Le’x/Kratoth
Though he was rarely out of sight of his dragon, Le’x never got tired of looking at him. Kratoth, at seven months of age, was immense. He was nearing thirty feet of husky brawn, and built like a splendid draft runner. His hide, the color of klah with copious amounts of cream and froth, was just beautiful to behold. But not to wash and oil, there being so much of it now. Le’x was thankful that Kratoth’s growth had slowed down a great deal, and those jobs needed less and less doing… especially in the dead of winter. It was the eve of Turn’s End, and Le’x was spending it with his dragon in the barracks, smoothing the few small dry patches of the brown’s hide with warm oil.
Kratoth was enjoying the pampering, but he knew that today was considered a special day for the humans. The fact that his human wasn’t participating bothered him. Most of the other weyrlings had gone to the modest celebration put on by High Reaches, since they weren’t allowed to go to the big gather at Tillek, but Le’x hadn’t shown much interest. Why haven’t you gone to the Turnover celebration with the others? The dragon sensed part of his rider’s answer before it came.
He was sad.
“We can’t go to Tillek.”
Why does that matter, Le’x? We can celebrate with our clutchmates here!
The boy looked up into his dragon’s whirling eyes, but didn’t say anything. Just another wave of sadness, and another brush with oiled fingers.
Emori/Inannath
Emori was celebrating Turn’s End with a tiny green dragon, a slightly larger glass of wine, and a rapidly-growing pile of crumpled parchment. When she ran out of parchment, she picked up one of the crumpled ones, flattened it as best she could, and started writing on the other side. She was already tipsy at this point, and when her hand slipped, etching a deep, dark line through the parchment and onto her desk, she threw her face down on it and sobbed like the actress she’d been before getting drafted into a fighting wing.
Inannath idly watched her rider’s strange solo performance with contented green and blue in her eyes. The dramatics, in one form or another, were a near-daily occurrence, usually in the quiet time before bed. With noisy, inebriated sniffling, Emori got up and went to the hearth, where a firelizard egg was ensconced in a nest of warm woolen socks. She knelt and petted the egg, a soft look leaking in through the tears. Then it was gone, replaced by indignant surprise as Inannath laughed at her. “What is so funny?!” she snarled.
Firstly, my darling, you are drunk, Inannath chortled. And secondly, at this rate that egg is going to hatch before you even give it to him. Perhaps this should be the subject of your Turnover resolution?
The woman’s first response was to slur something unintelligible, though clearly meant to be unsafe for young ears. She endured another burst of draconic laughter as her reward, then huffed out an exaggerated sigh. Okay, maybe you’re right. I… I’ll do it. Right now. With that, she carefully slipped the egg into one of the socks and tucked it into the pouch on her belt. Then the pair went went out to their ledge and took off, the green dragon belting out a gleeful trill as they headed for the very place she’d been trying to get Emori to go for months.
Karone
There was yet another at High Reaches who shunned the celebrations that night. In fact, he’d snapped at the candidates who tried to get him to go to Tillek a few hours before. He’d been doing that more and more lately. Snapping, that is. It was the frustration talking. For seven months Karone had been trying to reconcile with a lot of things, not the least of which was that the only real family he had within reach… was no longer reachable. Not like he used to be, anyway.
Since Lenix Impressed, Karone had been trying to come up with a plan for his life, should the dragons continue to reject him. It was so easy before Thread. He had known who he was. He was the son of Lord Holder Dusiph, practiced in the ways of his father who would someday bequeath him a little cothold of his own. There was a freedom in knowing. And now, as a candidate, he was little more than a glorified drudge, while Lenix… Le’x, rather… was learning to be a dragon rider. More recently, the comfort of his father’s letters, irritating and nosy as they could be, was also taken away. Dusiph’s mental health had vastly improved, he’d been told, but the man’s mind was still frail, and meditating on what he’d lost—including his son lost to dragon Search—could upset that fragile balance. So the letters he received nowadays were often just updates on his father’s status from staff at Healer Hall.
In short—Karone was lonely. He lay on his stomach on his cot with his elbows and chin resting on his pillow, fondly remembering the days before Thread, when he and Lenix were inseparable. Did that really have to change, just because Len was a rider? The weyrlings were graduating soon, would have their own quarters… So Len would be in charge of his own life again, right? Could they reconnect, and have days like the old times?
Suddenly, he needed to find out the answer. To know if he’d be getting his cousin back. The weyrlings were confined to High Reaches tonight, he was certain. So off he went to find Le’x.
