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Five Turns Earlier |
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My mother, Devrah, and I had lived alone for several turns, ever since my father was killed in an accident. Since it was an Interval, we didn't have to worry much about outside threats. We only had to worry about growing enough to feed ourselves and the runners we had been breeding. When they were old enough they would be sold, but for now we had to keep them growing and making sure they learned manners. We lived in a small hold, it didn't even have a name. |
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One day my mother asked me to look for a new place to keep our runners. Someplace that would be safe from Thread. She had overheard someone say that the Interval might be almost over. We also needed a larger place, since our herd was growing in number. So I started looking. After a few days I found a spot that I thought would work. |
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I took my mother to the place I found. She liked it, although the abundance of greenery worried her. I told her not to worry the dragonriders would protect us. We were still close enough to the hold to be under protection during a Fall. And with water so close, we won't be dragging buckets back and forth all day.
Within a week we were moving all of our runners into a large cavern
I found. It's entrance was hidden behind the trees. When my mother first saw the cave and other passages that branched off from it, she thought that we could easilly fit several dragons into most of the areas. She joked that if the weyr ever needed a new home they could easily fit in our new cave. |
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After we had lived there for almost a year, I finally had a chance to explore most of the caves and passages. There were several passages that led to other openings, higher up the cliffside. We had, after a few months, cut down most of the trees immediately around the cliff, to make gates, fence posts, and a bed frame for mother, who still hadn't gotten used to that much greenery any way. There were still a couple of trees near the opening, but they were overshadowed by a slight overhang on the cliff above them.
Some days, I would sit in one of the upper openings and see dragons fly by, on their way to the hold or back to the weyr. Then I would close my eyes and imagine waht it would be like to be a dragonrider. But I was already almost seventeen, then, and decided that if I ahdn't been Searched by any of the dragons I had already met, it probably wasn't going to happen. |
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Then, about a year ago, mother met someone. This man, Kalan, was a smith. He had come to our hold because his mother had been born here and she had recently died. He came to tell the rest of his family here, and he fell in love with my mother. It didn't take very long before they were married. My mother and Kalan decided to move back into town where he could be easily accessible to anyone needing a smith. I voted to stay with the runners, and live by myself in the caves. |
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