Other Than That

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 25th December 2006

Characters: Arateyka, T'kanu, Teykara, Delhanu
Description: Arateyka visits her father and finds he already has guests.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 1, day 8 of Turn 4

A bell was needed in the weyr, she thought, thumping on the door. It was a pleasant evening outside, fine but not too hot, and her father was probably sitting out on Ailinth's ledge. Since the ledge was necessarily in front of the weyr and these rider's quarters were off to one side of the main cavern and near the back, it was possible that no amount of hammering at the door would be heard.

"Should've guessed," Delhanu muttered pulling the door open, surprising his sister. "All that noise. Had to be you. T'kanu's on the ledge."

"Figured he would be," she said as she walked inside and closed the door behind her. "You … just visiting?"

"I brought ales." He made a show of eyeing her empty arms as they moved through the bare rider's quarters and across the empty dragon weyr.
"You, however, appear to have arrived empty-handed."

"I brought charm. And you couldn't possibly have brought any of that."
Arateyka rounded the front of the weyr cavern and looked along the wide ledge. "Teykara as well. What did you bring?"

"A subtle sense of humour. You'll have to get her a chair, Delhanu."

"Not in this Pass." The young man settled into the chair he had vacated to answer the door and picked up his ale. "She can sit on the rock.
It's plenty warm enough."

T'kanu, as was his usual policy, didn't get involved in his children's squabble. "How was your day?" he asked his smithcrafter daughter as she settled down on the ledge with her booted feet hanging over the edge.
It wasn't anything like a shear drop, more of a steep slope down to the broad terrace that stretched below them for dragonlengths in each direction. Like most weyrbred children Arateyka had little fear of heights and the regular thump of her boots against the limestone punctuated the evening.

"The usual. Well," she remembered that it hadn't been exactly like that. "I took the apprentices for classes and workshops all day because their usual journeyman was sick. That was interesting."

"Interesting in that you'd like to do it again?"

"No, just interesting."

"Were they very little apprentices that made you feel all maternal and think of having babies?" Teykara asked with a smile for her younger sister.

"They were senior apprentices," Arateyka explained. "All gangly and awkward and so they made me think of how awful Delhanu was at that stage."

"At least I grew out of it – unlike some who are stuck there."

T'kanu sipped his ale, smiling at their banter. They teased and squabbled but were all remarkably close and that pleased him. Of course, they had never needed fostering because their mother, Delhara, had raised them all herself. If that made them closer than most siblings he didn't think that was necessarily a bad thing, especially when it was appearing less and less likely as time went on that any more of them would Impress. Close family members – and the closeness was more a matter of upbringing than blood ties – could sometimes be a liability in the same wing.

"Lhara's going to Stand," he said from the line his thoughts had taken.

"Mmm. She was saying the other morning," Arateyka said. "Happy about it?" She turned a little on the rocky edge so that she could see her father's expression. There had never been time to ask him how he felt about it when they had been moving his gear into the new weyr.

"Mixed feelings," he admitted. "I'd like to think some of you inherited something from me –"

"Other than our startling good looks?" Delhanu asked. Of the six of them only Ykana and Lhara had taken after their mother – the rest (including the three of them there) were all like enough to be immediately recognisable as T'kanu's children.

T'kanu took a sip of the ale his son had bought and nodded. "Yes, other than that."

Last updated on the December 26th 2006

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