all the dragon that was _his_ to touch.

At least he never had to worry about Skadith, about leaving him unattended. Never had to remind him to be gentle, or to correct behaviours that many of his peers still struggled to curb in over-eager lifemates.

And yet he only made it a few paces before he paused, turning to look back at his dragon with a thoughtful expression and something deliberate and unsaid in his dark eyes.

Last updated on the June 24th 2025

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Everywhere but Here (1/2)