| Who | Aranthi, Kimmila, Wiyaneth |
| What | Kimmila finally has a talk with Aranthi |
| When | Summer, 2728 |
| Where | Administration Complex, Fort Weyr |
Kimmila sits on the edge of the weyr's ledge, in a spot where she won't be bothered too badly by anyone walking past. It's late evening though, and she's betting that no one on the ledges above the Weyrleader's will have a reason to use the steps. If they do though, she'll try not to frighten them. Probably. The ropes and railings they installed should prevent someone from a nasty tumble, but still best not to push that luck.
Her thoughts stretch out to find Varmiroth's, the small blue curled up on a ledge of stone high above, soaking up the last of the warmth the sun-heated stone has to offer from a star that has long since set. He needs the heat more in his older turns, though even as she thinks it she smirks a bit.
Not too old yet, no. She can still hike with the Candidates, still fire her bow true. Still make her rounds, though she did have to admit to herself that her back twinged a bit on cold mornings now, and there was a slight burning in her chest after a particularly spicy meal.
Still, she should count herself lucky, considering her history, that she didn't have more pressing injuries to contend with.
Looking skyward, she lets her eyes trace the familiar constellations and she exhales, smiling for a moment. Gaze drops towards the hatching caverns and she gently twists the bit of fabric she holds between her hands. Thumb rubs against the worn, almost tattered fabric and she sighs. Her mind reaches again for Varmiroth, but the blue sleeps deeply and she refuses to rouse him for such late night worries. Still, it'd be easier if he were awake.
The hatching would be here soon, and they'll find out if Aranthi is destined for a dragon or not. Kimmila sighs softly, thumb moving against the fabric again.
It's so complicated, her relationship with her daughter. With all her children, perhaps? She wasn't a very good mother at all to Ziani - abandoned her, actually, and A'ven. She tried to do better with her other children but did she? She still wasn't so sure. Not with Aranthi so distant. K'vir she felt had a good enough relationship with her. Elladyr? She hadn't spoken to in a while. Wasn't even sure where he was.
Was she a good mother? No, probably not, she had to admit. Shards, there was a knot of guilt tearing at her insides.
And now her youngest daughter was about to Stand for a clutch, and Kimm hadn't even really spoken with her about it. Couldn't they sit down? Sit on the ledge and have a heart to heart talk? Like the ones in the plays, or the stories, where two stubborn people finally have a breakthrough and everything is fixed in an evening?
No, probably not.
If Aranthi was even here right now, what would she say? "Hey, good luck out there, hope you find whatever it is you want? By the way…what is it you want?"
Kimmila sighs.
It didn't help that Aranthi and Th'ero had such a complicated relationship. Shards, those two were so much alike. But if they were, then why could Kimm get along so well with Th'ero, and so awkwardly with Aranthi?
Well, I've known Th'ero for a lot longer than Aranthi, Kimm thinks with a soft chuckle. Was that it? Was it just time? Effort? Probably more effort than time.
Kimmila looks around, holding the bit of fabric tightly in her fist, and sighs again. The weyr was empty, Th'ero in another meeting, and the bluerider lonely. What had begun as a happy journey outside to look at the stars had turned into a sad time, brooding on her personal shortcomings.
What a great way to spend an evening.
A flicker of gold catches her eye and she watches down below as Wiyaneth steps outside of the ground weyr. Lifting her head, the old queen peers up and Kimm swears she looks right at her. "Hello, old girl," the bluerider says fondly, and perhaps imagines the gold rumbles in response. Surely the brief touch of warmth she feels is in her imagination, right? And not her mother's dragon? Her mother's dragon, who named her?
Well at least her mother and Aranthi got along well. At least Aranthi had some sort of maternal figure, even if it wasn't her own mother.
Was Kimm too selfish? Was that it? Too focused on her own life, on her own duties, her own dragon (understandable) to put in the time that was really needed to be a good parent? Excuses rise in her thoughts - the weyr! Her lifemate! - but she pushes them down. How many times had she gone out hunting? Hiking? Flying? Instead of down to the caverns? She'd had four children and had often chosen to not be with them.
Selfish. A string of small choices that equaled this big choice. In the end, she hadn't been there for her children.
"Well shit, aren't I a barrel of fun?" she says with a low exhale of breath, a touch angry. Too late to start, perhaps? She looks in the direction of the candidate barracks, dark at this time of night. She's suddenly gripped with a powerful, almost overwhelming desire to march down there, drag Aranthi out of bed, and have a mother-daughter evening. Whatever that would mean. Where would they even go? What would they do?
Kimm sighs. She has no idea. She just feels like she wants to see her daughter - talk with her - before the hatching.
Below, Wiyaneth rumbles audibly and Kimm squints into the darkness. Remarkably, she sees a shape standing by the old queen's head, and she knows it's not her mother. Too tall, too broad in the shoulders.
"Shards and shells," Kimm says, carefully getting to her feet. Fabric still clutched in her hand she hastens down the stairs, coughing to alert the two of her approach before she reaches the ground floor and ground weyr.
Aranthi steps back from Wiyaneth's head for a moment, squinting into the darkness with a frown. Then, the frown turns into surprise and then guarded detachment. "Mother?"
"Aranthi," Kimm says, stopping near Wiyaneth's head and reaching up to rest a hand gently on the gold's muzzle. "I…hi."
"Hello," Aranthi replies, resuming her scritching of the queen's eyebrow. "Is everything okay? You're up late."
"So are you."
"I'm allowed."
"I know you are, I.. I'm not going to get you in trouble."
Aranthi frowns. "Alright." Whatever, mom.
Kimmila sighs. "I was just surprised, is all. I was thinking about you and then I saw you down here."
The Candidate tilts her head, peering over at her mother. "About what?" She's surprised she crosses her mother's mind at all anymore.
"Just…you. Wondering how you were doing. Excited?"
Aranthi is quiet for a long moment, before she shrugs. "I don't know. I think so? It's…I have no control over anything anymore. I've kind of given up trying to feel anything about it. It is what it is." Resignation. That's a great way to approach what might be the most exciting, joyful moment of her entire life, right?
Kimm nods. "Don't want to get your hopes up too much?"
"I…I suppose that's part of it? I don't know what's going to happen, so I don't want to get too committed to one path or the other. I'm looking forward to having my room back though, if I don't impress. So that's a plus. But I'll be sad to leave my friends behind. It's been nice." Having friends is nice. Who knew? She shrugs.
Wiyaneth rests her head down on the ground between them, content to be a distraction for the two women as they dance around each other.
"I remember my fellow Candidates fondly," Kimmila says with a smile. "Weyrlinghood was nice too, though it was more about me and Varmiroth and less about me and the other Weyrlings."
"I guess that's kind of what I'm afraid of," Aranthi says with a sigh. Something about the darkness, about Wiyaneth, makes it easier to open up. Even to her mother. "I..I really enjoy how things are right now. My friends, we have fun, and they seem to really enjoy my company. It's nice. But once the hatching comes, we'll all be…different. Even if everyone impressed, it'd still be different."
Kimmila exhales softly. "Things change, Aranthi, that's just life."
"Well for once I wish it would wait until I was ready," the Candidate snaps.
Silence stretches between them, and Kimmila looks to the stars again. "I know," she finally agrees, simply. "It's a lot, all at once. You don't have hardly any time to adjust to this life before you're possibly sent into a brand new one. Or sent back to your old one. No real time to deal with any of it. You just have to keep moving forward. But I know. It's hard."
More silence, until Aranthi huffs. "Yeah."
"Do you want a dragon? Do you want to be a Fortian rider?"
There is a long stretch of silence then, and Kimm isn't even sure her daughter will ever answer her.
Until she does. "I…is it okay to say I don't know? I watched…I've watched this weyr take you and Father, take everything for the sake of the weyr, for duty. I don't know if I can do that. Fully give myself over to…to Fort."
Kimmila nods. "It's okay, Aranthi. I know…I know the weyr kept your father and I away from you more…more than you would have liked. And I'm sorry for that."
Aranthi looks up in surprise. An apology? "What?"
Kimmila sighs. "I'm sorry, Aranthi. I wasn't the mother you needed. Or the one I wanted to be. I was…I was the mother I could be. For what it's worth," and she seeks her daughter's gaze over the gold dragon's muzzle, "I'm very proud of you and everything you have built for yourself."
Aranthi is stunned into silence for a long moment, looking away. That sniff? Allergies.
Kimmila holds her place, looking helplessly at Wiyaneth. The queen just rumbles quietly and shifts a bit to tip her muzzle against Aranthi's back. The Candidate sighs. "I just want you both to be proud of me."
Carefully, slowly, Kimmila moves around the dragon to Aranthi's side, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We are, Aranthi. We are. We both love you so much and…listen," her hand slides around her shoulders, trying to give her a side hug. "We just want you to be happy."
Happy. There it is again. Happy. "That's why I'm here, Mother," Aranthi whispers. "I'm just trying to find out how to be happy."
The tears come then, and she carefully turns to rest her face against her mother's shoulder. So what if she's taller and more broad than her mother? She can still be held like a child as she cries.
Kimmila's arms immediately wrap around her daughter's body, squeezing her so very tightly. "Oh, Aranthi," Kimm murmurs into her dark curls. "Oh, honey…" What else is there to say? Nothing.
Aranthi cries, some part of her shocked at what's happening now, but the rest of her giving it up. Faranth how tightly she's been wound. How much she's needed this. Sometimes just a mother's touch is all that's needed to take you right back to when you were six and you fell out of that tree. Sometimes you hold things in far too long and sometimes you don't even know you're doing it until something cracks and it all falls apart.
And sometimes you're a mother holding your grown child as they cry, and you don't know what's wrong, and you definitely don't know how to fix it, and you feel horrible guilt for not knowing either of those things, because shouldn't you know those things?
And sometimes you're an old queen dragon watching over your rider's daughter and granddaughter, comforting and a little smug because sharditall they needed this, and you knew it, and they were both too stubborn to see it.
Kimmila holds Aranthi until the Candidate straightens, pushing hair away from her face and sniffling, wiping her nose and eyes on her sleeve. "I'm sorry, Mother."
"Don't apologize. You don't need to. I'm sorry it's…" Taken her this long to even reach out? No, she didn't even do that. She saw her and walked over to her. Hardly seeking her out to see how she was doing. "I'm sorry."
"Thanks." Aranthi steps back, pushing her hair back once again and giving Wiyaneth's muzzle a fond pat. "I need to get back to the barracks." No time to unpack the rest of her feelings right now, nope. She needs the quiet, the dark, the comfort of the Barracks to even begin to process that.
"Right, I understand," Kimm is quick to say. "Have a good night. Listen, I'll…maybe tomorrow we can go for a hike? Just…just walk." No pressure!
"Sure, yeah. Maybe. That…that sounds nice." And with that, Aranthi turns and walks briskly towards the barracks, leaving Kimmila standing beside the old queen.
"You planned that didn't you?" Kimm asks, eying her mother's dragon after Aranthi is gone.
Wiyaneth rumbles softly, tilting her head to peer at the bluerider with a swirling eye.
"Yeah. I don't know how you did but you always were able to poke at my emotions." There's a pause, and Kimmila reaches over to give the broad muzzle a hug. "Thank you." And for a moment, she is a little girl again, holding onto her mother's dragon. The queen rumbles softly and Kimmila straightens, giving her one more fond scritch before she's striding back up the stairs to the weyr, steps lighter and mood lifted.
She'll wait for Th'ero as she always does, sitting on the couch. And when he settles in beside her she'll take his hand as always, lean into his solid comfort, and let herself come home. And that scrap of Aranthi's baby blanket? The fabric she was clutching the whole time? She returns that to her jewelry box as the evening draws to a close, nestling it beside the keepsakes of her other children.
Perhaps she's not a terrible mother after all.
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