[PRP] Dragon Tears (Ristia, Riagan, & Tia)

[DruidTigeress]

Strawberri Stardust

Alright, here is the totally self-indulgant RP because I wanted to write about Dragon's Tears (which is what me and Tara came up with for Prince Rupert's Drop) and then make Tia cry. v_v

On a rest day, Riagan was in the glasscraft workshop, as usual. Entertaining a visitor, he was setting up a little trick he knew to show her. Tia had been coming to bother him here a lot lately. It wasn't all that uncommon for weyrbrats to sneak around trying to get a look at potential future crafts and bringing about a million questions with them. Riagan usually indulged them.. up to a point, then told them to scram so he could get back to work. But he was always a sucker for his siblings.

"Take a look at this.." he said, holding up the clear glass droplet for Tia to see (though not to hold!). "Looks fragile right?" he asked. Tia nodded, eyes wide and bright with curiousity. Riagan grinned. "Check this out." Putting the glass droplet on the table, he took his hammer from the work bench and brought it down suddenly on the glass bulb, making the weyrbrat jump in her seat. "They call this a Dragon's Tear," he said, lifting it back up with tongs as Tia oohed and ahhed appropriately, "And they say it's as strong as a dragon's bond. But, when broken..." Moving the piece to a metal bucket a safe distance away, he pinched the tail with a long-handled glass shear, causing it to exploding inside the metal container.

"Wow!" Tia gasped, jumping up out of her chair, astonished.

Riagan grinned proudly. That one always went over well with weyrbrats. He bent to sweep up the shattered pieces from the bin as he went on with the story, "They say when a rider dies, just before the dragon betweens, they leave behind these crystallized tears as a symbol of their love for their rider." Finished cleaning up the glass, Riagan stood and turned around, only to have a wall of panic hit him like a hammer. Tia's lip was doing that thing it only did right before she sabout to... "Oh, no.. Don't-" But it was too late. "Cry.." he sighed, as she started bawling. "Don't be upset, Tia! It was just a story." he told her quickly.
Tia sniffed. "Dragons don't really between when their rider dies?" she asked.
"Err... Well, no that part is true actually.." he said, and his words were punctuated by another wail.

Sighing, Riagan quickly deposited the glass dust onto a work bench where it could be remelted later, then stripped off his work gloves and lifted the girl off of her seat. He had no idea what to do with this, he was always pretty terrible at comforting his foster siblings too. Time to call in some reinforcements..

He was on his way down to the creche to see if someone there would know how to help when he spotted a black head of hair ahead of him in the halls. "Ristia!" he shouted, obviously relieved. She may not have raised Tia, but she had to know more about kids that him. You couldn't possibly know less. "Help?" he asked, gesturing to the crying girl.  

[Dragon Berri]

DruidTigeress

Those things are awesome xDD

In a rare mood, the blue rider had just been on her way to the creche to visit her youngest daughter when she heard someone call her name. Immediately she caught sight of Riagan with a crying Tia. Ristia was not by any stretch of the imagination a maternal woman. She liked kids well enough, and hers of course were the best of the bunch, but there were other people more suited to the task of the day to day care and responsibilities that children needed.

"What happened?" she asked her son as she scooped up the teary-eyed Tia and looked her over to see if there were any physical wounds. She was sure that if his sister had been injured, Riagan would have taken her to a healer but she couldn't stop herself from checking while she waited for him to answer. Satisfied that the girl wasn't bleeding, she cuddled Tia to her chest and stroked a hand down her back comfortingly.  

[DruidTigeress]

Strawberri Stardust

"I don't know!" Riagan said quickly. "I was just telling her a story. Err... About Dragon's Tears." he admitted, a little guiltily. In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have picked something with the word 'tear' literally in the name. He'd forgotten just how sensitive his half-sister could be. He patted her back hesitantly, grimacing apologetically. "Sorry Tia."

Ignoring him, Tia immediately latched onto Ristia once the woman had scooped her up into her arms. Though psychically fine, her eyes were read and her face was blotchy, as it always got when she cried. Putting her arms around her mother's neck, she buried her head in the woman's shoulder. "Riagan said that dragons go between when their rider dies!" Tia sobbed into into her chest. "Is that true?" she asked. She was feeling a little better now Ristia was here, but she still sniffed and cried quietly.  

[Dragon Berri]

Druid Tigeress

Ristia arched a disbelieving brow at first, then chuckled. "I see now," she murmured. "Probably not the best story to tell your little sister, eh?" She smiled, rubbing Tia's back comfortingly. Ristia wasn't upset with him for telling her, what's done was done. And she thought the boy might think twice next time.

She turned her attention to the child in her arms as she cried. And then the blue rider was put between a rock and a hard place. She wanted to comfort her and tell her everything would be fine....but she disliked lying. Tia was young yet, but she lived in a Weyr during a time when Thread was prevalent and deadly.

No, she would not lie to her youngest daughter. "I'm afraid Riagan was telling the truth, sweetling," she said softly. "A dragon and rider bond is for life, and when one half of the pair dies before the other it's like...tearing a soul in half." She tried to keep her voice soft and comforting, but she knew this was one of the hard truths of the life they lived.  

[DruidTigeress]

Strawberri Stardust

"Err.. Y-yeah. Sorry." Riagan mumbled, his foot shuffling against the floor as he looked down at the ground guiltily. He hadn't been thinking, so it had really just slipped his mind that it was something that would upset her. Though obviously, in hindsight, he couldn't believe that he didn't realize it.

Tia was still crying, though she appeared to be slowing down finally (not that she was any less upset, really, she was just beginning to run out of steam). Her back jerked in little hiccuped breaths as she was finally able to calm herself down, with the help of the comforting hand rubbing her back and stroking her hair.

She leaned back from the blue rider, rubbing one watery red eye with the back of her wrist. "Really? But that's so sad!" she said, her lip shaking. Of course, even at her age, she'd already noticed that after a rider died, their dragon stopped showing up anymore. She didn't have an explanation or an idea of what happened to them, though, it was just something that she'd never thought about before.

She leaned her head back on Ristia's shoulder, still looking rather despondent, though she wasn't bawling anymore. "What about Apeth?" she asked, meaning the dragon of the woman who had been fostering her previously. The green had been so nice to her... Even though she knew dragons loved their riders more than anything, it would have been comforting to think that she was still alive somewhere.  

[Dragon Berri]

DruidTigeress

Chuckling softly, she ruffled Riagan's hair a bit before turning back to Tia. "It is very sad," she agreed quietly. Too many had been lost since the return of thread, including one of Tia's foster parents if she remembered correctly. Ristia herself had had a close call soon after the silver menace started to fall again. Her arm was terribly scarred from her brush with their enemy, which was why she kept it wrapped when she was in public.

And there it was. The dreaded question of what had happened to Apeth. "Oh, Tia..." she murmured and held her closer. She hated to make the girl upset but what other option did she have? "When her rider died, Apeth went between for the last time." Still trying to sound soothing, she was probably not succeeding in helping Tia feel better.  

[DruidTigeress]

Strawberri Stardust

Tia leaned against her mother, too tired to go on being so upset, though a gloom still hung around her. Her eyes were unfocused, staring into space, as she thought about was Ristia had said. She supposed she'd probably known that Apeth was gone, deep down. Still, sometimes it was nicer to pretend.

Riagan smiled when Ristia ruffled his hair, though he still felt a bit bad. He rubbed his sister's back gently, trying to be comforting. "She'd be too sad to live without her rider, Tia. You understand that right?"

"I guess..." Tia sighed. Though, of course, she didn't really understand. How could she? She hadn't lived or loved nearly enough to properly imagine the way a dragon felt about its rider, or what could drive it to such a desperate act. But, still, she accepted it anyway. Sometimes you just had to accept what people told you.  

[Dragon Berri]

DruidTigeress

Ristia was out of her wheelhouse when it came to comforting sad little girls. She supposed it would just take some time for Tia to come to terms with all this new information she'd been given. Maybe if she and Riagan could find something to take her mind off of it...

"What would you say to a bubblypie, Tia?" she asked with a smile.  

[DruidTigeress]

Strawberri Stardust

"I guess so..." Tia sighed, still melancholy in her tone. Sometimes she would linger in these sad, sighing states for days, if nothing forced her out of it.

Riagan rolled his eyes, grinning. Ristia had it right- best just get her mind off of it. "Don't be so gloomy." he said, pinching her cheeks from behind. "Come on, what do you say?"

Tia laughed despite herself, pushing his hands away. "Okay." she agreed, a little more cheerfully this time. It wasn't often that she got to spend time with her biological mother, after all. She appreciated that it wasn't Rista's job to take care of her, so she was always grateful whenever she would make the time to see them.  

[Dragon Berri]

DruidTigeress

She was a little deterred when Tia still seemed so upset, but Riagan had her laughing again when he pinched her cheeks. "Alright! Bubblypies for everyone," Ristia said and bounced Tia in her arms a little before heading toward the kitchens.

She didn't get a lot of time to spend with her kids, so she was looking forward to spending a little time with two of them. "You two can tell me what you've been up to while we eat, right?"  

[DruidTigeress]

Strawberri Stardust

"Whee! Ha ha." Tia laughed as they headed towards the kitchens, already forgetting most of her troubles. Though, of course, they were still too soon and too raw to ever really disappear from her mind, but at her age it was still pretty easy to distract herself from them for a while. And the thought of bubbly pies and spending time with her mother did just the trick.

"Mm.. Same as usual." Riagan replied to her question with a shrug, about as communicative as any 15 year old boy typically was. "The Touching was interesting though.." he admitted. Though it would take more than a few candlemarks to really explain why!
"Same as usual!" Tia chorused, copying her brother. She thought about maybe telling her how she'd gotten to play with Ddraigth recently, but she could wait until they were in the Lower Caverns.
"Anyway, I'm more interested in what you've been doing." the boy said, lighting up. As someone who aspired to be a rider himself, he could never get enough of hearing about what his foster dad or Ristia had been up to.