[OOC] Vignette.
It isn't hard to find a chilly night in the Reaches, Dagany's come to discover. He's known the location in the past, just maybe not this intimately.
He's been here for months. Two? More? He can't remember things like time very well. When he was on the road it didn't matter, the caravan stopped and you got out, you did your work, you made some marks and you left again. This time, he stayed.
The reasons behind his decision, and the events that have transpired since, are what lead him to finding quiet moments away from the kitchen, the stables, the dormitories. They guide his boots along a trail he's taken before, one only he can see, one his brain remembers and it's all muscle memory from the inside to the outside, to the shore of the lake with its so-dark water.
To a place where he sees open sky again, a horizon off in the distance if he squints and uses his imagination just a little, just enough to paint the line of it like it'd be if the sun were out.
He absorbs it all for a long minute before moving, before pushing his boots off so he can feel Pern beneath him, uninterrupted.
On such outings he finds the peace within himself, the well of calm that provides him with the means to act so patiently, to behave as if he has any idea what he's doing. To every positive there is a negative, or to every upside there is a down; these outings, too, are opportunities for his mind to dwell on what's wrong, on his own sadness, on his family.
He misses them terribly while he stands there, alone on the stretch of earth and rock, staring up at the blanket of star-smattered black swathing the world above him. He misses them, he misses the pull of the road. The animals. His parents. His sisters. The art of the trade.
A stiff breeze blows in and, with nothing to halt it on its way, hits Dagany full in the face. His skin burns for a moment, shivers run down from the base of his neck and spread; he hunches his shoulders to nudge his jacket's collar tighter around his jaw and glances down at his bare feet. His toes wiggle at him. His eyes catch something. A wrinkle forms between his eyebrows.
To the right of his right foot, maybe four inches away, is a dark shape against the dark ground. It doesn't belong there. Curious, he bends down at his knees to inspect it, reach out for it. At first he just pinches the material, and it's definitely material. Leather. Something else, too. Thumb and forefinger lift it up. His expression is a mix of inquisitive and bemused. Someone's lost a glove.
Most people wouldn't leave it there. Pern's is not a wasteful society. But they might take it for themselves, slip it on, or start thinking of all the ways the leather could be cut to make something else, something more useful to its new owner.
Dagany doesn't leave it there. He does slip it on: it's too small, but not by much. A younger lad's, maybe. Whoever it is, they have long fingers.
He's always been of the mind that there are reasons for happenings. Nothing just happens, just because. 'Fate' is too direct a label for this philosophy, but there's got to be something fateful about his finding this glove in the middle of such a rising of sadness, in the middle of a shore that's big enough by far to have lost it. So he does the one thing that makes the most sense to him: he keeps it, tucks it away into his pocket, reaches down for his bootlaces and, after one last longing look up at the sky, turns to head back to the Weyr.