The Leaving Part

Writers: Jane, Kaysea
Date Posted: 7th May 2007

Characters: Rahona, Keirlee
Description: Keirlee helps Rahona pack for her new life on the riverboat Sungazer.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 4, day 3 of Turn 4

There were three large square baskets. Lineal had the fourth. There were two lower, rectangular baskets, one each for the children's personal things.

That was apparently all the space they would have on the riverboat.

Rahona had started getting stressed about it the moment the baskets had been delivered. Tonight she had sent the children away to annoy her brothers and started the actual packing.

Within half a candlemark she was in tears. It was _never_ going to work. Not the packing, not the move, not life on the riverboat, and not being _married_ to Lineal. Nothing was.

"What's happened?" Keirlee almost dropped the basket she was carrying, but remembered just in time, to lay it down carefully instead, she walked across to the nearest cot and lay it down gently; then turned and walked back to Rahona. "The children? Lineal?"

"The _packing!_" Rahona wailed. "The baskets are so _small!_"

"Oh!" Keirlee wasn't sure whether to laugh or not, "Is _that_ it?" She looked around at the baskets, "Hmm... I do see what you mean though, but I'm sure with a little help, and ingenuity we can make this work; that is, if you could do with an extra pair of hands?"

"Oh Keirlee," Rahona said with a sniff she would have scolded her children for, "I could do with the fattest woman in the Weyr to stomp everything flat so I don't have to leave everything behind."

"Hmm ... I'll go look for Heugia then, should I?" Keirlee asked with a sly smile.

"I don't want everything _that_ flat," Rahona muttered, managing to smile back.

Her arm slipped around Rahona's shoulder, "I'll help, and we'll get it done in no time. Though, honestly, I should steer clear of you and not give you any more encouragement in leaving."

"I _know_ I want to go," the other woman complained. "I just don't want to go through the leaving part."

"It won't be easy, but you know we'll always be here, if you ever want to come back for a visit." Keirlee knew once there, there would be little chance Rahona would be coming back, not for a while. "You do have transport, if you ever want to."

"I know. I know _everything,_" Rahona said miserably, looking around her. "But I just don't want to get rid of all the stuff so that we can fit in one little room. Did I tell you that? The four of us all sleep in one little room, half the size of the children's room here? They have bunks and we have a high bed with these baskets underneath for storage."

"Oh.." Keirlee's face fell. "Nothing more? I mean ... Lineal will be the Captain, doesn't he have a larger room for you and him, one that is separate from the children?"

"They _all_ have the same space," Rahona complained with a laugh.
"That's the way they do things, apparently, so there are no arguments.
If we have another baby, though ... Then we'd get an extra room or have to put Nalin in one of the rooms made up as a dormitory for boys."

"I'm sorry Rah, it wouldn't be the space for clothes that would get to me." Keirlee gave a wry grin. "I'd be more worried about actually conceiving a new child." She moved forward and started collecting some of the clothing and toys that Rahona had already laid out on a cot.

"I don't imagine that's going to be difficult if I'm going to share a bed with Lineal every night instead of having him visit six or seven times a Turn."

"To each their own..." Keirlee grinned, and started to roll the clothing into bundles. "Come on, woman, you have work to do, stop harping on about your lovelife!"

"At least I have something to harp on about," Rahona couldn't resist muttering as she picked up roll and leaned over the side of the deep basket to place it on the other items there. She might have chosen to go to a new life, but she had no intention of going there without a lot of bits and pieces from the old.

Last updated on the May 10th 2007

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The Leaving Part