Pern: A Dragonrider's Tale [lé beginning]

[Plantae]

= The Bygone and of impulse gone astray =

For a pristine second, a whisper had passed through his mind which for once, had the clarity of the purest fount. His animal instincts were not so much shrouded as exemplified, given purpose and naturalism as his soul found his exact counterpoint reflected, and a chill wind filled his senses. For that one glassy moment, he had dangled over the edge of a chasm, of a perfect union with the human mind, and it had been a terrible and invigorating experience. He did not realize, however, until the following second, how much he desired it again. In the dream-like world, a flawless insouciant mist had risen into his mind and shut it out, and that possible future had fallen out from under him. The man before it, or so it assumed, given the lay of his features, was male, was meant as his companion. But Lahlileth stood in the middle of a room full of people, of his kin, forgotten.

His eyes bore a thousand miles in front of him as he searched for a point in space, for that other pair of eyes that were meant to be that of his only needed ally in the world, and he had only the vaguest sense of what proceeded about his person. There was a tempered hatred boiling in his gut, and halfway through the Impression process, the gaze of the boy found itself transposed as that of a feeble woman, leaking fear like a broken spigot. Before he could stop himself, though, he and she were made one, as the disgust within him came to a fever, and all was lost. Though he made no note of it, to her own race, she was, maybe, somewhat attractive. That is, she had cornflower hair with just the slightest curl, which spun the sun as if the thread of the heavens. Her face was not altogether novel or beautiful, but her wide, easy smile made it more so, and there was a pleasant curve, like a heart shape, to its form. Slim, petite, she was in a word graceful. That is, until one saw her move, and realized that though she was perceived, when still, to be a dancer, she was no more than the makings of a young woman who had not quite grown in to her own body mentally.

Again, as if it was only his purpose of blood to do so, his mind formed and spouted words into hers. "I am Lahlileth. You are my rider." If he would have spoken with his mouth, as she was tempted to do, the words would have tasted foul. To his discomfort, she responded, numbly, "Pleased to meet you. Shelagh is my name and you are just lovely! Oh, wait, I suppose I must be Shah now, how adorable that is." Her stupidity immediately struck him; in their empathy, he knew she was occasionally witty, and as their memories intermixed, his short and hers composing a decade and a half of thought, he knew that she could be clever. She was not a simpleton. He did not realize her exact idiocy then. If he had possessed some inkling of etymological knowledge, and had foreseen how the meaning of her name would affect him and his own, he might have murdered her then. But as it was, the worst was to come.

So it proceeded blindly. She was discomforted by the display of his brutality. She was not a rich woman, but was one accustomed to a life in which the darker deeds were done out of her eye-line, and so to see his way of going at a herd-beast made her stifle nausea. She was loquacious, but she soon noticed that her chatter washed over him, that it was nothing more than a screeching music, just at the very side of his hearing and in his ignorance, he remained at peace. By the time he had finished his feast, for the effort of hatching had made him voracious, he had learned to be just at rest with her voice as he was with silence, for within him, they were one in the same. He did not say even a word back, and though she got the feeling that he listened to her ramblings, this was not the case. Despite this, though, he fed on her, her jubilant life, like he did the meat.

Given this sustenance, Lahlileth felt suddenly alive, dispassionate, but wholly active. The wretched mechanisms of his head turned quickly, and though he did not so much have thoughts as have instincts that move in linear form, he brooded. Dragons being of unsound memory, within hours almost all impression of his failed other bonding had dissolved. There was, though, what could be called a nagging in his subconscious, but him not prone to crossing into that territory of his brain, it went mostly unnoticed. The little effect it had could be described thus: as the day passed, he could not help shake the feeling that something was implacably wrong. And as rider and he returned to the barracks, there was a distant yearning for the northlands. He slept restlessly, dreaming of agony and death not his own.

= The Denial and what follows =

Lehana remained as he was for at least a quarter of an hour until roused from his pseudo-mournful state by an attendant, who having already given audience to those elite, the riders and theirs, was now more or mildly concerned with attending the wounded and the rejected. They had assumed he was of the latter, but they did not know that such was actually the state of the dragon to which he had very nearly found himself in union with. “You there, get up. You have not a scratch on you. Be glad for it.” In a better world, or given some semblance of etiquette, that statement would have been different. Lehana decided to respond in kind.

He was not quick with words, so he said only, “Is my business disturbed not injury, insult enough?” He left the man to contemplate this, but the set of his mouth showed he did not mean to, and given that, Lehana did not so much as hide the hate in his features, but rather, departed with it firmly intact. He was a man to keep grudges, and so he loitered, eavesdropping if you will. Another servant addressed the man that had spoken as bluntly as the set of his ugly face formerly, and so he learned his name, which he took down in his memory for safekeeping of the worst order.

He found himself in a pub nearby, and he waited, chatting soon with a local girl, a brunette with more than a little bosom and a little rough around the edges; if he would have rejected her, though, it would have been his loss. She was not beautiful and hardly acceptable, but she was something of voluptuous, and alive at his touch.

Given his purpose, he initially let her invitation pass deafly, telling her he would meet her in perhaps thirty minutes time, to which she smiled, nodded, and then quickly went to speak with some of her closer friends. He could tell solely from the set of their features that they spoke of him, and it went, perhaps, a little to his head. As so, when his charge, the offending attendant from before who had treated him as filth given his failed impression entered, he entertained an exaggerated vengeance. He did not greet the man, but when he sat at a nearby table and spoke with another gruff customer, Lehana leaned over and muttered to the bartender to bring the both a beer.

Once the dim light was accounted for, which disguised the telltale blinking that he was prone to when lying, all was well within hours. His new companions, having reconciled there feelings after one mug of ale, were inebriated, and he was pretending to be. When the gruff man was discharged, stumbling home in some alley, it was but the two of them and the bartender left; so it was simply done, when he got the next round of drinks, to slip a fierce, nauseating sedative into the drink of his hideous enemy. The spite would be complete in minutes, and once the beer was drained, he made up excuse to leave. He knew, once he had left, that the same man would be in immense pain, that he would vomit near-constantly for hours, and that his head would throb for at least a day. He would probably assume it as the effects of beer gone off or how much he had drunk, and no one would be the wiser, save Lehana. Though the truth was disconcerting, it was simple that, given his family heritage on his mother’s side, carrying poison was typical.

He would have been happier, though, if he had mended two swords with one blow, so to speak, but as of now, he still knew nothing of his sister, Pele. He woke in the night, though, realizing that he had failed to recognize a face; the other man, the gruff one, whose name he had caught as being Brogan, was the man she had run off with, if his father’s description served.

In the morning he asked about, found the inn in which the two must be staying which was but two blocks from his, and proceeded to the spot. What he found shamed him.

A man of few witty words, all he managed to stutter was, “Pele, you wench!” Considering the situation, the words were a bit too literal.

Pele was what many would call “feisty,” others “vivacious,” but to him, she was no more than volatile. She had a crop of red hair and a constant layer of make-up, her lips cherry-red, her skin milk-white, and her clothes, or at least as of the moment, leaving little to the imagination. She did not seem so much as embarrassed, and she grinned as she pried the face of some strange man from her lips. “Oh, Lehana; fancy you being here! Sit down a bit, relax! Be with you in a-“ she was silenced by the same man, who was beginning to press their little rendezvous further. At the moment, his sister had captured the very essence of a painted jezebel.

“What the hell are you doing you selfish whore! Father’s dying at home, and here you are.” At this, the short, balding and beer-bellied “gentleman” ceased his advance, realizing that things were soon to go awry. But it was too late, as Lehana had already crossed the room and floored him with a blow to the jaw. His sister laughed, in the vicious way she did, and the man realized at once that he might have been mistaken on the character of his mistress.

Her face turned, however, when Lehana lost his self-control; it was not all that unexpected. He did not have a temper, he did not even have honor, so the reasons for his punching the man were muted. Despite this, even wanting to restrain himself consciously, he could not stop. He was a man of heart, usually, that acted politely, but ever since the failed bonding with that dragon, something had been bubbling up inside him. He had never felt so sadistic as he did in the moment when he started to full-on kick the man as he lay on the ground, the edge of his foot slicing his nose, which began to bleed profusely, likely broken. It was as if an animal had taken him, when he had always been so civilized, so composed, when he had let nothing get to him and had gone on with fatalism and a face bearing nothing but mirth. At length, when the man cried out for him to stop, he did so, realizing what he had done. Grabbing his sister, he fled, and no more words were said the length of their leave. They grabbed what little she and he had brought from their rooms, and she still in risqué clothes, were at the gates of the Weyr.

It was not until then that she spoke, her voice timid, something that put even him on edge. She was always boisterous, and her voice crossed the room at any volume, but now it was like a whisper. “Lehana, what has happened?”

His reply was no more than, “I am in a foul mood. Let off it.” She gabbed idly thereafter, but as another had learned so aptly to do in the past day, her voice was but silence to his ears. The subject of her being forcibly brought back was never brought up; perhaps, having seen the prior event, she had smartly saved herself such aggression, but Lehana could usually scarcely raise his voice to her. It was she that bullied him, ever since they were children.

As they traveled the road, he could not shake the idea that there were feral urges about him and he had never been so seized by such feelings before. His mother had said he had potential for bloodlust. Was this, then, what she had meant? But it had been just a brawl in a bar, and the man had lustful feelings towards his sister, so surely it was justified. But it was not just that; there was a feeling as if something was missing. It was as if a possession very dear to him had been lost without his knowledge. At that moment, he did not know that such was not far from the truth, or that what he had misplaced was worth more than any gem or spice. What he had received in its place, however, was just as foreign.

= A Threshold and the reptile meditating thereby =

The odd, night owl of a passerby would have been disturbed by a rust-colored beast, standing in the doorway of an unwelcoming stone room, looking out into the velvet black air. It sniffed once or twice, and beat its feet upon the ground, folding and unfolding its wings to an unknown stress. And more by more, it peered, as if trying to see what was occurring somewhere distant.

“Oh, Leth, come curl up with me. You must not stand that way, and we ought to be asleep. We have a big day tomorrow, I am certain!” Her vivid telepathic smile and satisfaction sickened him, as if a migraine. There was a pause to which he noted was followed, interestingly enough, with a resigned sigh, and then, “Why do you stand that way?” It was the voice of one tired of speaking rhetorically.

“Movement in the shadows. I have desire, but I know not for what.” She did not understand, not what he had meant, or what she could say to it. He did not mention that the shadows were those deep in his own brain. Instead, he put her at ease, deliberately, by returning to his bed-place. But once she slept, snoring in a less than ladylike fashion, he returned to stare into the pitch-colored night, that which stirred such feelings in him, like longing.

Neither did he so much as mumble to her, even when the dawn had come and the last vestiges of the feeling had since vanished, that he had known what the desire was. It was the need to hunt.