Post by Zen on Mar 1, 2015 0:56:58 GMT -5
A'zael
It had been a long time since he’d so much as touched a gitar. He must have mentioned as much to Srunae. And yet he found himself vaguely curious as to just how much he remembered from those lessons Southern Weyr’s harper had managed to give him before he’d become too consumed with candidacy to care anymore. Part of him wished he had kept up with it. He surely didn’t have time for it now. Not in the long run, anyway. He did, however, find himself with a little free time, and he took his wondering to Mavros’s harper and was graciously allowed to borrow their older gitar, the one they allowed students to use.
He took the instrument to the dining hall, hoping perhaps for a little socialization with his musical experiment. He grabbed himself a cup of klah and settled in one corner of the room, near one of the fires that had been lit to keep the place warm. It wasn’t exactly meal time so it was relatively empty, but for the few who came to eat at odd times because work and duty kept them otherwise occupied. It was heading toward dinner, but still a bit early for the vast majority to be coming in to eat. He sat back against the stone wall and sipped his klah, humming some vague, simple tune as it came to him, something he might be able to replicate on the gitar.
Setting his cup aside, he shifted the gitar into proper playing position and plucked a few random notes, reorienting himself with the sounds each string made. It had been longer than he’d thought since he’d last played…. He played with the placement of his fingers, strumming softly until he found the correct placement of a certain chord he recalled enjoying the sound of. There… now it was coming back to him, albeit slowly. Frisk yawned from his place lounging across A’zael’s shoulders and looked down at the instrument with some amount of curiosity.
He strung a few of the first chords he recalled together, creating some sort of unconventional but not terribly unpleasant tune before laughing and shaking his head. He hummed softly again, trying to get back that tune he’d been half consciously thinking up and plucking along hesitantly on the strings, taking a little while to get the placement of his fingers to make the correct sounds. Perhaps one of these turns Fath would lose his chase of Zalmaranth and he’d have regular free time on his hands to possibly take up gitar more seriously. He paused and sat back, thinking about just how nice that would be… to be just a regular wingrider. He and Fath had barely graduated before Zalmaranth finally rose. How many months had he been just a wingrider? Two?
He returned to strumming notes, humming along softly, until he noticed two women peering at him from the kitchen entrance. He gave them both one of his signature smiles and they both returned to the kitchens, giggling. What he wouldn’t give for more female company in his life. It was great to have Rau back, and S’fin was always good company with good advice, but he hadn’t had this bad of a sexual famine since he and Fath were weyrlings. It seemed like ever since he’d Impressed he’d been so sharding busy all the time…. Weyrlinghood, adjusting to being a wingrider, WEYRLEADERSHIP…. Granted, Weyrleadership came with a little break to the famine, but it hardly counted honestly. And since Karredy, there had only been… Mollin. And that was eight months ago. To say that the frustration was building up would be entirely correct, he just had to be careful not to get involved with a candidate right before a hatching again. Yeah, he would admit it, not one of his brightest ideas, but it’s not like he could have predicted she would get pregnant…. Not that there was a rule for candidates to refrain from sex when a clutch was about to hatch or anything.
He sighed. All right so maybe that rule was in place for good reason. But there was a plan in place. The Golds could keep Daltilith calm throughout Mollin’s labor and then… surely… everything would be fine? He leaned back against the stone wall again, looking up at the cavern roof and pausing in his strumming to reach up and stroke Frisk’s fluffy mane. The gemglider crooned happily in response. He would be a father in a month’s time, give or take. What sort of father would he be? It was normal in the Weyr to let your children be raised by others, he had been. Neither his mother nor his father had ever been truly active parts of his life, though he at least knew them both. Rau was more like family to him than either of his parents. Is that what he wanted to be? Some distant figure that shared his child’s blood and not much else? For some reason he just… didn’t like that idea. Not that he had any time to be a normal parent, but he could at least… try.
He would be there more than his parents were, at least. Not that he blamed either of his parents, he didn’t have any hard feelings toward them at all. Sometimes that’s just the way things were in the Weyr, especially when a child came of flightlust. He almost laughed, recalling how one of the crèchewomen had told him superstitiously that children born of flightlust turned into lustful adults. She had just caught him and a girl together, exploring and experimenting. Had he been thirteen? Maybe she was right. He shook his head, looking back down at his borrowed gitar and plucking a few random notes, humming along to match the notes to his voice. Wheel and turn or bleed and burn… fly Between, Blue and Green… soar, dive down, Bronze and Brown… dragonmen must fly when Threads are in the sky….
It was a very simply melody, the first he had ever learned to clumsily pluck out back at Southern. The song itself was entirely too simple considering it was about fighting Thread. He shifted his fingers, attempting the simple chords the weyrharper had taught him after he’d managed to master the basic melody notes. Wheel and turn or bleed and burn. Fly Between, Blue and Green. Soar, dive down, Bronze and Brown. Dragonmen must fly when Threads are in the sky. A simple song every child on Pern learned in their early turns. He remembered singing it as a boy, pretending he was a dragon flying around the Weyr, fighting Thread all on his own, having never witnessed anything quite so horrifying as those deceptive silver strands falling from the sky, having never seen what they could do to a dragon, how quickly they devoured flesh. As a harper he could have remained blissfully ignorant to the true horrors behind that children’s song, but there was nothing he would rather be doing than facing that horror so others did not have to.
He played through the chords a couple more times, remembering the correct finger placements more easily each time, the song coming together more smoothly.