Frost and Fun (Azh)

Unath's brown color might have been a bit drab and grayish, but she was the darkest of her breed. Her spots, the socks on her forelimbs, and the creamier tinge to the undersides of her wings spoke to her heritage. She dunked her head under the frigid lake's surface and then threw her neck skyward, flicking the resultant spray over her back. Her wings opened and beat ferociously upon the water, clouds of foam blossoming beneath her and raising her upper body away from its glassy reflection. When she snapped her membranous pinions shut again she plummeted forward and disappeared underwater, rolling about in the shallows like an unusually active bar of driftwood.

Her rider had plenty of time to watch the spot of color zoom across the bridge toward him. Unlike Saia, his hands were bare, protected mostly by the folding of his arms across his chest. And he shivered where he stood, his brown jacket failing to protect him completely against the Winter like his old green one had. It was another article that needed to be properly replaced at the coming Gather. The cap pulled over his head was woolen and blended a much brighter union of blue and purple, an embroidery of silver string demarcating the lower edge.

His scarf reversed the colors, moonlight-pale with patterns of blue and purple sewn into it. It was all rather bright atop his plain jacket, the thick brown of his pant-legs, and his dark boots. It had been fashioned to fit with his older attire. He had pulled the upper fringe of the scarf over his nose and mouth, but when Saia came soaring towards him he obligingly tucked it down to speak. Of course he still appeared covered, having grown out his black beard for the best possible protection against the chill. His lips lay pale, but a hint of red graced the tip of his nose. He blinked at her request, saying nothing for a few beats.

"No." The Tanrider looked away from her, out to Unath, and his dragon began paddling in to shore. Q'sis bent to retrieve one of the two enormous pails resting by his leg, and one of the towels folded on the ground beside him. The bucket had a letter and number etched into its metal side, and Q'sis had been required to sign that identification on a slate when he left the barracks. He straightened up and pitched the towel at Saia. "You can oil her."

A pentadactyl paw reached out of the water and connected with the cold stone. Unath crawled clear of the lake and flumped down on the stomach, legs splayed away from her body in all directions. Her head and neck came down onto the ground about a foot from Saia, cerulean eyes flashing their inner lids occasionally but showing no sign of fixating on the Candidate. Quick, forceful breaths left her snout in a fitful series, then broke around a sigh. Those jaws, eyes and the partway-sprouted knobs made up a head about as long as Q'sis' volunteer.

The Tan's wings unfolded from her back, finger-like supports cupping the air, then holding still as lakewater ran down the outer edge of the membranes. She held still after that, save for the impressive rise of her forequarters around each slow intake of breath. "Take off your gloves," Q'sis ordered, picking up the second bucket and towel and walking it over around the right side of the languid dragon's head. "Get a good coat of oil on your hands before you start. It will warm up as you work. Use the cloths in the bucket. If she is too wet to get the oil on," and Q'sis gestured to where water stains darkened Unath between her front and hind legs. "Dab her with the towel."

Q'sis looked into the dragon's eye, smiling, rubbing his thumb into the arch of her nascent eyeridge. Then he glanced back at Saia. "You can start with her face," he said, picking up his own bucket again and taking a step from the dragon's forearm to her back. He walked down between her wings, obscured from the sides by the tawny membranes. Turning around so that he faced back toward Unath's head, he laid down the bucket and began wiping the oily cloth along his dragon's spine.

"I would expect it to be," Q'sis said as he climbed the young dragon. "The hat and scarf. It is my mother's work." Unsmiling he ran the oil cloth over Unath's sides up to the perimeter of her wingsails, then worked his dripping fingers between her back ridges. "I will be selling it all at the Gather." Saia he watched with fleeting glances and peripheral studies. He considered her initial interest-- aside from Unath of course --and realized it had been a very long time since he had met any girl properly obsessed with clothing. "I will be replacing it," he soothed accordingly. "With something equally colorful."

At his unspoken command, Unath raised her chin from the ground, displaying the hide at the bottom of her jaw to Saia so she could crawl under and get at it. The dragonskin was softest directly under where her tongue rested in her jaw, and roughened outwards along the bone frame. "Perhaps there was a single hatchling somewhere you missed," Q'sis responded to the news of Fort. "Dalibor would have five of them. The other Weyrs should have hatched at least one." Or perhaps the Tans were peculiar to Dalibor's queens, but Q'sis did not appreciate the thought. Stepping forward, he wrapped the cloth between the natural saddle between the last two neckridges, descending to his knees to coat her from shoulder to shoulder.

The wings propped to his sides would come later. For all the starry speckle of Unath's body, the effect only grew while water still clung to her. Each drop magnified and multiplied the underlying spots. Q'sis massaged the smooth arch of her shoulder with his towel. "The Hatchings here are not immune to violence," he said. He could only assume Fort had something bloody going on lately and Callistath's Hatching had looked peaceful by comparison. It was worrying enough that the queens at an old and traditional Weyr might be managing their offspring as poorly as Dalibors' did. "You would have been better off staying to Fort. Yours will be from Couineth's get, if anything. Her first, so you can't expect a queen egg. You'd be lucky to take one like Unath." He refused the common term for her class, a word he greatly disliked. "There's simply not enough of them for all you girls. Stay near the big eggs."

He slid back off Unath, standing beside her shoulder to burnish the lower half of it. Unath did not respond to the notion that she was lovely. But her rider looked Saia in the eye. "Q'sis," he exchanged belatedly. "Of the North. My friend L'kie is originally from the South, but your hair is most similar to his. Are you by chance related?" He did not quite think her color real, but that had been his reaction to the other, less flagrant redheads. Someday he would discover the root of them all, and why they congregated so at Dalibor.

"It's expected," Q'sis reiterated, dismissing the notion that his mother was especially talented. "You would have to ask her," he continued, locked into a slightly defensive track till he reviewed his own words. "The blue is from Igen. The purple is the same, mixed with a red from High Reaches. As you can guess, the Igen extract is very expensive. High Reaches' is seasonal." He watched the Candidate emerge from beneath Unath. "This stuff might be a little big for you," he observed dryly.

He was back on his knees soon enough, his palm pressed to Unath's larger one, supporting her paw as he oiled underneath. "Unath, put your head down," he murmured when the Tan did not respond to Saia's offer. The dragon dropped her head back to the ground. "I suppose Fort would send away anything they made regardless. Tans are new, but I did not think them isolated." Saia was an awfully curious and welcoming inquisitor concerning the new colors for a Fort transfer. He raised his bearded chin at her. "If you know you will Impress, you will. The only reason you would not Impress is due to some defect or lack of enthusiasm. Age has nothing to do with it."

He sat down with Unath's paw in his lap and began oiling around her talons, fitting a shiny lacquer over each saber-shaped nail. "You misjudge my Unath, I think. To keep a 'dragon like her' alive, you must be very firm and very watchful all the time. She has very little mind beyond what you give her in Impression. It is dangerous." And he was not about to tempt Saia with news of the rewards. "She snuck up on me," he added. An unusual feat for a dragon with very little mind. "It was different from the wher I bonded before."

Unath's eyes transitioned from blue to bottle-green, and though her mouth did not open she emitted a warm hum that changed pitch every so often to create a simple melody. A lot of the noise ran deeper than human hearing, vibrated through the stone and through their bones. The volume never encroached on the conversation, but Q'sis eyed his dragon before finishing off her five-fingered paw and patting the wrist. "It is not a feeling that goes away. But it is sensible to suppress it, so you can get on with your life and don't spend all day looking into her big pretty eyes." Q'sis grinned as he got to his feet.

He stepped forward to attack her ribs, employing his towel judiciously to dry along the musclebound cage. "You do?" Q'sis paused and leaned back to see around Unath, squinting at Saia's hair. "I suppose it is just another kind of thread. You are clever to experiment with it that way." Even if the girl was not Weaverbred, she had to have been influenced by the Hall. "How do you avoid getting it on your skin?"

Q'sis tried to ignore his urge to contemplate the various types of compensation for large things that might occur in the girl's life. She did have Valha's level of diminutiveness. He rubbed his nose in distaste, but at least remembered to use a dry pinch of his towel for it. Unath's dragonsong reverberated under his hands like the purring of a great feline. If dragons were precious stones instead of lifemates, Saia's offering of rarity as a positive characteristic might have been more acceptable to him. As it was, it reminded him of Holdgirls clamoring for the sparingly discovered rocks from the deep northern mines.

"No dragon is perfect, even when they're grown. The Search is only the first of many steps to determine your worth. Those steps do not end at Impression." Of course if Saia was a good girl, she would take a queen, and her challenges would be in the areas of feminine strength: child-rearing and domestic management. Fighting ability would be a pointless bonus. But even queens had to learn the art of Betweening. "It is just that once you have a dragon, your flaws have a much higher chance of being fatal."

He could no longer see Saia, having withdrawn completely behind Unath's shoulder to oil her sides. "I am the living proof of that affair," he called back to her on the matter of second Impressions. Q'sis could hear her well, a good trait in a would-be queenrider, and of course his own volume was always in an audible state. What she had to say did not entirely enthuse him though. "Well that is less clever. Have you paid all your debts to your family?" Though for women it was a simpler matter: they only needed continue seaming and cooking and nannying without causing further incidents. Their closest male relative was responsible for their monetary incursions-- though holders often had differing, less efficient customs than tradebreds. "It's black then, normally?" When not being condemning, Q'sis was entirely capable of being curious.

"I cannot negotiate your intent," Q'sis replied. Unath finally gave a tiny expression of recognition: her facets shifted toward Saia, as signified by a change in the gleam of sunlight off them. She blinked as the wet oil rag ran over her budding eyeridges, then cracked a toothy grin before flexing her inner lids shut. Held tightly in place, the lids proved to be a translucent white barrier to the oil. Even if Saia did manage to lose a drop or two into the eye itself, the dragon would only flick the lids back and the oil would droop out the corner like a tear.

The Tanrider might have been a shade disappointed to find Saia's hair so plain in reality too, but he said nothing of it. And though he approved of her conduct of her repayments, that too did not strike him as dramatic enough to comment on. But his wher, his Qosk...he was happy to speak of her. Unath stopped singing, and whenever Saia's rag rolled over her eyeridges she tilted her head toward the Candidate. "She was a Green," Q'sis said, though knowing Saia was such a connoisseur of color, he would have to elaborate.

He headed back up to Unath's head, joining Saia by the eye she was currently tackling. At first he only grazed Unath's jaw and muzzle with his fingertips, making trails in the oil gloss, but he gradually came around to regard the Candidate with a smile. "I'll show you. Unath..." He knocked on the dragon's eyeridge with a closed fist and the inner lids flicked open, the green maelstrom beyond building to ever-greater strength and speed with him close. "Shh." Q'sis laid his hand over her ridge for a moment. When he took it away, the Tan's facets had become a pristine emerald pool, the only defects a series of paler sunbursts around the fringes.

The man gestured to the palette of shiny green diamonds. "That is the color exactly. She was this green, all over. Then these here at the edges: she was dotted with them around the joints. Her tail was striped but that was hard to see without getting close. She was not the sort anyone got close to but me and my enemies." Unath blinked as his control of her eased, then the darker emerald vacated, replaced by that glowing, fast-whirling lime again. "Good," Q'sis informed her, and she crooned back at him.

He turned back to Saia, though Unath was never long out of his sight. "She was a big strong girl, her head to just above my knee. I admit that before she Ran I thought all whers were about that size. It's a good size. You walk in with that next to you and no one causes you trouble." He rubbed the back of his head in false modesty, smirking. "Though right around when I hit fourteen Turns people stopped giving me trouble anyway. Except my father of course." Q'sis shook his head sharply, as if flicking away a fly. "And only because I let him."

Am I a wher?[/i]

No.

Oh...[/i]

"And she had a brighter green on the back of her wings," he added, wondering why the detail had taken so long to recall. "You know the wild whers get into lots of fights, and they have no healers so their wings always look pretty ragged. On a bonded wher the wings are full and clean, like dragon wings in miniature. They're just not big enough to fly. Qosk had really tiny ones, but I figured they would just end up being targets in a fight anyway." Q'sis gestured to Unath's outstretched wings. "If you look hard, you'll see there's blood all through them. 'Capillaries' like the healers say. They get too much damage too them and they bleed out. Whers are only a little tougher than that." He shrugged.

"Sometimes my enemy was just a big squawking wherry that wanted to gut my draybeasts," Q'sis chuckled. "Or steal one of the children-- they do that you know. They have puny arms, but a small boy..." Q'sis gestured with his hands to about the maximum size for a wherry takeaway. "Snatch 'em right off the side of a wagon."

And this was absolutely not just a threat used to convince children to go to bed rather than running around the camp all night that Q'sis was reappropriating to entertain his Candidate acquaintance. It was not a cheesy alternative to describing the brigands and other undesirables he had met and countered well before any dragon ever paid him heed. Women had to press for those stories. They always had. They would rather hear about a man killing a man than an eight-foot, three-hundred-pound predator that just happened to look silly.

He shook his head. "It's not painful. I dealt with it. Before Unath, even. Since you're asking about when she was alive, it's not going to hurt." When Saia helpfully pointed out the gist of his joke, he smiled indulgently. After wiping his hand off on his towel, he held it just above her head. "Hm." Two could play at obvious remarks, even the ones delivered without words. He lowered his hand. "I think the wilds are a bit shy of humans outside a Run, unless they've been led on with food. Be glad you've never seen one. They are a lot worse than tunnelsnakes or wherries."

Q'sis regarded Saia's face as she strained to pick out the deadly details. His lips parted slightly in brief, wordless surprise at the Candidate's best wishes. "Well, Unath is a big strong girl too," he said after the pause. With an amicable thump to his dragon's snout, he headed back over to her side. As he polished her rear leg, he said: "When you've got all the head and the top of the neck done, come over here and help me finish off the tail's flank. I'll have her lay over on this side after and you can get the belly."

"Really," the Tanrider answered with utmost seriousness. "Two of my siblings were taken by wherries. You can ask my mother. She'll tell you they're dead." Now as to tunnelsnakes, he could almost believe her if she was not so coy about it. The problem with tunnelsnakes was that they could get into a wagon through the smallest crack and curl up with the sleepers inside for warmth. All would be well till morning or an active dreamer's nightly unrest kicked in.

Later, when he was varnishing one hind toe at a time, Q'sis heard Saia's panting and looked her way curiously. When she only called out a question to him, he grinned. "Saia!" the rider called. "You can step up on her arm to reach the top of the neck better, or you can just climb up. You have to get it in the dips between the ridges and you aren't going to do it that way." He looked back down to the toe in his hand, and noticed a split just starting to form at the end of the talon. He put down his rag and pulled out a simple belt-knife. It was not his beloved but confiscated dagger, which he would only have returned upon graduation, but it did make many dragon-related chores easier. At the moment he used it to shave off the jagged elements of the claw-point.

He used his hand to test the smoothness of the remainder, then resumed oiling. Unath had closed her eyes, though her wings remained upright. "She flies by herself next month, and we fly together either then or after Turnover. They have been shuffling our lessons around a bit as the deadglow who taught us got herself burnt up in the fire. Breathe easy that you will have one of the proper riders for Couineth's class." Because certain people were still maintaining that the Fort transfer would Impress sooner rather than later. He was not deluded enough to assume it would be to an appropriate dragon, but she seemed like a nice enough girl...

Q'sis' silence at the girl's sympathetic talk spoke for him. Unath opened one eye and turned her head to look at Saia. She shifted her jaws apart in tiny movements, emitting a few squeaky sounds.

"Don't tease her," Q'sis demanded, and the Tan relaxed back to inactivity. "She likes your voice," he noted for the Candidate's sake, pushing his oil rag across Unath's tail. He could coat the side first, then work over the ridges that continued down to the forked tip. "I was there. I am much stronger than any of the other Weyrlings. It was my duty to assist in taking the victims out, rather than the lighter work. Got a cough but it's gone now." His fingers seemed to be permanently "tanned" at the tips, but he barely noticed, nevermind anyone else. "There was no reason for you to have gone in, however."

He could not be too upset when he had not seen her running about like a headless wherry at the time. She had earned her injuries and hopefully would not be put into a similar situation again. "That's enough on the neck. Come down here and start on these tailridges." He would be spot-checking all her work later anyway.

Q'sis moved out of her way and sat down to oil the flukes at the end. Unath's tail twitched every so often but with him grasping the tips she could not pull it far. Or rather she would not, for it would risk injuring her rider. "That is the sort of attitude that will see you left behind," the Tanrider grumbled. "What do you think lies in the mind of a dragon without its man? Or a queen without her woman? If you die, they will always Between. They cannot suffer loneliness. Yet a hatchling must bear it for all the long minutes it takes to find a suitable partner."

His eyes narrowed at the fluke his oily hands caressed. "These odd clutches at Dalibor will fool you into thinking otherwise. Some of the hatchlings come out demented, like Shirath. They linger. But tradition suggests they are terrified, and hungry. They want only to live. They choose you to live." He raised his eyebrows at the girl. "So if you are just sitting back hoping to cheer on your friends, no hatchling will bother with you. It's not an affair for spectators."

"You can't accidentally upset a dragonet. They're already upset," Q'sis continued impatiently. "It's more like you will upset their mother. When that happens you end up like Calmera-- as good as mauled, though she Impressed anyway for some unknowable reason. That is the proof of what I said earlier. The mother recognized a flaw the infant was blind to. There are no perfect dragons." He let the flukes down and crouched to the other side of the tail to oil it. The work was not as intensive as Saia's attendance of the ridges, and he quickly caught up to her.

The Weyrling scrubbed a water patch that had formed as droplets fell from Unath's wing. They were in the shadow of her mainsails now, and the Bowl felt several degrees colder for the lack of sun. Q'sis tugged on the end of his scarf to tighten it after it had loosened from all his reaching and pushing about. "You are not required to harass one into bonding with you, but you do need focus. There's a difference between believing or hoping you will Impress, and knowing you will. It's not a difference defined solely by arrogance." His lips twitched at a smile, but did not see it through.

He watched her work, tilting his head to follow the motion of her hand between the ridges. "But I shouldn't expect so much from you," he decided, and what annoyance he had for her objections departed. "Give me your hand." He stuck out his, not bothered by the inevitable exchange of oil. "Feels pretty warm when you are touching the dragon, but the air is cold enough. At least the wind is short of breath today. Trick is, I usually do the oiling inside." Q'sis smirked. "Are your fingers going to fall off soon or can you go on, Saia? We can take a break if you need it."

The Tanrider watched his assistant as much as he listened to her, checking her grin against her vocal tone, her words against her visible sincerity. His hand boasted a shell of warmth around hers very like his dragon's ever-heated hide, and though crossed by old rough spots had softened considerable under the daily enactment of their current task. He had a habit of tapping his clipped forefinger against things that he could not suppress, though not everyone appreciated the grazing of that damaged part. When she mentioned the queens by their primary duty, his gaze went from her fingers to her face. He grinned at the follow-up.

"I might almost argue there are more important reasons to keep a nose than mere Impression," he chuckled, releasing her hand. "Go on, step back." Once Saia was at a safe distance, Q'sis looked up the smooth line of dragon parts to Unath's head, though there was no hope of seeing it while he was so far behind her. "Alright, bring the wings in and roll over woman," he demanded. Unath, her eyes still closed, did exactly as ordered. She flexed in her wings to graceful alignment against her back, then shoved her stomach from the ground with a gravelly pump of her front and rear right legs. Her left wing was not quite pinned by the movement, but it could not longer expand out.

The Tan extended her rear legs out straight, long poles of bone and muscle. The three talons on each foot fanned out as she strained into the stretch so vigorously her legs quivered. She scratched her chest with one of her hand-like forepaws, yawning hugely, then fell still. Q'sis, his hand resting at her knee, watched the dragon for a few seconds before waving Saia to her next target. "Don't tickle her too much," he advised. "She gets twitchy. She's a a lush for oil, but not all of them are the same. Some get very impatient, which is problematic when you're taking care of it alone." He sat back down at Unath's tail, this time to scrub the underside.

Of course Q'sis would have preferred she valued sight and hearing above all other possibilities, but he did not indulge much in hypotheticals. When finished with the tail, he hooked a leg over it and got his footing on the shiny dragonhide, then climbed to Unath's flank. He suspended his bucket over his arm, but poured small amounts of the oil over the Tan in places to make his work quicker. He was a sharp measure of quantity and space, and none of the drippings went to excess.

"They are, aren't they. Positively giddy if they've not a dragon of their own," he said as he advanced on his knees, lower pantlegs getting soaked till they were as good as the bucket rags. No matter, at least while he was on the warm pedestal of Unath. Where Saia's reach failed he leaned down and met the gleaming line she left with his own. "Why, the noble populace of Crescent will suffer a rain of dragons at Turnover, yet they will not be allowed touch of a single one." Q'sis smirked. He would remedy that. For a fee.

Unath exhaled a whistle as his boot-toe ground a spot between her two lowest ribs, and her long hindlegs bent at the knee and her powerful feet motored. "There's the tickle," Q'sis noted, but moved on before the Tan accidentally kicked Saia away. When he had finished the side, he crouched to observe the Candidate's progress on the longer work of the belly and lower neck. He actually sat down with his legs dangling over the slope of Unath's forearm, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

He climbed back up, and commanded his dragon back onto her freshly sparkling stomach. As she moved he walked up, bracing himself to the front of her wing till he could pivot around the leading edge and onto her back. "And now just the wings," Q'sis offered brightly as he slipped off her leg, the membranous limb flashing out above him and Saia, then slowly descending till the underside of the membrane was within reach. Q'sis soaked his rag in the bucket. Unath cupped the wing, trapping her body heat inside with them. "Where the sail meets the arm and spar: that is where it's truly needed. Fear not this blanket of dragon. Better to be strategic. Besides, I guarantee when we are done she will flap her wings and ruin our work anyway."

"I expect Weyrbreds get sick of dragons in general. I visit the creche here sometimes; the children make models of holds, caravan wagons, and other locations and objects found outside the Weyr. At an older Weyr like Benden, the effect must only be encouraged by generations of acclimation to dragonside life." He spread just enough oil on Unath's wing to coat it. Any overdose would have immediately dripped back onto him. "There are probably people whose lineage goes back to the beginning of Weyrs, but who never rode dragons. So they are suited to being drudges." He shrugged. "They are happy enough to continue working. That is all they are needed to do."

Supposedly women appreciated Weyrs more than Holds. Q'sis could believe it. Weyrs permitted them to act out in all manner of strange and horrible ways without reprimand, to forget that they were women at all. The failed Candidates usually stayed on. Why using failures to run one's kitchens and stores was a good idea escaped him. "Every day, still, though some days I only do the creased parts of the hide. Unath does not recognize where she is flaking. I have to look every time."