Not Waiting [Arc]

[Arcane]

"They're around you often, even though they could go anywhere on Pern through between, and don't seem unhappy in your presence. That speaks to some degree of fondness, does it not?" Relli reasoned. She didn't know enough about firelizards to really say whether a firelizard liked someone or not but it made sense to her.

Hopefully this hatchling would prove more affectionate. Esther clearly tried to care well for her firelizards. She deserved to feel appreciated.

And then, with a cry, the firelizard hatched. A brown, Relli thought, although she didn't have faith in her ability to reliably tell brown hatchlings from bronze through the egg goop. He sounded hungry. Of course. Hatchlings were always hungry.

"He's beautiful," Relli said, pushing the most nutritious looking food on her tray towards Esther, in case she needed something to feed him with, "Have you picked a name?"

Be good to her, Relli thought at the firelizard, just in case he could somehow hear.

[Fel]

Esther still wasn't convinced that they—or at the very least Little Monster—were fond of her so much as they were tolerant of her because she fed them. She felt contentment from them after she fed them, and eagerness before they were fed, and even a desire for closeness in the winter sometimes, or to have an itch scratched. But nothing like affection.

She silently took some of the food from Relli's tray and gave it to the brown, who eagerly snapped it up, taking a wobbly step closer to her. Another bite disappeared almost as quickly.

"I can get you more, after..." she promised quietly, giving the tiny brown another bite. "And... I'm not sure about a name yet."

[Arcane]

And with that, Impression was made. Hearing what Esther murmured, Relli got up and filled another plate with the same nutritious-seeming meat dish, pushing it quietly towards Esther as she returned.

Relli didn't have any firelizards of her own and didn't truly understand them, but she knew the first moments were important. These were for Esther and the young hatchling, who seemed cute and happy to be fed, "Can you sense what he's like yet? Or does he need to get a bit older first?"

Relli had known Relsk from the moment she gave him her blood but whers were not firelizards. It wasn't the same.

[Fel]

Esther looked up as Relli returned. "Oh. I... I meant I promised I'd get more for you. I didn't want to take your breakfast without giving back..."

Still, she took the offered meat and kept feeding it to the tiny brown until he eventually started to slow down. His snapping after the next bite was more perfunctory—because it was food and it was there—than out of any remaining hunger. His belly was round and he settled on it, just reaching with his head.

"It's hard to say yet. Dragons, you see more of what they're like before a meal knocks them out. I assume whers are the same. Plus they can talk. And it's more like they're a part of you that you just never realized was there. Even when that part is... something you'd rather not see in yourself. Fire lizards are already focused on eating by the time the bond is made. And then usually on napping."

[Arcane]

"There's plenty more food I can help myself too if I'm still hungry," Relli assured Esther, "You're welcome to as much as you need."

Firelizards were cute at this age, Relli thought, beneath the egg goo, with impossible small, delicate talons and fangs that were already sharp. She wondered absently if firelizards had baby teeth.

Between gorging himself and hatching, this little firelizard seemed tired already. Relli supposed it had been a busy day for him.

"Whers don't feel like a missing piece of you," Relli mused, "At least my two didn't. Which is for the best, I think. Two whers and a human would make for a very crowded soul. Whers also don't choose us like your dragons do you riders. It's an arranged match in most cases and we make the best of it. I count myself very fortunate in Rellivask and Relsk, but I only knew Relsk as a hatchling. He could talk and I though I knew him from the start- although I later learned there was more to him than I had believed. Rellivask was already grown when we met. She understood our bond better than I did, at first."

Relli's mind caught on something Esther had said. It was hard to imagine Krugith as the sort of dragon Esther- or any rider- would be ashamed to see herself reflected in. Relli had never asked Esther about Keramerth. It seemed too personal and painful a topic to broach uninvited. One of the deepest tragedies a rider could ever face. So she said carefully, "I think we all get to choose which parts of us we want to nurture, riders and dragons included. Whether the sides of ourselves we have mastered are still part of who we are is a question for the harpers, I suppose."

She thought of the pairs she knew best, her own family, "I also believe sometimes dragons seek out riders who are what they're not, because human and dragon alike need balance. I never knew your Keramerth, or you when you rode him, but I cannot believe there was ever a time when you weren't good."

[Fel]

"I suppose whers are more different from dragons than I expected. I thought, when the eggs weren't sold, that the mother just sort of... knew who the babies wanted and selected that way, rather than giving them out to who the mother wanted for them." But then, she hadn't considered that whers could re-bond as adults either, and that those bonds may have been more out of a sense of pragmatism than any real connection. She'd known it was a possibility, but had just never really thought about the logistics of it. Maybe in some ways, that was easier than it was with dragons--nobody ever felt trapped by a bad situation.

But on the other hand, Esther wasn't sure she'd trade the sense of just fitting together with Krugith for anything. She handed the tiny brown one last piece of meat even as he slowly curled up there on the table. She could feel that his hunger had subsided, though there was also a certain level of greed there despite no longer being ravenous. Yes, she supposed he really was his mother's offspring. Wonderful.

She shook her head ruefully at Relli's assertion. "No, you're wrong. And it wasn't... just him. I wasn't good then. He made me angrier, I think. But he didn't make me arrogant. Or... combative, I guess. I had to be right, or in the right, and if I could shout over the dissenters then..." She shrugged. She hadn't been capable of shouting in a long while now, but that hadn't stopped her from wanting to, at least not back then. "I suppose the situation made me somewhat over-sensitive about criticism. Not him, any bronze would have. I never wanted that kind of notoriety. "

Esther guessed she'd never know how much of what she'd come to dislike about herself in those Turns had been her own doing, and how much had been Keramerth. Had he sparked the fire, or only fanned the flames?

She reached out to stroke the little brown's chin, and he obligingly rolled over for her to continue, then yawned.

[Arcane]

"I'm not sure how much mother whers know of their children's desires. Rellivask has never clutched so I can't speak from experience," Relli said, eyes thoughtful, "But I don't think much. I doubt the wherlets themselves know who they want. Wher eggs don't have touchings like dragons do. They Impress more like firelizards, bonding only when offered food and blood."

If Relli was a wher mother, she would not allow her hatchling to go to someone cruel or incompetent, no matter how infatuated her hatchling thought they were. Love mattered but love required knowledge and understanding hard to gain from an egg.

Relli watched as Esther finished feeding the small brown, who at last collapsed into the sleep of the young and well-gorged.

Relli tried to picture Esther as the woman she described. It was hard to imagine the kind, thoughtful, quiet, entirely good woman she knew in the bronzerider of Esther's stories. But she didn't think Esther would have recognized her either, in the woman she had once been, who had not been brave or strong enough to save her family, "I'm sorry you didn't get the chance to find your own way as a rider, without the burden of notoriety or expectation, and that you have to live with those regrets. I hope you give yourself enough credit for the things you did do right. And for rebuilding yourself, into someone wonderful, after all you lost. It must have taken a tremendous amount of inner strength."

There was a gentle invitation in Relli's last words to share more, but she did not ask. She never asked about Keramerth or the time before Krugith. Relli knew enough of riders to know how personal and painful a loss that was- a hell she would never draw Esther back into simply because Relli was fascinated by her. If Esther wanted to share, Relli would listen, but the memories were not hers to demand.

[Fel]

"Dragons choose... mostly fine even without a Touching," Esther said, though she remembered one Hatching where there hadn't been one, and the outcome had been poor. She couldn't even remember why she had attended; to punish herself for her failure, she supposed. To force herself to watch other people being happy with what she had lost. Still, even then most of the dragons had chosen without a great deal of trouble. It was just how bad the dragons that didn't had been that was the problem.

Esther shook her head. "I don't get to take credit for that. Krugith does. She saw... what I could be, not what I was. I was... barely functional, after... everything. I forgot to eat, I barely slept most nights. I got it in my head that I was... dirty, somehow. That I contaminated everything I touched. I'd scrub the floor of my room, over and over, trying to make it clean again, and... No. I wasn't strong."

She was fairly certain Relli wouldn't be sitting here talking to her if she'd known her back then. She hadn't managed to maintain friendships with anyone she'd known before Keramerth had died. Had, in a last act of either vengeful pettiness or a misguided sense of mercy for the first time ever, had left her for worse than dead. Not that she'd had many friends then in any case. And after... she hadn't had any. A meddling sister, but that was all.

"And I think part of me hated myself. Because once the initial shock wore off, I was almost... relieved he was gone. Even though I was just empty, barely even a person, I was relieved that I didn't have to worry what either of us would do. He was gone, and nothing I did mattered for anything or to anyone any more."

She rubbed the little brown's belly and he stretched out, cat-like, for more. "I'm just... glad you didn't know me back then. You wouldn't think I was very wonderful at all—and you're wrong about that anyway. But... I'm also... glad you're wrong about it, in a way. I think I'd prefer that you had a high opinion of me than... not. Even if you only think it because you didn't know me at my worst."