Chap. 61 Equilibrium

Chap. 60 Equilibrium

There was a comfort to be had with the status quo being re-established.

The weyr had a Weyrwoman. Young, yes, but Siena had proven herself to be empathetic and  competent.

M'rvin, the new Weyrleader, had a long list of accomplishments as a wingleader. His bronze, Arcturuth, was relatively young and robust.

K'ndar reflected again, on how glad he was that he had a brown rather than a bronze. This mating flight had been far more…exuberant, than the odd and disconcerting one that Jenmay had engineered. The male dragons had all risen, to include Raventh, but none but the bronzes had the stamina to keep up with Mirth. She'd led them on a long, truly epic chase. 

He also reflected on how destructive the hurricane had been, yet, in a small way, how fortunately timed. Thread had fallen, blindly, stupidly, right into the maw of the hurricane. It never had a chance! So the weyrfolk hadn't had to worry about fielding wings to fight it while undergoing the hurricane, or while busily rebuilding afterwards. 

He was stretched out on his bunk, reading, when Siskin chirped.

"Hello, the weyr? K'ndar, are you home?"

"Lindea! Won't you come in?"

She entered, her Zeta wrapped around her neck.

"Guess what?" she said, smiling. He motioned her to sit down. Siskin began to sweet talk Zeta, but she ignored him.

"Um…..you're getting married."

"What? Huh? NOOOOOO!" 

"Well, you wanted me to GUESS, right?"

She swatted him on the leg.

"No, silly. Zeta's in egg."

"NO! Yes!! Oh, terrific! She was eating the flowers, when we went up there," he said, referring to the tundra they'd found after following Jenmay. Zeta DID look rather pudgy.

"Well, they worked, just like you said. What I wish I knew was who bred her," Lindea said. 

"She'd been out for awhile, but I never heard or saw any males hanging around her."

"Well," he said, thinking, "It's not like no one else has fire lizards, but now we know they can go an awfully long way. But………I wonder if the male is that new girl, Francie's, bronze. She's got THREE of 'em."

"Three BRONZES?"

"No, three fire lizards, one is a bronze, the other two are greens."

Lindea sighed. "No matter, I guess I'm going to learn how to be a fire lizard grandmother."

"Hmmm. You might want to reconsider that. Can you imagine having a dozen fire lizards all impressed on you? Francie says that sometimes,  three are two too many, but one isn't enough, and she loves them all."

"Should I try and sell them? I don't see how I can take time off from work…it's not like I'm Fire Lizard Man."

"Um……….maybe, maybe when they reach hatching stage, we release them, put the eggs out somewhere where there's no humans,   put out some fresh meat for them so they get that first meal,  and let them go wild. I've never seen wild ones around here, maybe it's because of our activity, but …it would be nice to know they're out there in the wild."

"Or, maybe, Zeta will do that all on her own..go out and lay the eggs? I don't know. I don't want to lose her,"

"I don't think that will happen. Look at her. She is your heart."

Lindea stroked her gold's head. "What do you think, Zeta, would you want your eggs back in the wild?"

Zeta apparently had no opinion one way or another. Once the eggs hatched, they had no real role in raising the babies. 

She relaxed in the chair. "This is a nice weyr," she said. It was on the second level, and while it didn't have a view of the ocean it did look out over the horse pastures.

"I still miss the beach, though," he said.

"What a relief that Jenmay is gone. It's like the whole world suddenly got bright and clean," she said, 'like the flushing and scrubbing the weyr got from the hurricane. I've never seen so much sand, but it wasn't that hard to clean up. What surprised me was how many tunnel snakes we have in the weyr. A lot of dead ones came out. I'll think twice before I go back into some of the deeper tunnels after dark."

"Take Zeta! They are good hunters, especially on tunnel snakes." 

He shook his head, thinking of Jenmay. "How can one woman wreak such havoc, cause so much heartache and bullying, I don't know. But I  learned something about her, after the fact."

"Oh?"

"Well, you know how she was always claiming that she'd been a Weyrwoman, at Telgar? before coming forward?"

"Yesssssssssssssssss," Lindea said. "Well, wait. I heard her say over and over again that she'd been Weyrwoman. And I heard her say once or twice that she'd come forward from Telgar. But…I don't think I ever heard her say she was a Weyrwoman AT Telgar."

"That's a good point," K'ndar said. "You're right. But anyway, just before the hurricane, a bunch of us were sitting around, talking about her, and one girl said she'd done the math and Jenmay could only have been 19 or 20 when she came Forward."

"Huh." Lindea did the math. "How obvious, why didn't anyone here think it through? A girl doesn't usually make Weyrwoman that young.  How could we have been so stupid as to not figure it out?"

"Because we're stupid. Not STUPID, but…trusting. When a person says something, we take it as a given they're telling the truth."

"The other thing I learned was: I talked to the new green rider in my wing. Francie? The one with the 3 fire lizards?"

"Yes….?"

"She was born and raised at Telgar. They keep records there, good ones. They never had a Weyrwoman named Jenmay. Not before Forward and not after. They didn't even HAVE a Jenmay, PERIOD."

Lindea's jaw dropped.

"So……..where was she from?"

"No one has any idea. I talked to N'orald, he said the same thing. But you can't trust his memory anymore, it's gone."

"Why…why would anyone lie about where they were from?"

"Y'know, Fire Lizard Man told me once, when someone does something really bad, sometimes they have to change their name and where they live to keep from being put in a cell. And we know, now, that Jenmay was poisoning poor Danelle. I think…I think she was some sort of criminal, somehow she managed to get away with it and changed her name."

"But…her dragon? Wouldn't her dragon have told us her real name?"

That stumped K'ndar.

"Well, then, I'm stuck for an answer. What annoys me is why I'm wasting time on thinking about her. She's DEAD, for which I am so grateful, but she was like a trundlebug…the stink still hangs long after the thing is dead." 

"I think it's because…well, we were all…I don't know the word, hurt? Affected? Just waiting for her to somehow come back, and afraid that it might really happen."

"Traumatized. That's what the healers call it. Trauma."

"Yes. Traumatized. Everyone here was that way and it's going to take a while to get rid of it."

"Well, I have a good idea on how to get rid of it. Let's take our fire lizards and go for a walk on the beach."

"What's left of it, right?"

K'ndar grinned. "Yes. The hurricane took away a beautiful beach, but it also took evil away. It balances out."