I do not own Pern, but these characters are mine :)

This is a little sketch that takes place ten turns after my story "The Harper's Sons." The image of a 25 year old Ransom popped into my head for some reason and wouldn't leave until I had written this.

Anyways, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the story!

Ransom woke early on the day of his departure from Ruatha River Hold. He rolled over in the semi-darkness, Evina still in bed beside him. She lay on her side with her back to him. Her dark hair tangled over their pillow and the sheet slipped down her bare, freckled arm. The cadence of her breathing told him she was awake, as did the tension in her shoulders.

He brushed a springy curl behind her ear and kissed her neck. "Evi, you awake?"

She hunched a protective shoulder over her neck and pushed him gently away. "No. It's not morning yet. Go back to sleep."

"I still haven't packed."

"I didn't wash your tunics."

"We're not married yet. I should do my own laundry." Ransom walked his fingers up her arm, drawing lines between her freckles as if drawing pictures in the stars on a clear night by the riverbank. He wanted her to turn to him, smile, tease him and call him hopeless. Instead, her arm tightened against her body and she curled into a ball. He sighed, letting his hand rest against her smooth skin.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I wish I didn't have to go. Not now."

"It's not your fault," she said in a small voice.

He waited, propped up on one elbow, but she remained turned away. He bent over and kissed her cheek. "I love you. It'll only be a few weeks."

She nodded and tucked an arm beneath her pillow. Ransom swung his legs out of bed and began pulling on his trousers. His small room was a disaster, instrument cases leaning haphazardly against the walls, scores and clothes lying in jumbled heaps around the floor. Traces of Evina popped up here and there like lilies in the river shallows—a vase of wilting blooms on the windowsill, a silly drawing in the margin of his wax tablet, her small shoes at the foot of his bed. In a few hours everything would be gone, packed for his journey or passed on to the next Harper inheriting his post.

"Where are my boots?" he said, bending down to peer under the bed.

"The cat peed on them, so I put them outside. I meant to tell you, but you were already asleep."

"How long were you awake after me?"

Evina finally looked at him then, purple crescents darkening the skin beneath her eyes. "I don't think I slept."

"Evi," he began, kneeling on the bed and reaching for her.

"Don't fuss over me," she said, turning on her side again. "You should pack. I don't want you worrying about me."

Ransom blew out his breath and straightened up. He knew pressing his concern would only drive her deeper into her shell. "I'll be quiet, so you can rest."

"Would you sing?"

Ransom smiled at the back of her head. "Gladly."

Pale sunlight was filtering through the high eastern window when the sharp knock sounded on Ransom's door. He straightened the last stack of scores for the next Harper and pulled a folding screen in front of the bed where Evina was finally sleeping. His bare feet made no sound as he padded to the door.

Hundar stood on the front step, holding up Ransom's boots. "You'll be needing these." Behind him, Melory waited with a full rucksack slung over her shoulder, her long fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against her thighs.

Ransom took his boots with a self-deprecating smile. "Thank you, Hundar."

The stablemaster gave him his sternest frown. "Hope you aren't missing anything else."

"I have my hands and my drum. What more can a Harper need?" Ransom grinned and winked at Melory. "It was a joke, Hundar," he said after a stilted pause.

"There's nothing funny about a thirteen-turned girl trekking to the Harper Hall with no one but you as an escort," the stablemaster said severely. He shook his grizzled head. "I'll bring the runners around."

Ransom watched him go. The bowlegged man had the sense of humor of a termite-ridden log and about as much charm. "Sorry, Mel," Ransom said to his waiting apprentice. "I'll be right out."

He tiptoed across his now clean floor and pushed the screen back. Evina was sitting up in bed. She had put on her nightdress and was fiddling with the ends of her dark hair.

"Is it time?" she asked.

Ransom nodded, his throat suddenly tight. He climbed onto the mattress and folded her in his arms. She let him hold her for a moment. Her thin fingers slid around his face.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I wish I could go with you now."

"It's just a few weeks," he replied into her hair. "I'll have time to settle in, grow a full beard, and then you'll come and we'll be together again. Everything will be all right."

"A beard? Even your stubble is patchy."

"A man can dream, can't he?"

"Only if he shaves it off afterward." She tugged on a tuft of his hair, a hint of a smile flickering around her mouth. It made him ache to see the shadow of her former self. He kissed her and she slipped back into her protective ball.

I love you, she signed with one hand, using the language he and his deaf brother had invented as children. Ransom pressed her fingers to his lips and stood.

Hundar was waiting outside in the courtyard, holding the reins of two runnerbeasts when Ransom emerged from his quarters for the last time, his tambour and pipes across his back, his rucksack full of clothes and wax tablets in his hand.

"Your saddlebags been packed with enough provisions to get you to all the way to Fort. Endling's midway. You can stop there to sleep in a real bed," Hundar said. "Plan on riding barefoot?"

"Oh." Long summers of walking along rocky shorelines had toughened Ransom's soles so he forgot when he wasn't wearing shoes. He shoved his feet into his boots, hoping the cat hadn't marked the inside of the leather as well.

The expression Hundar wore as he passed the reins to Ransom was that of a man seriously doubting the wisdom of this decision. Ransom put on his most responsible smile and began securing his belongings to the back of the runner's saddle. A few Hold folk had gathered around the edges of the courtyard to see them go, though Ransom and Melory had already said their goodbyes the previous evening. Ransom mounted his beast and took a last look around the small Hold that had been his home for three Turns, the Ruathan banners emblazoned with wavy sapphire lines for the river, the low-lying cotholds lining the delta, the blue line of the ocean on the horizon.

"Ready?" he asked Melory. She was already astride a placid-looking roan mare.

She shrugged a skinny shoulder. "For the Harper Hall, yes. For four days of riding and saddle sores, no."

"Saddle sores? What about the romance of the open road? Sleeping under the stars?"

Melory wrinkled her nose. "I like my roofs."

"So Pernese. Thread stopped falling when you were barely out of nappies and you still don't like open spaces?"

"The sooner we go, the sooner we'll be safe in a Hold again."

Ransom shook his head. "No sense of adventure. That'll be the first thing to remedy, young Mel." He nudged his runner gently forward and they clopped out the Hold gate.

As the sun climbed in the sky on their left, Ransom wished he were riding the opposite way. If he had to leave, he'd rather go north to Ruatha, where his brother was a Master draughtsman at the Weaver Crafthall. Ransom hadn't seen Roe and his wife Layla since their second was born, a boy with his father's bright eyes and his mother's wild hair. Instead, Ransom was being summoned to the Harper Hall to teach and advance to the rank of Drum Master, towing young Melory along to begin an official apprenticeship.

For all Melory's apprehensions about traveling, she was nearly bursting from excitement, peppering Ransom with endless questions as they rode. What was the Harper Hall like? Were there many female apprentices? Would the Masters make her play pipes even though she hated them?

"And I'll meet your father," she said in an awed voice. "What is he like?"

"Dull, stodgy, and about as charming as a puddle of mud."

Melory frowned. "But he's the Masterharper."

Ransom disguised a chuckle as a cough. He sometimes forgot about Melory's inability to understand sarcasm. "I'm not at all like him, of course," he said.

They rode along the shore for most of the morning, turning inland to the scrubby woods when the terrain grew too rocky for the runners. Their course took them father west, their old lives receding in the distance with every stride. Other than the odd break to walk alongside the runners and stretch their legs, Ransom and Melory rode at a steady pace until late afternoon as the light turned gold and long shadows trailed their every step. They stopped to make camp in a wooded grove near the foothills.

Melory nearly toppled from her runner as she tried to dismount. She slid awkwardly to the ground and hobbled over the roots of a gnarled tree. "Why did we decide to ride all the way?" she groaned.

"It was faster than waiting for a trade caravan," Ransom replied. He tethered his and Melory's runners to the tree and began unbuckling their gear. "I thought you liked runnerbeasts."

"Their pretty to look at, but none too kind on my backside." She lowered herself to a sitting position with a low groan. "I haven't had such a tender bum since the last time my da caught me in a lie."

"Tomorrow we can go slower if you wish." He tossed her an empty bucket and their canteens. "Make yourself useful and fetch some water from that stream we passed."

Melory's groans and grumbles receded through the crackling underbrush and Ransom turned his attention back to the placid mare. Her flank was warm and smooth, powerful muscles shifting beneath her short coat of hair. She whickered at him, as if chastising him for his inattention. Ransom lifted her saddle off and rubbed down her sides.

He first learned to ride from Evina. She was the stablemaster's daughter and he a young harper at his second post, already bored and itching for a new experience. His first time on a runner was a quick affair, ending with him flat on his face in the mud. Evina had run to him in concern, her skirt hiked up above her knees. It was only after she saw he was unhurt that she began laughing, peals of relief and hilarity shaking her whole body. He fell in love with her then, as she helped him up and wiped mud from his face with her sleeve. A Turn after she followed him to Ruatha River Hold, he asked her to be his wife. It had been far too long since he last heard Evina laugh.

Once the runnerbeasts were rubbed down, Melory watered them while Ransom built a fire and prepared a simple meal. They ate in the warm glow of their campfire as darkness gathered around them, the harper casually drilling the apprentice in musical notation and theory. She rattled off the answers to his questions with the ease of long practice. It had become a game of theirs during the long winter nights on the coast.

Ransom cut an extra knob of cheese for Melory despite her protests. "You're too skinny," he said sternly. "I'd mistake you for a drumstick if you turned sideways."

"You sound like my mother," she grumbled, picking at her food with her fingernails.

"Good. She made me promise to take care of you." He wrapped up the rest of the cheese and tucked it away in his saddlebag.

"When will you and Evina be married?" Melory asked suddenly, her cheese forgotten on her knee.

Ransom's fingers slipped on the saddlebag ties. "After she joins me at the Harper Hall."

"Will she be well enough to travel?"

"She's not ill anymore. She just needs more time."

Melory sighed. "I was hoping you'd be married before we left. I won't know anyone if you get married at the Harper Hall."

Ransom's mouth tilted in a sideways smile. "If I get married at the Harper Hall, you'll actually enjoy it because you won't have to play the entire time. Go get your gitar. We'll have an hour or two of practice before bed." Their careless words echoed in his mind as Melory slid her instrument from its leather case. If he got married…

Evi was coming. She only needed more time.

He reached over the saddlebag for his tambour case.