Reaching Out With Awkward Words
Dragonsfall Weyr
Amber Hills Hold
Vintner Hall
Healer Hall
Hidden Meadows
Dolphin Cove Weyr
Dolphin Hall
Emerald Falls Hold
Harper Hall
Printer Hall
Green Valley Hold
Leeward Lagoon Hold
Barrier Lake Weyr
Sunstone Seahold
Citrus Bay Hold
Writers: Rochelle
Date Posted: 31st July 2008
Characters: R'syl
Description: R'syl contemplates the difficulties of writing a letter to his estranged children.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 10, day 27 of Turn 4
R'syl stared blankly down at the paper in front of him, toying with the inkpot absently. The page mocked him, open, empty, waiting.
He sighed, carefully putting down the inkpot before he spilled it or permanently stained his fingers. It was so tempting to just push the paper aside, or to start writing something else. Reports, new drill ideas, those could flow from his fingers like water. But a letter, a simple letter....
He stared down at the paper, willing the words to come, to appear on it without needing him to physically think and write them first. This wasn't his thing.
But if he was honest, was this anyone's thing? How did you write a letter to a child who never wanted to see you again? Who would probably never read it, and would refuse to even accept it if the messenger brought it to them? And if they did read it, if they finally made that most tenuous gesture in his direction, what should he say? What could he tell them? What should he tell them? What words could reach them and let them know that he loved them and missed them with as much fierceness as he did their mother, but still not chase them away again?
He closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead, trying to smooth the ache developing between his eyes. He wasn't a harper. He was no good at crafting words, and he preferred them blunt and honest even if he did spend more time dancing with them than not. It would take a harper of legendary skill to reunite his children with nothing more than a few words on a piece of paper. But there weren't any available, and he knew they wouldn't appreciate it anyway. There was just him and his dry, awkward words and slightly illegible scrawl from too many reports over the last few turns. They could be the right words, he knew, if he could find them.
If they would read them.
So far only Sohhen had read his letters, faithfully kept the carefully written posts in the bottom drawer of her desk in case one of his children showed an interest in their father's well-being. He'd sent a new one every few months, trying to keep the news fresh, to find better words for what he wanted to say each time and instructing Sohhen to discard the old one.
But it was hard. Hard to write the words he knew they would never read, harder still to write the ones he never wanted them to, but that he knew needed said if they ever did. Hard to casually discuss the weyrlings that he tried to fill the hole they'd created in his life with, to reach out without pouring out his soul and scaring them off again.
Hard to admit the growing futility of the gesture when he understood their distance from him possibly better than they did.
He sighed, letting the hand massaging his temple creep backwards to rub his neck. He did this to himself, he knew that. He supposed part of it was his upbringing. He'd Impressed Usaeth late after only a few months at the weyr, and although he'd lost most of his inhibitions over the Turns, some things were much harder to shake -like the idea that a father should take active interest in his children. His children on the other hand, were weyr-born, even if they'd been raised solely by him and his ex-wife until her death. He was fighting their natural drifting from age and family shattering disasters simply because he couldn't bear not to, even if he knew it was probably the best thing.
And yet...
He closed his eyes, seeing in his mind Oroma's happy face, shining with tears of joy at her Impression, before the image shunted to the brutal memories of his second Fall, when the agonized screams of determined yet inexperienced dragons had not been enough to prevent a father's sixth sense for his child from turning his head to see the distant nightmare of his daughter winking out of existence aboard her Thread-roiling green.
Sairyl, his beautiful youngest, was a dragonrider now, far safer and better trained than her father or older sister had been. It was so easy to transpose that awful memory, to envision his baby in that nightmare. But if it happened again, he was almost certain that one of them, perhaps Sairros, would reach for the others, or even for him. And if it happened, he didn't want his children to pull back empty-handed.
Resolutely, he reached out for the pen again.
Last updated on the August 1st 2008