Music Brings Memory

Writers: Halyonix, Yvonne
Date Posted: 23rd May 2025

Characters: H'run, B'nell
Description: H'run finds help for his guitar - and finds a friend in the process.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 5, day 13 of Turn 12
Notes: Mentioned: Riyanth

H'run

H'run waited two full days before taking his gitar out from its protective case... and the gitar was damaged from the trip from Dragonsfall to Dolphin Cove anyway. The bluerider fought back frustrated tears as he ran his hands over the strings and again heard a faint buzz. The glue for the internal braces was weakening and humidity was the culprit. Between the frizz in his curly hair and the buzz of the gitar, H'run was ready to give up.

}:Can you fix it, though?:{ Calcifeth asked.

**That's not the point.** H'run's lower lip quivered as he carefully lay his gitar back in its case. **This gitar was a labour of _love_. Its forsaken me just like everyone else has.**

Calcifeth's snort was audible from inside the weyr. }:I have not left you. Come, lets go to the beach. Perhaps we will see dolphins and we can forget about gitars and things that make you sad for a while.:{ There was a slight pause. }:I would like a flit to be my hat again.:{

**You are impossible!** H'run threw himself on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. There was a spot of damp that looked like a feline in the corner. **My gitar is _ruined_ and you want to wear hats?!**

}:You cannot fix it?:{

The bluerider frowned. **Maybe. Probably not. It's unfixable like me.**

}:You are not broken, you are just sad,:{ Calcifeth said with brutal draconic logic.

**I hate you.**

The blue dragon's snort was audible from inside the weyr. }:Go fix your gitar.:{

It was so much _work_ when all he wanted to do was lie about and be sad... but unfortunately Calcifeth was right. He'd made the gitar as part of his test to earn his Journeyman's knots, and although it was apprentice level work he liked the way it sounded and the way it nestled against his body. It knew his hands. He couldn't abandon it after dragging it half-ways around Pern.

Reluctantly he dragged himself out of bed and toward the Dining Cavern, where he asked around until someone pointed him toward a brownrider who he recognized as the Wingthird in the Queen's Wing. "B'nell? Might I ask you for a favour?" he asked as he approached the other man.

The bespectacled brownrider blinked owlishly. That was the usual side effect of being jarred out of a melody he was concentrating on. B'nell would get so engrossed in the notes, the harmonies, that he would forget the world around him until someone shook him out of that state. "Y-Yes?" he answered.

"Oh good, you are B'nell." H'run sat down beside him without an invitation. "We have sort of met... I've been assigned to your Wing, so I've seen you wrapped in your flight leathers on--" **Help me, what's his dragon's name again?**

}:Vorath,:{ Calcifeth replied promptly.

"--Vorath," He smiled and tried to look charming. "You might just be the man to save me. My gitar's warped in this awful humidity and I need some glue. I don't suppose you know where a fellow Harper might acquire some?"

There was a lot for B'nell to unpack in such a short time. He blinked a few times in the hopes of clearing his head somehow. Had he really missed a new Wingrider? He was a terrible Wingsecond to have forgotten the man's face already! He must have been distracted at the time, like he was now.

But the mention of the gitar brought B'nell's attention into sharp focus.

"Glue? How did it warp?" he asked, extending his hands to take the instrument.

"Humidity." The bluerider said again. He strummed his gitar and winced at the slight buzz before handing it to B'nell. "It hates me for taking it from Dragonsfall Weyr."

"You'd think that it would thank you from freeing it from the cold," B'nell remarked absently as he looked the instrument over. His fingers traced the curves and joints, peered at specific points and angles. He hummed thoughtfully. "I can fix it," he finally declared. "Do you want to come up to my weyr while I do it?"

The bluerider nearly melted with relief, having been sure that he'd have to fumble through a fix on his own. "I would _love_ to come up to your weyr. Any time, any day. Crook your lovely little finger and I will come running."

The bespectacled brownrider shot him a puzzled look. Was he...flirting? B'nell cleared his throat awkwardly. "Just um...have..."

}: Calcifeth, :{ Vorath supplied helpfully.

"Calcifeth follow Vorath up." Shells, he really should get better about learning names. What sort of a Wingsecond was he?! He cradled the gitar against his body with ease as they went to their dragons. It wasn't a far hop -- one of the perks of his rank -- but one could definitely see where B'nell's priorities lay once they walked into his weyr. Half of it -- the sleeping half -- was organized and neat. The table and shelves on the other half were messy and full of music sheets, books, and instruments. "Just um...give me a minute to find it," he said to H'run as he started searching.

"I have nowhere else to be." H'run, ever the snoop, indulged his curiosity and wandered over to B'nell's bookshelf. The books were all about music, although there was a biography of a harper from several hundred Turns earlier and a history of the Dolphin Cove area. Then he spotted a small, tattered copy of 'The Craft of Composition' half-hidden behind the biography with a dragon doodled in black ink down the spine. When he'd first apprenticed at the Harper Hall that book had been a favourite of one of the teachers. And that dragon... it looked familiar. Then it clicked. "Barnell."

"Hm?" B'nell hummed, momentarily confused.

"Barnell. Your name was Barnell. I remember you from the Harper Hall." H'run was beaming, he was so pleased with himself. "We were apprenticed at the same time but I was only there for two Turns before I was Searched. I remember you getting in trouble for drawing on your books."

B'nell looked at him. Blinked. Really looked at him. Blinked again. And then smacked his forehead.

"_Harun_?!"

"I'm surprised you remember me." H'run preened a bit. Of _course_ he was memorable.

"I'm surprised that I did too," B'nell sheepishly admitted. But now that he followed his train of thought back, back, back into the past, he remembered a boy who was always grabbing the attention of the masters and apprentices. Sometimes for good or bad. "I'd heard you had Impressed. I just...well, I guess we took different paths for a bit there."

H'run plucked the little composition book from the shelf and thumbed through its dogeared pages, feeling nostalgic. "When were you Searched? And to which Weyr?"

"Here," B'nell answered. "Um...like eleven Turns ago. It was supposed to be a silly bet. Just Stand once, prove I did it. I'd go back to Harper Hall the next day. Except..."

"You Impressed not long after I did then." He slipped the book back onto the shelf and turned to face B'nell. "And now here we are. Are you still working on your Craft?"

"I _try_ to," B'nell said with a hint of complaint in his tone. "When I'm not busy with Wingsecond things. Well, I mean, I don't mind being Wingsecond to the queens. It's different. There's a lot of records, archivist kind of things. So it's a little like working at the Hall style, with all of the writing and recording, but still not quite the same. You?"

H'run shrugged a shoulder. "Not as much as I should. I have a half-written Harper novel, composed an awful trite little song for Riyanth, and a bunch of other abandoned projects littering my weyr. I hate this Pass business."

"You and me both," B'nell agreed as he fished out the glue. He sat down with the gitar and began to work. "Tell me about the song for Riyanth," he asked, ever curious to hear new music, even if it wasn't finished.

"Oh Faranth, it's nothing really. Just a little melody. It's probably atrocious." The bluerider flopped into an armchair and sighed. "Minor chords and all that."

"Minor chords work best for songs about tragedy," B'nell absently agreed, concentrating on setting the line of glue just right.

H'run hummed a bar, then let the silence settle around them as he watched B'nell work. It was an uncomfortable feeling watching someone reach their hands into his gitar's innards, but B'nell was probably better at repairs than he was-- the brownrider had been promoted so he had to be good at... things. Most harpers were better than him at everything. He was a terrible Harper, H'run decided.

"Tell me something else about yourself, something about after you left the Harper Hall," H'run said, more to break the silence than anything.

After humming that same bar back, letting it mull over in his mind, B'nell answered, "I...got promoted? It's still a scary thing when I think about it so I try _not_ to think about it. I let Vorath handle most of that. He's better than I am at it. He likes it." He hummed that bar again. "Do you just have the one piece of it?"

"I have a full chorus and a draft refrain, but I left my composition book back at Dragonsfall and can't quite remember how the refrain goes," H'run admitted.

B'nell held down the joint while the glue began fixing. He looked around for a clamp. "We can workshop it if you want," he said. He pointed for H'run to grab the clamp when he finally spotted it.

"You think it's worth workshopping?" he asked as he handed B'nell the clamp.

"Absolutely. And it would be a fitting tribute to Riyanth."

H'run paused. It was just a little melody, nothing important or good enough for the tragic loss of a golden queen in her prime... but a small seed of hope grew anyway. "I'd like that," H'run said slowly. "And I could use the help."

"Sure. Alright, let's let this sit for a day or two," B'nell said as he checked the clamp. "We can meet then and work on that song?"

"All right." That would give him time to remember and maybe reconstruct what he'd composed so that he didn't look like an absolute dimglow in front of B'nell. The brownrider had been at the Harper Hall for so much longer, and despite the official line about Weyr-trained Harpers receiving just as good an education as the ones who trained at the 'Hall, there was something to be said for a traditional education. The bluerider stood. "I should go. Let you... do whatever you've got planned for this evening, that I interrupted."

B'nell felt as though he was missing something -- context, story, explanation -- about the tone H'run used but instead he blinked owlishly at the bluerider. "Okay," he said, letting him go. "I'll have Vorath talk to Calcifeth when it's ready. And we can work on that song then."

"Like I said, simply crook your little finger and I'll appear." H'run winked, then bowed. "And thank you for saving my gitar. I'll see you later."

Last updated on the May 26th 2025

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Music Brings Memory