Dear Ma and Pa

Participants:

Ciara.jpg

Date: 05/08/2010
Location: Eastern Weyr: Weyrling Barracks
Synopsis: Ciara writes her first letter home to her parents.
Rating: PG
Logger: Ciara

She'd learned to read and write of course: even if she was 'just a dumb Holder', she'd had her harper lessons like any Weyrbred person. It was Ciara's writing style that made her look like she didn't know what she was doing. The graphite stick is clenched tightly in a practised grip, driven with infinite care across the paper. Small strokes mark out the letters, and Ciara's slow but neat hand steadily fills the paper. She doesn't go for waste, this one, barely leaving any sort of margins. She's got a lot to say, and she wants to get it all on the sheet.

Dear Ma and Pa,

Sorry I haven't written to you in so long. I've been very busy! You'll never believe where I am now, but I'm at Eastern Weyr! I was made a fisher there by one of the Weyrwomen herself - gold rider Randi in fact.

Ciara pauses, resting the end of the stick against her chin and squinting at what she's written so far. How can she even begin to describe how she feels about what's happening? The first of her family to live in a Weyr, the first to study at Landing, the first to be a candidate. Finding out exciting and sometimes strange new things about the world. Being so close to AIVAS, the machine she can't help but feel awed by. Talking to Weyrwoman, meeting flirtatious men, making friends from all over Pern. She's no writer; she can't express every minute detail of her emotions. Now Ci bites softly on the end of the graphite stick, frustrated at this inability.

There's so much she wants to tell them. About Ahnika, about the excitement of being a candidate, about what life's like in a Weyr. About learning at Landing, about the computers, about the unfinished Weyr. Limited by her vocabulary and writing ability, she can only write formally. Her energy won't translate to words, and it annoys her.

For the first time in Turns, Ci feels the urgent need to see her parents - talk to her parents. She's never felt homesick before but now…now that she's unable to describe everything that's happening in her life to them, it hits her like a fist to the gut. This place, despite how foreign it is to her, has never made her feel sad before. But suddenly Ci's missing the comfortable boredom of home. Yes, it was boring but…you knew where you stood there. Here, there's a new surprise every day. Sometimes she wonders if the world's moving too fast for her. Has she bitten off more than she can chew…?

Ci hunches over the paper, biting her lip to hold in the tears, trying to ignore the clenching feeling in her stomach. Just a few months and the eggs will crack, and her parents will be watching her on the sands. And then she can see them.

Now the graphite stick moves again, as her emotions try to pour out through the implement, and through that to her faraway, missed ma and pa.



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