Changing Tides

Writers: Iluva
Date Posted: 3rd May 2026

Characters: A'garyn
Description: Aegaryn surfaces from his memories and finds his footing again
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 12, day 14 of Turn 12
Notes: Mentioned: K’valas, Drenorik (NPC)
Continues directly from "Still Water”. Precedes "She's Wrong" cw for description of dead body

A'garyn

Sounds. Through the fog of memory, the scattered sounds of the barracks came around him again. Voices and laughter. The same rich abandon-- bright, hearty, unconcerned. Fierce in feeling. He heard it, but he did not understand any reason for it. It echoed down the bunks to where he sat, slightly hunched on his bed. Elbows drove into his knees. Voices of Candidates returning to change and chat.

If there were some other place to be than here and now, he would rather have opened his eyes there. Somewhere the sky was black and the sun was gone and the world was hard and frozen. That would have been better than now.

Did anyone else here know that feeling? To wake and find yourself alone and not even know all the ways you were yet? Hurry. That's all there was left of you. Hurry, or stand still and feel it. Feel anything.

The candidate barracks gathered around him, and it was still Hatching Day. Kavalas was still somewhere with Sazikoth, and someone over there was still laughing.

Aegaryn rose and broke away from his bed. He couldn’t listen to this; couldn’t be here. He was still raw and dangerously undone. He yanked whatever clothing draped over the wooden chest at the end of their bunk. Things he and Kav pulled from the Weyr’s stores, worn but a handful of times by either of them, nothing ever fitting them that well, and as someone across the room laughed again, he grabbed the nearest thing -- a bottle -- and whipped it in there, shattering it against the inside. Zolta tore after him, her wings wide and eyes still fogged with worry.

She swooped down the main hallway with an especially firm and resonant cry to clear the way, dodging a few heads and squawking angrily at someone when they turned and gasped up at her in alarm. She angled high through the archway as they entered the bathing room, long talons clutching a shelf. Their world was now this room. The Hatching Feast had drawn in the rest of the Weyr, and there was no one else here. Kav could be there, but might not, and something told Aegaryn he wouldn’t be there long if he were. He could still be at the infirmary, too, for all Aegaryn knew. He could be -- but that same thing deep in his gut knew that Kav wouldn't unless the wounds were deep, and even then maybe not. He’d survived far worse, and savage as Sazikoth was, there was an insulative quality to the link. It was palpable, it had its own vivid texture even from the outside. The way she'd _looked_ at him like he was a threat, lunged like he meant to do something. But then, what was so surprising about that? The way hatchlings looked up at their chosen ones, the way Zolta was looking down at him -- that look was one that would ensure protection and care in a way nothing and no one else could.

Aegaryn felt wrong and raw in a way he hadn’t in turns. He couldn’t speak. He shed the rest of his clothes and threw it all on the bench. Submerging in a slow, deliberate, uncompromising descent up to his ears, the water clear and hot, then all of him, he didn’t move. Water ran into his ears and his nostrils, stung his eyes. Sounds receded; the world faded into warm oblivion, a pleasant, far-away haze. For a few moments he couldn’t bring himself to come up.

What had happened, Aegaryn realized, was a natural, if dreadfully unwanted, consequence.

Dragons made choices, same as people. Some were yours, and some were someone else’s. You just didn’t always know which ones were which until long after they were made -- hours, days, and sometimes turns. Until a green dragon was there. Until his breath stalled and his true understanding of just how much risk was involved, just what the real cost was, or how much he'd actually agreed to, slipped into place, but by then, it didn’t matter.

Drenorik had wanted more than Opal Cove. He was young and full of good humor and excitement, and he wouldn’t have been able to live in some empty room, tucked away from sight, brought out in pity, in charity, having someone else tend to him while he sat in a chair and looked out the window and stared at whatever piece of the sky was there that day. No riding. No adventures. Nothing but what could fit in the length of his lap. At night he imagined it would have been hard for Dren to find sleep, because in a dream he could be somewhere else for a while, and then he might forget. Until he woke, until reality poured in on top of him again, and his legs were back to being there but gone, just useless weight that kept him where he was, and anything else went back to being impossible again.

Aegaryn had been fighting the thought of him constantly since coming to the Weyr, but that was like trying not to need air. Now he thought about the wind pulling at Dren’s hair there on the ground and the decision he’d made on that hill. He’d been sitting there a long time, crying, sobbing, urging, shouting, when it came to him like a flash.

He broke the water’s surface and dragged in air. His chest didn’t want him to. He went down again, slipping to the bottom of the pool, and the silence stretched longer, the muffled quiet of the water pushing the world further away.

He remembered. He remembered thinking, in whatever part of him that could still think on that hill, that he had to do this.

To be with Dren now when, before, he’d foolishly rejected everything his brother was telling him and then left him alone to grab a nervous runner. To _not_ leave him again.

He remembered the way the sky pulled wisps of cirrus clouds overhead as he led Amak back. How hard waves thrashed down the shore and how all he could think of was the animals haunting those craggy, vacant fields, always in search of an easy meal. The terror and the grief and the responsibility had set him ablaze. He held Amak’s mane tight, shushing him, shushing him. The sickening panic of seeing Dren like that didn’t fade, and the vicious terror grew, and the responsibility he felt for why inflated so huge it railed against his ribs like another ill-fated creature. It was slow and difficult. He cried a long time before he could get himself to try. Drenorik was bigger, heavier, and more muscled. Aegaryn had just managed to get him on his shoulder and then off the ground, his knees quaking traitorously under his weight, got Dren up and then, swaying a little, almost up onto Amak’s back when his footing faltered and his ankle caught between the rocks -- the suddenness made Amak shy again, and Aegaryn grasped uselessly for something, anything to hold onto, before he stumbled backward with a hard, horrible smack. Dropped him.

The pain in his arm stopped registering when he managed to get free and saw the sorry state of Drenorik’s face -- torn on one side, a jut of pale cheekbone peeking through the brilliant red flesh underneath. His one intact eyebrow quirked up, still faintly amused, the fine line of his nose badly broken. He was seventeen and tall and his face torn open.

Half handsome, half destroyed.

Amak was gone, and it occurred to Aegaryn, then, horrifyingly, that it looked like something deliberate. Violent. Like something one person would inflict on another. Drenorik lay crumpled and broken and wrong, and all at once it didn’t matter that it was an accident. That it had been one idiotic choice after another. Or that it was Aegaryn who made the decision for them to leave the Hold to celebrate, or that Drenorik had agreed to go, or that they were just boys and had made a mistake together by racing out there that day.

It was true, they had only been boys, and there was nothing he could do about it now, but it was still a mistake. It was still a hideous, sickening thing to think about. It all still led to that horrible place on that hillside. Much later, choking, through tears, he’d tried to explain and then beg, but the only true thing by then was his mother’s incoherent sobbing in the next room. What mattered was that as much as he could love a person and want to take it all back, it didn’t change that Drenorik was gone.

He touched his brother’s memory as closely, as lovingly, as piously as he could now. Dren was warm and open and kind and strong. He wanted more for himself. For them. He tried to hold onto those parts, but they only made his absence heavier, the result worse, and it was the pain Aegaryn’s mind kept coming back to.

He could say the truth of it, that it wasn’t his fault.

Or he could say, just as truthfully, that it was.

Zolta fussed and fussed at the lip of the pool when he hauled himself out of the water. She was relentless, driven, her shrill squawks bouncing high off the walls. A thing maddened. She crowded in too close to let him move without bumping her and then batted him with her wings when he tried to stand. ~Hurt. Hurt. Help?~ In an instant she leapt into his lap and up against his scarred chest. ~Help.~ She insisted and pressed her cheek against his. She was soaking wet herself by the time he peeled her off him, but she immediately tried to crawl back.

“I’m okay.” He told her. She didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe him.

The day that had played in his mind when he and Kavalas made the choice to Stand was not this one.

He knew he stood no real chance out there. He hardly thought a dragon would take either of them, given their histories, but Kavalas was one of the best, and it was not so far out of the realm of possibility that one might get close enough and see that. Selfishly, though, deep in his chest, he wished she hadn’t.

But none of that mattered, either. Nothing that could be planned, seen or not seen, wanted or unwanted mattered out there on the Sands. Such was the way of dragonkind, and he knew that now. Gathering Zolta up, Aegaryn deposited her gently on the bench. She waited anxiously while he pulled a towel around himself, and then she was back, determined to fix, to comfort, to do whatever she decided she needed to do. Her cheek melded soft and warm against his again, the way it was many times over the turns when he’d needed it. Loyal, sweet. Startlingly so. When she finally relented, he dragged in a painful deep breath. He glanced down. Adoringly she stared back, humming with a delicate layer of hope. Nine turns they’d been bonded, but she chose him. Again, and again, she chose to be near him. She enjoyed his touch, still sought out his presence. Still saw him as her thing to nurture and guard.

“Thanks, Z,” Aegaryn murmured. His life would have been much different without her. Worse in more ways than one.

He hadn’t brought more than a change of clothes. Rifling through the odd mix of items left behind by other bathers, drops of water jumping everywhere, he popped the lid off a jar. “Here.” He didn’t need to call her twice; Zolta was already twisting into his arms. She loved being oiled. On his lap the luminous shimmer of her eyes glowed blue against his hand. The way she stretched, rolling on her side, then her back, so that he could coat each limb, each side. Her enjoyment radiated through their link, and he smiled suddenly at her long, whistling trill of satisfaction. She wore scars, souvenirs of altercations, the same as he. She’d lived in the same harshness as he had. She hadn’t known comfort for turns. But here, of all places, now, he could give it to her. He did so with single-minded purpose, the old scars on her hide fading slightly into her shine under that delicate film of oil, a little like ink diluting across a page.

He watched her golden eyelids fall. And something in him, quiet and uncertain, wondered -- could he be trusted with something that needed him?

He didn't have that answer. But Zolta was still here.

And Kavalas was not dead, and Aegaryn understood. Sazikoth had only done what was natural, not what was wanted or willed by anyone else, not even Kavalas, because that was what dragons did. They chose someone. That decision had never been his and had never been Kav’s.

He dressed quickly, pulling fabric on as fast as he’d taken it off, and left the bathing room, though with no intention of returning to the candidate barracks.

The storm was still rumbling outside. A Hatching Feast that ensnared the entire Weyr in celebration was underway beneath the rain, beneath the stone. His heart thudded harder when he reached the Weyrbowl. He saw dragons landing on the damp ground, in the high crooks of ledges, wings wide in the wind, and letting their calls join it, vast declarations of joy and opinion. Zolta sailing ahead with his image in mind, he followed. He just had to know that Kavalas was okay. He needed to know, to see for himself.

Aegaryn gazed up at the dark expanse of clouds, and he thought about Dren and all that he had wanted for them and all that he did not get. The guilt was there; it would not let go. He never expected it to. But some part of him still held on to how much his brother had wanted him here. And, despite everything, he was. And Kav was. The love and guilt would still be there, later, tomorrow, probably always; maybe that was just how they had settled into his bones. The future was still to be. Right now all he wanted was to see him.

Last updated on the June 4th 2026

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Changing Tides