All Grown Up

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 21st November 2006

Characters: Arateyka
Description: Arateyka helps her father shift weyrs.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 13, day 14 of Turn 3

"Couldn't we get Ailinth to do this?"

T'kanu eyed his daughter until she huffed in defeat and picked up her end of the box.

"And where are the others?" Arateyka asked, trying not to whine like a six Turn old. "Tey – Lhara. Anyone?"

She hauled the box upward when her father did, setting it on the flat bed of the trolley. Pulling her hand out of the rope handle she inspected the ridges on her fingers.

"I thought smiths had tough hide."

"Skin. We have _skin._" Arateyka looked around the rider's quarters that her father had occupied almost as long as she could remember. "Why are we doing this?" The room seemed emptier than it should have with just the personal effects removed. The furniture was still there – clothes press, bed, a handful of chairs. The old box that had always been at the end of the bed was on the trolley now, ready to be wheeled to its new home at the foot of some other bed, and still no explanation had been forthcoming from her father.

"_You_ are helping because I asked you to and you are a kind and devoted daughter."

"Uh-huh. Apparently the only one. Come on, you can tell me. Why the sudden need to move?"

"No _need,_" T'kanu corrected, lowering the draw bar on the trolley, thus released the simple brakes from the wheels. "I'll steer, you push."

Aratekya turned from the room and bent slightly to get her hands onto the back rail of the trolley. After a moment's effort they were moving along the corridor. "Well can you at least tell me how far we're going?"

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"I _can._"

She straightened up, taking her hands off the railing and stopping in the middle of the corridor. From the other end of the slowing trolley her father looked back and grinned.

"There's been a vacancy. One of the sea view weyrs. Are you going to push?"

"If you're going to talk." She pushed at the railing again, and again they moved off. "Didn't you have one of those – before?"

"Before I was burdened with six children," T'kanu agreed with his back to her as he steered the trolley along the corridor. There was nothing wrong with his daughter's muscles and they were moving at a good pace.

"And the rest." Her father and mother had six children together, but her father had other relationships that had produced off-spring.
Nevertheless she understood what her father meant. His long relationship with Delhara conferred a special relationship with his six children to her that most of the others didn't have.

Her father ignored her muttered comment. "Once there would have been nothing to moving back once you were all grown." Before the Weyrholds' queens had started rising more and more frequently, producing clutches that were larger each time. Before the Red Star had come back. "It's different these days. There's competition for those weyrs."

"Dead men's boots."

It was strange to hear his daughter voice the thought that made him ambivalent about the move. Not a death, but a maiming that would mean a ground level weyr for dragon and rider for the rest of their lives. It could easily have been him and Ailinth.

"So," Arateyka prompted as she glanced up to check that her father was doing his part of the job, "It's because of the competition for the view that we're moving in before breakfast?"

"I have permission," the brownrider said loftily. Possession could sometimes out-manoeuvre permission, though, and he wasn't chancing anybody else taking possession.

"And you'll be half the weyr away from us."

"Have to say, that appeals."

The smith journeywoman smiled. While she and her siblings had always been sure of their father's affection, they had also always been aware that he liked being alone. Alone with Ailinth - that kind of never-alone-ness that riders often found enough.

"You're all grown up now. Even Lhara."

Lhara who had been the baby for so long. She was fourteen Turns old now. More than old enough to Stand but T'kanu hadn't pushed for her to do so as he had his other daughters. He had wanted the bond he had with Ailinth for his children and encouraged them all to Stand. The eldest had Impressed, his son hadn't and eventually grown too old to be eligible. The next child, Ykana, had also Impressed. Arateyka hadn't, and carried on with her craft, then Tey had started to Stand, just as Thread started to Fall again. Suddenly his certainty about his children Standing had evaporated, made worse when Ykana and Sevayeth disappeared /between/ after being scored during 'Fall. He was a dragonrider; he believed in the history and traditions of his kind, but was wasn't sure that he wanted to sacrifice any more children to Thread.

Lhara, though, had other plans. She was free of lessons now, spending her days working in the lower caverns. She wanted to Stand like 'everybody' else did and he didn't know what he wanted. She was the child of a dragonrider, born in the Weyrhold; she had the right to Stand.

"And that's why you're moving? Because we're all grown up?"

"I'm moving because there's a vacancy in one of the most sought after areas of the Weyr," he corrected. "And all of you are capable of finding me now, whatever weyr I'm in."

"Too capable?" Arateyka teased.

He pulled the draw bar around the corner, glancing back to make sure the length of the trolley would clear the stonework. "I wouldn't say that."

He might mean it, though. She would have to remind the babies of the family to give him some space. "Poor T'kanu."

He smiled but deflected the sympathy, as light as it was. " 'Poor T'kanu', nothing. You're the one who's going to be carrying the heavy end of this up the stairs."

Last updated on the November 23rd 2006

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All Grown Up