Is your friend okay? Zultoloth asked, leaning her wedge shaped head against her rider's side. She seemed upset last time.
"I don't know if she's ever going to be 'okay', Zul. She lost her brother in a most horrific way." Although Ky'ra knew that Zultoloth didn't really understand the sort of grief that people experienced as a result of Hatching losses, she'd been trying to explain the matter to her so that she'd be a bit... more tactful when it came to Kiri's feelings. Kiri, after all, had watched her brother's murder as it played out right before her eyes. She'd then been forced to watch his murderer not only play with his dead body, but also go on to Impress while the poor little Green who should have been her brother's went between for once and for all.
That Zultoloth did seem to understand. The little Green's death had rang with finality, and the queen made a distressed creel at the memory of it. I am sorry. But Ky'ra reached up to pat her sweet girl, pressing her forehead against her soft hide. "You can't possibly have understood. It's all right. It's not the same for dragons, after all." They tended to forget, just a little, over time. Just enough so that most of the time the pain wasn't quite so sharp.
Settled on the heights, the pair looked out over the Weyr. Remembering that Hatching just brought up a lot of bad feelings for them both. Ky'ra had been incensed with the way it had played out. They'd all been representing Western, and look how terribly it had gone! Western had surely been the laughingstock of the entire region for months thereafter. But what could one dragon and rider pair do to correct that impression? Nothing, of course.
Revel1984
