Logs:You Belong To Me Now
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| RL Date: 23 April, 2010 |
| Who: Kash |
| Involves: Benden Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: In which Kash abandons her child, becomes someone else, and gets written off camera when she Impresses Winter Moonlight Blue Kastaveth. |
| Where: Tillek / Benden Weyr |
| When: Months 7-8, Turn 22 |
| Mentions: Ch'son/Mentions, K'del/Mentions |
| It was a lost turn, in the end, a turn that, much later, Nakasha would remember very little about, except a recollection of crushing despair and hopelessness. Evelin tsked and chided, and Mira mourned, unable to reach her daughter; Nakasha spent her days hiding outdoors, running away from the realities of her life. She toyed with writing to Ch'son, when word came in from Ista that he'd caught the Weyrleader's knot. They'd laughed about it, hadn't they? He'd come and collect her, if his Taineth caught a queen, she'd stand for the clutch. But the idea of asking for help made her stomach churn. The idea of facing someone who knew made her want to be sick. Most of all, she wanted to be someone else. Not just abandon him, but pretend it never happened at all. And how could she do that, if people around her knew? Sometimes, she wondered whether she should just have married Kezend, but that seemed a remote concept, now, more than ever. She'd stopped missing him a long time ago. She didn't even know if he knew he had a son; she'd not spoken to him, not written, in that whole turn. It was gone: she was a different person now. Well. She wanted to be, at least. She felt like she was drowning, like there was nothing left of who she was. That the longer she stayed, an embarrassment to her family, the less there would be of her. She was tired of K'del trying to coax her into doing things; she was tired of pretending she didn't know about the family conferences where they argued, endlessly, about What To Do With Nakasha. She was tired of being pushed at him, and chided for not being a proper mother. I don't want to be a mother at all, she told herself-- she told them, too. I don't want him. Keep him. And Evelin would hussle him away again, holding him and cuddling him, whispering that she loved him, she'd always love him. When she thought about it, Nakasha felt bad for her nieces, put aside for someone else's son. Most of the time, though, she just... didn't. Think. It was all too much. One summer morning, she began walking and left it all behind. She wasn't sure where she was going; she wasn't sure what she intended to do. She carried nothing with her. By chance, she was picked up by a brownrider from High Reaches, on his way to a Gather not so very far away. By chance, the brownrider got distracted by a dice game fairly quickly, leaving Nakasha to wander the booths alone, suddenly conscious that she had no idea where to go from here. By chance, a handful of riders from Benden decided to drop in, and maybe it just proved that life didn't actually have to suck when it turned out there was a clutch on their sands, and they wanted Nakasha to stand for it. She gave her name as Kashana - close enough to her real name that it didn't feel too wrong - and went back with them. She claimed no particular family ties, said she wasn't leaving much of anything aside. No one seemed to care too much. They gave her a supply of clothes out of stores, and a bed in the candidate dorms. As she nestled into the blankets that night, she felt, for the first time in almost a turn, hopeful. Positive. It's going to be all right, she breathed. I'm going to be all right. --- Being someone else wasn't quite as easy as she'd hoped it would be. Everyone else had stories to tell about themselves, and she worked out fairly quickly that telling none of her own only made her seem standoffish and awkward. She didn't want to be that, so she began to make things up. But that wasn't easy, either: she had to work hard not to contradict herself. And it always felt like maybe people knew, even if there was no way they possibly could, surely. She felt older than them, though she was far from the oldest in the candidate group. She could pretend all she liked, but-- she felt different. She was different. They found her strange, difficult to understand. She didn't belong... but she did, she did, she did. Sometimes, she even felt guilty. You abandoned a child, she told herself. You ABANDONED your child. What was the point of stewing in it, though? She wasn't going back. She couldn't. She wouldn't. And he was better off without her. She'd been searched late, which was good: less time to worry about it all. A handful of weeks, and then they were marshalled onto the hatching sands. It was only then, glancing up to see the filled galleries, that she found herself panicking: what if someone who knew her saw her? What if she was found? She didn't want to be found. It was too late to worry about that, though, not when there were eggs hatching, and hatchlings, and-- she felt a thrill run through her, rushing through everything. Finally! She should've had this experience long ago, but never mind that, because she was here now. Kastaveth bowled her over, physically as well as mentally. One moment she was scanning the sands, the next she was flat on her back, the whirling blue of his eyes lighter and brighter than the moonlit blues of his hide. « Kash! Get up. You belong to me, now. Kastaveth's. » And that was it. Kash was Kastaveth's. Heart and soul. Mind. Body. It was all his. |
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