Disclaimer: I don't own anything/anyone from the Pern world books. I do own most of the characters in this story and anything else not from the original series.

Chapter Seven: Remembered, Unremembered

Star was introduced to many people that day, from Manora the Headwoman of the Weyr's kitchen cavern, to the Weyr's Harper, a Journeyman named Sijlon, to F'nor , rider of brown Canth and the first person who had journeyed to the infamous Red Star. Later she was ushered into the Weyrling barracks and met Niquii, the girl who had been taking care of her fire lizards.

The Candidate for the Junior Queen's clutch smiled when she saw her and came forward, hand outstretched, a brown balancing on her shoulder. Vanya shrilled and dove at Star, latching her green talons in the teenager's black-dyed hair, grasping mostly the single blue streak, and throttling her with her tail. Blue Elzin and bronze Nivi fought for a place on her remaining shoulder as their human shook the offered hand until Elzin landed on her arm and clung them, grumbling to himself. Looking quite smug, Nivi settled into place on her shoulder and flipped his wing to his back.

Star grinned at Elzin. "Tricky," she commented, then addressed Niquii. "Thanks for taking care of them." The other girl waved it off.

"I don't mind. Disaster liked squabbling with someone new. He kept giving me outlandish images from them."

'Oookay, good time to change the subject, Star,' she thought to herself. "'Disaster'?" she asked, trying not to smile.

Niquii sighed. "You probably don't want to know the whole thing. Basically I tripped over him and some of his clutch mates when I and my family were fleeing the tsunami; we lived at Tillek, then, then we went to Ruatha, then I was Searched last Impression, but didn't get chosen, so here I am."

Not much in the flood of information made an impression on her ('Tillek and Ruatha? Are they cities? Does searching mean like search-and-rescue? And what's an Impression? Whatever it is, it sounds important. Can anyone 'Impress'? Or is it something you're born with? And why would I want to?')

But one thing stood out: tsunami. This girl had been in a tsunami. "Tsunami?" Her voice squeaked and trembled as she remembered, and didn't notice anything, neither her white face nor wide, empty, pale eyes which were not red despite the tears that gathered in them and spilled over. She took two paces and sat down hard on a chair, her world going blank as she remembered.

Flashback

(A/N: This is a fictitious tsunami in a real place, Ocean Shores, on the coast of Washington )

Her parents were calling for her, and she for them, but they couldn't hear her over the cries of other people. The family Ocean Shores beach trip was turning into a nightmare. Their hotel, the Shilo Inn, was in havoc as people fled the tsunami that was rapidly approaching. Six-year-old Star had been buying a gumball from a talking, noise-making machine when the man had come barging in, yelling about the approaching tsunami.

He had pulled the fire alarm and the hotel had broken into chaos. In the deafening confusion Star had run the other way from her parents. People were all racing for the doors, but she had ducked away from the stampede, eyes wide, while her parents were swept along.

At last they were nearly gone and the last few stragglers were hurriedly rushing outside. "Mommy!" she wailed, coming after them. She had partial amnesia for the next long time, days or hours she didn't know, but the next thing she remembered was being very hungry and kind-faced men bringing her to her parents.

She had been lost and alone in the horror of the after-tsunami in Ocean Shores for three days, she was told later.

For a year she had nightmares.

For two after that she had been fiercely hydrophobic.

For another year she had been less so, but still afraid.

End of flashback

It had taken her fully those four long years, until she was ten, to be able to go near large bodies of water, and until she was twelve to fully recover and hide the memories deep where she would never find them again, or so she had thought.

000

Star jerked and inhaled sharply, coming out of her memories, then closed her eyes again and leaning forward in the chair she still sat in, held her head in her hands, taking slow deep breaths. She had to push the memory of what she could not remember away. If she tried to remember what she had lost, could not remember for some reason, she might go mad with the long, dark blankness in her mind.

After a little she at up and looked around. Lessa, F'lar, Niquii and two other people, a strangely familiar man with F'lar's eyes and brown hair who must be related and a woman with red-brown hair and blue-green eyes, were looking at her with concern. Benden's Weyrwoman held her hand, while Niquii cradled her green fire lizard Vanya, who appeared to be traumatized, the strange woman carried an unconscious bronze, Nivi, and the other man had blue Elzin.

"Are you all right?" the strange woman asked. Nivi stirred and she looked down. "They became very agitated, broadcasting wild images of lots of water, and strange buildings, and something she –or you, I suspect,– couldn't remember, because it wasn't there anymore, in your memories."

"Not just your fire lizards, either," the unnamed man told her. She suddenly remembered him as F'nor, F'lar's half brother. "Canth and I were out on the beach with Grall" his gold fire lizard was perched on his shoulder, surveying the room imperiously, "and they both suddenly leap up, Canth scarcely waits for me to get on his back when he whisks us back here, and lands right outside here. You'll find quite a commotion in the Weyr, as a result of your cry, you know."

"Cry?..." She was a little dazed and confused. "Did I scream?" she asked herself quietly. "Again? After I thought it was all gone? It's only been a couple of years…"

"A few years since what?" Star shook her head to clear it, then looked at the strange woman.

"What? Oh… since the tsunami…" She thought on it again, and was jerked away by a shrill screech and a pain on her ear. Vanya's tail was wrapped abound her neck, and she had apparently bitten the human's ear as well as shrieking in it. "I'm sorry," she whispered, stroking the green fire lizard and then giving the same attention to her blue and bronze, who sat on her lap.

Star looked up at the people around her. "I was in a tsunami when I was very young," she explained. "It– took me a while to recover."

Don't think on it! Just forget. That was unmistakably Mnementh.

Stay with us now, put in someone she didn't know, a light female.

Forget! called a mature, experienced male. I had to, so it will be better for you as well. She knew it was Canth when she heard this, because of his trip to the Red Star, or Planet.

We're here with you, another unknown told her. All of us. Always.

We love you; we won't let you go into the blackness, Ramoth said firmly. All of us will hold you. We won't let you go.

"Oh, I know," she assured them. "The dragons," she explained to the others, who looked at her oddly. She and Lessa suddenly chucked together. "Ramoth just told Mnementh that it might just take all of them to hold me if I'm stubborn and try to remember past my amnesia. I'd say it would." Then her voice changed grimly. "Don't worry. I won't try that again; I learned to forget a long time ago, I just didn't remember… not to remember." That didn't sound right to her. "Probably doesn't make much sense, but never mind. I've never made much sense. To anyone, including myself and my parents!" She grinned, but her smile faded into panic.

"Oh, god, my parents! They've probably called Search 'n Rescue by now- I've got to get back!" She tried to spring from her chair, but Lessa pushed her back. "I was late already; I'm probably overdue by like six hours!"

"No matter when you leave here, you'll be back in less time than you left. You say you were late; when we bring you back, we can fix that, put you back before you were ever late." Star stared at her, not comprehending, and the Weyrwoman chuckled. "You have no idea how late you really are- Pern is several thousand years ahead in time from when you lived! When you called Joozith, you also summoned her through time as well as a vast breach in space."

"Oh." Star sat down again and looked down at her lap. For some reason, now, after having three fire lizards, summoning a dragon and then going flying with them, the idea of time-travel suddenly didn't seem all that far-fetched. "Pretty cool," she told them, "can't wait to check it out."

They looked at each other, some smiling, some confused, most both. "I mean, that's um… it's- good, and I can't wait to see it," the teenager translated. "Whacked place," she said to herself. "These dudes here are way old-fashioned." 'Or, according to their time-warp theory, incredibly new-fashioned.' She knew that didn't make any sense, even in her own mind, but she didn't care.

"So, what's next?" Star looked around at the various assembled people with a grin. "Don't tell me you also have phoenixes and griffins!" 'Dragons and phoenixes and griffins, oh, my!' she thought, referencing The Wizard of Oz.

The adults looked at each other. "No animals by that name."

Suddenly the teenager peered intently into the strange woman's face. She'd seen a lot of people that day at the Weyr, but she couldn't remember this woman. "Are you… a Benden Dragonrider?" she asked.

"Faranth's Shells!" She looked startled, then slightly amused. "At my own Weyr a girl doesn't know me!" She held out her hand, grinning. "Raia, Goldrider of Milath, Weyrwoman here at Benden. I know the final Pass finished near on a century ago, but you'd think three Weyrwomen and their Weyrleaders wouldn't be too much to remember."

About to grasp Raia's hand Star froze, looking between the two women who both claimed to lead Bended Weyr, Lessa and Raia. Then realization hit.

"Oh, God, I did it again," she muttered to no one in particular.