Hardest Thing Ever Done... Saying Good Bye 

   (( Telnor ))

Traplin
********* 

Trap stared at the note in his hands, rereading the words written there for
a third time before finally placing the paper on the table in front of him.

"Well?" the kid who'd given it to him ask. "Can I tell him you're going to
meet with him? He's waiting to hear."

"I'll meet with him at the time he's asked," Trap agreed and saw the boy nod
and then turn and walk away.

Dewer. Trader. Thief. Some said a murder, but that could never be proven.
Trap knew him, or had known him from the time he had been living and working
in the Warren's interest as The Shadow.

As The Shadow, he had worked his way up in a gang of thieves raiding the
tithes trains sent to the Warren for the Local Lords who looked to the
Warren for protection. 

Trap had been asked soon after joining if he would go undercover and try to
bring down this gang that had been working in the area around Telnor's
domain. He'd agreed and soon had spawn the myth of the shadow-like villain
who swooped down on the tithe trains and stole them blind before anyone knew
what was happening. He'd become feared by others as a man not to cross, but
by others as a man who could get the job done. 

He had enjoyed the work that he had achieved, but had only one real regret
for what he'd done. That of having to leave behind the woman he had come to
love, for not even she could know the dragonrider Traplin was still alive.
For if word got out then his life and others might not have been worth much
by the time word had gotten out.

It was during this time that he had met Dewer... they'd done some business
together a few times, but the man had somehow escaped the hangman's noose
when the gang had been brung down.

So why now after all this time was the man asking to meet with him.........

   ((later that same day))

His bags were packed and most were already out on the ledge or attached to
Diemis's saddle. All Trap had left to do was tell Danielle he was leaving.
Hopefully not for good, but knowing his mate the way he did, he was fearing
the worst.

He'd already made his farewells to his sister and agreed with her that
taking leave of this place herself was something she needed to do. It was
hard for her living here since Ga'brin had died. Worse still that she
couldn't get over seeing the man whom she felt responsible walking around
like nothing had happened.

And then too, once he took off there would be no one left for her to go too
if she needed help.

Ga'brin's family had been wonderful to her after his death, but Tera still
felt something was missing. Something she couldn't find in Telnor. It was
her idea to leave and she wouldn't be talked out of it now that she had made
up her mind.

Trap felt better about her leaving also because her being there would only
remind Danielle about him and how much she as going to end up hating him
after he told her he was leaving. 

His sister had at lease understood what drove him and hadn't tried to talk
him out of it. She knew it was something he had to do and though she might
worry when he wasn't around, she would never ask him to give up his dreams.

Next Trap had gone by the new Warrenlady's office and told her he was
leaving. Tera could talk with her later when she asked for her own transfer,
but he wanted the woman to know it hadn't been because of her.

"I'm sure the Warren will miss you when you go Traplin," she had said. "Are
you sure you really want to leave us here?"

"I have too," he'd replied. "I thought I could come back here and take up
where I'd left off before I'd agreed to work undercover for the Warren and
the Landbound Lords during the time when our tithes trains were being
attacked... But it hasn't been easy since coming back for me." He'd told
her, being as canted as he could with her.

"Some of the riders resent me for what I did and think I'm nothing but a
glory hound out to seek merits to pat myself on the back... That resentment
can be deadly to a rider during a fight. You never know if you can trust the
man riding point for you so you might do something you'd regret later
because you were doing something you shouldn't have..... And others still
resent me for taking Danielle away from Kay... who left the Warren soon
afterwards... they think I did this. Ran him off,  because I felt I had the
right to any woman I wanted... weather she was taken already or not. It
didn't matter that Danielle and I had loved eachother from the start or that
she chose to come to me..."

He'd bowled his head, hoping to find the words to say what he was wanting
too without messing it up.

"I feel... that I can do this Warren and others a better service if I left
here and did what I'm the best at... and that's not being a dragonrider
stuck in the warren day in and day out praying on one hand that the wraiths
stay away... but on the other hand hoping for some sighting of them just to
break the day in day out sameness of the pace. Not that I'm knocking the
Warren or it's riders. We've some very brave men here and that's the life
they enjoy. I'm good at working behind the scenes helping people who don't
know they're being helped and that's what I feel like I should be doing.
That's what I *need* to be doing. Anything else and I short us all of my
very best work."

"It's not for the glory I do this thing," he told her, being as honest as he
could with her. "I'd rather people not even know I was there. It's so that
the small man can get the justice he or she deserves. It's so that the scum
around us don't take the upper hand and make our world a scary place to
live. But mainly it's so that we can have some kind of peace in our lives."

"What about your mate? Danielle?" the woman had asked him. "How does she
feel about this?"

"I haven't told her yet..." he sighed and ran his hands over his face. "I'm
going to do that after I leave you, but I know she'll hate me for it. She
would have anyway had I stayed and not been able to live up to what she
wanted me to be.. She would have kept asking me to stay and be something she
knows deep in her heart that I could never be... and we'd end up hating
eachother if I'd agreed. It's better this way. Maybe someday she can get
over the hurt I'll be causing her and find someone who can be what she needs."

He left her soon afterwards with her blessings and an invitation to come
back if he ever felt the need.

He thanked her knowing that he would never return. Danielle's hatred for him
would keep him away.

He was doing the right thing for the both of them. It took Dewer's request
to make him face up to that.

One reason he had finally agreed to check out  Dewer's request, was because
the name of the woman he spoke of, had set off bit's of past memory buried
in a distant corner of his mind. Dewer's account of the woman and her
troubles reminded him of a story he had heard long ago when he'd first come
to Telnor as a newly joined rider.

There was a man, around the same age as himself who joined at the same time.
They'd started to become friends right around the time Ophelia and a certain
Landbound Lord had come to him with their request for his help.

Though he hadn't know the man well, and never learn from whence he came, the
man had told him a story about his home lands and the people who had lived
there. But mostly his stories had focused on a young girl the man had cared
very deeply for.

He'd told Trap about the temperament of the village people. Narrow minded
and ignorant, he had called them. 

"They think dragons are some kind of evil spirit out to enslave human kind,"
the man had snorted. "Me now. I'd always thought they were something
special... and that's one of the reasons I had to flee my homelands... They
thought a dragon had possessed me and the one way they knew to 
un-possess someone was to kill them..... and I just wasn't ready to say good
bye to this world yet."

He explained more about the villagers ways, but Trap mostly remembered the
look in the mans eyes when he spoke of the girl. 

"She's a mind of her own and I fear she takes a bit after me when it comes
to the dragons," the man had told him sometime after their fourth beer.
"She's as sure to join as anyone I know and if she does her family and the
rest will make life hell for her... Somehow I have to get her away from them
when the time comes....."

Trap never did find out if the time ever did come, for soon after they had
talked Trap agreed to leave everything he knew and loved to became The Shadow.

By the time he did make it back to the Warren and Danielle, the woman he had
always loved, things had changed. Of the man, he's learned when he'd ask
that he'd been killed in nearly the same type of teleporting accident that
Trap himself had supposedly died in.

Traplin, rider of Diemis had wondered at the time if the death was a true
one... or like with himself... a means to an end. Had the man's family found
out he was in Telnor... and Joined no less to one of the evil ones... Or had
something else happened to drive him away.

He'd never found out, but always it was in the back of is mind he thought he
knew. He'd really liked the man. They'd had a lot in commend. 

Trap was reminded of that fact ever time he saw his sister, for he felt the
same way about her that the man had felt about the young girl he had spoken
off...

There too they had something commend.

Both women shared the same name.

Tera.....

He was all packed... Had everything he thought he would need and left the
rest... Everything but the blue silk scarf he'd given Danielle on her
birthday... He'd wanted something to remember her by...

His bags were all out on the far side of Diemis where Danielle wouldn't see
them when she arrived home on Violet. Trap had wanted to tell her himself
before she saw them, something deep inside told him he wouldn't be coming
back once Danielle found out where he was going.

All he had left to do was wait.

He didn't have a long one. Diemis told him moments later that the two had
arrived and that Danielle was looking happy about something.

"Happy," Trap spoke the word aloud then swore for he knew he would soon
erase that happiness from her eyes.

The door opened and she entered the room, the smile on her face disappeared
quickly when their eyes met.

Gods but she's beautiful, he though as beheld her. So beautiful that even
now he ached for her. Ached for the life that he knew could never be his.

He hated himself for he knew he was about to do to her the one thing he had
promised her when they became mates... to never do.

Trap had tried to keep that promise. He really had, but that he'd agreed to
go off to a far off land to learn what he could about the treat on a unknown
Warrenlady... no matter her rank... His agreeing bespoke a far greater need
deep with in him that living here in the Warren could never begin to fill.

He loved this woman standing before him. Loved her with all of his heart and
everything in him. Maybe if he had never known the power and excitement he
had known living as The Shadow... Maybe he could have been blissfully happy
living his life here in the warren like a good dragonrider and mate. 

Living with the woman he loved... Having babies... wing practice every
morning and patrols every evening. Doing all the things that most men found
fulfilling..... 

He should have been happy doing all those things... And for a while he
was... But now he realized that something was missing. Something needed to
go on the way he was expected to go on.

But then Trap never did what was expected of him. Never had. Not when he was
growing up, not after he had joined with Diemis... and right now he knew no
matter how deeply he was about to hurt this woman standing before him...
This woman who held his heart in the palm of her hand... He just couldn't do
the expected thing and stay.

For if he did, Trap knew they both would end up regretting it. Maybe not
today. Maybe not for years to come... But in the end his staying and trying
to be what everyone expected him to be... would pay it's toll and they would
end up hating each other.

No. Better to end it now. Danielle would be hurt but in time she would get
over it and find a man who could live up to what was expected of him.
One day Danielle would find someone who could make her blissfully happy.

Trap just wished it could have been him.

She knows, he thought as their eyes held on to one another.

"What is it Trap?" She asked softly in a voice he could barely hear. Then
her eyes turned accusing. "You're leaving!"

"Dallie... You have to understand..." this was going to be one of the
hardest things he'd even have to do in his life. She didn't deserve it, but
bastard that he was, he was going to do it anyway. It was for the best. For
the both of them. 

{{ Tag Kat... I figured we could work on the next part together.. I'm SURE
Danielle WON'T be too happy with my boy after she hears his news....

===========================

Nrpg: this is part one of Trap's good-bye to Telnor. the rest of the story
will be outsoon.. I'll give Telnor part of it, but as we move on to Jasra
I'll stop sending to Telnor... It's been fun Thanks...

***Submitted by: *****

Traplin & Diemis
Tera & Sundellath
Telnor Warren

AKA
Barbara

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