A Gift of Dragons by Anne McCaffrey

Author:Anne McCaffrey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Pern (Imaginary place), Retail, Science Fiction, Fantasy fiction, Short Stories (single author), Dragons, Fiction, Fantasy, American, General, Adventure, Science fiction, Life on other planets, Space colonies, Epic, Short Stories
ISBN: 9780345456359
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2002-10-29T04:54:04+00:00

Good-natured laughter and movement down the hall roused her. Someone had half opened the glowbasket, so she saw her own clothes, clean, dry, and neatly folded on the stool where she’d dropped her running shoes. She realized she hadn’t even taken off the anklets before she got into bed. She wriggled her toes in them. No tenderness there. Her hands were stiff but cool, so Penda’d gotten out all the slivers. The skin of her left arm and leg was stiff, though, and she threw back the quilt and tried to see the injuries. She couldn’t, but there was a little too much heat in the skin on the back of her left arm for her liking, and her right leg. Five sort-of-sore spots she couldn’t really check at all other than identifying them as “sore.” And, when she checked her legs, two bad red bumps on her thigh, one in the left calf and two on the fleshy part of her right leg by the shinbone. She had suffered more hurt than she’d realized. And stickle slivers could work their way through your flesh and into your blood. If one got to your heart, you could die from it. She groaned and rose. Shook out her legs, testing the feel of her muscles, and, thanks to Penda’s massage, they didn’t ache. She dressed and then carefully folded the quilt, placing it just as she’d found it on the bed.

Making her way back to the stairs, she passed the bathing room and heard the hum of masculine voices, then a laugh that was clearly from a female runner. As she came down the stairs, she was aware of the smell of roasting meats. Her stomach rumbled. One long narrow window lit the hall that led to the main room, and she gauged that she had slept most of the day. Perhaps she ought to have had a healer check out the scratches, but Penda knew what to do as well as any Hall-trained healer . . . probably better, since she was a station manager’s mate.

“Now, here’s a one who’s prompt for her supper,” Torlo said, calling the attention of the runners sitting around the room to Tenna’s appearance. He introduced her. “Had a brush with Haligon early this morning,” he added, and Tenna did not fail to note that this brash personage was known to them all from the nods and grimaces on their faces.

“I tol’ Lord Groghe myself,” one of the older runners said, nodding his head and looking solemn, “that there’d be an accident . . . then what’d he say to that? I asked him. Someone hurt because a wild lad won’t respect what’s our rights and propitty.” Then he nodded directly at Tenna. “You aren’t the only one he’s knocked aside. Dinncha hear him coming?”

“Met him on the hill curve, she said,” Torlo answered before Tenna could open her own mouth.

“Bad place, bad place. Runner can’t see around it,” a second man said, and nodded his sympathy to her.

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