Note: Contains mild spoilers for the first Dragonrider trilogy and the Harper Hall trilogy. It also is pretty AU, in the sense that I ignore big chunks of the later books. Basically, this story deals with a particular way that Mirrim-as-Rider and Menolly-as-Journeyman could have turned out, rather than how they turned out in canon.
Originally written for Boosette, for the Yuletide rare fandom exchange.
The freezing cold of between shocked Mirrim to her teeth—always had, always would, no matter how often she endured it. But the warm tether of Path's mind, bright and prickly and familiar as a good wool blanket, kept body and soul together for the three coughbeats until they sprang again into the daylit world, high above Greystones Hold and the minercraft outposts in the mountains there.
Hardly anything alive down there to protect, she told Path.
Doesn't matter, Path said cheerfully. Thread falls. I want to flame. And Mirrim felt the high welling surge of pride, the warmth that she was helpless to, as she reached above the thick layers of her saddle to stroke Path's warm skin.
Tebaneth—dragon of the wingleader D'nal—says we're using the fourth formation, Path added, and helpfully visualized it for her rider: three staggered arrows, layered one atop the other, with bronze and brown at the front of the vee to take the heaviest leading edge of Fall and to break the strong winds, and with greens and blues at the back, using their dexterity to clean up stray clumps of the silvery-burning menace.
Right, Mirrim replied, go to it, then, and Path winged dextrously up and to the right, to her place in the formation: the middle arrow, on the right and toward the back, above green Ysranith and below blue Marateth.
Thread sighted, Path said, with the excitement and anticipation she'd been born and bred for, shaped for and sworn to, and Mirrim felt the excitement simmer up into her from her dragon. Even at times like this, staring painful death in the teeth, with nothing but her wits and her dragon's between her and the horrors of Thread, she wouldn't have been anywhere else. No, especially at times like this. She'd thought herself doomed to a life in the Lower Caverns, but now—now—
She had the wind and the wild sky, the roar of thin air around her, the steady crack-flap of Path's wings driving them through the sky; she had the spike of excitement, battle-readiness; she had the glory of battle and blood and flame . . .
Firestone, she said, and Path whipped her head around in a practiced arc to catch the first grey stone, and then the second, and then the Thread was upon them.
Path flamed, turning a clump of Thread to cinders; flamed again, catching a single whipcord silver strand before it could blow back into the rider behind and to the left of her. She flamed a third time, but not at Thread, just to burn off the last half-digested remnant of firestone before she needed another hot flame, and then whipped her head around for more.
They fell into a pattern, or at least as much of a pattern as dragon and rider could have during the pure unpredictable fury of Threadfall. Watch left, there's a clump, Mirrim thought, and Path was moving before the thought had even been fully formed. And Path indicated without even directed thought that it would be good to gain a bit of altitude, so as to attack a dense clump of Thread from above rather than below, and so they did it, moving as one, smooth and clean as a needle moving through sisal cloth.
Only suddenly something was wrong. There's a lot of Thread coming, Path said, with some worry.
What do you mean, a lot of— Mirrim began, and then broke off, because she saw it, too. And she saw the cause: S'olan and blue Marateth, who were supposed to be positioned above them to thin out the Thread, had moved out of position. Path! Tell Marateth to get back into position now!
His rider has his attention, Path began, and he says they're—
Now! Mirrim said. Cracks and shards, we can't handle this much ourselves!
Path backwinged desperately to keep from skidding straight into the path of the thickened clump of Thread, flaming and flaming again and burping smoky gas and flaming one more desperate time, but there was only one of her and too much Thread. Mirrim heard the sizzle of Thread rather than seeing it, heard it and then felt it sink through the thick leathers of her right arm, her left leg, a blinding-searing pain that drove a scream from between her clenched teeth.
Path's reaction was instant, reflexive. The two snapped between, and Mirrim felt the icy cold as relief. And then they were out of the blackness and over the familiar bowl of Benden Weyr, and she could feel the clump of Thread, killed by between's frigidity, crumble to blackdust between her fingers, and then she slumped forward over her dragon's neck and trusted Path to bring them down in a wide gentle circle over Benden Weyr.
"Ow," Mirrim said aloud as a weyrling helped her down from Path's warm neck. "Ow, ow, cracks and shards and shells and Faranth's thickened tailfork, ow." She kept a hand clamped over the gap in her riding leathers where Thread had eaten through the thick material and begun to devour her bicep; she couldn't hold together the matching score on her opposite thigh, but she favored that leg as she slid down to the ground. She could still feel her fingers, which was a good sign, but it hurt like frostbite mixed with flame.
I'm sorry, Path said mournfully. If I'd been a little faster . . .
"It wasn't you, dearheart," Mirrim said instantly, aloud, leaning on the weyrling on hospital duty. She switched to mental communication when the boy gave her a quizzical look. It was that fourteen-times-cursed bluerider, S'olan. He left position and let the clump get through. I bet you anything he was showing off.
Still, Path said, I should have kept you safe.
You always keep me safe, Mirrim replied, discomfited by her usually-brash green's contrition. Anyway, I'm a rider. It happens.
Not that she was going to let that stop her from complaining. She'd lived in a Weyr long enough to know that sweet, quiet women were sweetly, quietly ignored; she wasn't a sweet thing anyway, she was a rider, and by Faranth they were going to treat her like one. Especially when she'd been injured! In the line of duty! Because of someone else's stupid mistake!
The weyrling got her situated on a cot in a quiet room, with a half-dose of fellis, which was just fine by her because she didn't want the brain-fuzziness that came from a full fellis dose. That always upset Path. Reppa and Lok popped out of between and circled around her cot, trilling with concern. After a moment, Tolly joined them, settling himself on her knee, below the searing pain of the Thread wound on her thigh.
You're all right? Path asked, touching her mind in a way that made Mirrim think of her own tongue probing a loose tooth when she was a child.
I'm fine, love, she said. Just irritated. And in pain, because a half-dose of fellis could only do so much, but she did her best to keep that from the link, lest it worry Path.
Marateth shouldn't have left that gap in the Threadfall, Path said, with some spirit, sounding more like herself and less like the frightened creature she'd been just minutes before. Mirrim smiled to herself.
Exactly, she said. When I get out of here I'm going to let D'nal hear a thing or two about his wing's— and then Mirrim's thoughts were interrupted by someone opening the door to her room.
"When I was working the Lower Caverns," Mirrim began, "it wouldn't have taken someone nearly this long to get treated for Threadscore—"
"I know," came a melodious, amused, and above all familiar voice. "I remember your tender mercies quite clearly," she added with a note of sweet teasing.
"Menolly!" Mirrim said, sitting up quickly—and then regretting it. "Oh, ow. Ow." And then she had to soothe a surge of profound worry from Path, who'd felt her pain through the link. Sorry, Path, she said. I was being dumb.
Well, don't do that, Path replied.
"Lie back down," Menolly said, "and don't be silly. You're just cranky because it hurts." She sounded disgustingly cheerful as she uncovered the glowbasket, which cast its familiar greenish light on her face. She looked good—better fed than when Mirrim had first met her, more filled-out, happier. Her thick brown hair still fell in her eyes, though, even as she worked deftly to unpack a Healer's bag.
"You're right it hurts," Mirrim said, but without any rancor, because Menolly's presence was a rare treat. "What're you doing on Healer duty? Make a wrong turn at Fort and end up in the wrong Hall?"
"Tsk," Menolly said. "Light Threadscore's not had to treat."
"Light!"
"Beauty tells me Path says you've been saying it's nothing," Menolly said, pouring out distilled alcohol and dipping a piece of gauze in it. "Take off your leathers so I can patch you up."
Mirrim shucked off her heavy jacket and then wriggled out of her trousers, wincing as she did so. The motion pulled open the score on her leg, which began to bleed sluggishly.
"Here," Menolly said, "hold this over it, it'll stop the bleeding."
"So what are you doing here?" Mirrim asked, to distract herself from the pain of the opened wound, and the matching throb of her bicep. "All joking aside."
"I've got new teaching songs for the Weyrharper," Menolly said, briskly wetting a pad with alcohol and applying it to the Threadscore on Mirrim's arm. Mirrim winced, but didn't complain; she knew Menolly used alcohol to disinfect rather than redwort because redwort would neutralize numbweed. And Mirrim wanted the numbweed, oh yes. "And then I heard about the Threadfall injuries, and I thought, well, you were so kind to me when I ran my feet off, I could return the favor."
I like her, Path decided.
Eavesdropper, Mirrim returned, but with good humor.
"Well," she said, "thank you." She smiled at the fetid smell of numbweed when Menolly opened the crock, and then wondered at herself, that she'd come so far that she appreciated it. Once the smell of numbweed had conjured up the misery of days upon days of boiling the salve, but now . . .
Now you have me, Path interjected, smugly.
Menolly liked her silences. Mirrim didn't understand that, since she liked crowds and people, and voices, talking, all around her. But maybe that was a Harper thing, liking silences so you could hear your own songs. Anyway, knowing that made her easier to find; when Mirrim and Path emerged from between far above Fort Hold, she kept an eye on the high places.
Beauty's on the fireheights, Path said, and after a moment Reppa and Lok confirmed this: Beauty and Rocky and Mimic and Uncle were on the fireheights, and probably Menolly was there too.
Sure enough, when Path backwinged to a halt at the top of the fireheights—to the annoyed trumpet of the brown watchdragon—Mirrim quickly made out the shape of Menolly sitting on the edge of the heights, pipes in her hands and her hair blowing in the wind.
Menolly laid down her pipes and smiled. "Come to raise dust, I see," she said.
"That's gratitude for you," Mirrim said, hoisting a wineskin. "Here I was going to thank you for your tender ministrations—"
Menolly began to laugh, stirring Uncle from her shoulder. "My tender what now?"
"Min-i-stra-tions," Mirrim said patiently. "I'd expect a Harper to know big words like that."
"It was only fair," Menolly said, because Menolly was a sweet person. Sweeter by far than Mirrim. Menolly was sweet, Mirrim thought, but Mirrim was spice, because people liked sweet, but they paid attention to spice.
Which, as far as Mirrim was concerned, was totally unfair to Menolly. She was going to keep getting stepped on until someone turned up to show her how to be spicy as well as sweet. "Fair's one thing," she said, "and kind is another. You were kind to me, so I'm going to be kind to you. Only I'm not very good at kind. So we'll say a good Benden Red is the same as kind, all right?"
"All right," Menolly said. "As long as you help me down the path again when we're done. I don't have a head for wine."
'Help me down the path,' Path said, with a frisson of amusement. More likely Path will help her down you.
Mirrim felt a flush of unaccustomed embarrassment. She was never embarrassed. Hush, you.
You say that, Path said, but you don't mean it. You think she's pretty.
Enough, Mirrim said, and Path curled in on herself to sun with a quietness that was completely smug.
Mirrim hadn't thought to bring cups, so they drank by passing the wineskin back and forth between them. "How is life as a Journeyman?" Mirrim asked.
Menolly grimaced. "Well enough, but more . . . well, ordinary than I would have thought."
"Ordinary?"
Menolly rubbed the knees of her breeches. "There's only one or two 'Brekke's Song's per generation. The rest of the time . . . well, it's new teaching songs, or updating old teaching songs, or, well, writing love songs on commission. That's how the hall earns its meat and milk, you know. Nobody pays us in tithe for songs about how we need to remember the sacrifice of the Oldtimers. But they do pay us for writing about how a lordling's favorite mistress's eyes are like the flowers on the corn."
Mirrim felt her mouth pull into a grin. "Oh, really?"
"Oh yes," Menolly said. "Haven't you heard? The newest song to come out of the Harper Hall? 'My mistress is as sweet as dew / And cool as rains in autumn time / Her eyes are calm as cornflowers / Her voice as sweet as silver chime.'"
Mirrim guffawed. "Nobody would ever write anything like that about me," she said. "Unless the next line was, 'Her voice as sour as old, cold klah / Her mood as icky as tunnel slime.'"
Menolly giggled. "That's hardly fair. You aren't slimy at all."
"Why, thank you."
"No," Menolly continued. "You're more prickly."
"Hey!"
True, Path said.
"In fact," Menolly continued with a grin, "if I was going to write a ballad about you, it would probably start like, oh . . . " She put her pipes to her mouth and blew a tune, and then sang, in her sweet, husky voice, "'She's prickly as a seedcoat burr / And stinging as a well-aimed dart'."
"Hey," Mirrim said, snatching back the wineskin. "I didn't come here to be insulted!"
Menolly continued, unabashed, her voice low and lovely, "'And yet she's kind to those in need / And with her friends she shares her heart.'"
Mirrim took a swing of the wineskin, and then smiled, despite herself. "Okay, harper girl, I like that song just fine."
"So that's enough gossip about Fort," Menolly said, at the end of a long and fascinating tale about Briala's indiscretions with a bronzerider, and her parents' response, and Briala's surprisingly spirited response to her parents' response.
"So Briala asked me whether I thought it was right that she should keep seeing him," Menolly said, "because of course Pona thought that she should keep her legs together . . . ."
"Holders," Mirrim said with an eyeroll and a sigh. On her shoulder, Reppa paced, pricking through her shirt with sharp claws.
Menolly slapped her playfully on the thigh. "Don't talk like that. You have no idea what it's like. It's hard for a holdergirl to assert herself. Anyway, of course I said if she loved him and was happy there wasn't any problem, but of course I'm holdbred, so I was wondering what you'd do."
"Me?" Mirrim laughed. "You're asking my opinion?"
"Well, why not?
"Nobody asks my opinion. I'm a girl greenrider, remember? Everyone asks Brekke, or if they don't mind getting bitten hard, they ask Lessa. Not me."
"I don't see there's anything wrong with being a female greenrider," Menolly said. "It's a different thing, being a woman on a fighting dragon rather than on a brood dragon, but I think it's a good thing. Did you know there are girls playing Mirrim games? Pretending they're Mirrim on noble Path, fighting Thread?"
Noble Path, Path said, smug as always.
"No," Mirrim said. "I never would have thought. I always wanted to be like Brekke."
"Because there was no woman on a fighting dragon," Menolly said, sensibly. "So you had no role model. But now others have one for you, and girls who want to battle Thread look up to you, just as there are girls who want to be journeywomen who follow my model." Menolly looked very embarrassed to say that, but she said it anyway. "I was working on a song about it, actually."
"Oh?"
Menolly smiled, and then began to sing:
"High above the dragons fly
To fight the menace that is Thread
In ash and flame they strive and try
And battle that the landbound fear
"And many thought 'twas man alone
Who had the nerve to meet the foe
But now the ancient war is flown
By Path's Mirrim, dragonwoman."
Mirrim began to blush, despite herself. She never blushed. It was a point of pride. "Well, that's just silly," she said, which meant 'thank you.' She was pretty sure Menolly knew that. She was glad when Reppa's irritability became too much to ignore, because it gave her something else to talk about. "Good grief, Reppa, what is it? Thrice-cursed firelizards! You're being a pest and a half."
That's because firelizards have tiny little brains, Path said. Like walnuts. Unlike me. I have a lovely big brain.
How very nice for you, Mirrim said, nastily.
See if I help you with your proddy firelizard now, Path replied with the draconic equivalent of a mental shrug, and rested her long fine head on her foreclaws.
"Proddy?" Mirrim demanded, out loud. But yes, Path was right. Of course Path was right. Reppa wasn't just being her usual nuisance self: she was flirting, flicking her wings and lashing her tail, sending out mental probes, rousing Rocky and Mimic and Uncle Two. No wonder Beauty had excused herself. No, there wasn't any other explanation for it, not with Reppa's skin turning the sallow color that dragonriders romantically called the mating glow.
"Oops," Mirrim said.
Menolly's mouth tipped over to one side in a lopsided smile. "That's how greens are. Fine one minute, flight-ready the next. Beauty at least gives me some warning, but the Aunties . . . ."
"Reppa, can't you wait until—Reppa!" Mirrim said, but the green had already taken flight, circling twice over their heads and then flinging herself onto the wind-currents over the Fort Hold complex. Rocky, Mimic and Uncle threw themselves into the air after her, to be joined after a moment by a handful of other firelizards: bronze, brown and blue.
"Do you want to go somewhere more, um, private?" Menolly asked. Mirrim stared at her for a long time, seeing only her bright eyes, her flushed cheeks, and her tempting mouth, before the words penetrated her brain.
"I think maybe that would be a good idea," she said, and it turned out that it wasn't just Menolly who needed help navigating the narrow path down to the Hall.
Firelizard lust was nothing like dragonlust. Mirrim had experienced the latter before, and it was both overwhelming and impersonal: she'd never wanted the brownrider whose dragon had caught Path before the flight, and she never wanted him after the flight. The flight was like a small interlude out of the way of normal thought, and desire, and sense.
Firelizard lust was less overwhelming, and yet more intimate. Mirrim could have resisted it. She could have. She could have splashed cold water on her face and had a bracing drink of klah and just suffered it, feeling prickly and warm and aroused, without doing anything about it.
Reppa spiralling higher and higher, trilling a challenge to the males chasing her, swooping high, diving low, as the larger and more clumsy bronze firelizards peeled off, unable to match her agility . . .
She could have, and, watching Menolly busy herself at the other end of the room, she knew Menolly would follow her lead.
Reppa flicking her wings, turning abruptly and losing Mimic, so it was only Uncle and two other blues, almost as agile as she herself was, in the chase.
But Mirrim realized, looking at Menolly's sweet, open, lovely face, that she didn't especially want to. And she was weyrbred. If she didn't want to resist temptation, then she . . . just didn't.
"Menolly," she said.
Menolly came over and sat beside her, and smiled. Mirrim bit her her own lower lip.
Reppa, fanning her wings to consider her pursuers. A foolish move, because Uncle surged forward—
And Menolly was the one who kissed her first. Menolly, holdbred, craftraised, Menolly kissed her first, and Mirrim was so glad and so relieved that she laughed into the kiss before she bore Menolly back to the bed.
Uncle twining his neck with Reppa's, his tail with Reppa's, limbs entangled as two pairs of wings opened to break their fall in the long descent down toward the Hold and Hall.
Menolly's tunic opened with some difficulty, but her breeches opened easily, and Mirrim kissed her way from Menolly's elegant breastbone, down between her small sturdy breasts and over her flat belly. Menolly moaned aloud, but without any surprise, and her clever fingers were quick in Mirrim's long black braid. Mirrim shook her hair out impatiently so that it fell loose around her head, loose in a fall of black over Menolly's belly, loose over Menolly's pale thighs as she dipped her head and pressed a kiss and waited.
Menolly parted her legs and Mirrim didn't wait any longer.
The taste, musk-deep and sweet; the scent, heavy and heady; the prickle of hair and then the silk-slick softness of Menolly's wet flesh. The initial surge of lust was from Reppa, Reppa and Uncle, but the pleasure was all hers. Hers and Menolly's. She tasted, hesitant but with growing enthusiasm; licked, stroked with her fingers, touched trembling flesh. And knew, in the back of her mind and the center of hear heart, that it wasn't firelizard-lust that had brought her here, but something else. Something else.
"Mirrim," Menolly gasped beneath her touch, and then, more urgently, "Mirrim! Don't stop!"
So Mirrim didn't, but kept up the steady pressure of her tongue, the gentle flutter of her fingers deep inside until Menolly arched up, tensed, trembled deep and then shuddered her release, and Mirrim laid her head on Menolly's thigh.
That was nice, Path said.
Voyeur, Mirrim replied, feeling as shocked as she could manage given her position.
No, I mean you're very happy now, Path replied, unperturbed. And that's nice.
Mirrim had no answer to that, so she kissed Menolly's thigh again, and then her hip, her belly, her breast, her throat, her laughing mouth, as Menolly wrapped one arm around her waist and let the other slide down between her thighs, to return the favor.
Chances were good they'd be returning one another's favors forever, Mirrim thought as her thighs tightened around Menolly's hand. And that was all right. That was just fine.