"Mo-ther..." Alhann breathed, "it is too tight!"
"Then suck your breath carefully, little girl. You must look perfect for the Holder's sons!"
Alhann glared at her mother's head. Only her greying hair up in a bun was visible with this tight obscenity called a 'gather dress' she had to wear. She was only nine turns old! What was her mother thinking, trying to marry her off so early?
Or was it, that she wanted to show off and try for an arrangement?
Alhann shuddered inside, either of the options weren't ones she wanted. She did not normally dislike dresses, Holder boys, or her mother. But at this moment in time, she despised all three ideas at once. She snapped her eyes up in front of her when her father came into the room.
"Well, little 'hanna," he purred, "how do you like your new dress?"
If her mother didn't mean to poke her with the small hem-pin, Alhann wondered how it could have happened. For wasn't the hem on this blasted dress half a span away from her ankle at the time?
"... I adore it, father," Alhann said, half a gasp and half a growl.
"Good! Good!" He was, as ever, oblivious. "Then I hope you have a grand time at the gather!"
"You're not coming?" Alhann suddenly turned concerned. Her father would be ... missing a great time... He'd always spoken about going to the gathers, when he was a lad. But now, he was grown and she supposed that he had to keep working. As a master smith, forging the metal bars and shutters for holds and weyrs, he was always busy now.
"No sweet, I can't go. You be sure to bring back something nice for me. I will expect something!"
He was going to tussle her pampas-gold hair, but then remembered that his wife had already pinned it back into its nice tame echo of her own bun. Instead, Ahlronol put his heavy fingers up to his daughter's chin. "You have a good time, too. I know you will."
She blinked, and tried to nod, but the neck line of the dress was so high... all she could do was swallow and shift her jaw a bit.
***
"You're just lucky to go at all," whispered Aton, Alhann's youngest brother. "I never get to do anything fun."
"This is not fun," Alhann said, hugging him. She winced when her dress dug into her hip again. "I only wish that mother knew how bad her tailoring is..."
Aton laughed out loud, then suddenly stifled. From the wagon where their mother waited, a clear 'a-hem' came out. Alhann gave a half grin to her mother, and rolled her eyes. Aton wouldn't be in trouble, their mother would forget he was bad the moment they entered the gather.
When they arrived to the grounds, it was to loud clapping and drumming, already people were gawking at Alhann and her mother. Alhann hated this too, she didn't mind being *looked at* but this was just rude. And it wasn't because she was pretty, which she thought she was. It was this dress! It was awful! It made her neck look a dragonlength longer than it really was!
When the Lord Holder of the area came through, most of the celebration quieted down a bit. He had a brown-haired boy in tow, who looked just about as miserable as Alhann did, in his own version of a too-tight nasty-feeling dress-up uniform. He wore white, mostly, but it already had grass stains on the knees and the hemline of the pants legs were quite muddy. He'd been having fun, and Alhann suddenly was half jealous of him.
But his pale eyes shone with a glimmer, he was cute, she thought. And he *was* the holder's son! The Lord Holder announced some event, and then approached Tainala, Alhann's mother. "It is good to see you, Tainala, how is your brother?"
"Tain is well, and yourself?"
They made mindless small talk. Both children looked at one another from the hip of their parent, made eye contact, and finally escaped their parents notice by ducking beyond some jugglers.
Together, Alhann and this holder's son scampered away to where the runner races were being held. "This is great fun," Chiris said.
"For you," Alhann said. "This dress is making me choke."
"Then ... here." Chiris took ... he took a knife out from his boot?! Alhann stood with wide, amazed eyes as he very carefully -- very slowly -- ripped -- open - her -neckline...
"ALHANN!!" Bellowed her mother. Chiris looked at Alhann, they both looked at their enraged parents, but at least -- Alhann could breathe enough to run!
"Chiris will be next, I know it..." Alhann said to one of the other Holders. "He's very handsome."
"We all know what you think of him. I thought you were to marry him."
"Well I-- I LIKE him," Alhann said, putting her sewing aside. "I like him. He's my best friend. I do love him, but not... well, maybe like that..."
The others tittered. Alhann's mother had dropped off a load of sewing and the girls of the hold took to it like sheep to their feed. Alhann kept her own private work below the piece she was meant to be repairing. She was no drudge, after all. And that work was usually supposed to be for drudges. The drudges in this hold had the least work assigned to them in the whole world, she presumed. Since she never saw them do a moment's work -- the other girls were always piled high with repair work, setting glows, and cleaning...
Must be nice to be a drudge, Alhann thought to herself when she took her embroidery back up. She was making a tunic for Chiris, perhaps because she loved him, perhaps because they WERE best friends. He had bestowed a beautiful bracelet upon her, something he traded some other valuable thing in his father's store rooms for. He was quite good at that, wheeling and dealing. Alhann was as well, but in more subtle circles. She dealt in gossip, in information, in news.
Harpers had asked her mother to send her to the Hall, to become a scribe or a currier, but her mother had refused. Her father... Her wonderful father, had been killed in an accident putting up one of the same huge shutters that he helped build. She chose not to think on that. But it left her, Aton, and their other two siblings wanting for work. Their Hold was average in size, but the goods coming from it were few and far between.
Hence the idea of marriage into a more prominant Holder family.
She understood it better now. But why Tainala didn't just marry Chiris' father was beyond both of them. It's what they wanted, it was obvious they were attracted to each other...
Finished with her work at last, Alhann stood up and met the eyes of a tall ... dragonrider!
"Oh!" She gasped, and the other girls in the room followed suit.
"Sorry to interrupt, but I've come on search. Would you care to accompany me?"
They went outside... It was busy but most of the youngest children were kept from the line of potential candidates. There before them, stood a beautiful blue dragon by the name of Sylith.
He sniffed all the girls, and the boys who had come from their work rooms. And then his snuffling breath landed upon Alhann.
"You, how old are you?" Asked the rider.
No one expected this... No one especially meaning Tainala.
"You cannot take my daugher! You cannot even think it!" Tainala burst out through the others who watched. Her arms flailed in the air. "What will we do? You cannot take her!"
Alhann glanced at her mother, with a bit more of the disdain that she'd grown in the years since meeting Chiris, and stepped toward W'ryn. "I will go. Where am I to stand?"
"Dawn Sisters weyr has had a gold's flight. A very good gold's flight," he looked back at Tainala, who refused to be pacified, until the other aunties practically dragged her away.
"I have heard of them. Good. May I pack now? I wish... to leave soon."
Looking with half an eye at the still-ranting Tainala, W'ryn nodded in agreement.