A Piece of the Past

Writers: Vix
Date Posted: 2nd September 2007

Characters: Tamaca
Description: Tamaca reflects on the changes in her life since the death of her brother.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 5, day 22 of Turn 4

"Good - she's not here."

Tamaca muttered the words to herself as she stealthily entered her mother's quarters, the weyr in which the young woman had lived for most of her life, though not in recent turns. She looked around as she moved quietly through the common room, glancing into her mother's sleeping room and the slightly smaller one occupied by her grandmother, both neat but containing items that bespoke the personalities of those who slept within them.

Beyond those two sleeping rooms was another, smaller room. The three beds had been moved from this room, as had the curtain that had been hung to divide it into two sections - a smaller one for Tamaca and a larger for her two brothers. Instead the room held miscellaneous belongings, including chests of items that belonged to the three siblings.

She paused in the doorway leading to those items, taking in the unfamiliar, the haphazard arrangement of the room now turned to storage area, and the familiar, those chests that she had seen every day while living here in the turns of her childhood. She paused a moment, but then steeled herself, taking a breath and entering, for this was her purpose in coming to her mother's weyr.

She passed the chest belonging to her eldest brother, Lacardin. "L'car," she reminded herself in a whisper, trailing her hand over the smooth wood of its top. This one she would leave unopened, its owner still living yet locked in bitterness, surviving his 'scores and yet guilty. . .

She left that thought, not wanting to explore it today, not ready to deal with her own feelings on that but with other purpose.

The next chest belonged to Tamdin - T'din from the time he Impressed until his death and yet always Tam to her. Little more than a turn had separated the births of her and her brother and they had been close in temperament as well. They had been inseparable, referring to themselves as "Tam-one" and "Tam-two."

She traced the front of the trunk, the place where her brother had carved his name with the knife she had given him on his tenth birthingday. Mum had been unhappy with both of them, Tamaca for saving all of those thirty-second pieces given to her to buy the knife and Tamdin for his injudicious use of it. The young woman smiled slightly at the memory of that, recalling that their mother had hugged both of them, her healer instincts coming to the fore as she sighed that at least neither had been cut by the knife.

Now her fingers went to the latches of the chest and undid them, shoving upward on the heavy lid to reveal the contents.

At the top, she found his favorite gather shirt, light brown trimmed with a brown that matched his eyes - and hers. He had always folded it carefully when finished with it, and been so disappointed on the day that he put it on and found it too small, the muscles he had developed from the constant drills with sacks of firestone straining the material so that he could barely move. She had not thought about the fate of that shirt, had assumed that their mother had passed it along to someone else as she had with other pieces of clothing they had outgrown, but here it was, bringing to mind the times that he had worn it.

She held it to her chest, remembering the sight of him in it the first time, for this had been a gift to him on his fourteenth birthingday, a gift that had served him almost until his sixteenth turn, somewhat more than a turn before his death. She glanced into the trunk and tears welled in her eyes as she saw the item just below it, another item saved from that same birthingday. She picked up the slip of paper, so carefully lettered in her own hand, the poem that she had written to accompany the shirt, her gift to him.

"Handsome brownrider, full of himself,
So vain to ride so high.
Handsome brownrider, winks and nods
To the girls walking by.
Handsome brownrider, primps and preens
To make his hair shine so.
Handsome brownrider, draws all eyes
Wherever he does go.
Handsome brownrider, boasts to all
His voice clear and loud.
But handsome brownrider, brother-mine,
Makes me oh-so-proud!"

She buried her face in the shirt, remembering his reaction, how he had teased. "You'd better study harder, Harper-girl, and learn how to write a _real_ poem." But he'd hugged her to thank her, whispering softly, "I'm proud of you, too, Tam-two."

Sniffing and swiping her arm over her face to dry her tears, Tamaca tossed the poem back into the chest - though she carefully refolded the shirt to place it atop the other items within the large wooden box. She closed it, her expression devoid of the earlier play of emotion.

She moved to the third chest, her own. Initials were carved into the front of this one as well, done by her brother's hand on the same day as his own, though he had made it no further than "Tama" before their mother had walked into the room and discovered the two of them kneeling in front of the trunk and put a stop to that.

She paused before she opened the trunk, closing her eyes and telling herself that the items that rested within were only things and really did not matter. Of course, she had come here to find something, something that _did_ matter, so she knew that her assurances to herself were mostly empty. With a sigh, she went through the same motions as with her brother's, unlatching and opening it.

There on the top were her Harper's knots. She had worn them for four turns, though she had also stood for Hatchings within that time. She had been so proud of them, as had her mother and grandmother, both telling her that here at the Weyr she had this opportunity that other young women on the southern continent had not been offered. She had taken that so seriously, throwing herself into her classes - until Tamdin had died and all had changed.

She held the knots in her hand, remembering the discussions with her brother over what she was learning. This was something they had shared, the craft they had both chosen, though by the time she had apprenticed, he had already had to set aside his studies to care for the dragon he had Impressed. Still, he was avid to hear of her classes. When he had been scored, when he had gone /between/ too injured to live on, injured in that first fateful Fall, she no longer had anyone with whom she could discuss those small triumphs and enormous-seeming frustrations. When he was no longer there to share that experience, it somehow seemed diminished. Her studies lost purpose, as did most of her life. It had not been long before she had left her craft, the knots discarded - though apparently retained by her mother.

She set the knots aside, realizing that she had been sitting for a long while and that her mother and grandmother could be returning to their weyr at any time. Now she knelt in front of the trunk, rummaging through the items within, ignoring the memories they held, her hands reaching into the bottom for what lay within.

She pulled out several books before she came to the one she wanted, setting aside the storybooks that had been her favorites for Grandmum to read to her and the first that she had read by herself. Her fingers closed around a thicker one, its leather cover smooth, its binding barely cracked, the book as yet unread.

Tamaca sat on the floor of that room, the room where she had slept during her childhood, her back against the trunk that held the memories of her earlier turns, the book in her hand, staring down at it as she gathered the strength to open it, its plain brown leather cover interrupted only by the letters tooled onto it in gold tint. "Harper of the Weyr," she read softly.

She remembered the first time she had read this title, the evening that she had unwrapped the silken cloth from around it and had seen the brown leather, the brown of her brother's eyes and her own. She had given Tamdin an exasperated look, though she was pleased with his birthingday gift to her. "Read it and then we'll discuss it," he had told her, but life had been busy then and she had not read it, had saved it until she had a free restday to devote to it. That restday had never come because fifteen days later, barely two sevendays later, Thread had fallen and her brothers had risen to meet it with their Wings and one had returned injured and the other had not returned at all. In the days that followed she had been numb and hurt and then angry, and had eventually set aside her craft, her dreams, and this book.

Finally she opened it, staring at the familiar writing, the words penned on the cover: "To Tam-two, Happy Birthingday, from Tam-one."

She took a moment to absorb those words, to allow the longing to see him to subside. Then her fingertips touched the pages of the book, seeking what she knew still lay within, finding the edges of the folded paper that rested within the printed pages. She had forgotten this paper, forgotten this book, until a conversation with another apprentice, but upon remembering, she knew that she had to return her for both the book and what lay within.

She started to open the book, intending to take the page, but thought better of it. Her mother, her grandmother - both would be returning too soon. Instead, she snapped the book closed, rose from the floor, and shut the lid of the chest. With book in hand, she strode to the door, taking this piece of the past with her.

Last updated on the September 2nd 2007

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A Piece of the Past