Difference between revisions of "Logs:Weak"

Wait, she said.

Riorde could have stopped. She almost did. But in the instant of her hesitation, pitying excuses rang in her ears and rather than wait long enough to let them become real, she bricked herself up and repeated, I have to study.

Incoherence thundered out of Sforzath before she could clamp down on him too, applying the same heavy-handed pressure to him as she did to herself, pushing against the weight that had settled in the centre of her chest.

No. Don't.

Some of his outrage had erupted out to Szadath and the other weyrling dragons in his immediate vicinity, surely. Ash settled thick as he sought to dampen himself, but molten fury seeped through the cracks, glowing crimson and copper.

« Why? »

Riorde couldn't begin to chip away at all the incomprehension that question embodied. She tried the next best thing in offering not explanation but strategy.

We have other things to think about. We mustn't let anything distract us. We mustn't let anyone think we're weak.

She wanted to hit something. Raum might have indulged her, but Raum was gone.

E'gin might have sparred with her, but she feared a moralizing tone.

Iolene might have hugged her, but Iolene was avoiding her.

So instead Riorde did exactly what she said she was going to do. She dashed into the barracks long enough to gather her notes, then took herself off into a corner of the bowl where she could curl up with Sforzath, huddling small against the half-grown brown. She bit her lip, bent her head, and tried to force concentration. Her mind was a wall, its door policed and guarded. The wet drops that smeared the hide occasionally - well. They weren't from her. At some point, it had started to rain.