[Vignette] Exile at Ierne
Day 8, Month 3 through Day 6, Month 4. Gratuitously long and probably full of things that don't matter to anybody but me. Oh well!
Tiriana had packed everything, loaded it onto Iovniath, even threatened the healer on duty to within an inch of her life that they one month to fix Satiet or else. Now the only thing left to do was to actually leave. It wasn't like she actually had anybody to say goodbye to, after all.
<< Kind of sad, that, >> Iovniath noted, idly. She'd spent most of the morning sending off her well wishes to various--not friends; Iovniath didn't do 'friends' any more than Tiriana did. But she maintained quite the network of contacts, all the same, and in the process of saying goodbyes, she had casually coaxed a few of them into promising to keep her updated on the goings-on around the Weyr.
Just shut up and go, Tiriana retorted as she mounted up, after one last look through the remains of her weyr for things she might need. Iovniath said nothing, at least, but Tiriana could still feel her dry, cold touch as they took off and headed to Ierne.
<< There's no one here, >> she observed when they reappeared from between. Tiriana's stomach sank even before she looked down at the bowl, and Iovniath scanned it repeatedly, as though that would make some sort of welcoming party appear. But none did.
It's that one, in the middle, Tiriana brushed it over, with a nod of her head toward the entrance to their temporary weyr. Daddy and Summer try to stay as far apart as possible.
<< I can't understand why, >> drawled Iovniath. She glided downward to that ledge, though, landing carefully and letting her rider dismount and start unpacking, while she greeted Belyth and made herself known. Ierne's Weyrwoman was apparently busy in a meeting with her staff, which perhaps explained much about the lack of welcome. Still, Tiriana felt distinctly unnoticed, and didn't like it.
"What about Daddy?" she asked.
<< He is--indisposed, >> she said at length. Tiriana kicked her trunk around, out of the middle of the floor, but she didn't bother with actually unpacking anything more than that.
"He's fucking somebody."
"Intermission, actually." The voice just behind them startled both girl and dragon, and Tiriana spun around quickly to face her father. He continued, unfussed, "You remember Mireta, don't you? Think you had harper classes together." A wave of his hand introduced the rather horse-faced girl tucked into his side. Tiriana's lip curled.
"No, I don't think so," she said, stalking forward as though to bar the doorway from them. Mireta wore a tight smile.
"You threw spitballs at me all day," said the other girl. "And when I told the harper, I spent two days in the infirmary with a concussion."
"Oh," said Tiriana.
"That was you?" Sh'drian asked. He slanted a thoughtful look between Mireta and Tiriana. "That was back when we had that one with the long hair and the girl voice, wasn't it. Or was it the one after you ran him off?"
"Um," said Tiriana. She shrugged. "I don't know, it doesn't matter. Isn't somebody supposed to...?" Another shrug, and she looked expectantly at Sh'drian. "Shouldn't I be doing something?"
"Enjoying being home?" he suggested. He did not look particularly interested, and in fact steered Mireta smoothly back the way they'd come, from his weyr. Over his shoulder, he added, "Your aunt and your grandmother have the Weyrwoman pinned down, I think. Check in with them whenever."
"It's not home," Tiriana said, but not until after he'd left, with the latest girl-her-age on his arm. "It's not."
Furious unpacking took up the rest of her night, dinner in the weyr and a brief, strained visit from Summer to set up duties for the morning. In the night, Tiriana tossed around in bed and made a wreck of the sheets, until finally she dragged quilt and pillow and all over to Iovniath's couch.
"Scoot over," she ordered. The queen did, though it was hardly necessary.
<< Oh, love, >> Iovniath said, and curled up around her.
-=-
The long late summer days dragged on at Ierne, though the routine of everything was hardly comfortable. Iovniath, a winter dragon, did not like leaving what was left of the Reaches' cold for Ierne's doldrums; she spent her days lounging on her ledge, made lazy by the heat and sun, with a coven of admirers--mostly bronzes and a couple of overambitious browns--drawn in by the northern queen's exoticism. Ierne hadn't had a junior in turns--the only gold Belyth had clutched, some turns ago, had long since transferred away under the veneer of 'health reasons.' Probably, that was true enough: Sh'drian was good for no one's health.
But at least he stayed out of the way, mostly. After that first day, Tiriana only seemed to see him escorting some new young thing from his weyr in the morning, or worse, hear him during the night, despite the thick stone between their weyrs. It had never really bothered her--she had hardly even noticed--when she was a child, staying in the same weyr half the time. But now--.
But now at least she didn't have to see him, no more than she had for the last turns, ever since she'd first left Ierne. More troublesome was trailing after Ierne's Weyrwoman, a generally nice woman Tiriana had had the misfortune of knowing as a child. And having known the spoiled, tantrum-prone child, Summer was notably cool, even mistrustful, toward her loaned junior, even as Tiriana's duties largely consisted of shadowing her and dealing with miscellaneous small matters.
And the headwoman's staff. Run by her mother or her aunt (depending on who you asked, and which one of them was within earshot), the lower caverns ran well enough, and the two women were friendly and likeable enough on their own. But when they were together, even Sh'drian made himself scarcer, lest the crossfire get him, too.
Tiriana, however, found herself frequently unable to escape their scrutiny. One day, her grandmother would say her clothes looked like she came straight from the stables, the next her aunt would say she looked like one of her father's whores. Either way, it ended with Tiriana trying to appeal to the other--which, whether it worked or not, never went well for Tiriana still. By the end of the first few days, she found herself spending increasingly large amounts of her free time hiding out in her weyr, lest she get cornered again.
"You're cheating again," she told Iovniath, after the fourth day.
<< I'm not. You're just terrible, >> the gold answered, primly folding her paws in front of her. << And I cannot believe you have sunk to this already. >>
"Just put in your bet already. And don't cheat, because I know you're cheating and I told you, you can't be looking at my mind when we're playing cards," Tiriana complained.
<< This is ridiculous; I don't know why I put up with you. Also, I can't help it my poker face is excellent, and yours, well, sucks. >> Iovniath said it so delicately, added, << I'm sorry. I don't know another word for it. >>
Tiriana threw the whole deck at her, which is about when N'ro walked in.
"Oookay," the brownrider said, staring at the pair: Tiriana in the floor, Iovniath in her couch, and around them, cards everwhere. Both looked guilty. "So this is weird, new levels of pathetic. M'I interrupting."
"Yes," Tiriana said. She flicked a card at her elder cousin, but smirked still. "What do you want."
"Supposed to invite you to dinner," said N'ro. He paused, then grinned himself. "And that booooyfriend of yours. Mama said."
He was still laughing when Tiriana hit him, a sucker-punch that doubled him over; he gave her a good-natured shove back, but Tiriana was hardly so relaxed.
"You keep them away from him. All of them. You just--you just better or I swear on Iovniath's egg and Faranth and everything, I will kill you, okay?" she said, wide-eyed. N'ro wheezed a bit, flashed a thumbs-up sign that was supposed to reassure her. It didn't. "I don't want them near him--they can't. I don't want to be near them."
"S'okay. Okay, okay. 'Ll tell 'em," N'ro said finally, nose wrinkling up. "Boyfriend is off-limits, gotcha. But, well..." He managed to straighten up enough to make a shrug, hands held up to say, 'what can you do?'
-=-
And really, what could they do? The first time R'uen showed up at Ierne, for dinner, Sh'drian just 'happened' to stroll by the door while Tiriana was waiting on him, the first time she'd really seen him in days.
"Hope Fort's not planning on fucking my baby girl under my own roof," he remarked, so casually, and kept on walking. And Tiriana, forgetting about waiting on her weyrmate, stormed after him, into his weyr.
<< Don't-->> Iovniath began. But it was too late.
"It's none of your damn business what I'm doing or who I'm doing it with! Especially when you're out fucking girls younger than me and you can't even be bothered to say fucking hi to me when we pass in the hall."
"I'd ask you to sit and stay a while now, but I expect your Weyrleader is waiting on you?" Sh'drian paused by his couch, worn and stained with questionable substances, to look around at Tiriana, a brow lifted.
"Your couch is disgusting. I wouldn't sit there anyway," Tiriana snapped back. And, nose in the air, she turned and stomped back out, as though she'd said her piece. She felt miserable still, though, and spent the rest of the night sulking and wallowing on first R'uen, and then Iovniath again. The gold, at least, tolerated it.
After having their first offer of dinner blown off, though, her grandmother Ria and aunt Nuria quickly became more direct, and cornered Tiriana with R'uen one evening. And he, the traitor, was happy to agree, though Tiriana glowered.
The dinner, of course, was one of the worst nights of Tiriana's life, as she decided shortly after arriving. Her aunt and grandmother spent the whole dinner grilling R'uen on every detail about his life. Sh'drian stared at him and smirked; he seemed to think the women were doing a good enough job, and didn't say much himself. And N'ro, the only other one of the grandkids invited, kept trying to break the tension with stories and jokes. Unfortunately, most of his stories these days consisted of funny things his son, now three, had done lately--which just led to lots of awkward, unsubtle questions from Ria about when she could expect more great-grandchildren, wink wink. This was also, incidentally, about the only time any of them paid any attention to Tiriana.
-=-
It was another uneasy night after Tiriana saw R'uen off to Fort again. Even if her family more or less approved of him--in fact, seemed to like him more than they did Tiriana sometimes--it was still awkward, Fort's Weyrleader visiting the Reaches' junior at Ierne: awkward in a way his being at High Reaches itself wasn't. He didn't really stay the night, but came for dinner when he could, fortunately avoiding the rest of her family in the process. Tiriana herself was torn between the desire to keep him as far as possible from Ierne and her father, and the desire to have louder sex than Sh'drian next door. Not, she thought, that he'd probably notice even then.
<< You should go running, >> Iovniath suggested, when Tiriana was still tossing around in bed, fitfully dozing before dawn.
Running?
<< As you and the Weyrwoman used to do, before. It always makes you feel better. >>
But--without her?
<< I think she'd like to think you keep up the tradition, even without her, >> Iovniath said.
Tiriana was silent a long time.
Do you think she's okay? she finally asked. Iovniath didn't answer this time; her gleaming white mind dimmed.
<< I think, >> she said instead, << you should go running. >>
So Tiriana did, dragging herself out of bed just about the time the sun came up, for a run around the bowl. Iovniath was right: it did make her feel better, stretching her legs out and having nothing to think about but the ground underfoot. And it certainly went a long way toward sleeping better in her lonely bedThe morning laps became habit quickly, a way to wake up and get moving before another humdrum day following Summer around, fulfilling all those routine duties the Weyrwoman had missed having a junior for.
How much longer? Tiriana asked, as she met Iovniath back on their ledge after one such morning excursion.
<< Another week, and we leave this place, >> answered Iovniath. The homesickness was beginning to creep into her voice now too, overriding her deliberate nonchalance toward their temporary home.
How... how is it, there?
<< The same, I believe. She is... as well as before we left. >>
"You should go eat already. You look--off," Tiriana said aloud, once she was inside the quiet of the weyr.
<< In a moment. You have a visitor. >> The delayed warning, however, did Tiriana little good: she rounded the corner of the weyr to see Sh'drian sprawled there on at her desk just about the time Iovniath finally said something.
"Off, is she?" he said, glancing toward the ledge where Iovniath remained, the better to avoid him. "Gray or glowing?"
"This is my weyr." Tiriana was bristling already, skin flushing. "Get the fuck out."
"Now, is that any way to talk to your daddy? No wonder your Weyrwoman sent you here, if that's the way you talk to her." He stood, at least, and sauntered over toward her. "Maybe I should go visit her. We can compare notes."
"Stay away from her," said Tiriana. Her hands balled up at her sides, nearly shaking; and Iovniath, at the back of her mind, wasn't providing her usual coolness to dissipate her anger, but instead mirrored glass that only seemed to focus it. "Get out and stay away from her."
"I think I will. Perhaps she can give me a few tips on how to win you back over, since I seem to have fallen out of favor sometime of late."
She hit him. Even before she thought about it, Tiriana hit him, and while she afterward suspected he let her, his surprise seemed just as genuine as hers.
"Stay. The fuck. Away from her," she demanded. She stared at him with a hateful expression, the moreso for his smirk, his bemusement, the ginger way he rubbed his jaw before he nodded once and stepped past her. He paused at the doorway to look back.
"For what it's worth," said Sh'drian. "I didn't fuck her."
"I know," said Tiriana, coldly. "Otherwise you wouldn't even be talking about it now."
-=-
The last night at Ierne seemed to take forever to arrive. Summer, kindly, gave Tiriana the day off to work on packing and preparing goodbyes, though again, Tiriana found she didn't really have anyone she wanted to say goodbye to, except perhaps N'ro if he'd handed his kid off to its mother for the night. Still, a note found its way to her desk while she was out to breakfast that morning: a request for dinner in the Weyrwoman's weyr that night. Tiriana regarded it with suspicion, but at Iovniath's insistence, showed up at the appointed time.
It was an awkward goodbye dinner. With little in common, they fumbled around talking about work, but that had all been carried out in the days. They talked about her going home, how much packing was left to do. Vaguely, they touched on things missed about home, but that seemed somehow too personal. Summer casually mentioned, at one point, something about her Weyrleader sporting a new bruise, nad Tiriana only smiled, smugly. Eventually, they finished eating, shook hands, and Tiriana left.
Without her stuff sprawled all across it, the weyr at Ierne seemed lonelier that final night, and Tiriana ended up curling up with Iovniath again, in their couch so she could finally doze off.
When morning finally came, they didn't waste any time. Tiriana threw her pillow and her quilt back on the bed without bothering to make it, and she hastily strapped up her trunk to Iovniath. Their weyr was dark and cold, even in the mid-morning light, but it looked the same, everything just where Tiriana had left it, in a mess around the floor.
<< Home, >> said Iovniath, and sank into her couch, almost before Tiriana could haul down the luggage again.
"Home," she echoed, and set about her unpacking again, straightening up everything as they began to settle back into life at the Reaches.