Disclaimer: I don't own Pern. I do, however own many of the characters in this story.
Chapter Four: Hayatch's Rising
Virika was sharpening her knife when Eleneif woke up. "You sleep like the dead," she commented to him, raising her voice to carry over the distance between the boulder she sat on and the forest edge where he had appeared.
"I was dead tired, anyway," he called back, coming over to sit beside her. They didn't talk. She concentrated on her knife, trying to ignore her quickened heartbeat and dry mouth as he sat close to her on the rock. He stared out over the ocean.
Blade sharp, she sheathed it and joined him in looking at the pounding waves. After a while he blinked and shook his head. "You fall asleep again?" she joked.
He half smiled. "Something the matter?" she asked. "You look pretty distracted."
Eleneir stood up, mouth tight and unhappy. Just as he was about to leave he turned. "Hayatch'll fly soon. Who's going to be there… with you?"
She didn't entirely comprehend and frowned. He turned pink and coughed self-consciously.
"She's flying well already, Ele-" Virika broke off and stiffened. She felt herself going pale and starting to tremble as she stared at her friend. Of course! She berated herself for her naïveté for the last full year. The dragon-folk were enough like their cousins they must have the same impact during mating flights.
Virika had just seen them as too human, but now she thought about it they were more deeply human, and therefore would likely not decrease the power of the connection.
"Oh," she said weekly.
He bit his lip and came back to the rock. "Sorry," he said. "That was kind of a stupid thing to say." She turned her face away abruptly and looked at the ocean, not directly in front of them but down the coast away from the young man. Her hair fell forward and screened her face enough so she could not see him. She felt her pulse speed again, racing faster than before.
After a bit Eleneir rook one of her hands from twisting her pant leg, wrinkling it. She looked at him, then away. He used one hand to hold both of hers to him and the other to turn her face gently toward him, slipping it under her shelter of hair to tilt her face towards him.
The young woman started to tremble ever so slightly as he gazed into her eyes. His were kind and soft; with them he told her how much he loved her. Eleneir leaned forward and tilted his face to touch theirs together, allowing his hand to slip away so she could turn from him if she chose. At last he whispered her name, then gently eased his lips over hers.
They didn't move for a long moment, then he slowly pulled away, looking into her eyes. She ducked her head to the side and fingered her lips. He still held the other hand. After a moment she glanced up at him shyly, still pink, then looked away again.
He tried to lighten the atmosphere of tension and embarrassment. "You didn't stab me," he joked. She smiled again, then returned his gaze briefly, but she couldn't keep doing it, and looked aside again. "I've been wanting to do that for a while, since you got 'lost'," he told her hoarsely. "I realized, once you were gone, apparently for good, what you meant to me."
She didn't respond for a minute, then suddenly sat up and turned to look him in the eye. "You're sure it's not just because Hayatch is going to rise?" she demanded, searching his face desperately. He stiffened, then gazed down at her, half in his arms already.
Gently he folded her into an embrace and leaned her back, then killed her sweetly.
When they parted she let him hold her. "Never," he whispered into her hair. "Not ever. Not for you."
000
Some time later they went back to the dragon-folk. Hayatch greeted them more formally than most of the time, without any expression on her face. She gave a sweeping bow to them, then left them. Eleneir and Virika exchanged glances. "We Impressed…" she muttered by way of explanation. "It works both ways."
They both went pink when they received the same treatment from all the others they encountered on their way to breakfast.
000
Two days later Virika was dozing in the sun next to Elenier, both of them on the rock when she heard/felt Hayach growl. She jerked awake and leapt off the rock, racing to where her friend stood, staring into space above the ocean.
"Hayatch?" She hesitated. The queen growled again and whirled, then raced away. "Hayatch!" the girl all but screamed as she dashed after her friend. Never had she felt so apart from the gold. She stopped and fell to her knees, clutching her head. It was as if Hayatch was gone from her forever, as if she had never been.
After a moment she became aware of Eleneir holding her, kneeling beside her. "Virika?" Virika felt Hayatch returning to her, stronger than ever imaginable before.
All her horror and terrifying knowing came out in one frantic, deadly soft whisper. "She's rising."
"Vyrania!" He called, but she put her hand against his lips and turned so she could look him in t the eye.
"She's rising though, and you're-"
He tried to move away from her, but she gently held his arms. "I know," she whispered hoarsly. "It- it's all right. Stay. With me."
Eleneir looked down at her, then relaxed. "You're… sure?"
"Yes," she said."
Her lover bent down and kissed her, then stood and pulled her up in his arms. "We're going to have to go inside," he said. A shriek underscored his words, and they saw briefly a blur of gold and several bronze streaks spinning into the distance.
"I know," she said.
She looped her arms around his neck and he gazed down at her. They knew they were hardly ready, but they could not think of being sepperate just then.
He brought them to a deserted cave-room and lowered them both gently to the floor. Hesitantly they came together, shyly. But in the end it didn't matter. They were together, and whatever else might come after it, they would not face it alone.
000
The author expresses her regrets in this chapter that she had to end the story so abruptly, but she didn't want to either leave this story dangling around unfinished or delete the whole things. To her readers she would like to say that she might later continue the legacy of the half dragon race, but for now she must let others imagine what they will for the next generations of these remarkable people.
