wench

pronouns: she/her

i am an adult

…

“…I heard Sylve and Harrikin talking about it in the night, talking about waiting now because they'd have maybe hundreds of years together, after their dragons changed them…”

harrikin i HATE you. and i don’t care if you both become elderlings and live 1000 years, you’re still like 20 and have zero reason to sit and wait around for her to come of age. a longer life means more time to search for an AGE-APPROPRIATE MATE. yuck.

Alise stooped down and picked up the small glass bottle that had been dropped. She looked at it, then glanced at Sedric in consternation. "It looks like an ink bottle," she said.

Sedric shrugged. His mouth was pinched and his face pale. He looked sick. Carson moved closer to him. Alise slowly turned her gaze on Leftrin. "It's not true, is it? The hunter lied to that boy, didn't he?"

…

"He had a lot of peculiar ideas. But he's gone now, Alise, and what I'm telling you is true. I never agreed to smuggle dragon blood or parts." He looked at her and then added very quietly, "This I swear on Tarman. I swear it on my liveship."

For a moment longer, Alise stood uncertain. Thymara watched her. She glanced from Leftrin to Sedric and back again. Then, Alise hooked her arm through Leftrin's and looked only at him. "I believe you," she said, as if she were making a choice. "I believe you, Leftrin."

i can’t tell if alise and sedric are beefing. clearly, she took sedric’s words about leftrin to heart, but she’s still deciding who to trust. sedric is obviously a mixed bag at this point. earlier, she told leftrin “well maybe you are deceiving me but at least i chose this deception” which…sure i guess.

"Yes." A flat answer.

"Why?" Leftrin wouldn't let it go.

Greft touched the scrapes on his chest and looked at the blood on his fingers. "To ask for blood," he admitted abruptly.

"Blood? Why?" Leftrin sounded shocked.

"Because I want to become an Elderling like the others!" The furious jealous words burst out of him. "I've heard the whispering. I know. The other dragons have given their keepers blood, to help them change. The other dragons are making their keepers into Elderlings. Yesterday I went to Kalo and I asked him when he would give me blood and take charge of my changes.”

…

"I heard what Kalo said. He said he wouldn't give you blood because he no longer trusted you. That you might not want the blood to change, but only to sell." Her hand darted out and seized the front of his torn shirt. She tore at his pocket, and a small glass bottle fell with a thunk and then rolled in a circle on the deck. It was empty. She pointed at it. "It doesn't take a bottle of blood to change someone, only a few drops. So what was that for, Greft? Do we have a traitor in our midst?"

you know…i actually feel a bit bad for greft here. asshole though he is, he hasn’t done anything poaching-related that others on the expedition aren’t guilty of as well. both sedric and leftrin were implicated. maybe they didn’t go through with it, maybe they had a change of heart, but they still had less than pure intentions. hell, sedric had already taken an entire vial of blood, endangering relpda’s life when she was already vulnerable. his only saving grace was the dragons forgiveness, which only came after he had proven himself useful to her.

his misogyny and entitlement are worthy of scorn, but the dragon stuff is a bit hypocritical.

A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of Greft's mouth.

He ignored it, instead looking disdainfully from one of them to another. When he realized the full hostility of those watching him, he took a breath. "At first, I believed in what we were doing. Then Jess set me straight."

again, i feel bad for greft. i often forget that he was just as impressionable as the other keepers, especially the male keepers. it was only too easy to take this outcast with a lifetime’s experience in rejection and make him feel important. he took the red pill😔💊

Greft's voice was suddenly calm and level. "I've known all my life that I wouldn't get as much as anyone else did. Not respect. Not even time. People like me, like us, we die young. Unless a dragon takes us on and makes sure we don't. I know that now. I heard Sylve and Harrikin talking about it in the night, talking about waiting now because they'd have maybe hundreds of years together, after their dragons changed them. But not Greft. Not for me. So I went tonight to take what should have been given to me. All the times I groomed him, fed him, you think he'd give me just one scale, just a few drops of blood. But no. No."

He sighed out through his nose and looked all around at every one of them. He shook his head slowly as he did so, as if he could not believe his bad luck or the harshness of fate that had doomed him to be here.

"I'm going to die," he said finally. His tone made it their fault. "Things are starting to go wrong inside me. I can feel things going wrong. My gut hurts when I'm hungry and hurts worse when I eat. The shape of my mouth has changed so much that I can't chew or even close my mouth comfortably. My eyes are dry, but I can't close my eyelids all the way. Nothing simple is simple anymore. I can't get enough air through my nose when I try to breathe, and when I breathe through my mouth, my throat dries out until it cracks and I spit blood." He looked around at them again and his eyes came to rest on Thymara. "That's my life," he said quietly. "Or my death. The death of someone who is changing, without a dragon to guide it. The death of someone who was born so Rain Wild touched that I can't even live to be middle-aged, let alone old."

this passage brought me back to my earlier interpretation of being “touched by the rain wilds” as being disabled. feeling your body break down, either quickly or slowly, but just as out of your control regardless. it’s a powerful and horrifying sensation. the hopelessness, bitterness, and heartbreak is a lethal combination.