On a bench in a dark corner a man and a woman sat with their heads bent close, speaking in low, urgent tones. Curled up beneath the bench, limbs twitching, slept a newly hatched green dragon. The man lowered his mouth to his partner's ear to speak.

"Reya, this is serious. We have to come up with a plan for how we're going to proceed here," he insisted.

The woman's demeanor seemed eerily serene, given the day she'd had. She turned her head and tried not to get her interlocutor's hair in her mouth as she answered him, "Of course this is serious, and I'm delighted to hear that you think a plan is a good thing to have at this juncture, but the thing is, we already have a plan, and it's really the only feasible one."

R'bin pulled back, his stubbly cheek rasping against her face and making her rub her cheek with absent irritation. "There's a plan? How is there a plan? No one could have foreseen that you would Impress this morning."

Reya also sat back, relieved that her older brother seemed willing now to raise his voice a little to be heard over the general sounds of the feast, rather than murmur in her ear. She picked up a portion of battered fish and considered it, wondering where the Weyr had gotten fish. It was, she recalled, not especially near to any body of water which would be able to supply fresh fish of the edible variety. Well, dragons could travel instantaneously, but she had not observed any dragons at Western Weyr being sent to fetch supplies, and she very greatly doubted that High Reaches would behave any differently in that respect.

"You're right again. I certainly didn't come here with the intention of Impressing Raqisath, but I have and so our future is very clear from here on. She and I will complete weyrling training, be assigned to a wing, and when the time comes, we'll fight Thread, just as you and Huarangith do."

Beneath the bench Raqisath made a hrm noise in her sleep which seemed to be a happy reaction to hearing her name on Reya's lips. Both humans looked down at the green. Her limbs and tail were still twitching wildly. They hadn't stopped since she hatched, although the motions had become sporadic as she slept.

"Yes, I know that's all unavoidable," R'bin replied, more easily brought back to the point of this conversation than his sister. "But surely you've not forgotten that you have a son?"

"Of course I haven't," Reya snapped at him. "Yet I think you're worrying more about him than you need to."

"How do you figure? He's about to lose his mother for five turns. What's going to happen to him while you're gone?"

The stare Reya fixed her brother with was flat and angry. "I would like to think that his uncle would find it in his heart to look after him."

R'bin flushed beneath her stare, but he continued to hold her gaze, his eyebrows drawing together in frustration. "Reya..."

"R'bin! If you don't want to look after him you don't have to. I can't make you and I won't try to force you. You have already done so much to keep him safe, I understand if you feel you've discharged any avuncular duty you might have toward him, and I do believe that he'll be cared for at the Weyr whether you choose to involve yourself in his upbringing or not, and I hope that he'll find a way to be happy. But I can't go through weyrling training and look after a small child. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be permitted to, even if I thought to try."

She decided not to eat the fish, instead placing it on the ground a few inches from Raqisath's nose. The young green's nostrils twitched and in a moment a green tongue darted out and claimed the morsel without its owner ever waking up. Reya could not help feeling pleased with herself for discovering this alternative way of getting food into a dragon she already suspected would be a fussy eater.

"You're trying to make me feel guilty," R'bin observed, scowling. "It's not necessary. I never had any intention of abandoning Eri to the care of the creche. But I want to know what your plan is for five turns from now."

Reya blinked at her brother and he blinked back at her, waiting her out. He had always been far more patient than she, and was usually the implacable one, but today he felt their personalities must have been swapped, for he was filled with snapping urgency and she seemed at her ease and willing to let things happen.

"Five turns," Reya answered him slowly, "is a long time to plan."

"But you have," R'bin prompted her. "I know you have. Even sharing your mind with a dragon would not have stopped you from working out a plan. I know you, Reya."

Reya held out a crispy vegetable of some sort as if asking his opinion on whether it was safe to eat. He assumed it was, since it was on offer, but he didn't venture an opinion on it and after a few seconds she shrugged and began munching on one crunchy end of the thing. It wasn't until she'd consumed it halfway that she spoke again.

"I think we should see how things go for the time being, R'bin. I may not even survive weyrling training." She held up one finger to forestall his protestations, "I'm obviously not planning to die, but it's not as if I've ever been especially interested in physical activity, and I may simply get injured. I haven't even been in candidate training, being conditioned for this life. It's going to be a very difficult adjustment for me."

R'bin's thoughts had gone a short distance down those paths in the past several hours, but his own interests had always diverted his mind back to the more immediate problem of what he was going to do now that his sister had Impressed. Now she was putting voice to those half-baked thoughts and forcing him to consider those possibilities.

"Out of curiosity, why five turns?"

R'bin's jaw went slack as he realized that she didn't know the terms of the candidate exchange between High Reaches and Western. There was no reason she should, of course, since she had never been a candidate, and it was entirely possible that the exchange would no longer exist after today anyway.

"That's how long you're expected to remain with the Weyr you Impress at before you can request a transfer," he explained. Someone else would have to catch her up on the rest of the details. Someone who better understood how they would apply to her.

He was asking her whether she intended ever to return to Western and resume her maternal duties, once she'd fulfilled her duties to High Reaches. The thought hit Reya in a dark, soft spot that made Raqisath squirm beneath the bench as Reya prodded at it, because the truth was...she didn't want to. she didn't know if she would be any good as a dragonrider, but she knew she was never meant to be a mother and that she didn't want to devote the rest of her life to failing at that and resenting her son because she was constitutionally unsuited to motherhood.

R'bin must have seen something in her eyes. Maybe the flash of rebellion at the thought of simply walking away from her parental responsibility. Maybe the moment of panic when she realized what kind of a person she must be to consider leaving her child behind, let alone being eager to conceive of it. Maybe the moment of resolve when she decided to commit herself to this new path completely. But whatever he saw, he was already scowling at her when she opened her mouth to answer him.

"I won't be returning to Western Weyr after five turns," she told him as if he wasn't scowling at her. She had never had trouble making hard decisions or saying the hard words. This was just another in a lifetime of instances which required her to be hard. She knew R'bin would come to forgive her - he always forgave everyone, eventually - but she also knew that this might be the last time they spoke in person for many turns, because she recognized the spark of fury mingling with astonishment in his expression.

"You are no kind of mother," he hissed, standing abruptly enough that Raqisath finally woke. When she did, she hissed back at him and flared her wings as much as her present location would permit, which actually involved scraping them along the underside of the stone bench. "Don't blame me if your son grows to hate you."

Reya stood, too, less abruptly, but there was furious color in her cheeks, too, when she replied, "I have done the best that I could for as long as I could. If Eridan grows to hate me, I will find a way to come to terms with it. Even if you encourage him in doing so. Is that your intent?"

Raqisath pressed against Reya's calves, offering tacit support because she did not feel prepared to jump into this argument, although every fibre of her being wanted to leap to her bond's defense. She was only a little mollified by the steady confidence Reya projected, because she could also feel that small dark pocket of guilt which Reya was doing her best to ignore.

"Of course it isn't," R'bin snarled. "But when he asks where you are, I won't lie to him."

"I leave it up to you what to tell him, and how," Reya said. Her insides quivered and she thought she would be sick in a moment. She was certain she was doing the right thing, but that didn't mean she was comfortable with the idea of her son growing up to hate her. "I will love both of you the same, whatever comes."

Both siblings took a deep breath simultaneously and for a moment it seemed the tension might break with a shared glance of wry amusement, but neither one slanted the other any sort of humorous expression. They both stood stubborn and staring.

R'bin, do not say something you will regret, Huarangith urged, speaking for the first time. Whatever his own thoughts on Reya's behavior, he did not want his rider to hurt later because of words he spoke.

"I should go."

"You should go."

They spoke at once, each still angry at the other - Reya at R'bin for forcing this conversation and R'bin at Reya for its outcome. In the uncomfortable silence that followed Reya leaned over the table and scooped up a handful of flaky rolls and for an instant R'bin wondered if she was going to throw them at him to chase him away, but she didn't. She unwound the scarf from her neck which she'd donned in haste in the madrugada and rolled the pastries into it.

"For Huarangith," she said as she held the scarf out. It was not quite a peace offering. "I know he has a weakness for baked goods."

R'bin took it stiffly and left just as stiffly. He couldn't trust himself to speak. Huarangith had been correct in advising him not to say something he would regret, but he didn't think he had any words which didn't fall into that category at the moment.

Reya watched her brother walk away, her own posture erect in the manner of a bristling cat. The unconditional love Raqisath offered her was a flimsy balm to her raw emotions, but the panic lacing its edges reminded her she could not afford to truly lose her temper. Raqisath was too young to really understand the difference between Reya being angry and Reya being angry with her.

"It's all right," she assured the green, whose eyes gleamed a worried shade. "Families fight, but in the end they still love each other. Even if you and I fight, I'll still love you."

We won't fight, Raqisath insisted with a sort of pleading urgency. I won't ever make you mad.

"You might," Reya said, brutally honest even though she knew it distressed the young green. "Or I might make you mad. And we might fight about it. That won't change the fact that we are bound for life, and I will never want to be rid of you."

Raqisath wanted to bring up the fact that Reya was willing enough to be rid of her own flesh and blood, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. She could tell that Reya spoke truly when she swore she would never want to be rid of her.

"We are a pair. You chose me today, and I will choose you every day thereafter," Reya promised, and Raqisath, sensing the rightness of this claim, relaxed with her chin resting on Reya's knees and her eyes drifting closed once more.

Reya began munching on the uneaten half of her crisped vegetable and wondered if dragons drooled in their sleep.

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