Logs:Whatever It Takes

Whatever It Takes
Keep your cards close to your chest.
RL Date: 28 November, 2015
Who: V'ret, Zoth
Involves: High Reaches Weyr, Crom Hold
Type: Vignette
What: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.

When: Day 25, Month 5, Turn 39 (Interval 10)






She was from Ista, originally. She was a fisherman's daughter, and she was pretty, and it was pretty enough to get her in trouble. If she'd been weyrfolk, of course, nobody would have cared when she got pregnant at seventeen, but she wasn't, and they did, and it didn't matter that she miscarried. She did whatever it took to survive. She was bright and surprisingly well-spoken, and some men liked that. And she was fair-haired and young and slim, and more men liked that. Eventually, with a young son getting nearly old enough to have to explain entirely too much, there was a man from Crom who seemed to like both. And Crom seemed far away. She imagined herself wrapped in furs, walking with this charming fellow in the snow. She'd never seen snow. They went north. Later, so much later, with her son grown and gone and her other children nearly there, she picked out a bolt of fabric printed with little pink roses, cheerful and looking forward to summer. She bought it from a trader who'd come from further south. They talked about the long winter and how she missed the sun. He coughed, but she hardly noticed it. Pretty things helped to smooth over the accumulated hurts like powder on bruises. She had the pattern for the dress, but never finished it. As people got sick, V'ret stopped going to the Snowasis, not even for his one drink. He had a few bottles by then, not all of them properly paid for, but most of them, anyway, tucked in places he judged them unlikely to be found. And even if they were, none of them were good liquor; the marks for that just weren't coming anymore. One was tucked in a cleaning closet with two biographies of long-dead Lord Holders and a history of the Weyr. And, after a few weeks, a cushion borrowed from stores because he didn't like sitting on the floor very much. He'd been days, weeks even, scouting out places, moving when he needed to, avoiding anywhere with people. « Keep your cards close to your chest. That's what they say, isn't it? » No reason to talk to anyone, no reason to let anyone close. Zoth was company enough. The books were company enough. Safe and sterile. One evening, he took a roundabout way out of the living cavern after a dinner he only picked at, wove through the caverns to settle in for a few hours before bed, and found his books stacked neatly on the wrong shelf. The bottle beside them, untouched. There were two cookies wrapped up in a piece of paper, an inventory sheet of some variety, on the wrong side of which was a note that the reader was welcome to use the space, but should avoid displacing the cleaning supplies as it made keeping track difficult when things weren't on the right shelves. He almost bolted. Maybe should have. On the same sheet of paper, he scrawled an apology, and left it folded neatly on the same shelf with a quarter-mark tucked under it. The next day, it was gone, and a few things had been rearranged to leave a bit more space on one side of the closet floor. If V'ret spent his evenings lost in books and daydreams, and his nights largely staring into the dark. More to drink might have helped him fall asleep easier, and sometimes did, but mostly the sleep came with dreams too vivid to forget come morning. He would recite names and dates and places, mouthing the words, giving them no sound. Four hours a night was enough sleep for anybody. As he got used to it, he rarely overslept anymore. The silver thread was there, one day, and he carefully wove it into his knot. He talked less. He smiled more. « We do whatever it takes. It will be worth it. » To say that Zoth butchered his kills would be too clean. V'ret had been told at some point to try to reign in his dragon, but had not cared to even attempt it. To others, the bronze's voice stayed smooth and rich as satin. To his rider, it now had the metallic tang of blood. V'ret had trusted two people in his life that completely. His dragon and, once, in what felt like another life entirely, his mother. Only two people alive. And then there was one. If he had known, it would not have changed a thing. Not then, anyway.

Comments

T'gar (21:06, 28 November 2015 (PST)) said...

I love your writing style.
Snapshots like these show a lot about V'ret and his dragon!

Silva (21:20, 28 November 2015 (PST)) said...

Oh no. :(

K'del (21:36, 28 November 2015 (PST)) said...

Uh oh. V'ret, the Aaron Burr of High Reaches.

This was great.

Alida (00:23, 29 November 2015 (PST)) said...

These two... hmmm. They'll bear watching. >.> ^^