Two's Company

Writers: AL, Jane
Date Posted: 31st March 2008

Characters: Rahona, Eliste
Description: Rahona visits Eliste while on bedrest and keeps her company for a while.
Location: Elsewhere on Pern
Date: month 8, day 25 of Turn 4

"My turn to keep you company," Rahona said as she knocked on the open door to the passenger stateroom. "If you want company, that is," she added. "I'm Rahona, Lineal's wife."

"Oh! Hello!" Eliste lowered the miniature quilt upon which she was working and offered a half smile to the lady who entered. "I'm sorry, but we never met. I...I didn't even realise the captain was married."

"No? He'd better not have done anything to suggest he wasn't," Rahona said with a happy confidence in her good-looking husband's behaviour.
"We have two children aboard, too. Nalin and Lihona." As she named them she waved a hand to indicate their height. "Now, do you want me to stay and talk to you? I was told to let you have some time alone if you wanted that."

"Oh, no, company would be nice." There was a chair flush against the wall a little ways from the bed. Eliste indicated that Rahona should make use of it. "And no, your husband has never done anything to indicate that he is not taken by someone. I just didn't realise...well, I didn't really talk to him very much."

"Then I don't suppose it came into the conversation," Rahona said as she settled into the chair and set her work bag on the low table beside it. "I hear you're a wonderful quilter."

Eliste's cheeks turned pink and she looked down at the almost finished quilt on her lap. "Well, I'm all right at it." She ran her hand over the fabric. She enjoyed the feel of fabric, something she found to be common among most of the quilters she knew. "I enjoy doing it, and I've found it to be useful."

"Beautiful," the older woman corrected. "Not just useful." She indicated the quilts hanging on the walls and the one folded at the end of the bed the passenger occupied. "The riverboats use them, certainly, but they're used because they're beautiful."

"Yes." Eliste nodded in agreement. "They are beautiful." She fingered the small quilt once more and then looked back up to Rahona. "Do you quilt?"

"I'm learning. Apparently it's something all riverboat women do, and if I'm to become a real riverboat woman, then I have to learn. The basics, at least."

A small smile tugged at the corner of Eliste's lips. "It can become an addiction. Do you enjoy it?"

"Not really. Not like the women who were born on the Nettleweed do."

"Oh." Eliste tilted her head and regarded the woman. "You shouldn't feel like you must do it if you don't enjoy it. Is there something that you do enjoy?"

"Not really," Rahona said slowly. "I like a lot of things, but I don't have a real passion for anything - not like the quilters."

"I see." Eliste began to work on the quilt once more as they talked.
She liked to keep her fingers moving. "Well, maybe you just haven't found something to be passionate about yet. So, I gather from some of the things you've said that you were not always on the riverboat?"

"No, not me. We're newcomers, the children and I. Lineal was born on the Sungazer; his father was the old captain. But he met me while he was away, working as a seacrafter on the coast."

"Oh, I see." Eliste lifted her gaze back up to Rahona and studied her for a moment. "And, you two decided to marry? Or did your parents decide?"

"Our _parents_?"

She sounded surprised, which surprised Eliste. "I guess that means your parents did not arrange the marriage."

"Well, Lineal's father was here, on the Sungazer and my father - well, I don't know that it would have occurred to him. Lineal and I haven't been weyrmated all that long. Ten Turns? I wasn't exactly young at the time."

"So it was your choice, then." Eliste knew that some women had such luxury. She, however, had not been one of them. "I see. Do you like it on the riverboat?"

"I love it. I wasn't sure - there are such awful tales of women's lives outside the Weyr. Now _that's_ something my family was worried about. But no, it's a wonderful life and the best thing I ever did - perhaps apart from telling Lineal he could be my weyrmate if he liked."

"Tales?" She was fortunate, Eliste thought, to have only had to experience awful tales. "I...I'm glad you like it. I'm afraid I have no experience with any weyrlife."

"I don't think anybody would expect you to," Rahona assured her. "I was born there - my family have been dragonriders for generations - and so I didn't know any different."

"I see." Eliste was about to comment more, to say that perhaps it was best that she didn't know any different. She certainly wouldn't have wished her type of situation upon anyone. However, the young woman refrained. She did not need to spill her past upon Rahona. Besides, she had just met her. "I've never ridden upon a dragon."

"No? Not many people seem to have. That was a surprise, I suppose. Do you think we all expect other people to have lived lives like our own? or is that just me?"

"No, I think there is always some sense of expectation there." Eliste agreed. After all, she was surprised to find that Rahona hadn't had a marriage arranged for her. "I suppose it comes from only knowing one way of things."

"Well, my children will know two ways of life," the older woman said firmly, staring for a moment at the hole in the shirt of Nalin's she had pulled from the basket. For such a quiet boy he was hard on his clothes. "The Weyr and the river."

"Perhaps they will be more flexible then." Eliste suggested quietly, "More adaptable."

"I hope so. Especially if either of them decides to go back and Stand for Impression."

"Do you think they will?" While Eliste had never been to the weyr or even ridden on a dragon, she had been curious about them and wondered on occasion what it would be like to have impressed one.

"I don't even know if they will _want_ to, any more," Rahona said with a smile. "But that's all right. They can have wonderful lives here on the river, or go to the Weyr. They have choices to make." She thought of Lineal's father, Jesten, allowing his only son to go off seacrafting because that was what the boy-Lineal desperately wanted. "And we'll let them make them."

Last updated on the April 5th 2008

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Two's Company