Brave or Foolish?

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 15th May 2007

Characters: Arateyka
Description: Arateyka talks to her father about Rahona and gets more of a lecture than she'd bargained for.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 4, day 6 of Turn 4

"Do you think she's brave, or foolish?" Arateyka asked her father, nodding across the dining room at the brown-haired, green-eyed woman with a marked likeness to R'harne.

T'kanu looked around in the direction of his daughter's nod. "R'harne's sister?"

"Mmm. She's going to leave with her weyrmate and live over –" Arateyka waved a hand in a direction that had more to do with the Northern Continent than the place she was meaning, "- there somewhere, on a boat, on a river."

"So I heard." T'kanu automatically pointed in the correct direction and smiled when Arateyka huffed and batted his hand down. "Brave or foolish? I don't know that it takes bravery." He eyed his journeywoman smith daughter with some amusement, and added: "She has the courage of her convictions, for sure."

"Huh." The smith squinted at her father. "You're saying I don't?"

"I'm saying _she_ does," he pointed out. "Don't you think?"

"How is she to know what they're really like out there?" Arateyka grumbled. "Her seacrafter might say they'll accept her but what if they don't?"

T'kanu knew very well that R'harne would always check up on his sister and her children, and suspected that Arateyka knew it too. "You don't really think everybody who doesn't live in a Weyr is automatically prejudiced and unkind, do you? Apart from a few differences in viewpoint I think you'd find most holder or crafter families much like our own."

"What about the women who turn up here? Running _away_ from holdlife?"

"Or _to_ a life they think will be easier?" T'kanu offered. "There are lots of stories out there about how easy life is here, especially since tithing began."

"You're just arguing the point for the sake of it. What about the women who want to be crafters?"

"Sure. Those with a real vocation might make their way here, but think how many of the crafter women you know here were _sent_ by their families. By their _fathers_, trying to do the best they could for those of their daughters who wanted more than was available to them."

"Exactly!" Arateyka exclaimed triumphantly. "More than was available to them!"

T'kanu smiled and took a sip from the bottle of ale in his hand before setting it carefully on the table. "Like you. I went to the smith master and asked if he would take on the one child of mine that wanted _more_. I could have told you that you were going to be a lower caverns worker like your mother and siblings."

Though she knew her father had always been supportive of her intention to apprentice as a smithcrafter she felt offended by the implication that he could have forbidden her the choice. "I would have gone ahead and apprenticed anyway."

"Defied your father? Just like the girls who run away to the Weyr? See how similar Weyr and hold life is? All over Pern there are daughters threatening to defy their fathers."

"I'm seriously considering disowning him right now," the journeywoman muttered, her frown deepening at her father's grin. "You _know_ what I mean."

"About being disowned? No?" He nodded. "Yes, I do know but you need to meet more Hold folk before you make judgements about them. Most are living ordinarily happy lives and most of the people turning up here are the disaffected ones; people who don't fit in for one reason or other."

"They make judgements about my right to be a journeywoman without meeting me," Arateyka pointed out.

"Do they? What? One smith at a tavern? How many other Hold or Hall people have you actually met?

"I've met _some_."

"Not enough. Perhaps you should go with Rahona and the children and live on those riverboats for a while – make sure she's all right. See what life outside the Weyr is like."

"I'm not leaving here."

T'kanu eyed his daughter and shrugged. "I know. But perhaps you should."

Last updated on the May 19th 2007

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Brave or Foolish?