Logs:Something... New
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| RL Date: 4 March, 2021 |
| Who: Lilabet |
| Involves: Harper Hall, Benden Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: Lilabet's life plan veers off course. |
| Where: Benden Weyr |
| When: Day 3, Month 7, Turn 42 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Suireh/Mentions, H'kon/Mentions, Madilla/Mentions, Teris/Mentions, Leova/Mentions |
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| It was, in effect, a 'starter' posting. The kind of place a young journeyman could find his or her feet - and get some life experience. Lilabet knew she was not a once-in-a-generation talent: it was highly unlikely that her work would ever form part of the core canon. Still, she was well-trained, with an eye for what would (and would not) make a good work, and her work was good. (There was a part of her, deep down, that wished for better-than-good. The childish part of her who had dreamed of taking Pern by storm, writing the epics of the age that would be sung forever. To be... to be like Suireh, perhaps. She had always admired Master Suireh.) But she was nineteen, a journeyman, and this was her first posting. It was the first time she'd lived outside of a Weyr or the Hall, and she approached it with fascination. It brought back memories of that time when she'd been little (well, little-ish) and asked Auntie Leova to take her to meet Mama's family. She'd never gone. This little hold, out beyond Telgar Hold, barely a blip on anyone's map, was a long way from the Fortian cothold where her mother had been born, but it was the closest she'd ever been to anything like it. Mama's birthplace, she knew, was smaller still. She'd expected to feel constrained by the size; was surprised to find it freeing. Though she'd never be one of them, they welcomed her with open arms. The children weren't always eager to learn, but nor were children most places, and the ones who were more than made up for it. Despite herself, Lilabet found herself enjoying teaching. She wrote, but not as much as she would like. There were no grand, epic, sweeping sagas to be told here, not of the variety she preferred (though that in itself was wrong: there were always sweeping sagas, people were always people, it's just that the impact was so much less... barely a ripple, barely anything to latch on to for something truly great). She wrote a love song for a young couple, a wedding gift, and was touched by their emotional gratitude. She wrote a lullaby, and then a second. Not great works, either of them, but the gratefulness - the awestruck gratefulness - of the beneficiaries struck her, deeply. Perhaps, she realised, a person didn't need to be great in order to be of value. Perhaps, she acknowledged, that had been half the point of sending her out here in the first place. It was, thus, with exceptionally mixed emotions that she received her transfer orders, some half a turn after her arrival. She would be sorry to leave these people, with whom she'd made such connections. Equally, of course, even being the most junior harper at Benden Hold would be good for her career. Rumours weren't officially part of the Harper curriculum, but politics were, and she remembered a particularly engaging discussion about the appointment of Matthias as heir over the Lord's own baby son... major holds were, without question, a plum posting for composers in search of an epic. So she'd packed her things again, made her farewells, and off she'd gone again: a cart back to Telgar Hold, another heading eastwards. A caravan. Travel, they say, broadens your mind: Lilabet felt it, embracing the opportunities to see things, experience things, learn things. But the riding life, she knew, was not what she wanted. Engaging for a few sevens, and full of sore feet and uncomfortable beds and endless amounts of rain after that. It was a relief to get to Benden Hold where, she assumed, she could truly settle. The junior-most Journeyman Harper at a prestigious major hold doesn't hold much clout. It's not that Lilabet had expected more per se, though she hadn't taken into account the hold ladies staring down their noses, or the smirking taunts from some of the hold men who saw her weyr background as making her fair game. 'Loose' and 'uncultured' as if she hadn't spent most of the past eight turns at the harper Hall, which was surely the most cultured place on the planet! Even her superiors seemed dismissive of her music, pushing her away from bigger works to something smaller, "more suitable" whatever that meant. It was a fine line to walk: she wanted to succeed, and that meant working with her superiors, but she'd never done well being put in a box and told to stay. But she was studying the great works, too, and found herself perpetually frustrated when her own words lacked that perfect, clever turn of phrase, her melodies just slightly lacklustre. Good, but not brilliant. More than she'd expected, she missed that little holding. She missed the freedom of it, of being responsible for herself, with the freedom to do her job as she chose. She even missed the teaching, and that's not something she'd ever thought to think. It made her miss home, too. None of which was to say that she was looking for a way out, when it came. It was the Benden spring gather. For Lilabet, it was a day of both work and play: of playing for the punters, assisting with auditions of young hopeful apprentices, and of dancing and enjoying the stalls and their collection of wares. (Later, she would romanticise it in verse, turning grey skies to blue, muddy ground to the greenest of grass, a tipsy stranger to a handsome hero. The fiction was more satisfying than the reality, for all that she couldn't sing the damn song without wanting to wave her arms around and scream about how fake it was. Art!) She'd accepted a dance from the slightly tipsy young man wearing Benden knots - a greenrider. It had been a middling dance: he didn't know the steps well enough to follow, but at least he wasn't inclined to step on her toes in the process. They'd been interrupted partway through when a friend of his had started a scene of some kind-- with noting better to do, she'd accompanied them to the field where the greenrider dumped the other into a water trough to sober up. She'd sat on a fencepost and watched, and once the drunken sot was sitting on the ground, eyes closed but largely in one piece, there had been a conversation. The greenrider had told her of his childhood in the Benden vineyards; she'd shared her own, life at High Reaches, then the Hall. The Telgari hold. "Do you miss living in a weyr?" he wondered, having perched himself upon the fencepost beside her - a respectable distance between them, she was pleased to note. "I can't imagine going back." "I do and I don't. Remember, I was a child the last time I lived at High Reaches. Eleven. When I go back, I'm a visitor. Everyone's moved on without me. And so have I, of course. I'm not the same person I was when I was eleven. You can't really go home again, not like that. Not to stay. I don't think." "But you miss weyr life." "Holds are significantly more prestigious postings than weyrs, for a harper. If my career goes to plan, I'll never end up at a weyr." He glanced at her, and she could feel his gaze on her, studying her. "Sunfialth," he said, finally, "laid her clutch two days ago." "I'd heard, yes. A solid clutch." "My Alianath would have you as a candidate for it." Lilabet found herself sucking in a breath. It was... unexpected. Hadn't she spent her childhood imagining that first she'd be a harper, then he'd be a greenrider? It was a dream she'd cast aside in her quest to be the best harper she could be - and besides, until now, no dragon had ever cast a glance at her in that way. "Say yes." "I can't." "You... can't?" His bewilderment was, she realised, quite genuine. "You could be Weyrwoman! Back in a weyr, where you belong. Not the weyr of your birth, where you'd always be the healer's daughter, but somewhere different. Isn't that what you want?" "I'm a journeywoman. I have responsibilities. My Hall has invested a lot of time in my development and training. You don't just walk away from that on a whim. Even if I decided I wanted to, I'd still need their permission, and I don't even know if I want to." "You could be a dragonrider. Shells, you could be a weyrwoman: Sunfialth's laid a queen, our first since Sunfialth herself was clutched. Wouldn't that be even better than being some famous harper?" "When I was little," Lilabet told him, the corners of her mouth smiling though just barely, "it was a green I imagined - a green like yours. But I love my craft, Greenrider. I'm good at it. I've spent the past seven turns perfecting it, and I'll likely spend the rest of my life at it, too. Why would I choose to give that up, just on a whim? And..." She found herself drawing a deep, ragged breath, comprehension dawning, six turns late. "And?" his voice was very low and quiet, barely more than a breath. "When I was thirteen, my aunt died. Her dragon went between without her, and I saw what happened to her." She didn't mention the keys she'd stolen. What had happened next. "And I think maybe that's when I started moving away from that dream. Because I couldn't cope with that." Her greenrider companion paused, his own breath uncomfortably deep. "Ah," he said, finally. "Well... if you change your mind?" She didn't set out to change her mind. It was just that... that flicker of a childhood dream, the ember still just barely alight, had been nourished by this Search. And maybe, too, part of it was in response to that fear: you can't let what happened to Teris change you so much. And journeymanship had certainly taught her one thing: she really wasn't ever going to be the best of the best, no matter how hard she worked. And maybe that was fine... maybe the sensible thing to do would be to accept that, and move on, and simply be the best that she could be. But it hurt, too: the loss of a dream. Riding a dragon wouldn't stop her from composing. It meant she'd never be a Master, but how likely was that anyway? And - and this was important - hadn't she seen what being a master had done to her own mother? And maybe, instead, riding a dragon would give her a different insight. Maybe it would make her stand out as a composer. And maybe this was all self-justification, and completely ridiculous. A dragon, she knew, would disrupt her focus. Her first priority would be to the dragon, not to the music. Some dragons might even resent it-- there was no guarantee her dragon would be a compliment to her desires. Briefly, she considered reaching out to H'kon for advice, but found herself shying away from the thought. It was... uncomfortable. Dilan was supposed to be the dragonrider in the family, and yet he'd ultimately turned down the opportunity: his craft was enough. He'd traded a dream of dragon wings to one of sails and sea, and seemed so much the happier for it. And Lilabet... Lilabet was no longer sure. She wrote the letter. She still wasn't sure if she was going to actually send it, but time was short: if the answer was to be yes, she had no more than a week or two in which to make the decision. Writing it was both difficult and... somehow not. I know I am not the first to write with such a request, nor shall I be the last. I know how much the Hall has invested in me; I know, too, how grateful I am for it. Over the past eight turns, you've given me so much, and that makes me feel churlish to even consider asking for this. If the answer is no, please do know that I will abide by it, and have no regrets. I wanted to be a Harper from childhood. I've always known. Walking the tables to Journeyman was the proudest day of my life so far, aside from, perhaps, the singular joy of hearing my music performed. But now there is this. Is it possible for me to do both? Could I do it better: write my music through the lens of a dragonrider. I know I wouldn't be the first to do so, but I do believe I could bring something novel to it. I wish to try. Once - once and then done. If there is no dragon for me, that would be it, and I would be happy. She burnt that letter, aghast at her own emotiveness. The final draft was simpler, more succinct. The answer was affirmative. (She was almost disappointed by that. Both because it would make the decision for her, take it out of her hands, and because... because it would have meant they valued her enough to fight. She knew, logically, that it wasn't so simple, but since when had logic played into emotion?) Benden, then, which was both like and unlike High Reaches. Candidate barracks. Candidates. No one with whom she made an instant, deep connection, but that was hardly unexpected. No one with whom she felt inclined to hold hands with, when it came to the sands, though that was fine too. By then, she wasn't sure if this was what she wanted or not. She'd not been able to explain herself to anyone who asked: not her mother, not Dilan. H'kon's silences somehow often made her want to blurt out how she felt, but not this time: this time she simply shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. And then... there she was. Not the green of Lilabet's childhood, not the blue-or-brown she'd given due consideration to. Life-changing. Dream-ending. Something new. |
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Satiet (21:26, 5 March 2021 (UTC)) said...
<3
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