Learning Curve [TOR Pern AU]
This is the second part of Impressions. Find the first part here.
It's a difficult thing to be a teenager, especially one who hopes to fill more than one role within a society. To become a Journeyman is one thing, but to also seek to be a dragonrider is something else entirely.
At the age of 15, Gerain was doing the work of two students, and the strain was beginning to show.
No warnings.
* * * * *
Gerain’s days had been full since the weyrwoman had swept him off to the Weyr. Once - it felt like a lifetime ago - he’d only thought he was busy with his singing lessons, instrument making classes, quartet practice, composition and scribing, not to mention all the sundry cleaning and chores his work team had to do. Yet now there was all that and so much more; as a potential candidate for Impression, he had to know the ways of the dragons and the Weyr as well, and he felt like he was living in a dream he never quite managed to wake from.
He was tired all the time, his feet heavy now as he stepped out on to the Hatching Ground sands with the rest of the candidates. He’d been up late the previous night, practising his chords and drum measures until his fingers bled. They still ached now, even through the numbweed the aghast headwoman had slathered on them, as the sand picked up in the breeze to irritate his scabs.
“Have a feel. Don’t be afraid to touch them.” The Wingsecond’s voice rang clear and true across the ground, and Gerain, startled out of his half asleep reverie, jogged toward his place by his egg. “Trust me, you’re going to be scrubbing its occupant for a very long time, so get used to it now while they’re still small!”
“Watch where you’re going, Harper.” The low hiss was unmistakable as he staggered into another boy, that dark scowl immediately turned on him.
“I’m sorry, Perrel. I’m just tired is all.”
“Yeah, we could hear your screeching down in the Weyrling Barracks. Kept us up half the night. You’d better learn to sing if you want to be Weyrsinger instead of Weyrscreecher.”
"Whatever you say."
Gerain sighed as he walked on, reaching out toward the egg before him with a shaking hand. The shell had a little give to it, soft beneath his fingertips, and on other trips here he had fancied he could feel movement within; even a heartbeat. Today however he was tired, and the niggling seed of doubt Perrel had planted required a little more reassurance.
He’d used to have a lovely tone before his voice broke. His Masters had all commented on it, and his ability had been quite remarkable. There were few singers better with phrasing than he, despite his youth, and he’d been quite proud of his ability to sing the complicated measures the composition masters had wanted to throw at him.
He hadn’t been the best singer to ever pass through the Harper Hall, but he had been good, and wondered if his voice would ever settle again. Sometimes he felt the notes even out, and he allowed himself hope that he could sing properly again. Yet then there were nights like this last one where he couldn’t seem to control the sound at all, and he would warble and crack without any semblance of key at all.
Perrel might or might not have been aware of the vulnerability he had hit upon, but it left the would-be Weyrsinger in a quandary of doubt.
“You wouldn’t care if I screeched, would you?” he whispered to the unresponsive shell before him, caressing its smooth surface with a scabbed hand. He swallowed the tears of fatigue as he rested his forehead against the egg. “Does that kind of thing matter to a dragon?”
“It doesn’t, or else my Llandreth would sleep on the heights those nights I’ve had too much to drink.” The words were soft, murmured into the boy’s ear, and Gerain turned to see the kind blue eyes of the Wingsecond glimmering at him. “Why don’t you head on back to the barracks and get a wink of sleep?”
Vehemently the harper boy shook his head.
“I can't. I need to get back to the Hall after this. I have a score to press out, not to mention my practice...”
The tattooed face of the Wingsecond creased in mirth, the weathered olive skin lined with laughter as the man winked.
“Let me worry about that. But you’ll not do anyone any good half-dead, and that’s what you look like. Give your egg one last pat, and head off on your way.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was an amazing thing, the size and feel of the egg before him. With the reality of the egg before him, he remembered his hope. When he cuddled up in his sleeping furs, the light of the Weyr still shining through his windows, the spark of terror at not being able to do all he was supposed to do was drowned in that smooth, mottled shell.
Maybe he might yet become the Weyrsinger.