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I was born in the year of the Dragon. I have loved dragons my whole life. I collect dragons. When I was really little, I used to pretend I could turn into a dragon and dance on the wind.

When I was little, my mother read me the Pern stories. Admittedly, she edited them for a seven year old, but still. They were full of people who were heroes even though they were flawed and sometimes didn't know what to do. But they always tried to do the right thing. And there were dragons. Glorious Dragons, life bonded to their dragonriders.

Oh, I longed to be Lessa of Pern. How I wanted to walk and fly the world of Pern. And how ... vividly Anne McCaffrey brought her world of Pern to life. So vividly that I could see the stones, scoured clean of vegetation to keep the Thread from taking hold.. I could see the faces of the people who lived there and wished to live among them. The Harper Hall, the weyrs. All of it. And I wanted a bond with a dragon like Ramoth. Or at least a dragonette.

It sounds silly now, but I remember taking all my stuffed dragons and my barbies and trying to build Pern in a rocky hillside at the back of the yard. My sister Rose told me Pern wasn't real and I should be playing something useful. But my brother Thorn played with me; he'd bring his army guys. He got to be all the Dragonmen, well, most of them. My younger brother would come over and kick down the stuff I'd build and Thorn and I would build it again. We used to pretend those fuzzy seedlings those trees drop were thread. Vi was too young to play with us, but when she got old enough, she added her own take on Pern.

When I got older, I read the books for myself and found the bits that Mum left out. Pern became romantic, too, as well as a giant adventure. It led me to other books, other worlds to play in and it was one of the places my imagination soared, like a dragon, mating or fighting thread.

There's an artist named Robin Wood who did portraits of the Pern characters. Anne approved them. At the big SCA event called the Pennsic War one year, I met Robin. I walked into the bazaar with my mum and there were all these paintings, including ones of all these familiar faces.. Mum and I must have talked to Robin for at least an hour about our mutual love of the Pern books. I used my babysitting money to buy a print of Lessa and Mum bought me the one of F'lar to go with it. They're both hanging in my room still. I was excited - I'd met someone who knew Anne! It was almost like meeting her! Silly me. And now, I'll never meet her.

Anne McCaffrey died on Monday of a stroke at her home in Ireland. I gather she was active up until the fatal stroke, still talking with her fans on her website. She missed Dragon Con this year because of heart problems. She was an amazing writer. She was the first woman to win a Hugo award. And when I went to Robin's website, with her pictures of Pern People, I noticed something, besides her acknowledgment of Anne's death. - I noticed that her portrait of Robinton, the Master Harper of Pern, looks astonishingly like Anne, only male. Kind of fits. And I realized that, truly, the Master Harper was gone.

Good-bye, Anne! May your skies be clear, and the wine always Benden. We'll miss you. And thank you for giving us a world to love.