Lull [Hakotep's Touching]

Hakotep had sliced his finger open that morning.

He considered him an expert around knives. He was not so blind to deny that he slipped up sometimes, but he took pride in his control. It had taken a long time to learn. At first, when he was young, the fine muscles in his hands had quivered, ached, and protested. They pushed blade against wood and didn't have the steadiness to stop when the wood turned to air. 'Always carve away from yourself,' he'd been told. With his propensity to send the sharp edge of the knife flying, he understood.

At sixteen, he had found control. His carving process was slow, careful, and precise. He was rightfully prideful because of it. But he had never thought that such a startling injury would have happened because of his own craft. It should have happened while slicing tubers or hacking beast-bones up for soup. It should have been something mundane, but no. It had happened while he was carving.

The knife went down to the bone which showed bright white through the redness of the rest of it. It was a smooth, curved cut; it created a flap of flesh on lowest phalanx of his left index finger and then ran upward across the side of the second joint, lifting just short of the third. He dropped the knife and the carving immediately and bled on his bedsheets.

It was embarrassing. Nausea and lightheadedness took over him. He'd clamped his other hand over the digit and had sat frozen from shock for many minute before he had the stomach to look at the damage. The colour drained from his face and deposited itself externally on his hands. When he got to the infirmary, the healer couldn't just silently give him a bandage. The entire process was drawn out by examination, redwort, instruction, but worst of all, interrogation. 'What did you even do?' asked the healer. 'Knife slipped,' Hakotep had frowned. He sounded irritated enough that the healer finally finished up and let him go.

He tried to do his chores, but he was on kitchen duty. Tubers. His finger was useless, painful, and bandage-stiff. He held the dull knife so hesitantly that his partner easily out-sliced him. Eventually he gave up and left. 'I can't do this today,' was all he said to his partner. Jasmine or Nimara would probably follow up on his very early departure from his shift, but he didn't care. He wasn't cutting anymore stupid tubers, and that was that.


Ghris was still on shift. Mucking the runner stalls, Hakotep thought he'd said. The afternoon was growing old and his knock-kneed silhouette stretched long across the Bowl. The whole Weyr seemed to be getting sleepy. He needed something to do, and as he walked, his eyes fell upon the entrance to the Hatching Sands. Fifteen eggs, people had been saying. Ghris had gone a few days prior, too early in the morning for Hakotep to want to join him. 'A Touching is so rare,' clucked the drudges in the kitchens. 'Wish I could touch 'em! Bet they feel so nice and warm.' But, truth be told, Hakotep had been avoiding it.

He didn't know what to do about a Touching. Touch eggs, maybe, but he felt like it would somehow remove some sanctity; like he would steal something away from the eggs if he got his smallhold desert hands on them. He was always willing to introduce himself as a dragon candidate - ("Hakotep, son of Teyak, Dragon Candidate from Igen" was the typical full title) - but he seemed much less comfortable thinking of himself as one. It made him nervous. Very, very few things made him nervous, and he didn't like it. He supposed that it was the potential - that he could become a dragonrider. He could Impress. Or he could not. And while other candidates seemed happy to chatter about eggs, colours, and odds, Hakotep preferred not too. Even Ghris had not heard him talk about Impression. It seemed wrong, somehow, to get so excited about something so uncertain.

But he silently shuffled his way through the entrance to the Sands. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his cut finger and he groaned. It still embarrassed him. He had been so careless, thinking about the approaching summer instead of focusing on his work. So careless.

And he almost carelessly walked right onto the sand, but stopped himself there. The heat was comforting - made him feel like having a nap - but the sight of the eggs was not. They were so large and curiously hued. They didn't belong to him. What right did he have to even be near them? They belonged to their mothers, who he stared up at in awe. The great twin monoliths made him feel very small indeed. Quietly, he moved over to the Stands and sat there instead. Perhaps just looking was good enough.