Disclaimer:  Let's make this simple.  If you recognize it, it belongs to Mercedes Lackey.  If you don't, it's mine.  Simple enough for you? 

Hey everyone and welcome to my second real story.  If you haven't read my first, welcome for the first time –plugs her other story- it's done, but no reason you can't read it and review.  For my reviewers from my other story who migrated over, welcome back and nice to see you!

Greens is probably going to be slower plot wise and longer lengthwise.  I learned a lot from writing my other story and I hope to apply that knowledge here.

As for Greens, there is a passage in Brightly Burning where Pol is in Healers and the Healer tells him that he was an incipient Healer growing up among the Holderkin.  This is his story and how he shook off his heritage to become a respected Healer.

The time frame for this story is during the reign of Theran with King's Own Jedin, but the court and Collegia from Brightly Burning is not yet in place.  I'd say we're talking about around about the time Pol was a trainee.

This story takes place almost entirely in the Healers Collegium, so you won't be seeing too much of the Heralds.  Healers tend to be missing in FanFiction, at least as far as main characters go, so here is a story all about the Healers.

This may look a bit like something from Arrows at the beginning, but it won't be, I promise.

I am going to include a pronunciation guide for the characters you will see who's names I am really neurotic about wanting people to pronounce right, and since there are no reviews yet, I have space here.  Emphasis goes on the italicized syllable, and the guide is phonetic.

Tretin: {Tree-tin}

Lirain: {Lih-rain}

Chapter 1: Hold

Tretin was out hunting for his Father's table.  His Father had decided that although he was not the First son, it was "high time he learned to act like a man instead of a puling little."

This referred to Tretin's discomfort at having to kill animals.  Even though he knew the bow was humane, killing its quarry almost instantly, Treet couldn't help but feel as though he felt the animal's discomfort.

God help him if he tried to explain this to his Father, though.  He had tried, once, in the mistaken belief that his Father would understand his feelings.  How wrong he had been!  First had come the lecture on how it would be his duty as Husband to rule his Steading with a firm hand and if he could not stomach violence, he would not be able to exert the necessary control over his Wives and littles.

He had tried to make his Father understand, telling him about the way he could feel every twinge of the creature's death throes, as though they were within his own body.  The way that, once, when he had been bullied by his older sibs into striking at one of the younger girls on the Steading, he had felt the blow as though through his own body.

His Father, of course, had dismissed it as hallucinations and fancy, had gone as far as to warn him that if he could not learn to be a "proper man" he would be Exiled.  Exile was the worst punishment Treet could imagine.  Not only for the beatings and constant chores, Treet was no stranger to pain and hard work, but because it was a punishment typically reserved for girls. 

Not that Treet had anything against girls, but by threatening him with Exile, Treet's father was basically saying that he was not good enough to be a Son.  It was one of the worst insults that Treet's Father could have put on him, and they both knew it.

As reluctant a hunter as Treet was, he had been trained to bring down game for the table from a very early age.  He stalked quietly through the lush, green forest until he heard a noise that could only be a large animal walking parallel to him. 

Out of caution, Treet walked slowly over and bent down to peek through a hole in the nearby bushes to see if he could see anything.  At that moment, he felt a hand shove hard in the small of his back and he fell into the dirt.  The waves of anger and bloodlust that he had been trying to block out of his mind all day reached a crescendo as he hit the dirt. 

The feelings had obviously been coming from his not-so-beloved brothers, who had just as obviously been stalking him from the moment he entered the woods. 

Treet looked up wearily and tried to stand, knowing already what he would see.  Sure enough, he was surrounded by four of the strongest Holderfolk, his brothers. 

'None of them ever set a foot wrong in Father's eyes.'  Treet thought rebelliously.  His heart sank still further as he saw the Firstborn son there.  Now no matter what he said to Father, Father would assume that he had been being incompetent again or was being punished for slacking, not that he had been ambushed for the sick pleasure of his sibs. 

Treet was still receiving the waves of malice and twisted pleasure.  Hallucinations or not, looking around, Treet could see that they were probably disconcertingly accurate.  He was completely surrounded.

Keltav broke the impasse first.  "Avoiding your duty again, whelp?"  He asked, a savage grin in his eyes.  "You'll just have to be punished, then."  He shoved Treet, who knew by now that it was futile to protest that, in fact, he ad been doing exactly as he was supposed to, and, in fact, would probably have succeeded if they hadn't been scaring all the game away.

Treet careened wildly backwards, landing nearly on top of another of his attackers.  "How dare you lay hands on me?"  The Firstborn son roared in mock fury, backhanding Treet back across the circle.

By the time they had had their fun and left, Treet was barely able to stand.  He knew from long experience that within a Mark, the pain in his left leg would turn to a livid bruise, as would similar aches in other portions of his body.

Treet picked up his bow and quiver, knowing that all the game was well and truly scared off by that point.  He figured that he might as well go back to the Steading and try to come up with a story that would be believed about why he had come back empty handed again.  First, though, he would go see his mother, Elryn.  She was pretty much the only one in the Holding that cared for him, and she always had a kind word.

Elryn was twenty and seven years old now, and an Underwife.  She had been Married off, in cowed terror, at the age of thirteen.  Like Treet, she was tall and thin, with a pointed nose, brown hair and green eyes.  Treet's hair was smooth where hers was curly, and his was kept short, as befitted a man, but barring that, they could have been sibs.

Elryn was naturally sweet tempered, and, as Treet was her only child, she was Treet's refuge against the wrath of his Father.  She was terrified of her Husband, and so Treet never quite had the heart to ask her to stand up for him, but she did provide a friendly ear.

Treet sighed.  Why did he have to be so different?  Even without his uncanny ability to sense emotions and, sometimes, injury, he would still be nothing like a traditional Holderkin male.  He was too tall and thin, with a frame that never quite bulked up no matter how much work he did, which made him a ready target for accusations of shirking.

By the time Treet reached the kitchens, his mother was waiting for him.  "Oh Treet, please say you brought something back!"  She wailed anxiously.

Treet tensed at her tone.  His mother NEVER wailed.  He tried to formulate a suitably calming response, but Elryn read the answer in his face and the in livid marks of a beating that covered his body.

"You didn't.  Oh no!  My Husband, he has been in foul temper all day, but then that new Underwife, little Rella, she spoiled the bread with a moment's inattention, and he just went crazy.  You know him, and you and he don't exactly get along, and he's been threatening to beat you within an inch of your life if you don't bring anything back this time."

Treet opened his mouth to tell her that wailing about it wasn't exactly going to help, when she recovered from her hysteria and spoke again.

"Treet, we've got to get you out of here.  I'll send you on a long errand.  You must take the slowest horse in the stables and go to that market a day's ride from here.  We need more glue faster than we can make it, or at least we will after I'm through.  We can't be without it, and the market is closer than most of the neighbors.  Quickly, go!  Hopefully by the time you get back, my Husband will have regained his good humor, such as it is."  She handed him a purse filled with small coins.

As Treet hurried to obey, he marveled a little inside.  His Father must have been in a great temper for mother to send him to the market.  Usually, it was only the most trusted Hold elders who went on errands to the market, and only when the need was great indeed.  Treet had been told since he could walk about the immorality of the markets, how they were a cesspit of corruption and vile things.

Treet saddled up the slowest beast he could find that had an even temper.  Father or no, Treet wasn't going to be stuck on a long ride with a contrary mule of a horse that never went faster than a little simply to escape a beating.

Treet mounted up and prepared to leave.  He would spend the night in the open, but he had been taught enough woodcraft for survival, and he had money enough that he would buy one meal at the market, along with some food for the way back.  Elryn had thoughtfully included enough for him to have a decent meal, perhaps in silent recompense for the agonies of the day.

Treet passed through the Holderkin lands without being stopped.  A Holder of about his age riding off with all speed on an urgent errand was hardly unusual, although the task was often left to girls.

Treet wondered why his mother had been so eager to get him out of his Father's sight.  It wasn't as though he had never been beaten before.  He had even been put in Exile, although not recently.  He had learned to school his face and expressions so as not to suggest rebellion, and he had become so skilled that he generally got off with only punishment chores or a beating.

Recently, Treet's Father had been talking of Marriage.  The thought made Treet's blood run cold.  He could barely manage to keep himself in one piece, let alone a group of Wives.  Even one Wife would be too hard.  He didn't think he was capable of treating them with the brutality his Father and the other Holderkin expected of their men.

It would be like having a servant, Treet reflected.  This turned him off the idea even more.  Of late, Treet felt enough like one of the servants he had read about in a tale that imposing that state on another was a downright repulsive idea.  To treat someone so that they ended up like his own mother, cowed and defeated.

As the grass sped by under the mare's feet, Treet wondered how his mother had gathered the courage to allow him to escape.  He still couldn't figure out why she had been so desperate for him to do so, and desperate she would have to have been, to risk a beating herself to see him safe.

'I wish that I could just escape, just never go back.'  Treet thought.  For a moment, it almost seemed possible.  It almost seemed possible that he could find a place in the world outside the Hold, the one that he had seen glimpses of before in tales.  Then his hopes were squished.  He had no useful skills, nothing he could use to support himself in the world.  He relied on the Hold for his life, and as little pleasure as it gave him; he would have to go back.  He had nothing else.