Title: if its wrong I am right
Fandom: Dragonriders of Pern
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 311
Author notes: Dragonflight era. Acrostic-turned-fanfic.
Summary: Lessa is as tired of repeating ballads as she is of Benden's bronzeriders.



Dragonman, avoid excess, Lessa writes for the eighth time. She has been writing this particular ballad for days. Could measure out the ten counts R'gul is so very fond of in her sleep by now. She has done the teaching ballads by ten counts, and the histories before them, each of them word perfect replicas of songs she had learned as a child in her father's Hold.

R'gul paces to the jug of klah cooling against the far wall. Hath is getting close to waking. The bronze will want to feed once he does, and Lessa will be left to continue her copying in peace. But R'gul is not being bad, by the standards she applies to his behavior. Merely persistently present. Will let him rest a while more. S'lel, thank the first egg, is absent.

Again, dips her head to hide her glower. When compared to what she had survived on under Fax's rule, the meals provided at Benden are exemplary. But that can hardly be claimed to be the same as an excess of diet. Tithes are paltry. Were she even now Lady Holder of Ruatha - a title she has not, will not, yield to Fax's get - she would have given little more, if any. Even with her fortunes reversed, Rautha is not prosperous. From her seat in the Wyer, the cost of draconic hunger is all too evident to allow such equivocating.

Golds rule the Wyer. She, and Ramoth, by all rights, should rule Benden, but not yet. Not yet. Not until she can recite this ballad word perfect. Not until Ramoth rises. Not until she is acknowledged as Wyerwoman, until R'gul has no power over her, until there are eggs on the sands and the tithes come in plenty. She is daily beset with not yets, and she is well and truly sick of them.