Change Can Be Good

Writers: AL, Jane
Date Posted: 1st August 2009

Characters: Eliste, Rahona
Description: Eliste and Rahona talk about their new lives aboard the Sungazer.
Location: Elsewhere on Pern
Date: month 4, day 1 of Turn 5
Notes: Riverboat Sungazer

"People keep saying how long it's been since there was a baby born aboard," Rahona said to Eliste when she found the other woman in the woven reed armchairs at the rear of the crew deck. In her arms was the newest crewmember of the Sungazer, Rahona and Lineal's second son Jestlin. "I hope they're not commenting on his crying keeping them awake."

"Has he been crying a lot?" Eliste honestly wouldn't have noticed. She could tune children out pretty well - children except for her own. Follen's cry was not something she could ignore, even if she had wanted to try. She reached out to gentle caress the newborn's cheek.

"A little bit." Rahona moved Jestlin around so that the other woman could get a better look at his sleeping face. "Or perhaps it's me. I'm used to rock walls and living in caverns - your noise doesn't affect others at the Weyr. It's only a little cry, I'll admit. A newborn sort of sound, not like the noise he'll be making over not getting his own way in a Turn or two."

"Some newborns are loud." Follen had a good pair of lungs himself. "I doubt that people are bothered by it though."

"Uncle Barr probably is," Rahona said in an undertone, laughing at the thought of the grumpy old man who was Eliste's father-by-marriage. "Though I don't think any of the engineers have very good hearing."

"Uncle Barr might say he is," Eliste confided her own hushed manner, "But I think underneath that gruffness he really adores the children."

"Does he like Follen?" Rahona wondered whether the old man was kinder toward the babe Fog regarded as his own, or whether Barr held to the fact of the boy's parentage. "If he has a soft spot for anyone it seems to be for the three little girls. He grumbles _about_ them a lot, but I've noticed he's much nicer _to_ them than to everybody else."

"He seems to be." Eliste fingered her son's cheek and the child looked up at her, wide eyed. "Barr's not so bad. He's just grumpy on the outside."

"Probably because he's more than a bit deaf," Rahona agreed. "Isn't it nice that we had a boy, too, so these two can grow up together? The three little girls are such good friends and it would be awful for Follen to grow up without a companion his own age."

"It is very nice." A boon companion, a bosom buddy. Eliste was glad that her son would not be the only one his age. "Of course, that means twice the trouble they'll get into."

"If they get into half the trouble of the little girls we should be able to survive. Those three are terrors together, though apparently they weren't so bad alone." Rahona sighed. "I hope that doesn't actually mean they weren't so bad before Lihona arrived."

"Really? I haven't seen any trouble with them." Of course, Eliste hadn't been around all of them _that_ long. "They're delightful, really."

"So delightful we've left them ashore for a couple of sevendays," Rahona said with a chuckle. "Somehow it's more expected that the boys will be the ones getting into scrapes of that sort but I suppose it's a - a reassurance, really, that life on the Sungazer isn't restrictive for the girl children."

"Restrictive?" Eliste lifted an eyebrow at Rahona. Ah, well, she was from the Weyr. Things were quite a bit different there. After all, Eliste had thought that was where she would eventually end up after she had left Helvar. "The Sungazer holds a lot more freedom than some places."

"More than I expected 'out here'," Rahona agreed. "Did you know much about life on the river before you came aboard, Eliste?"

"Nothing at all." Eliste shook her head to echo her words. "I knew a riverboat traversed the river, but had never given thought to what life on a riverboat would be like."

"I don't think I even knew about riverboats," the former Weyr resident admitted. "There were none on our river and I suppose I've never been far from home, despite having dragonriders in in the family. Isn't that odd?"

"I don't know. Is it?" It would have seemed odd to Eliste if Rahona had been a dragonrider, but she wasn't. Rahona was as limited in her movement as anyone else, having to resort to requesting rides from dragonriders if she did wish to travel by dragon. "Are most weyrfolk well traveled?"

"Nowadays I think they are. But when I was young the Weyrs were rather more ... empty. We felt a bit like plague survivors camping out in the corner of a Hold, even when there was no plague. And we kept pretty much to ourselves, or visited the other remaining Weyrs. It was a very different life."

"Why were the Weyrs so empty?" Eliste tried to remember back to her harper lessons, but she had been so young and when she was older, she had been kept home to learn how to be a good wife. Further training was saved for the male children.

"Because we thought Thread was gone. I suppose the dragons did too. And the population just dwindled. Of dragons, I mean, which dictates how many people there are at a Weyr, too. But that happened over centuries. And then - bang! The queens started rising more often and having _huge_ clutches." Rahona remembered the confusion and uncertainty. "We had no idea, then. what it meant."

"Thread was new to all of us." It made sense that if there was no Thread then there wouldn't be as many eggs in a clutch, but Eliste had never thought about that before. "We are fortunate to have dragonriders to protect us."

"Pern's lucky they hadn't died out. Perhaps another couple of hundred Turns and they might have."

"I find that hard to believe!" Pern without dragons? The idea was frightening, especially with the thought that Thread would have returned and there wouldn't have been dragons to fight.

"I suppose I do, too, since my family have been dragonriders as far back as anybody can remember. I can't imagine that not always being the case."

"Hopefully there will always be a Pern with dragons." Eliste wished there wasn't a Pern with Thread but not every wish could be granted, could it?

"Yes, even if my children will be river-folk not weyr-folk," Rahona agreed. "After all this time. I feel like we've taken a new turn. You have too."

"Yes." A new turn, one she thought would never come to pass, but it did. Eliste was happy, content. She loved being on the river, loved her new family, loved her husband. She could never ask for a better one. "Change can be good."

"This one certainly has been - for both of us."

Last updated on the August 4th 2009

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Change Can Be Good