a sad little song for a green
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You are the lowest of the low.
You are a greenrider, prestigious enough to be called honourable and one of the protectors of Pern, but not enough to be revered like a queen, and you know some people mock you behind your back.
Ooh, greenrider--she gets proddy now and then, they snicker. Never mind that it's only four or five times a Turn; but anyway holders wouldn't bother to mess with the details.
You are on par with the drudges, and though you know that is not in the least bit true there is still something--that lack of fear in their eyes--when they touch you on the shoulder and talk to you. Respect is there, yes, because you've got a twenty-foot fire-breathing dragon on your side forever and always; but no fear. No reverence.
They see you eating redfruit and it is just that--you are a dragonrider eating redfruit. Perhaps you will toss the eaten core away and leave a bit of a mess for those drudges to clean up, but more often than not you don't, and remain invisible.
You take it the worst during Threadfall, when it is you and your dragon alone in a mass of shimmering Thread (ropes, that can't be right, they are ropes not Thread what do we do?). Your firestone kicks in and your dragon breathes out and sometimes you wonder just what is up with all those Harpers--what makes them glory you so?
Underneath all the aches and pains and the scratches and the tears and the cuts and the bruises, you can't help but feel useless because your dragon is doing all the work for you, and you're just there to weigh her down.
You could never weigh me down, your dragon says, and that makes you feel a little better.
But sometimes it isn't enough.
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Notes: I do not own Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern. This is just something I do for entertainment, and nothing more.
Inspired while I was eating an apple (it's 'redfruit' on Pern, right?).
Edit: My goodness, you people are literal. Didn't you realise this had paragraphs? Songs don't have paragraphs! And besides that, it is categorised as "general," not "poetry," so it is neither a ballad nor a song nor a poem.
And I thought you were all just joking when you said you couldn't get the rhythm.