Mawgrim

Everything is written for a reason. It hasn’t occurred to anyone else at Pinnacle that Jemina's death may not have been accidental or suicide.

I wondered if anyone would spot that!

Very true. So many people don't have happy relationships. I suppose the only good thing that can be said is that at least today people can get divorced easily, whereas in the past the stigma of breaking up kept many unhappy marriages going. My father married twice and the betrayal of his first wife left him feeling crushed. I've not had much luck with relationships throughout my life either - maybe I am just too fussy - although I'm happily married now. When I was younger I never felt ready to settle, so getting older is good for some reasons! Jemina was at a low ebb and no one had sufficient experience to recognise it. As @Clancy59mentioned, if Vikkel had sent for an experienced Healer, it may have helped. Or it may not. None of us know what's going on inside another person's head.

All the signs were there, as you say. In the two and a half thousand Turns since Pern was colonised, they have lost so much medical knowledge. As you say, Vikkel was too cheap to send for someone from the Healer Hall, who might have been able to help Jemina. It can't have helped her much hearing Vikkel continually talk about how no one who is 'useless' is welcome at Pinnacle Hold either It was a good job Merida insisted on searching for her, even though it was still too late. Vikkel was definitely a contributing factor in Jemina's death.

No, they're free to go now. The only doubt is whether Jevikel's leg will hold out for the journey. Merida is a compassionate and sensible woman, whose influence is already modifying Vikkel's behaviour slightly. Vikkel and Jemina are classes examples of how arranged marriages can go badly wrong. He wasn't allowed to marry the girl he loved and that's part of the reason he's so bitter. If he can't be happy, why should anyone else be? It's time to move on, for sure.

‘Mother?’ Jevikel sat down on the bench next to Jemina. She stared into the fire, clutching her useless arm. ‘How are you feeling today?’ ‘Could be worse,’ she muttered. ‘Could be better, too.’ She glanced at the arm with a perplexed look. ‘Would you fetch me some klah?’ He poured a cup. The sweetener jar had just been refilled, so he added a generous spoonful. It would take away the harshness of a brew that had sat on the fire too long. ‘There you are.’ She reached into her pocke

I was posting my Dragonriders of Pern stories on a well known fanfiction site when @Carlos Hazdaysent me a message telling me about GA. I found the site, read a few stories and liked the amount of feedback given by readers. It's much more like a community than many other sites where you can post stories and gives me the incentive to write regularly so as not to disappoint my readers.

Good for Parker's dad. The whole town seems very blinkered to what is going on, having buried their heads in the sand for years. I worked in Vietnam for a couple of years and there is racism there as well, based on how dark a person's skin tone may be. It's the most obvious way people can label someone as other than themselves and sadly will always be a problem if the attitudes are passed down from one generation to the next.

As has been mentioned there would have been quite a few staff and management in the cinema back in 1975. Many of them would have moved on to other jobs and some might be dead! One of the theories is that Jack may have been blackmailed into helping out a gang of thieves, who then decided he would be safer out of the way. That may (or may not) be along the right lines.

Brenda is trying to protect Maurice, although whether from himself or external agencies remains to be seen.

I used to work on maintenance in a care home where 95% of the residents had some form of dementia and they could get triggered by very small things, which were obviously significant to them. It often took a long while for the care staff to calm them down again. The seance is a quick and relatively easy way to find out more, although the accuracy may not be great and you couldn't use it as evidence to go to the police.

Nice pun!

Oh yes, Cynthia is longing for a seance and Dan will be far more open to the possibility now he's seen a ghost in the cinema.

Another lot of good guesses. We already know Trevor was a bit of a show off, wanting to get his name in the paper, so your interpretation of Brenda's statement is fairly accurate, too.

Nice sleuthing, Mr Poirot! Some of your guesses may be close to the mark.

We both slept in the following morning. Dan wasn’t in any great hurry as he wasn’t due in until midday and it was the first of my two days off. As we hadn’t gone to sleep right away, it was probably a good thing. Dan handed me my second slice of toast. ‘So, what do you have planned for today?’ ‘Well, this afternoon I’m going to visit Brenda and Maurice.’ ‘Not just a social visit, I’m guessing, Monsieur Poirot?’ ‘No. Well, sort of. I’d like to see how he is and I found loads o

Spot on. A little Hold in the back of beyond will be fairly low down the list.

That's awful. I'm glad they didn't get away with it.

I've been away on a writing course this week and would like to share some of the exercises we did. Much of it was concerned with character development. Here's one of the first ones we did: Close your eyes. See a character walking towards you. At first, they are indistinct, then as they come closer, you start to pick out some features. What are they wearing? What do they look like? As they come closer still, notice their face and hair, the texture of their skin. Closer still, what do they smell like? Would this character shake hands with you, or hug? Would they say good morning, or acknowledge you at all? I chose to use a minor character in the story I'm currently developing for this one and here is what I wrote: Arthur’s out walking his terrier, Susie as he always does at the same time each morning. He’s wearing his rough clothes: his dog walking clothes as Helen, his wife puts it. An old pair of jeans, with mud splashes around the ankles, well worn walking boots and a practical waterproof jacket with pockets for essentials such as poo bags. His thin grey hair, which is in need of a trim, stirs in the breeze. His cheeks are ruddy, with broken veins from a lifetime of working outdoors in all weathers. His jacket exudes a smell of stale smoke; he’s not allowed to smoke at home as Helen thinks it’s bad for his health. Another pocket conceals a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Now he’s out of sight of the house, he turns his back against the wind, lights up and takes his first long drag of the day. The cigarette - partially smoked the previous evening and picked out before he got home - is held firmly curled within his calloused palm, easy to hide if he meets a friend of Helen’s. Susie sits at his feet, content to wait patiently. She won’t give away his habits. His secret is safe with her.

Some of them may have fled to the barren parts of the mountain. Dragons usually stop fighting Thread over terrain where nothing will grow and where the ground is impervious to it. So although Kadin only saw one beast being eaten close to the cave, others probably died elsewhere. As they were so panicked, there would have been a few more fatalities and fatal injuries due to that and as you suggested, some just ran away.

You are so right. People were happy to follow Vikkel when he could provide them with food and shelter, but now a lot of minds are going to be changed. As the only survivor, naturally he would blame Kadin.

In 'Dragonflight' it's mentioned that canines are used to turn the spits in the kitchen at Ruatha Hold. Lessa uses her powers to slow one and speed the other so the meat ends up burned for Fax's feast. I believe the only cats are the big cats in the south bioengineered by Ted Tubberman.

I'm not entirely sure if there are. The colonists brought a lot of earth animals and plants with them, but not all of them survived. Eggs are mentioned as a food, but they might be wherry eggs.

Some people just have to know all the gruesome details. Even F'lar's timetables aren't totally accurate. Jevikel has also made a mistake in thinking that Thread will fall over Pinnacle Hold and Benden Weyr on the same day.

Hopefully he'll realise that protecting the barns isn't much use if all of his workers perish! It will take a while to repair the barns and the Hold to a Threadproof state. Not only will Vikkel need to fork out marks for the materials, but they will also need transporting up to Pinnacle and given that travelling has now become trickier, that might take a while as well.