The Pass Thing

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 8th April 2007

Characters: O'rian
Description: Odarian tells his friends Ravere and Rilisa that he will Stand.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 3, day 18 of Turn 4

Swift rounded the headland and stopped dead, awed by the scene in front of him. It was clearly Dolphin Cove Weyr; he'd heard enough about it to recognise the more than half-circle cliffs of the old volcano and the beach that the lost portion of the wall had been replaced by. And dragons! Everywhere there were dragons.

After a long look Swift cautiously continued across the sand toward the Weyr.

"Nah, nah, na-na-nah, you can't catch me!" shriked a young, fair-haired boy with delight, as he ran across the sand. His attention was on an older version of himself -- who was more than a dragonlength behind him -- and not on what or who was in his path.

"Teleyn, look out! Ahead of you," shouted the older man.

Thinking it a trick, the boy only flirtively glanced ahead, and then did a wide-eyed double take when he saw there was an old man right in his path.

It was too late for the boy to stop and even Swift's side-step wasn't enough to avoid the collision completely and the pair bumped off each other. "I'm too bony to bounce off," Swift said to the youngster, rubbing his hip. "Are you all right?"

Rubbing his side, Teleyn shyly nodded even as tears were beginning to well in his eyes.

"Are you all right, sir," asked the boy's companion, as he ran up to join them. "We were playing, and he wasn't watching---"

"I'm fine," Swift assured the pair of them. "Do we need to take you to the healers, young man?" he asked the younger of the two, who despite his agreement that he was all right looked like he might have suffered the most in the collision.

"That shouldn't be necessary, sir. I think running into you just surprised my brother," he said, running his hand over Teleyn's side before wrapping a comforting arm around the boy.

"It was that last moment that baffled me," Swift said, smiling at the boy. I was sure until then I could get out of your way. You're very quick - when it should be me that's quick since my name's 'Swift'."

This brought an unbridled giggle from the boy, which his brother quickly tried to rein in. "Pleased to meet you, Swift. I'm P'yke, and this is my brother Teleyn."

"A pleasure to bump into you, Teleyn," Swift said with a wink for the boy. "And to meet you, dragonrider. Greenrider," he added, having learned the significance of the coloured thread in the dragonrider knots.

"Are you a rider too," ask Teleyn.

Swift laughed. "No. I'm a kitchen hand from the Dolphin Hall, but I am very interrested in dragons."

"Me too! There are lots and lots and lots of 'em here," said Teleyn.

"My brother lives with our parents in Emerald Falls. Coming here is a rare treat," added P'yke.

"It's a rare treat for me, too!" Swift exclaimed with a laugh. "I was going to see if I could get a little closer and look some of them over."

"Just don't touch 'em," said Teleyn in all seriousness, "unless you get pa...pa...pa-min-shun" -- he glanced up at his brother for help.

"Permission."

"Pa-mish-shin first."

"Oh, I wouldn't! Quite aside from good manners in asking first, they do have a lot of teeth. The dragons. Not the riders, though I assume they have teeth too."

P'yke laughed. "Most of us do have teeth -- and some of us have a worse bite than our dragons." He winked at Swift. "But if you'd like to get close to one, that's my Wellanth over there next to Bannath,"
he said, pointing to an average looking green dragon lounging beside a bulky pale blue dragon.

"May I - get a little closer? To her? Will he mind?" Swift asked, nodding at the blue and wondering if they were mates. Perhaps the males were territorial.

"You can go as close as you wish," said P'yke, "Bannath probably won't even notice that you are there." He nearly added a 'like dragon, like rider' out of habit, but caught himself.

"Ugh," Odarian said as two of his friends appeared at the other side of the table and started setting out their meals. He swallowed, grimaced, and took a long sip of the juice in his glass. "Glad you're here. I wanted to tell you two something."

Ravere grinned. "I noticed." He looked over at the healer apprentice, not able to remember when he had last seen the sixteen-Turn-old so excited. Not since the disastrous Threadfall his father had led, perhaps. Though the injuries and deaths had cast a shadow over the whole Weyr, Odarian seemed to have felt that he was in some way responsible for his father's failure. It was nice to see a smile on the other young man's face. "Something good?"

"Hmm." Odarian couldn't help but think of some of the Threadscores he'd seen in his apprenticeship and that made it difficult to say honestly that it was good news. "Who knows, these days. I –"

"You're going to Stand," Rilisa guessed.

Odarian nodded.

"You ruined his news," Ravere grumbled at his sister. "What sort of friend are you?"

"One who's going to say congratulations." The fine-boned, sweet-faced blonde woman smiled across the table. "Congratulations. I mean it.
It's an easy decision for some –" she nodded her head in her brother's direction "- but not for everyone. It took me a while to decide."

Odarian tried to recall when the two of them had become candidates. He was a little younger than they were – months, rather than a Turn – and if Rilisa had opted to Stand when they had all started to go their separate ways from harper classes he might not have known about it.
Ravere, he remembered, had opted to Stand the day he had turned twelve.

"I've taken nearly five Turns."

"You always wanted to be a healer," Ravere pointed out. "Like everybody in your family."

"Well didn't you want to be a weaver like your mother?"

The senior apprentice weaver paused in his eating to give that some thought. "Not like you wanted to be a healer. I like weaving – lacemaking, mainly, like Wirril – but because I was raised doing it.
It's not difficult for me. When it came time to do something toward my keep it seemed logical. But - Yeah. I always wanted to be a dragonrider. Ever since we were kids when you were always bandaging the arms we 'broke' falling off our 'dragons'."

"Healing's a vocation for you, not just work," Rilisa said. "That's what he means."

Odarian didn't argue the point. "And yet I'm going to Stand and may give that all up." He glanced up and saw both his friends waiting for him to continue. "If it wasn't the Pass, then I could please myself."

Rilisa sighed. "That's what I thought, eventually."

"But you don't really _want_ to be a dragonrider?" Odarian pressed, feeling his decision had more in common with Rilisa's than her brother's.

"I don't know that I'll be a very good one. I'm not very brawny." She poked her fork into her brother's shirt-covered bicep. "Or tall."

"But she has a death-wish," Ravere growled, pushing the hand with the fork away. There was something else, but it wasn't his place to discuss it with even as close a friend as Odarian.

"Anyway," Rilisa continued, getting her fork back to its intended use, "I thought it was the hatchlings' job to make good choices, not mine to make it for them. That's helped me to decide. That and the Pass thing."

"That's the main thing, these days," Ravere agreed. "If there's a chance that we're suitable, isn't it our duty and Stand?"

Odarian nodded. It was exactly what he had come to think, himself, when apparently both of his friends had recognised that Turns ago.

Last updated on the April 11th 2007

Welcome to Triad Weyrs!

The Pass Thing