Author's Note
I do not own the Dragonriders of Pern. All rights belong to their rightful owners.
The stars were alive the night Luna was born.
They shone bright and fierce, and one star in particular shone brightest and fiercest.
It was all colours of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, pink, indigo, and pulsated in the sky like a great coloured blob. Those of the tiny cothold cowered in their stone crofts as it hung above them like a bad omen.
All but two.
Tradenna, wife of the late Corvus, gave birth that night. There was no midwife or Healer in attendance, only her good-sister Thaitea who had three sons of her own.
Luna would be born when the cursed star was at its brightest, streaking overhead above the village.
She was different from that moment on.
Her hair was a bright, shining silver, a beacon of light on a dark night. Her skin was pale as the snow and never tanned nor marked. Her eyes were large, round, and shone like the stars. She held an ethereal kind of beauty, look but don't touch.
Her mother loved her dearly, but she was an odd child.
She was never like other children. While they tottered about on chubby legs, she was already a slender child who could glide from one handhold to another. It almost looked like her feet never touched the floor. While they played with toys and dolls and wooden figures and soft balls, she would rather watch or gaze mysteriously into the middle distance. While they attended lessons, she could already read and write and would rather do some more mysterious gazing, especially if it was raining or near sunset.
Sometimes she dreamt she had an older sister, a beautiful girl with scarlet red curls. They grew together in her dreams, laughed and played together sometimes in places she knew and sometimes in places she didn't.
As a young child, she asked her mother 'mother, will I one day have a sister?"
"Perhaps, but probably not. I'm growing older now, and I have no husband any more."
Luna gazed at her with those eyes like the stars. "I had a sister once. She went away, but we will meet again."
Her mother went very, very pale. "Get out."
Luna would never fit in with the other children either. They never invited her to their conversations, nor their games or parties (though who could really blame them when her favourite pastime seemed to be predicting when people would die with a frightening accuracy?). As they grew older though they became hostile, and would bully her, pushing her in the mud and attacking her with sticks.
Nevertheless, accidents that should have been fatal seemed to be less so when Luna was there, such as a girl who slipped over the edge of a ravine landing at the bottom with only a scratch to show for it and a pack of savage canines who happened upon the children turning tail and fleeing.
She knew things about people too, thoughts and feelings and secrets that should never be spoken or given to the light of day. Folk distrusted her even more for that, her uncanny way of simply knowing.
When she was eleven her mother fell sick. Luna held her hand through the night and willed her to get better. Get better she did, though Luna herself grew sick that morning, and lay in a fever for many days, whispering about carts that drove themselves and pictures that moved and beasts bigger than dragons that flew through the sky.
Her mother would never truly recover, and when Luna was only thirteen, she fell sick again, sharp and sudden, and died within only a few days. Luna wept for the future she would never have.
Her funeral would be two days later. Few people attended.
The crofters came for Luna that night.
Without her mother she was vulnerable, and she knew their secrets.
Of course, knowing their secrets meant she already knew, and had packed a few sturdy belongings into a backpack before fleeing the cothold. Her future stretched out in front of her. She saw many, many paths, but she ran on the one that she knew was to be, and when the footsteps caught up with her she had no fear.
This was always to come.
When the hands seized her and the blows rained down she saw no anger in the people she once knew, only sadness and fear, and she herself had no fear.
This was always to come.
When her battered body tumbled over the edge of the bridge, she only closed her eyes and had no fear.
This was always to come.
Behind her eyes she saw red hair and a loving smile.
Luna held out her hand.