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Nikal hated Threadfall for the wrong reasons as well as the right ones. It wasn’t that he got overemotional, or suddenly incompetent, or even really stressed when it came down to it. On the contrary, there was just a numbness while he did the drudge work, hauling fresh resources to and fro. He hated Threadfall because it wasn’t just a menace to the world: he hated it because everything that surrounded it was representative of his failures, and especially in the one that became that much more obvious with Thread’s return. He did not have a healer’s hands, and he wasn’t sure a dragon would ever pick him. He would never be as useful as Veikel or Taiena or his mother. It was an existential problem that also doubled as a self-centered one.

The eggs’ arrivals forced it into even sharper clarity.

Nikal withdrew even more as the days and nights turned, growing irritable quicker in the midst of rising tension among the candidates. He sat himself down and trained Gauze, who was thankfully receptive to commands and nothing like his almost feral mother, but even that little victory didn’t soothe him. It was all just distractions. Pointless endeavors like the star chart he hid in his pillowcase.

He wasn’t sure why this time made him riddled with angst as opposed to the other impending hatches. Maybe it was because it happened on the heels of a nasty ‘fall. He had an odd conversation about it with another candidate once while they folded clothes.

Nikal wasn’t sure how it had started or why. Maybe overhearing someone else’s excitement had instigated him to vent his thoughts, maybe she had started it first. He barely knew her, but she was vaguely recognizable from classes and chores. Hair dyed partially pink. Spoke in half whispers. Weird. Always looked like she was deep in thought.

“I keep thinking about what it all means,” she said in a way that made him think she had been holding a conversation for longer than he had been paying attention. There was a starry green flit on her shoulder watching him curiously, barely the size of his hand without tail length. She paused and continued when he didn’t offer a reply. “On the heel of rough Threadfall, the eggs arrive. Death and life in a cycle. Time marches on.”

He continued to say nothing and folded a large sheet corner to corner with her.

“Maybe it means something.”

Nikal broke his silence a minute later. “Why?”

“Why indeed...”

“No, why’s it have to mean anything?” he asked, annoyed for some reason.

She shrugged. “Patterns help. They give meaning to the meaningless.”

Nikal rolled his eyes. “Stories aren’t real life. Things happen because things happen. Grow up.”

“I did,” she said, unperturbed. Saddened. Softer. “Maybe not where it counts.”

Faranth, he would get someone like this for a chore partner right now. If he believed things happened for a reason, then the storyteller was a bullshit hack writer that owed him some recompense. There was another stretch of silence between them where the girl looked close to crying, though thankfully it never happened. Probably thanks to the flit she had, who kept nuzzling and chirping all song-like. He had half a mind to drag Phalanges in so she could croak and shriek and mess it up.

It was tiring to think about.

“You know what it means?” he asked abruptly. The girl blinked at him. “It means the queen got ******** by a male dragon,” he drawled, “and we get to be paraded in front of the new generation of saviors.”

“Mm. Technically, yeah.”

Another silence fell, broken by the flit’s occasional tweet.

“You don’t sound happy about that,” she noted gently.

Nikal gave a scornful laugh. “Yeah? I’m pleased as bubbly pie, honest.”

“Not a sweet one.”

“Not a sweet one,” he agreed.

“Why?”

“Why indeed.”

He didn’t expect the hint of a smile that appeared momentarily on her face. Usually throwing someone’s words back at them meant more sass back, but she seemed pleased for whatever reason.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said as she began to scrub at a stain in a blanket. “But I like listening. Sometimes it helps, pulling those thoughts out and sitting them down on the open.”

Nikal stared at her, and then went back to his own work. And yet before he knew it:

“I think...I’m afraid.”

He didn’t know why he let that out. Maybe because the pressure inside was enough that venting it to a total stranger felt safe. Maybe by not knowing exactly who she was, he could toss it out like a bottle in the ocean, to be swept away and never seen again. Some part of him still felt like it was another pointless endeavor, and yet.

She asked, “Of what?”

“I don’t know.”

She nodded slightly. “Those are the worst.”

“Yeah.”

Another break. She piled the blankets in neat order for him to transfer to the basket of cleaned fabrics. Each movement was measured, shy, as if making a mistake would shatter something. He had an impulse to shake her by the shoulder.

“I used to write mine down,” she said. “The fears, I mean.”

“And that helped?” he asked, skeptical.

She hummed. “For me, not really. I think I stopped a while back because revisiting the old pages made me cringe,” she admitted sheepishly. “It felt childish. It doesn’t make them less real or more. They’re just...there. Described, but not solved.”

Nikal told her, “Just means you have to suck it up, then.” Writing it down was stupid.

“Yeah, I guess so...”

Should take your own advice, he thought with an inner sigh. Pouting like a baby was a waste of energy. But Nikal felt like all he ever did was suck it up these days. Not a healer prodigy? Suck it up. Not a merchant heir? Suck it up. Not incredibly talented in anything but being a bad example? Suck that right up. Every single time either of his siblings remotely talked like they weren’t that great at their current station in life, he wanted to deck them. (Or in Taiena’s case, deck her dragon.) It was worse with Veikel, who for some ******** reason thought running himself ragged all the time was a great idea. And the mere thought of Aerdan’s existence made him want to scream at times. What would a dragon improve at this point, if they saw him at all? Was he ready to handle the possibility of winding up crippled or dead? Could he take disappointing someone who would see through to his heart and say yes anyway?

Well, Pern needed dragonriders. He might as well be fodder for what good he did otherwise, if it had to be.

The girl suddenly touched his hands, breaking his train of thought. He had torn two inches into the thin fabric of someone’s shirt sleeve without thinking. Nikal froze as the girl took the shirt from him as gently as if it were a baby.

“S’okay,” she said softly. “Things happen, right?”

Nikal twitched. There wasn’t an edge to her words, no sardonic echo, though he had prepared for it. She produced her needleworking tools from a purse at her side and settled at an open table to work on stitching the sleeve back together.

“I’m sorry if this is intrusive,” she said without looking up, a slight frown of concentration on her face. “But someone told me this once, and I try to remember it for times like this: There’s a crack of light in everything. Be kind to yourself.”

He stared for a few moments more before he muttered a thank you for handling the tear. Nothing meaningful passed between them for the rest of the choretime, leaving him with his thoughts once more. The most prominent being: weird was an understatement.