Sorry it's been so long between updates! Hopefully I can finish posting chapters quite quickly, because I am limbering up for NaNoWriMo, and it would be nice not to have this story lingering in my mind at the same time.

Someone was shouting her name. She could hear them, but she could not answer. The noise faded to a buzz, and Saska opened her eyes and looked around the room where she lay.

Brightly coloured woven hangings on the walls. Curtains over what might be a window if it were not so tightly shuttered. A yellow light shaded by something green. Light showing as a line under the door.

Her bladder needed urgent action, and Saska shifted in the bed and gasped as she knocked her left arm. A jolt of pain shot through her and she stared at the neat bandages and splint.

"I broke my arm," she said out loud, and as if it were a signal, the door opened and a woman came through, closing the door behind her as if to hide what was beyond.

"You're awake - did you speak?"

"I need - I need to go - "

"Oh yes - let me help you. Careful of that arm - it was a nasty break and made worse by trying to get you out of that suit thing which wouldn't cut!"

Saska eased her feet to the rug on the floor and sat for a second or two, breathing deeply, and then stood up with the woman's help.

"Granne. Brekke's daughter."

"That's right."

Granne guided Saska to an inner door behind one of the hangings, and then helped her back to the bed.

"Can you sit on this chair? Put this rug over you. I'll just freshen up the bed."

She whipped off the sheets, and quickly and expertly remade the bed, shook the pillows and put them back.

"There. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat a boldis, bones and all," Saska replied.

Granne laughed. "I don't know what that is, but I think you're ready for more than a bowl of soup!"

"Can I get dressed? In - in something?"

"Yes of course. I'll be right back - you realise you'll have to answer some questions? From the Weyrleader at the very least?"

"Does everyone on Pern know I'm here?"

Saska looked around uneasily as if people were peering at her from the corners of the room. Granne shook her head.

"Only the wing of dragons that brought you here, and F'lessan and Tai of course, because Honshu is their home."

"Honshu. I'm in Honshu?"

"The three of you appeared over the hold during Threadfall," Granne said gently. "The wing on patrol had just about cleared it all, but you were caught by a rogue clump. It was disturbed by the displacement as you came out of between, And you fell right into it. I might add, you had ice on that strange suit you were wearing. And by the way, whatever is that fastening? It's amazing."

"It's a form of zip," Saska replied, and Granne nodded.

"I won't ask any more. Let me get some food and a dress. I think you'd probably want to wear your own underwear? That's been washed and dried."

Saska watched her leave the room, and then stood up slowly and carefully, holding onto the bedstead with her good hand, flexing the fingers of her other hand, feeling the twinges of pain from the healing bone and muscle. She walked the length of the bed and then let go and stood, balancing the awkward weight of the splint, feeling it pull on her shoulder muscles.

Her clothes had been laid out over the back of a chair, her underwear folded on the seat and Saska walked with care across the room, feeling the cold of the stone floor as she stepped off the woven rug. The chair seat was made of some sort of woven grass, and she ran a hand over the wooden back before picking up and examining her clothes. They had been washed, but she wondered how this culture had coped with the practically non-iron fabric, and decided they had left well enough alone after making a small burn on one corner of a cuff, neatly mended and hardly visible.

Granne, coming back in with a tray and a garment over her shoulder nodded her approval as Saska slowly dressed herself, and took the triangular cloth sling to rest her arm.

"Here you are. When you're ready, you can come through. I promise I won't let them overwhelm you."

"Thank you."

Granne might have decided Saska needed more than soup, but it was liquid enough to be a soup, Saska thought as she ate. There was a slice of bread and she ate that, tasting the sharpness of roasted seeds in the crust. Chasing the last morsel of vegetable, she decided she must go and explain to these people, if she could, what had been going on, how she had arrived, and what anyone could do to help her return.