Remembered

Participants:

Indira.jpg

Date: 2010.08.23
Location: Indira's Quarters
Synopsis: Day 21- month 09 - Five turns on Indira remembers. Follows on from Second Fiddle
Rating: PG13
Logger: Indira


After Ahnika had left, Indira sat curled up on the chaise lounge for a little longer and then with a sigh, rose and crossed to her bed, taking up the bundle of old letters she’d been going through when the candidate had arrived.

Letters of condolences from friends after L’min had fallen to Thread. It was exactly five turns to the day since that heart rending cry had been taken up by the dragons of High Reaches. Living in a Weyr, one becomes inured to the death dirge of the dragons and that day had been no exception. Up to her elbows in redwort and numbweed as she assisted the infirmary staff, it was only when Lettie came racing in, panting and barely able to get a word out straight, that the then Assistant Headwoman, had realized there was something very wrong.

“Lomaxin!” the lower caverns girl in charge of passing out fresh drinking water to the fighting wings coming in had panted out, “He’s…he’s…” and then she just started sobbing and was unable to say anything further.

Indira went cold, dropped everything and started running for the bowl. Somehow she just knew!

The thirty-four turn old stopped dead in her tracks when as one, L’min’s wing (what was left of it) turned toward her, ashen faced. In their centre, Max in the grasp of a burly bronzerider, fighting and cussing as tears streamed down his face. The fifteen turn old who always made it his duty to stand watch until his father came in every time after the wings rose to meet Thread…distraught beyond comfort.

Her legs gave out from underneath her, and somewhere, through the roaring in her ears as someone tried to help her up again, Indira was vaguely aware of one L’min’s wingmates telling her what had happened before she blacked out completely.

To this day, all she could remember was that the brown pair had somehow managed to make it back to the Weyr both dragon and rider critically scored. Before anyone had been able to run forward and unbuckle the weyrsecond from his riding straps, Shealth had gathered what last remaining life he had in him and clumsily pushed back up into the air, sending himself and his rider, forever Between.

And Max…had seen it all.

Indira could never quite differentiate between her own pain for losing her weyrmate, and the ache of her mother’s heart, for her son’s having borne witness to his father’s final moments.

And then the stab of guilt kicked in, for the way in which she’d abandoned him in her attempt to try and drink the pain away. The drunken blackouts when she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten to her quarters. Those mornings she groaned awake with the mother of all hangovers and stared blearily down at some or other nameless male sprawled across her bed.

She swallowed, closing her eyes against those memories knowing there was no way she could ever make up for the turns lost, for the wedge she herself had driven between her and her son. All she could do, was try to make right for the future.

But five turns on; there were no more tears to be cried. Despite the hell the charming, smooth talking brownrider had put her through; she still was able to remember him fondly at times. He’d been a good father. On that she’d never been able to fault him. And on days like today, she preferred to cast the darker times with him, aside.

Sighing softly, Eastern’s Headwoman tied the letters back up with the ribbon that held them together and set them back into the little wooden box she kept them in, to be taken out next turn on Day 21, month 09.


Closing Credits: Reba - He Gets That From Me


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