Difference between revisions of "Logs:Family Ties Broken and Reforged"

By the time Kaeden made it to the living cavern, the party was in full swing. Food, drink, dancing. Everything he had been looking forward to. He had managed to change out of his white robe, but the aftereffects of the hatching had left a grimy feeling on his skin, making it cling to the clothes he'd changed into just before leaving the weyrling barracks. His new home. No, that really had not sunk in yet.

It felt strange not to wear the white knot on his shoulder. Back at the Hold he'd very rarely had to attach that pitiful Holder Nobody's knot, then for almost three months straight, that gleaming white one had distracted him from time to time, just peeking at him at the corner of his vision. He'd just started getting used to it. Was he supposed to be wearing a new one now? What was it supposed to look like? Surely this had come up in one of the candidate lessons, but he had honestly just not paid attention to those details. He had finally convinced himself that, yes, he wanted to stand and accept whatever consequences might come of it, but he hadn't truly believed it would come to this.

Back at their couch, Kazavoth slept the deep sleep of the newly hatched and sufficiently fed. Kaeden... shells, no. D'kan could feel the tiny brown through that new link no one ever could have adequately explained to him beforehand. He could feel the dragon's full belly, the cool touch of oil where D'kan had applied it maybe a little too heavily behind the headknobs, the distant tickle of rushes beneath the curled body, the gritty texture of the stone beneath his chin.

Kaeden/D'kan moved around the edge of the outermost crowds while rubbing his chin. He knew there wasn't any grit there, but it felt so real. He kept wandering until he could find something suitable to drink. Juice seemed safe. The first glass was gone almost before he realized he'd even begun drinking. The second was a little more reasonable. Never thought just standing around could be such thirsty work, he thought to himself, fighting off that dazed feeling.

He was just starting to try figuring out why Kazavoth kept calling him "D'kan" when a server with a food tray walked by. Ravenous, Kaeden reached for a couple little cracker sandwich looking things and quickly brought the first to his mouth. Then the smell of raw meat hit his nose, leftover from feeding Kaz. Shells. He'd been so careful to scrub his hands. What was it his mother used sometimes? Vinegar? Must be vinegar. Kaed forced himself to eat the tiny sandwich and washed it down with juice. His stomach lurched uncomfortably, but he forced himself to do the same with the other sandwich. Faranth only knew what the rest of this day would hold.

Then, as if a thought of his mother could somehow conjure her, she and Kaeden's father were there in front of him. He barely missed spilling juice down his shirt before managing to wipe his mouth clean and get the glass out of the way as they both stepped in to hug him tightly. His father thumped him fondly on the back, his mother clung to his arms as if he were going to disappear without the death grip, and both stared into his dazed face, expecting... what?

Kaeden recovered from the initial surprise and gave his parents a wide-eyed smile, reaching out to grip their shoulders. "I wasn't sure you'd...," want to "be able to make it! You were able to get a ride up here, I take it? It went okay? You were able to see... everything?"

His parents exchanged a look. One he'd been expecting, really, but he kept his smile in place. It was easy to do.

"We saw," Korlen replied, voice just a little gruff. He was a little darker than Kaeden, and just a couple hairs shorter, but when he looked Kaeden in the eye, it still made the son feel small, younger than his twenty Turns. Kaed continued to keep the smile in place, though it felt and probably looked forced by now.

Dydael reached up to cup her son's cheek, and her hand smelled like the vinegar Kaeden had remembered just moments before his parents appeared. "We're very proud of you, Kaeden," she told him, her voice thick, words forced. That smile was getting heavier. Kaeden reached up to take his mother's hand and lowered it so he could hold it in both of his.

"Mum... dad. Look, it's fine, okay? This is a good thing!" he assured them both, ardent in both words and expression. "He's amazing. I'd love to introduce you. He's sleeping, but--" Kaeden was cut off as his father's hand gripped his forearm. Calloused fingers dug in to the point Kaed had to wrench his arm free, just to avoid waking Kazavoth, though he could already feel tendrils of awareness seeping through the simple things that are a newly-hatched dragonet's first dreams.

He could see the anger in his father's eyes when he pulled away, and that hurt look in his mother's, as only mothers can do. "I don't understand you two," Kaeden said, lowering his voice so its heat wouldn't carry much beyond the three of them. "'Follow your heart, Kaed'," he quoted, looking at his mother. "'Remember your duties'," he added, looking at his father. "Well, I did. Both. I'm here because of that."

"Yes, but for how long?" Dydael asked, plaintive and misunderstanding. "You were supposed to come home. After the hatching, you said. But now--"

"--now you're just their whore," Korlen growled with a vehemence Kaeden had seldom witnessed.

Hurt and anger tried so hard to bubble to the surface, and Kaeden had to scramble to suppress them, had to scramble to keep Kazavoth protected in his slumbers. He just couldn't comprehend. He thought they had understood. He thought they'd had his back. Where the hell had this prejudice come from? He was used to hearing it in the Hold, sure, but not from them. He could see it now, though. He could see it as they looked around them. He could see it when they looked at him.

He had to get back to Kazavoth as that island in his head began to stir again. Faranth, he had never craved a shot of liquor like he did just then, but rules were rules, and now they applied to him, enforced by much more than some weyrlingmaster's weighted words. Enforced by that same island where Kazavoth now lived, the one he could bridge with mere thought, the island that was now closer to him than his parents in this moment.

Those same parents had realized by now that things had clearly not gone however they thought they might. Whatever their intentions, it had not been to hurt him, but that injury remained, bleeding and raw.

His father reached for him again, but Kaeden pulled his arm out of reach and stepped back, nearly bumping into another knot of people, several of whom gave the small family curious looks.

Tears stood in his mother's eyes as she folded her hands together tightly against her stomach. "Kaeden, please understand, you're our only child!" she pleaded, voice quavering, but Kaeden couldn't even look at her. He was looking for an exit.

"Mum, that's not my fault," he said, voice low but urgent. He did spare her a glance then, but it was fleeting. He could feel those tears coming to his own eyes now. It was only a matter of time.

From his father there came a furious, "Kaed!" but the weyrling, of the Weyr by his very title, turned on him, the heated look in his dark eyes meeting an almost identical pair of eyes as, for the first time in his life, he looked down on his father.

"No." His voice remained low, but the urgency had retreated. He had stuffed those emotions down in some dark corner as far away from Kazavoth's island as he could push them. What remained was calm edged by the distant storm. "Not Kaed. Not Kaeden, no longer," he continued, sparing a glance for his mother, though he still could not quite meet her gaze. "Kazavoth has taken me as his rider, and he has renamed me. You can call me D'kan, or not at all."

He stopped then, needing a moment to swallow against a sudden pain that clutched his throat and settled somewhere cold and hard in his stomach. Tears threatened again to come to the surface, but he fought them back to their corner. He straightened slowly, forcing it vertebrae by vertebrae, chin held proudly, though that pride was as much a mask as his smile had been just minutes earlier. When had his father become so small? His mother so weak? D'kan's fingers began to tingle, but he quickly realized it was Kazavoth. He still had time, but it was down to the last few moments.

"I need to go. Kazavoth needs me," D'kan informed them quietly, working to keep the quaver from his voice. He looked to Korlen but did not reach for him. He looked to Dydael but felt a pity he couldn't stand. "I love you both, and I hope you know and believe that. My heart and my duty are here, now. They're with Kazavoth." There was more he wanted to say, now that he had their full attention, but there simply wasn't time. He left them with a subdued promise to write to them, then left.

It was a short distance back to the bowl, but it felt like a league, and the moment his feet hit the snowy bowl, he was at a run back to the barracks. He likely passed by riders, dragons, weyrfolk and guests, but his only thought was for Kazavoth. His steps only slowed when he entered the weyrlings' training cavern, though he walked at a quick clip past other weyrlings and their new lifemates in various stages of eating, sleeping, grooming, or otherwise bonding.

Relief flooded through him as he spotted Kazavoth. The dark and tiny brown was curled into an impossibly tight ball in the exact middle of a couch ten times his size. He was sunk into the rushes so far that only his wings remained above the "surface", and his thoughts were almost the same. Vague images and colors arose, then submerged, came to light, then fell to shadows. The tip of his tail appeared briefly, poking through a scattered bundle of stems as he swished it once, gently. Then again with more intensity. Pieces of his near-waking dream were becoming clearer, but D'kan had reached him in time.

The weyrling sank his knees down into the reeds and lay down next to his lifemate, not caring that the rushes poked him through his shirt. He settled his head next to that tiny, blunted snout. Slowly, gingerly, he reached out a hand toward Kazavoth's head, then gently lay his fingertips against the flat stretch of hide just below the headknobs.

Dreams receded as Kazavoth opened his eyes to mere slits, weariness still present in the lazy layers of his lids and the slow, ponderous swirls of dark ochre rimmed in midnight blue. For the span of time it took to return D'kan's breathing to its normal pace, the two regarded each other with an openness D'kan had ever known before, and one Kazavoth only knew.

Slowly, careful to keep that dark corner guarded, D'kan opened his mind to the young dragon, still only hours old. That island came to light as if the sun were illuminating it portion by portion. The beach. Trees. A river. A waterfall. A cliff. At the top of that cliff, there was a neat little cave set against a glittering wall of quartz that climbed even higher. That cliff was the core of the space Kazavoth shared with D'kan, and where D'kan could always find him. It was peaceful and sheltered. It was beautiful.

« D'kan. » The weyrling smiled softly as Kazavoth's thought touched him, clear and calm. He was D'kan, he realized, and it did not bother him. He had ceased to be Kaeden in that moment with his parents, but it was in this moment that he understood why Kazavoth had named him so.

« D'kan, » he repeated back to his lifemate, the process coming more naturally than he would have imagined before today. « Now and always. » His fingers curled around the brown's headknobs while his thumb reached around to stroke lightly across one of those dark, mottled eye ridges.

Within a couple quiet minutes, Kazavoth's eyes receded from that dark ochre back to a peaceful, deep blue, and one by one, the sets of eyelids closed tightly as he grew quiet in D'kan's mind. Only when he was sure the dragon was truly asleep again did D'kan loosen his hold on those emotions. His hand dropped until it rested in the rushes beside the brown, the backs of his fingers pressed lightly to his lifemate's warm, oiled neck. He turned his face against his outstretched arm and let the tears come, falling to dampen his sleeve and to drop into the reeds.

It did not last long, this last vestige of his childhood. Most had faded Turns earlier, but this last one needed to be released, or it would fester, and there was no room for that now. No room for self-pity, no time for clinging to old strings. When he felt the last was done, he wiped his face on his sleeve, then leaned in to kiss the bridge of Kazavoth's snout.

D'kan waited a moment longer to make sure the brown still slept soundly. Reassured, he removed his sweat- and tear-stained shirt and gave himself a much-needed sponging. It wasn't the same as a bath, but it would do for now. He had other duties, too, like at least one dance that was still owing. Better to go as clean as he could in the time allowed.

He only spared one last glance for the sleeping Kazavoth before he hurried back to the snowy bowl and the waiting party. There would be just enough time for that promised dance. Just enough time for a bombshell. Just enough time to take in a few free moments before this new chapter started in earnest. Where before he had viewed that chapter with dumbfounded anxiety, he now felt a serenity of freedom and an excitement for the things to come, and he welcomed the coming challenge with an open heart.

Comments

Azaylia (Dragonshy (talk)) left a comment on Thu, 21 Mar 2013 07:19:04 GMT.

< That was powerful. Just... it's kind of classic, the sudden shedding of his name, his family, and embracing his dragon and weyr above all else. It's beautiful and sad and I really enjoyed reading all of this. I got a swell of pride when D'kan stood up to his parents, I really felt for him. Awesome Vig!

Aishani (Brieli (talk)) left a comment on Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:49:20 GMT.

< I'm glad to see this follow up after the pre-hatching conversation. Really interesting.

Nicky (Nicky (talk)) left a comment on Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:58:32 GMT.

< This is such a beautiful scene - the imagery of a tiny Kazavoth in the rushes is just absolutely adorable. It makes me want to give both D'kan and him lots of squishy cuddles! <3