For The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors (DW)

Ten minutes.

Braele had, begrudgingly, been given less than a quarter of a candlemark to jog quickly down to the wherhandler's quarters and return the stacks of hide she had borrowed during her time as a dual candidate to study on and with. Privately, she rather thought it wouldn't hurt for dragonriders to do a bit more studying about their night-dwelling kin, but Kundalith had responded to this thought with a derisive snort she figured was rather standard for most of dragonkind. It was not a sentiment she shared, and it seemed all the more rather unforgivingly impolite to Braele to have a drudge deliver the documents, as if somehow confirming Kundalith's opinion that dragonriders—or dragonriders-to-be, Braele figured—had better things to do than deal with whers and their handlers.

Crock of nonsense. Braele had told him firmly, and he had responded only by giving her that look she was becoming all too familiar with—dismissive and ever-so-faintly patronizing. They would work on that, the tall girl thought grimly. She was as stubborn (she hoped) as the steadfast burgundy, and they would work on it.

Her nightvision, in the time since she Impressed the muscled hatchling who had knocked her down, had depreciated a bit, but the dragon woke her up as often as not in the middle of the night, with pangs of hunger he didn't acknowledge but that she felt, and she had retainedsome of it. But when she saw, just ahead, the small figure coming almost nose to nose with the wheret she'd seen, up close, shred skin with nary a second thought, she thought surely her nightvision must not be as good as she believed, because no little would get so close. The surprise had her faltering in her slow jog, and had she still the hides in her hands that she had just delivered, they would have scattered with the sharp intake of breath that accompanied the observation.

And then they were moving again, in automatic response to the shriek that smacked into the walls and rebounded, reverberated, echoed and continued in volume piercingly high. She felt Kundalith's head snap up, the growl in his throat even as she swooped forward, Calm she ordered, him and herself, and he, not being prone to spikes in emotion, settled himself, but lowered his wedged head to the ground of the barracks like a snake, as though he might strike at the unseen threat, far and well below him. But there was no panicked alarm in him because there was none in Braele, only caution, and tension, and that too eased as Braele reached the little with a skittering heartbeat she hardly recognized as her own and gathered him tight and close in her arms, as if he might be safe there, cool eyes taking in the pools of red that poured over them and immediately re-evaluating her initial decision to lift him to her shoulders, where even the quickly-growing brown would have trouble jumping.

But jump he probably could, and Braele thought it more effective, for the moment, to shield, and her arms shifted around the child to cover as much as she could, pressing him tight and taking stock of injury and vulnerable points to be guarded with ferocity. Neck. Stomach. Safe—what had been hurt? Arm. Her heart pounded in horror but her mind was, as it always was, as unrattled as a pool of water, and Kundalith followed her thoughts with the same calm, Shall I come? Good grief, wouldn't that just get her on the good side of the much tasked weyrlingmasters. No. Randiel's presence still hadn't registered, though she heard him, dimly, and her eyes may have met his once, and silently she acknowledged his role in preventing something worse, and there was an apology there because she was not going to stick around to chat about it, as she was already backing away with the little one tight in her arms, and it didn't occur to her to murmur anything comforting to child or handler.

She recognized Nadysk first, and for a moment, thought perhaps he was simply being, as he had been for her though not nearly as dramatically, a hero, but then she remembered the little figure playing in the waves with two bugs she could see now were engaged in battle, and she breathed a surprised, "Aydan," looking at him for the first time. It wasn't her place, but the hand that had been shielding his neck lifted, confident that Nadysk would not allow it to come to harm, to stroke the boy's hair, as she at last remembered that he was a child, and she murmured, low and warm like sun-soaked water, even as her mind tried to figure the quickest route to the healers, "It'll be alright."