Post by Azhdarchid on Dec 12, 2012 17:07:38 GMT -5
[ Candidates click here to find out how to visit the eggs. ]
[ Click here for the guessing! ]
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Early Summer.
The moons had exchanged their faces: Timor smiled at the warming nights, Belior appeared indifferent. Q’sis awoke to such a hard pang across his abdomen that his entire body straightened in the bed, and he had to wrap his arm around the offending section and lay there panting off the excess. He could be sure Valha had stirred with the telling agony too, and not just because she lay beside him on the massive deis of conquest. Their familiarity had not faded with the Flight, and the compulsion to keep her at his side had turned to ferocious addiction. Parting from her too long prompted mind-pains, and nausea. Like a sudden onset of fever. It was the flavor of complete and constant understanding.
He needed it gone. He’d spent too long sharing with Valha before the Flight, and for three months since he’d been stuck with her. Some deep and furtive part of him recognized this as repulsive, but on the surface Q’sis had absconded from the burning that characterized their pre-Flight relations. He’d gone compliant as his dragon, and it was a surprisingly comfortable prison. Despite what certain women might think, Valha was not a thorn of attraction tempting him at every turn. They had all the companiability of siblings. Clutchmates.
The pain returned, this time with a reverberation stabbing at the back of his brain. Pleasant stuff that, during Flight, but the horror of it had begun communicating itself over the past few days. Sloshing two personalities together seemed to have the effect of mediating both to distant neutrality. Doing the same with two nervous systems tended to drive the unwitting participants mad. He swallowed back the drying clutch of his throat and threw off the light summer cover, staggering out to discover which dragon was having the trouble.
Unath stood in the corner of the weyr, her tail standing skywards. Q’sis froze at the sight of her, and then he bared his teeth.
“You had best not,” he snarled at his dragon, then strode forward to climb her arm after looking under her to make certain nothing had already dropped. Bring Mith, he told Valha, then jabbed Unath out onto the ledge, and off to the Sands.
When Valha arrived with her dragon, Q’sis was leaning against the muscular swell of Unath’s leg. The darker tan watched the lighter one dully for a while, then glanced down at him. Completely unperturbed, but also lacking the natural instruction for her task. She’d already forgotten her preemption of the event.
“You push,” he snorted, indignation masking uncertainty. “I’m not helping you with this part woman. It’s what you’re built for.” Did he feel a certain clearing of the molasses from his head in that moment? Yes. Like overcoming a cold, his thoughts began to clear. And sharpen. Unath warbled, but he ignored her as he headed over to Mith and examined her progress with crossed arms. When he returned, an egg lay in the sand between Unath’s back feet. “Yes?” the rider inquired impatiently. The dragon hunched her hind legs together, and though Q’sis had claimed nonparticipation there was nothing that stopped the sensation from passing through him. He opened his mouth, but needed only to exhale as a second egg joined the first.
Unath looked around at him, and he laid his hand against her foreleg. “Alright,” Q’sis offered in a softer tone. “Walk a little.” The tan dredged forward a few steps and he trotted along to keep up till she paused again. “Don’t run your tail over them.” Though he had to keep giving similar commands, Q’sis did so with uncommon kindness. Unath might not have noticed the painful labor twitches, but her breathing quickened as time went on and stayed that way for the ‘marks it took to deposit the remaining eggs.
By dawn, two wobbly lines of dragonshells marked the parallel passage of the twin mothers. Unath abruptly splayed out in the hot sand, sighing with every breath, her tail still slightly raised. “Good girl,” Q’sis said, rubbing one rib of her heaving chest as he looked over his shoulder at the clutch. “Good,” he repeated, walking out under her tail before returning to her front. Unath sensed the opportunity for a snuggle with a razor-like intuition that she possessed on no other subject and twisted her head around to plant her snout against his chest. Q’sis thumped both sides of her nose with his hands and arms, and she rumbled against him so deeply he thought she might rattle his heart out of its cage. “Now you’ve accomplished the hardest task given to any woman, yet the one all women are born to suit,” he praised as Unath’s head lifted away from him. The dragon watched him, her eyes spinning blues rather than their typical zen greens. “You are worthy of being called ‘queen,’ you-”
I’m hungry.
Q’sis looked back at the line of eggs. “You have to-” he started, but Unath had already gotten up and went strolling out of the cavern. The rider paused, then continued to himself, “You deserve to eat. You can build the nest after...” But after she had wined and dined, Unath tried to nap on her weyr ledge, and had to be summoned back down to the Sands. “We’re going to sleep here for a while,” Q’sis told her. It was the simplest explanation. When she did nothing but sit and stare at her eggs, though, he began collecting them to a closer circle on her behalf. After a while, Unath put her paw next to one and nudged its soggy surface. Q’sis nodded, near to realizing the sleeplessness of the past evening. “That’s it,” he yawned, then headed over to the nearest segment of the stands and sprawled on the lowest stone bench. He tried to watch long enough to see what pattern she would make, but sleep took him.
When he woke, the tans had exchanged almost all their eggs several times over. The nest was a constantly shifting mass between them. Q’sis watched as Unath rolled a huge egg over by Mith’s arm, for which the other twin traded her a smaller specimen. A shocked drudge had hustled away from the dim cavern a few minutes prior, returned now with help and glows. Green light fluttered across the surface of a massive blood-colored egg. It had been pushed to the front of the clutch and tipped over on its side so that its tapered end pointed accusingly at the empty space where Candidates would one day Stand.
A glow lit in Q’sis, too. An aspect of himself muted during his duality with Valha had been freed with the eggs. The tall rider lurched off the bench and stalked across the Sands. “Leave them!” he snapped at the Weyrfolk starting to line the Candidates’ tunnel with glows. The ‘folk didn’t question. Q’sis wheeled to face the entirety of the cavern, where his booming objection had echoed to more than a little attention. “Off the Sands!” he shouted at the assembled helpers. “Now!” And Unath’s roar backed up the second command. The Weyrfolk scattered. Q’sis narrowed his eyes at the human subject of recent months’ amicability. “Get to work,” he said, pointing at the abandoned glowbaskets.
Samael, he urged, in a far different tone, as he hefted the glow payloads of four or five drudges on one arm and stalked into the dim tunnel. He proffered a very precise picture of its entrance to her dragon through Unath. You must come and see my eggs. Though how Sam would see anything from that secluded corridor was very uncertain indeed.
[ Click here for the guessing! ]
.
.
.
Early Summer.
The moons had exchanged their faces: Timor smiled at the warming nights, Belior appeared indifferent. Q’sis awoke to such a hard pang across his abdomen that his entire body straightened in the bed, and he had to wrap his arm around the offending section and lay there panting off the excess. He could be sure Valha had stirred with the telling agony too, and not just because she lay beside him on the massive deis of conquest. Their familiarity had not faded with the Flight, and the compulsion to keep her at his side had turned to ferocious addiction. Parting from her too long prompted mind-pains, and nausea. Like a sudden onset of fever. It was the flavor of complete and constant understanding.
He needed it gone. He’d spent too long sharing with Valha before the Flight, and for three months since he’d been stuck with her. Some deep and furtive part of him recognized this as repulsive, but on the surface Q’sis had absconded from the burning that characterized their pre-Flight relations. He’d gone compliant as his dragon, and it was a surprisingly comfortable prison. Despite what certain women might think, Valha was not a thorn of attraction tempting him at every turn. They had all the companiability of siblings. Clutchmates.
The pain returned, this time with a reverberation stabbing at the back of his brain. Pleasant stuff that, during Flight, but the horror of it had begun communicating itself over the past few days. Sloshing two personalities together seemed to have the effect of mediating both to distant neutrality. Doing the same with two nervous systems tended to drive the unwitting participants mad. He swallowed back the drying clutch of his throat and threw off the light summer cover, staggering out to discover which dragon was having the trouble.
Unath stood in the corner of the weyr, her tail standing skywards. Q’sis froze at the sight of her, and then he bared his teeth.
“You had best not,” he snarled at his dragon, then strode forward to climb her arm after looking under her to make certain nothing had already dropped. Bring Mith, he told Valha, then jabbed Unath out onto the ledge, and off to the Sands.
When Valha arrived with her dragon, Q’sis was leaning against the muscular swell of Unath’s leg. The darker tan watched the lighter one dully for a while, then glanced down at him. Completely unperturbed, but also lacking the natural instruction for her task. She’d already forgotten her preemption of the event.
“You push,” he snorted, indignation masking uncertainty. “I’m not helping you with this part woman. It’s what you’re built for.” Did he feel a certain clearing of the molasses from his head in that moment? Yes. Like overcoming a cold, his thoughts began to clear. And sharpen. Unath warbled, but he ignored her as he headed over to Mith and examined her progress with crossed arms. When he returned, an egg lay in the sand between Unath’s back feet. “Yes?” the rider inquired impatiently. The dragon hunched her hind legs together, and though Q’sis had claimed nonparticipation there was nothing that stopped the sensation from passing through him. He opened his mouth, but needed only to exhale as a second egg joined the first.
Unath looked around at him, and he laid his hand against her foreleg. “Alright,” Q’sis offered in a softer tone. “Walk a little.” The tan dredged forward a few steps and he trotted along to keep up till she paused again. “Don’t run your tail over them.” Though he had to keep giving similar commands, Q’sis did so with uncommon kindness. Unath might not have noticed the painful labor twitches, but her breathing quickened as time went on and stayed that way for the ‘marks it took to deposit the remaining eggs.
By dawn, two wobbly lines of dragonshells marked the parallel passage of the twin mothers. Unath abruptly splayed out in the hot sand, sighing with every breath, her tail still slightly raised. “Good girl,” Q’sis said, rubbing one rib of her heaving chest as he looked over his shoulder at the clutch. “Good,” he repeated, walking out under her tail before returning to her front. Unath sensed the opportunity for a snuggle with a razor-like intuition that she possessed on no other subject and twisted her head around to plant her snout against his chest. Q’sis thumped both sides of her nose with his hands and arms, and she rumbled against him so deeply he thought she might rattle his heart out of its cage. “Now you’ve accomplished the hardest task given to any woman, yet the one all women are born to suit,” he praised as Unath’s head lifted away from him. The dragon watched him, her eyes spinning blues rather than their typical zen greens. “You are worthy of being called ‘queen,’ you-”
I’m hungry.
Q’sis looked back at the line of eggs. “You have to-” he started, but Unath had already gotten up and went strolling out of the cavern. The rider paused, then continued to himself, “You deserve to eat. You can build the nest after...” But after she had wined and dined, Unath tried to nap on her weyr ledge, and had to be summoned back down to the Sands. “We’re going to sleep here for a while,” Q’sis told her. It was the simplest explanation. When she did nothing but sit and stare at her eggs, though, he began collecting them to a closer circle on her behalf. After a while, Unath put her paw next to one and nudged its soggy surface. Q’sis nodded, near to realizing the sleeplessness of the past evening. “That’s it,” he yawned, then headed over to the nearest segment of the stands and sprawled on the lowest stone bench. He tried to watch long enough to see what pattern she would make, but sleep took him.
When he woke, the tans had exchanged almost all their eggs several times over. The nest was a constantly shifting mass between them. Q’sis watched as Unath rolled a huge egg over by Mith’s arm, for which the other twin traded her a smaller specimen. A shocked drudge had hustled away from the dim cavern a few minutes prior, returned now with help and glows. Green light fluttered across the surface of a massive blood-colored egg. It had been pushed to the front of the clutch and tipped over on its side so that its tapered end pointed accusingly at the empty space where Candidates would one day Stand.
A glow lit in Q’sis, too. An aspect of himself muted during his duality with Valha had been freed with the eggs. The tall rider lurched off the bench and stalked across the Sands. “Leave them!” he snapped at the Weyrfolk starting to line the Candidates’ tunnel with glows. The ‘folk didn’t question. Q’sis wheeled to face the entirety of the cavern, where his booming objection had echoed to more than a little attention. “Off the Sands!” he shouted at the assembled helpers. “Now!” And Unath’s roar backed up the second command. The Weyrfolk scattered. Q’sis narrowed his eyes at the human subject of recent months’ amicability. “Get to work,” he said, pointing at the abandoned glowbaskets.
Samael, he urged, in a far different tone, as he hefted the glow payloads of four or five drudges on one arm and stalked into the dim tunnel. He proffered a very precise picture of its entrance to her dragon through Unath. You must come and see my eggs. Though how Sam would see anything from that secluded corridor was very uncertain indeed.
