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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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 Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:34 pm
"Your son's growing up so well, Tanda," Ara observed as she watched the small child toddle about the creche.
"I don't know how you manage without his father to help. At home, in Ghenza, nearly all the families were two-parent families, and both parents help to raise the children."
Ara had learned not to make her comparisons between Ghenza and High Reaches Weyr too frequent. Tanda wouldn't mind them, probably, but there were so many people at the Weyr who were not only uninterested in hearing about other places, but specifically uninterested in hearing about Ghenza. Some of them even became hostile when she spoke of it.
It wasn't easy to figure out why the High Reachers (as Ara thought of them) didn't care for Ghenzans. Her people had helped them in a time of crisis, allowed them to Impress and then leave with their dragons, and done so much for the Weyr. But she kept these views to herself. She was not so dense that she was totally unaware of the tension in the Weyr whenever her home was mentioned.
"Sorry. I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with the way things are done here. It's just...different. At home they said...well, I guess it doesn't matter what they said. I'm here now, aren't I?"
She smiled at Tanda.
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:56 pm
"He's handsome, for a squished up little thing," she smiled fondly at her son. He was just about two turns old, and no longer a squished up infant, but a toddler getting into everything.
"I'm glad he takes after his father, you know. He was a fine young man. I was sorry to see the last of him."
Tanda still had not told most people who her son's father was, mostly because it amused her to keep it a secret, but also because she didn't wish word to reach the father. He had gone to Ghenza and he had not returned from there. After a time he had ceased to write. Tanda had missed his letters at first, but she was an attractive young woman who always had people around seeking he favor, and so she had not been lonely for long.
"But I would not have wanted him to help raise my son, even so. I know how to raise children - it's what I do! - and I wanted to raise this little man without the poison my family infects its male members with. I loved my grandfather, really I did, but I did not agree with the way he thought or the way he treated women."
Without thinking of it she scooped her son up and moved him away from where her striped firelizard Rayana slept. Rayana was a friendly little flit, but like Tanda she disliked being woken. The toddler had not yet learned how to be gentle with small animals, and Rayana could only tolerate being manhandled for so long before she would scratch and hiss. Her hisses scared Tanda's son.
"And don't be sorry to mention how it's different. Holds are like that, too, you know. It's not so unusual for people around here to be raised by both their parents. Only the Weyrborn find it unusual."
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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:16 pm
"Did he...I mean. No one knows who his father is. He's not...He didn't die did he?" Ara flushed a dark magenta as she asked Tanda this question, which she knew was very personal and on a subject Tanda rarely discussed. Actually, she immediately decided that she oughtn't to have asked at all and began to apologize, asking that Tanda forget she said anything because it really wasn't any of her business.
"You're right. But it seems most of the people I end up working with are weyrborn. I still don't really know what to say to them. Not that I'm complaining! You have been so wonderful and sweet to me from the moment I got off the dragon, but..."
Ara fell silent because to say what she had been thinking would be to put into words once more this helpless, hopeless crush she had on Tanda's brother B'shir. Tanda already knew about it, of course. She had called her on it almost immediately and then asked what Ara had done about it. She had gone on to explain that B'shir would need more than subtle hints to get his attention, but even after more than a turn of knowing him, Ara couldn't convince herself to be as blunt in her objectives as Tanda wanted her to be.
"I don't think your family poisons its men," Ara said, though she knew she spoke from a position of ignorance, having only met B'shir, who was apparently the best of them. His grandfather, according to Tanda, had been a complete nightmare, and his father was even worse, in his own way.
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Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:39 pm
Tanda watched Ara struggle to ask a question the Ghenzan girl obviously considered rude and prying. It amused Tanda to watch Ara try to do things like that. The girl was so very polite, and to be impolite really galled her. Even when she was relaxed among friends, or as close to it as Tanda had observed, Ara was still very proper. Tanda wondered if she was ever able to truly relax, and then her difficulties seemed less amusing. She couldn't imagine being away from home and virtually surrounded by strangers like Ara was.
"He's not dead, as far as I know. But he's not here, either. He moved on to a place he thought he could do better." Her tone made it clear she did not intend to say any more on the subject.
Tanda had no idea what someone with Jericho's skill set would do in land-locked Ghenza, and she'd said as much to him, but he had been determined. She didn't understand why he hadn't just gone home when he didn't Impress at High Reaches, but she could only conclude he had gotten stuck on the possibility of Impressing somewhere. When he hadn't returned with a dragon and B'shir had mentioned that he hadn't Impressed, Tanda wondered what he would do, for he had surely aged out of the running by now.
"B'shir isn't as bad as the others, but you know he's more than a little misogynistic," Tanda said. "And he's still an oblivious boy in many ways, Ara. You can't just hang around me and hope he'll notice you. He really won't. What you're doing now just puts you at risk for ending up as part of the scenery."
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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 7:15 am
Tanda's evasive answer was enough to let Ara know she had asked for information she shouldn't have. Ara pressed her palms together in her lap and suppressed a sigh. She missed her friends at home very badly. Among them she had several confidantes to whom she told everything and who likewise shared everything with her. It seemed she and Tanda weren't that close. They weren't that kind of friend.
Ara didn't shrug. It was rude to shrug and her feelings were bruised enough by Tanda's refusal to open up to her that she was beginning to retreat behind her shield of good manners. Good manners were a little different in High Reaches than they were at Ghenza, but by and large what she had learned as a girl still applied perfectly well in this new setting. It was comforting.
"It's not that simple."
Now she sounded like she was whining, and that wasn't really it. Ara did find B'shir more difficult to talk to now that they had left Ghenza, but she didn't know why. Whenever they met, he was still just as he had always been. Maybe it was she who had changed, and not him. It was more difficult for her to approach him here, for some reason, and that could be part of it.
"I know you're right about hanging around you, but he was different in Ghenza," Ara said apologetically. "It was like he was more accessible or easier to talk to or something."
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 12:03 pm
Tanda recognized in Ara the signs of a child who was uncomfortable and retreating and wondered how often Ara did this. It was probably a large part of why Ara had so few friends, if she always withdrew the moment things became uncomfortable for her. Surely she hadn't been like that all her life. B'shir had told Tanda, after much pressuring, that Ara had been the first to speak to him and befriend him in Ghenza. She had been the outgoing one in that instance.
"B'shir has never been easy to talk to. Not for women anyway. He was raised with the idea that we're not worth talking to, and so he usually doesn't. Truly, it surprises me that you ever found him accessible or easy to talk to."
Of course, Tanda didn't know what the circumstances had been like in Ghenza. B'shir hadn't exactly been forthcoming. He had been far too distracted by their grandfather's death, and then busy being a wingleader. Even so, she wondered if he had maybe been a very different person there, someone he couldn't be at High Reaches. As his big sister, she wanted to look out for him, even if he was too old to need it.
"Tell me about it," Tanda said as she watched her son out of the corner of her eye. "Tell me what he was like in Ghenza."
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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 2:46 pm
Ara didn't know whether she ought to be relieved to learn that B'shir had never been an easy companion for women, or disappointed that she couldn't be the one to change him. Except she had seen him differently, and he had made exceptions for her that he did not seem to make for others. At least while he was in Ghenza. Here at High Reaches she couldn't see that he treated her any differently than he did anyone else.
"I know I keep saying this, but he really was different at Ghenza. He was less closed-off, less uptight. There were times when he would relax and just..."
She sighed and looked down at her folded hands. She wasn't putting this very well, and she wasn't comfortable discussing B'shir like this when he wasn't here. Somehow it felt different than when, at home, she and her girlfriends had discussed boys.
"He taught me to swim." She fumbled for words. "We would talk while we were working sometimes. Once he told me that living in Ghenza felt sort of like being on holiday."
Ara looked at Tanda's son and wondered what kind of man he would grow up to be. Not like his grandfather and great-grandfather, if Tanda had anything to say about it. But maybe a little like his uncle. Ara didn't think that would be so bad. There was a lot of good in B'shir, even if he was somewhat unapproachable because of it.
"I know how stupid that sounds."
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Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 7:21 pm
Tanda ached for the poor girl. Ara was so gone on her brother, it was actually painful for anyone with the least smidgen of empathy, and Tanda had more than a smidgen. There was so little Tanda could do for Ara, even with B'shir being her brother. B'shir didn't listen to her, after all, and never would. She was only his sister.
"Ara," she began, and then stopped. Did she really need to tell the Ghenzan girl that her cause was pretty hopeless? Probably Ara already knew that, but wished to ignore it, and Tanda didn't want to be the one to point it out to her in that case.
"Perhaps to him being in Ghenza was like being on holiday. He didn't have A'ram breathing down his neck, he didn't have to wake up before the sun every morning to train, and he didn't have someone constantly telling him he's not good enough." Tanda had no difficulty believing that. She also suspected B'shir felt guilty about that.
"But things were different there. Now that he's home he has responsibilities again, more of them than before. He isn't the sort to take time to relax unless someone forces him to."
Tanda knew that her next suggestion would be met with denial, and that it was only prolonging the inevitable, but she found herself saying, "Why don't you invite him to go swimming with you sometime? It could remind him of Ghenza and of the relationship you two had there."
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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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Princess_Feylin Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 6:20 pm
Ara bit her bottom lip, worrying it between her teeth for several seconds as she watched Tanda. It wasn't hard to guess what the older woman was very carefully not saying. Ara could see it in her expression. But Ara had always been someone with romantic ideas and grand dreams, and it wasn't so easy to dismiss those hopes, even if they were naive.
"I know things are different. I didn't really think they would go on as they had been."
Made far ruder than usual by her frustration and the suggestion Tanda made, Ara snapped, "I'm not like you, you know. I can't just shrug and say, 'Oh, there's always going to be someone else.' I don't see men as interchangeable penises."
Immediately she gasped and covered her mouth in horror at what she had just said. Tanda had only been trying to be helpful. There was no way she could know that Ara had already issued that invitation to B'shir and been turned down. He was sorry, he would love to, but he couldn't. He had too much work to do.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. I should go. I don't seem to be fit company today. I'm so sorry."
She was already most of the way out of the room by the time she finished her apologies. Ara couldn't believe she had behaved like that, said those things to Tanda. She just wanted to curl up in her bed and die.
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