Logs:Changed
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| RL Date: 27 May, 2010 |
| Who: Madilla |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: All is not really well in Madilla-land. Emotionally, at least. |
| Where: High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 11, Month 12, Turn 22 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Milani/Mentions, W'chek/Mentions |
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| "They've changed you," Tredor had told her, staring at her with disapproval. He'd never been a kindly man, never treated her with warmth, but this cool displeasure-- this was new. "Turned you into one of them. Spoiled you. It's not what was supposed to happen. You were supposed to get your healer whatever and then come home. Not go to some immoral weyr." She'd been eighteen at the time, visiting for an afternoon, eager to share her news and see her family. To prove to them how well she was doing. But it wasn't just Tredor who'd treated her with such distance. Her mother had seemed awkward and uncomfortable, as though she was frightened of something. The younger ones had been hurried away, kept out of sight. It hadn't taken so very much, in the end, for Madilla to realise that she wasn't wanted here, anymore. That she was causing problems, somehow, just by being who she'd become. But I'm not so very different she tried to convince herself, only it was hard to really believe that. She was different: she'd grown up. She'd seen things. She... Her mother's hug, when she said goodbye, was somehow firmer and more lingering than usual, as if she was saying something with it, something that probably they both already knew. Madilla watched the little hold as it got smaller and smaller beneath them, until her ride disappeared between, and it was gone entirely. She doubted she'd ever see it again. ---
Even if things had been better, Madilla could never have gone back to her family and told them that she was pregnant, and unmarried, and it was intentional and not because something awful and unthinkable had happened. She couldn't even comprehend telling them that: it was just one of those things that didn't work. So that was that. And that... all this was why it mattered so much that people here, at the weyr, would be family to her child. They were the only family her child would have. And it hurt, it hurt more than Madilla cared to think about, that she'd never be able to show off her son or daughter to her mother, that her child would never understand the other side of where he or she came from. Alone in the infirmary that night, after that conversation with Milani, she pounded herbs in the stillroom until her shoulders ached. She'd never much minded being left alone to her thoughts, but now it felt like the walls were closing in on her. She was five months pregnant. In another five, give or take, she'd be a mother, utterly and completely responsible for another life. It had never been something she'd worried much about, once upon a time, but now... was she really up for it? Would he child grow up and hate her for all the things she'd never managed to be? The pestle dropped from her hand, and she slid towards the floor, wrapping arms around her belly. She loved watching her body blossom like this, loved tracking the changes. But she feared it, too, and all that it represented. Had this all been a terrible mistake? Not the child - no, she could never consider a child to be a mistake - but the whole... everything of it? Was she really ready for this? Really up for it? She was terrified, but the very idea of admitting as much made her stomach turnover, made her want to vomit. No: this was something she was just going to have to work out on her own. |
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