Girls Are Weird [Treyjen]

[Zen]

17 Turns before the start of the Pass
Treyjen: 9

Treyjen had tired of spending time with his cousins rather quickly. They were so boring. They always wanted to do the same things. They didn’t have any imagination at all. All Rav ever wanted to do was fish, or pretend to be out sailing… only to catch fish. The boy was obsessed with being a fisher like his father. Treyjen didn’t want to fish or play at it, and though he’d humored his cousin on a couple occasions for lack of anything better to do, he thought he’d prefer just about anything else at this point. He didn’t know how he was supposed to survive being ashore for several turns until Nalyra was old enough to sail. It was going to be awful.

Nalyra was especially fussy today for some reason and just wouldn’t seem to stop crying. While he loved his sister, he wasn’t sure how much more he could take, and when he told his mother he was going out to play she’d just told him to be back before dinner, too preoccupied with Nalyra. He’d wandered to the docks, but the fishing boats were about all out for the day and there wasn’t much happening. The wind was strong and there was a bite to it, but it still seemed to Treyjen like it was pulling him out to sea. “I can’t go, stupid wind,” he muttered as he turned away from the water angrily and made his way to the beach instead. The day was too cold for anyone to really be out in the water and the beach was mostly empty, but he didn’t mind.

As he made his way around a rocky ridge, he paused as he spotted a girl playing with a stick like a sword. She was by herself, fighting off invisible enemies, and Treyjen grinned as he watched her. She didn’t notice him, too engrossed in her imagination. So he looked around and found his own stick, holding it in both hands, and called out to her, “Maybe you’d like a real fight!”

She stumbled in the midst of a fancy twirl and dropped her stick, staring at him with wide eyes. She looked suddenly afraid, like he’d found her doing something wrong. He tilted his head curiously at her as she took a few steps backward, “I… I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Please don’t hit me.”

Treyjen was even more confused now. What in the world was she talking about? “What? Won’t do what again?” He moved closer to her but she backed away again so he stopped, frowning, “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“You’re not…?” she looked skeptical, glancing down at the stick she had dropped and back up at him. After a moment she tilted her head, “Who are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

Tillek was a big place, did she know all the kids in Tillek? What a weird girl. Or maybe all girls were weird, he didn’t know, he didn’t really spend a lot of time with them. Would his sister be weird too? “I’m Treyjen. Normally I sail with my family but… my momma had a baby, so I’m stuck here.” His disdain was quite apparent, but he didn’t dwell on it. He used his stick to point at hers, “D'you wanna play?”

“You… you wanna play with me?” there was clear disbelief in her tone.

He shrugged, “Aye… why not? It looked fun, what you were doing. Unless you like playing by yourself I guess.”

“No! I want to, I just… the other boys… girls aren’t supposed to play with swords so….”

Treyjen’s eyes narrowed, “Who says? Besides, it’s not even a sword, it’s a stick. D'you wanna play or not?” He was tiring of this conversation.

The girl’s face instantly brightened as she realized he really didn’t care, wasn’t going to make fun of her and shoot her down, or make her stop because it wasn’t what a girl should be doing. She quickly picked her stick back up and held it out, beaming, “Yeah, I wanna. I’ve never gotten to fight a real person before.”

Treyjen grinned, “Well after I win you’ll prob'ly wanna go back t’fightin' nobody.”

She giggled, “We'll see!”

They started out fighting each other, sticks clacking as they ran around the sand and jumped on rocks, but eventually their game shifted and they were forced to join forces to fight off a hoard of enemies. Before long it was starting to get dark and Treyjen realized he was already late for dinner. Hopefully his mother wouldn’t be too mad about it. “Wanna meet here tomorrow?” he asked her, and she nodded happily. He grinned, “See ya then.” His mother wasn’t upset when he’d apologized for being late and told her he’d made a new friend and that he was having too much fun with her to pay attention to the time.

“Oh? What’s this new friend’s name?” Jenara asked with some amusement.

“Gildira. She’s kinda weird, but I like her.”

~~~

After a round of stick dueling, Treyjen and Gildira sat on a large stone, sharing some fruit his mother had sent along with him when he’d left to meet her the next day.

“We need a new game t’play,” he said thoughtfully, looking out at the waves rolling in.

“Hmm…,” Gildira made a thoughtful sound as she took a bite of her fruit, then she looked over at him excitedly, “We could play sailing.”

He made a face, “I’m not playing at fishing.”

She blinked in surprise at him, “I didn’t say fishing, I said sailing. You’ve sailed for real, right? So you could teach me, couldn’t you? I-” she cut herself off and looked down at the fruit in her hands, suddenly sheepish.

“You what?” he prompted after a moment. Already he’d noticed she had a bit of a habit of doing that, starting to say something and then changing her mind. Like she thought he’d be mad about whatever she said. It was weird, and a little annoying.

Her voice was soft as if she thought they might be overheard, “I’d really like to sail, one day… to see all over Pern…. But… girls don’t sail.”

“My momma sails,” he refuted with some annoyance. She sure liked to go on about what girls supposedly couldn’t do.

She looked over at him in surprise, “She does?”

“Aye… when she doesn’t have a baby, I guess,” he shrugged, “She knows a lot about the wind.”

“The… wind…?” now Gildira was just confused.

Treyjen nodded, kicking his legs where they hung just barely above the sand, pride in his voice, “Mmhm, she’s real good at reading it. She can tell when a storm’s coming before we can even see any dark clouds, just cuzza how the wind’s blowing.”

Gildira’s eyes were wide in amazement, “Wow…. Do you sail with many other girls?”

Treyjen’s legs stopped kicking and he sighed, “No. Just my momma…. My brother said it’s just cuz she’s married t’my father and he’s the captain.”

“Oh…,” she murmured, dejected by the news. They were quiet as they ate more of their fruit for a few moments, “So… do you think I could sail if I married a captain one day?”

Treyjen shrugged, “I dunno. Maybe. I’d let you sail with me if I was a captain.”

“Really?”

He glanced over at her, saw how hopeful she looked, and shrugged again, “Sure. Why not? You’re fun.”

Suddenly she had thrown her arms around him and he stiffened, unsure what to do, so he just sat there until she released him again. “Thank you, Treyjen. I really hope you become a captain. I would love to sail with you.”

Weird. So weird. Girls were weird. Why had she done that? He felt the heat of a blush in his face and stuffed more fruit into his mouth so he didn’t have to respond right away. After he’d had a moment to chew and think, he slid off the rock and picked up his stick, tossing the core of his fruit into the sand, “Okay, well… I suppose I can start teaching you t’sail now.”

He took his stick and started drawing the outline of a ship in the sand, using his father’s ship as his reference point. He marked out the masts, the helm, stairs, where some of the rigging went that he remembered, because there was quite a lot of it and he didn’t really remember it all. He looked over at where she was still sitting on the rock watching him when he’d finished, “D’you know anything about sailing?” She shook her head, standing to look the pretend ship over curiously. “Well first you should know the parts of a ship.”

He ran through everything he knew about the Lokarra and Gildira was eager to learn. “Tomorrow I’ll bring some rope so I can teach you some knots, if you want,” he offered, figuring that was probably enough teaching for the day.

She nodded, “Yes, please!” And she looked around the ship in the sand after a moment, “So… you’ll be the captain. Oh- what’s the name of our ship?”

Treyjen hadn’t really thought about that, since he’d drawn the ship based on his father’s ship and that already had a name. “Mm… the Jenara.” His father’s ship was named after his grandmother, as the ship had belonged to his grandfather first. It made sense to name his own ship after his mother.

Gildira beamed, “Okay, captain Treyjen, where are we going first?”

He grinned at that. He liked how that sounded, captain Treyjen. He glanced over the ship again and moved to the helm, holding onto a pretend wheel, “Where d’you wanna go first?”

“Shouldn’t the captain pick?” Gildira glanced around, unsure exactly what she should be doing as a sailor.

He shrugged, “I’ve been all over. Pick somewhere and I’ll take you there. I’ll tell you all about it.”

She bounced happily, “Oh, okay, uhmmmm… I hear sailors talk about Southern a lot?”

Treyjen grinned once more and rather dramatically turned the pretend wheel as if steering toward Southern Hold, assuring his friend, “We’ll be at Southern in no time cuz the Jenara is the fastest ship on all of Pern!”

~~~

Eventually Treyjen grew tired of redrawing the ship whenever they wanted to play at sailing, which was rather often as Gildira was always eager to learn more about it or practice what he’d already taught her, and he didn’t mind either because he got to pretend to be a captain for a while, pretend not to be stuck ashore for turns. So they’d taken small rocks to outline the ship instead so it would be a bit more permanent, but as the two of them returned to their little secluded area of the beach, it seemed others had found it before they got there. There were several young boys playing in their ship and Treyjen was immediately incensed. Gildira, however, grabbed his arm as he was about to move forward and demand they all leave his ship alone and go make their own.

“Maybe we should find somewhere else to play today…,” she murmured, tugging him back with a frightened sort of look.

He shook her off, “No! The Jenara is our ship!”

“But there’s four of them, Treyjen… you’re not gonna be able to make them leave. And they’re mean… they’ll hurt you.”

He made the connection then, to her original fear of him, and her reference to other boys that must have made her afraid to play openly in a manner that they had decided was not fit for girls. He grabbed her hand and pulled her behind the rocky ridge before they could be noticed, releasing her to look around until he found two decent sticks. He held one out to her with a wide grin, “Looks like pirates have taken over our ship. We gotta fight them off and get it back.”

Her eyes went wide and she shook her head, “Treyjen, you don’t get it… they’re really mean.”

His own blue eyes narrowed at her, “D’you wanna sail or not? You gotta be brave to be a sailor. The sea can be scary sometimes. You can’t just run away because someone’s mean, or something’s scary. That’s our ship, not theirs. Help me take it back.” He thrust the stick at her again insistently, “I bet we’re better at fighting than they are.”

There was a long moment of silence between them, but eventually Gildira bit her lip and reached out to grab the stick with a solemn sort of nod, “Okay I-... I mean… aye, captain.”

Treyjen laughed. This was going to be tons of fun. They were going to get their ship back and Gildira was going to get back at those boys for being mean to her all at once. He turned and marched around the ridge and he didn’t stop, even as each of the four boys began to notice him. He came to stand before the largest one of them and held his stick out as though pointing a blade at his chest, “Get off my ship and go find your own.”

The boys laughed, the largest one speaking for them, “Are we supposed to be scared?” His gaze settled over Treyjen’s shoulder as he noticed Gildira and he laughed again, “You got a girl to help you? Is your mommy gonna come running too?”

Treyjen didn’t give him any further chance to speak, or think, or do anything. He had given him one warning and that was all he planned to give. He shoved the stick into the boy’s gut, to which he yelped and then doubled over with a gasp as the wind was knocked out of him. He spun around to whack the next closest boy square in the chest and send him stumbling back. The other two were slightly farther away and had more time to react so he wasn’t able to catch them off guard, but neither of them had a ‘weapon’ and he didn’t hold back when he ‘slashed’ in their direction with his stick, keeping them at bay, “Get off my ship!”

Gildira was at his side, pointing her stick at them as well with a grim sort of resolve. The two backed away, glancing at their friends uncertainly for a moment before tossing back, “We were done with your dumb ship anyway!” Treyjen didn’t lower his stick as they helped the boy he’d jabbed in the gut up from the sand, tossing a hateful glare back at him as they left. He was left feeling slightly disappointed. Was that really all it took?

“Pff, what a buncha scaredy-flits,” derision was clear in his voice as they disappeared around the ridge. He’d been expecting a lot more of a fight from how Gildira seemed so scared of them. But maybe they were only ‘brave’ when they were picking on lonely little girls.

Gildira was suddenly giggling madly and he turned to look at her just as she threw her arms around him, “Treyjen that was amazing!”

He tensed at the embrace, feeling heat rise to his face again, and after a moment managed to wiggle out of her grasp. He moved away from her under some pretense of inspecting the ship to make sure they hadn’t messed anything up, so she wouldn’t see how embarrassed her actions made him. Why were girls so weird? “I barely even did anything.”

She didn’t seem to mind his escape, but followed after him, “Those four are awful. They’re always picking on others. I’ve never seen anyone chase them off before.”

Feeling the brief rise of heat fading a bit, he glanced back at her, “Has anyone even tried?”

She shrugged, grinning at him, “Not that I’ve seen.”

He rolled his eyes, “No wonder they ran away. They’ve never been in a real fight.”

“Have you been in fights before?” she tilted her head a bit, curious.

He shrugged, mildly annoyed at his answer, “Just with my brother, but he’s bigger’n me so… they don’t really last that long. When I get bigger though… he’s not gonna keep winning.”

“You’re so brave… I… I’ll try to be braver, like you, so I can sail with you.”

“You were brave too,” he told her, “You came with me, even though they’ve been mean t'you before. You didn’t run away.”

She flushed at the compliment, “I… I really didn’t do anything, I… I just stood there….”

“But I wasn’t alone,” he pointed out, “I think that scared them. I bet they pick on other kids when they’re alone, right? They were too afraid t'fight with both of us here.” She just stared at him for a long moment, and he was about to ask her what was wrong when she suddenly leaned in to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. He pushed her away, “EW! What’d you do THAT for? GROSS!” He scrubbed at his cheek rather frantically. What in Faranth’s name? “Girls are so weird!”

She was giggling madly again and suddenly took off running, “Tag, you’re it!”

Still rather stunned, he just stared after her for a moment, “Hey! That’s NOT how you tag!” Ugh. Girls.