Not quite sixteen turns old, Stephon is already quite proficient in delegation and paperwork, as well as good with servants and drudges for organization. He's been trained well by his mother as a sort of family Steward. Very well organized himself, rarely with anything out of place either on himself or his rooms, Stephon would give it all up, all of it, to be riding a dragon.
"It wasn't your fault, Stephon. If you hadn't pushed him, that Thread would have killed him. Everyone knows that. There were many witnesses." The red-haired woman bit her lip. Guilt was something for those with bad habits, with trouble following them. Stephon was anything but.
"Now, you sleep a while. Your arm will be in pain, so when you wake, just call for the journeyman there and he'll make sure that the numbweed is put on correctly." Bayat indicated the fresh journeyman who came into the infirmary to replace one who had been on shift for a while. Then she looked at Stephon again.
"The wound will heal, but it will leave a scar. A deep one, probably." She said, while Stephon drank fellis-juice. He looked at his arm, and the heavy bandages which wrapped around it.
"Then I suppose I'll have to wait to stand on the sands, huh...?" He said, woozily.
"You've been Searched? Oh, dear..." Bayat said, but the young man was already unconscious.
Ru'di, a blue rider, was leaning against the stone wall speaking casually with one of the Lord Holder's secretaries. Bayat caught his eye.
"Yes, master healer?" He said, and the young woman he was talking to vanished back behind her wide desk.
"I've got to ask you which Sands some of these injured boys are going to be standing at," she said, "Stephon may not be entirely healed if it is to be soon."
"Stephon... That boy who got pushed onto the rocks, is he all right?" Ru'di asked, but then cleared his head of his dragon's interrupting speech. "He is to stand at Andromeda. The eggs are hardening, but they're still waiting for all the candidates to show up. There is some time yet."
Bayat breathed a sigh of relief. She saw the look in the tall darkskinned man's eye.
"He was very brave to do that," Ru'di said, low. "But the Holder whose son got injured is still furious. It's the talk of the Hold."
"So I hear," Bayat said. "But if the Holder would rather have a dead son or one who will be needing therapy to walk soon, that's the question. He ought not to complain." The healer turned on her heel and made for her rooms.
***
It was only a couple days later that Bayat allowed Stephon to leave the Hold, for Andromeda Weyr. Though she did insist: no betweening. That might still injure the threadscore along his arm.
Stephon was seen to be in the infirmary later that day, though. He knelt beside the Holder's cot and muttered another apology.
"My father thinks it's fine that you're leaving," he said, "but I'd give anything to be in your shoes!" The light in his eyes had returned after his broken legs had set. He barely remembered tumbling over the rocks, and onto the ledge below, but he knew that his legs would be fine enough to ride runners some day again. His own runner wasn't so lucky... And he saw the long line of pale scar tissue on Stephon's arm to prove how lucky he really was.
"I must go," Stephon said, "but ... If there is anything you want, send word to me. I can probably find some interesting things in a Weyr. You know... Flit eggs, watch whers... that sort of thing..."
The Holder laughed, winced, and then smiled. "Stephon, I owe you my life already... Stop it! Go get your things, and impress well!"
He stood and did just that -- well, he got his things... And he thought about what "impressing well" might really mean.
"I gave you a bath just a couple candlemarks ago, Fuer. Go to sleep."
But I itch!
"That's because you keep waking up! If you sleep, you won't notice the itch."
The brown rested his head on his rider's shoulder in their cot, and tried. He TRIED to sleep.
Ph'on finally got up and oiled the dragonet again. Like HE could sleep when his dragon itched so fiercely!?
I do not know what that word is, but I know what you feel. They think that we are not ... loud enough.
"I don't need to be loud," Ph'on said. He dropped the ash-covered riding jacket onto the stone floor of his weyr, and flopped onto his cot.
I must bathe too, Fueroth told him. Are you going to help me or are those weyrlings going to do it?
They do not ask you to do this, Fueroth pointed out. You could leave it to the recordskeeper.
"But I like doing it. It relaxes me. Now go on... I'll be there soon enough."
