Azhdarchid
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Post by Azhdarchid on Aug 10, 2011 22:44:14 GMT -5
When he was little, Lexony had dreamed himself crawling the ancient labyrinth of Fort Weyr. Of course, in such dreams he had usually been accompanied by a dragon capable of being properly enormous, yet somehow small enough to accompany him through the dark, dead corridors that guarded the dragonriders' history. He had imagined himself encountering strange dragonish creatures-- not whers of course, they were always much more beautiful and ethereal than whers --and certain objects of great importance. He never remembered what the objects were, or why they were important. Just that he had found them. That was why it was a dream.
Full-grown, Lexony did not remember why the uninhabited tunnels of a Weyr gave him a thrill, but that did not stop a grin from rising to his face when he finally got a day to visit Dalibor's. Unlike Fort-- or how he imagined Fort to be --the natural corridors supposedly did not run so deep he would be put out of all contact with the rest of the Weyr. But he armed himself accordingly: two glows strapped on each hip, and one opened basket dangling from his hand. His chore involved hunting as well, so he had appropriated a snake stick and a bag. The stick was a simple device he had been well accustomed to, with handles at one end that contracted a set of tunnelsnake-piercing pincers at the other. The bag was simply to collect the corpses.
Lexony had not seen any tunnelsnakes yet. The walls curved gently, not square or even like the cut stone at Fort. When he passed his hand along the rock he could feel a sandy grain under his palm. The Candidate was thoroughly entertained, and he had not even gone very far. Everyone in the Weyr was still on a semi-official search for missing buckets, or for those that perpetrated the disastrous events two sevendays prior. The tunnels were highly unlikely sanctuaries, even if the perpetrators were snakes.
Yet at that very moment, like his thought awakened it, Lexony detected a human's scuffling. Tunnelsnakes slithered, they rasped and hissed and sometimes rattled, but they could not make the uneven beats human feet did against the ground. A watchwher might have been a possibility, except it was mid-afternoon, and watchwhers were silent. Stopping, listening, Lexony tried to count how many pairs of feet were involved. But it sounded like only the one. That was more curious than alarming; his light did not cover all the space between him and the source of the sound. He advanced at a walk till the mystery revealed itself, or till he found out he had started dreaming again.
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Chek
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Post by Chek on Aug 17, 2011 18:19:00 GMT -5
Rennin didn’t expect company, not as deep in the tunnels as she was. That was the advantage of following dust, dust usually undisturbed by all but the little slithery prints of tunnelsnakes, because where there was dust, there were not people, and usually there was no reason for people. Areas like this one, a tiny little offshoot in the tunnel, barely more than a dip in the wall, were ideal for what she was there for.
“I don’t know, I don’t think the blue came out as deep as it did last time,” Rennin murmured quietly to the wall even as she ran the mentioned blue paint across the flank of a charcoaled dragon. “Well, no, I didn’t have enough to…no, I know I need to find something that grows better here for the color. It’s hard enough that I’m almost out of yellow.” Her painting was all together sparing with color, and not just the off-color blue or yellow. Black and reddish orange spilled from a cave opening created from a natural hole in the rock, with a glow washed with thin red paint inside casting a dull, threatening illumination.
Dragons, spread-winged in the air in and around the charcoal smoke were blips of startling color, when everything else was depicted in start black lines, from the people in the bucket line to the crowd of healers around covered and hurt semi-stick figures near the lake. She daubed a little red there, thoughtfully, “I think that adds something to it, don’t you?” She glanced mournfully down at her sad, near empty little paint pots, “A little is all I can manage, though. I’m sorry I can’t give you a little more color.”
A tiny head, pale in the dim light from the glow basket in the floor, lifted itself out of her hood, and Oracle chirped, her eyes swirling from a sleepy yellow-green to an agitated red-orange in the time it took to take a breath. The flitter struggled free and took to the air, darting down the hallways towards an approaching light.
There was someone down here! Rennin glanced at her painting, then ducked to gather her paint pots into her pockets, fumbling with them, her sack and snakestick and her dim basket of glows. She covered the glow basket, plunging herself into near darkness, lit only by the dull red light of the painted glow in the wall behind her.
The brighter light reached the edge of her little offshoot and she froze, watching for the person who was definitely coming her way in the hopes they wouldn’t notice her.
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
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Post by Azhdarchid on Aug 21, 2011 12:47:55 GMT -5
He saw eyes in the dark. Eyes that flashed and whirled, enraged as any pierced tunnelsnake's, but advancing swiftly, and through the air. He did the sensible thing: he ducked. Wing-beaten wind scurried up the back of his neck, and he lunged forward out of his crouch at a run.
"Who's there?" he barked, for where there was a firelizard hanging out in the blackness, it would not be by its lonesome. Furthermore, the fact that whoever it was had seen fit to send a flitter to slow him suggested there was in fact suspicious activity afoot. Lexony steadied his grip on the snakestick, his only weapon, and his unfittingly warm brown eyes searched the walls. He saw the side-passage, but the red glimmer in it was obfuscated by his own glow. At first he passed it by, slowing in the main hall.
Then the ex-guard returned, raising his glowbasket in front of his face so the tunneler could not make him out, but he could see her. Three steps into the niche and he dropped the held basket back to his side, underlit face a dramatic mask of surprise. He tapped the snakestick against his leg, then noticed the similar device beside the frozen girl. "Aren't you a Candidate?" he asked. He might have seen her in a class, or maybe just scooting by in the commons, but he did not know her name.
He pulled up the 'basket again to get a better view of the mural on the wall. For the first time, his surprise gave way to amusement. "Heh. That's really good. I like the--" There was a pause as he realized the nature of the scene. As a man who had been in the sky at the time, he thought it grisly in its accuracy. Lexony's lips thinned as he hooked the glow he was carrying to his belt beside the others. Then he offered his freed hand to the girl. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you," he said, smiling and canting up his eyebrows in his best puppy-like forgiveness plea. "I thought uh...well, it doesn't matter what I think, because I am clearly a deadglow." He poked at his temple with the tip of the snakestick.
Lexony glanced back at the painting, crescents of glow-light hanging at the bottom of each dark iris. "It is good. Very much what they call 'technically accurate.'" And completely, assuredly inappropriate, but he would not be the one to say so. "You'll have to wash it off though, if they ever build down here." They were many dragonlengths from the current extent of Daliborian civilization, so there might be a wait involved. "I'm Lex," he said in extension of yet another olive branch. The girl's ears and eyes held his attention for longer than other parts of her. She was boyish, but he had plenty enough experience with boyish girls to separate them from the real thing. But those eyes and ears-- he had not seen features in quite that shape or arrangement before. He tried not to appear like he was staring. "You were talking to that firelizard, weren't you? There's no one else here?"
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Chek
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Post by Chek on Sept 14, 2011 16:58:17 GMT -5
Rennin had started to sag in relief when at first the other tunnel-roamer had passed her by, preparing to make best her escape by lighting off in the opposite direction – and then he came back, looking like nothing so much as a man-shaped blob in the darkness, highlighted here and there with spots of color where the glows didn’t totally blind her to his appearance. A distant park or her brain mused that is would be an interesting image to paint if she could find something suitable to make yellow pigment out of…
“Yes, I’m a Candidate.” She murmured quietly, almost too quietly to be heard if it wasn’t for the surrounding silence of the tunnels. She watched him, head and body subtly turned away, as he noticed an examined the mural she’d been working on, clenching her jaw when he realized what the scene was actually of – it was an uncomfortable image to be found painting.
She leaned down to scoop up her snakestick, looking back up in time to see him extending his hand in greeting. She cocked her head, thinking about it for a moment, his immediately previous words having washed over her – processed, but not really listened to – and then started to return the greeting with a paint spattered hand just in time for Oracle to return, eyes blazing red, and settle on the outstretched hand.
Around her throat, Rennin had painted the words, “DO NOT TOUCH” in a stark inky color that stood out against the pale, pale green hide. Oracle chirped sweetly at Lex, daring him to defy the written warning, her red eyes and the previous attack the only warning as to her true nature. Rennin sighed, but didn’t move her hand again. After all, she didn’t need any bites today either.
Ignoring the flitter on her hand for the moment, she glanced back over her shoulder when he commented on the mural again, “Words aren’t always the best records,” she commented quietly, “No one has to try hard to see what happened, this way.” She ran a hand through her short hair, self consciously covering her ears as best she could and casting her eyes down in response to the focus of his gaze. “Rennin,” she said in reply to his offering of his name, “Oracle isn’t very good for conversation, but there are no other people here.”
Evasive, but it tended to be difficult to explain her conversational habits without making her look crazy.
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Azhdarchid
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Post by Azhdarchid on Sept 20, 2011 20:14:43 GMT -5
The Candidate did not reply immediately to Rennin's offered logic, brown eyes traversing the paint-filled hollows of the wall one more time. He had retracted his hand when Oracle blocked Rennin from taking it. No matter how sweet on him the Green sounded, he knew better than to trust a beast's words over its master's. Oracle's blood-colored eyes did little to salve the distance. The corners of Lexony's mouth worked at a smile out of politeness, but his lips had pressed together thin and straight at the middle. A tightening of his jaw strained the cheer from his cheeks till he looked back at the other would-be dragonrider.
"I'm sure it makes you feel better too," he said at last, breaking his tension on reasonableness. This was another time where his absence from the bulk of the fiery massacre meant he could not view it like the other Candidates did. He could not hope to embrace the impact of it as they had. And he knew people had all sorts of ways of meeting grief; Rennin's was comparatively beautiful, and he had no reason to judge it against her. He was acting rather poorly himself, to gawk so openly as to incite her to cover up those interesting features. "You were assigned to this route too?" he surmised, gesturing to her snake-stick with his own. "In that case maybe you should come with me for now and we can make a good show of catching a few pests."
Lexony eased open another of the glowbaskets at his hip, peeling the metal lid away from the caged fungi at a slow enough rate that he thought would not bother Rennin. "We might get in trouble with the Candidatemaster otherwise," he explained. He suspected Rennin might respond better to that notion than one of duty-- but there he was, assuming again. He shook his head slightly as he turned and advanced out of the side-tunnel. The progress was experimental, and he had to stop and look back to see if Rennin was even following.
He was thankful his doubled light did not reach far enough to illuminate anything but the edges of the mural from this distance. "I think I've seen more firelizards here in two sevendays than I have in...the rest of my life," he concluded in a laugh. "And dragons too, of course." Like dragons were merely some side-effect of flits! Awful. Lexony sighed at himself. "I'm a people-- I mean, a person. So you can talk to me if you want now."
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Chek
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Post by Chek on Sept 26, 2011 17:16:38 GMT -5
Rennin hummed in agreement, watching Lexony’s face discreetly in fascination – the expressiveness of the human face always interested her, and his was revealing so much while revealing so little. And watching him look at the mural on the wall was an excellent example. She touched the charcoal in her pocket and memorized his expression – it was an interesting one, and she’d enjoy sketching it out.
“I missed everything, I was here in the tunnels – this is all from…what I was told. I helped with cleanup…but that would be a terrible thing to put on a wall. The wall wouldn’t deserve that.” The last few words were murmured under her breath as she touched the painted entrance to the dining cavern. She shook her head, freeing herself with relative ease from the memories of the things she saw in the burnt-out kitchen and dining hall, and answered the question with a little more awareness and firmness than she’d thus far displayed, “Yes, my route is,” she waggled the hand with Oracle loosely in the air, “strange. I walk the length of this tunnel, and then take the left turn to circle back to habitable areas near the wherhandler’s quarters.” She looked at her empty sack, and sighed, “Oracle has been eating and hiding every tunnelsnake we’ve seen.”
No one believed you if you showed up with an empty sack. It always ended in more chores.
Apparently, Lexony knew that too, if his further comment about the Candidatemaster was anything to go by. She wavered for a moment, but bowed to the inevitable. Perhaps tempting him to get within reach of her teeth would distract Oracle sufficiently to catch a few tunnelsnakes?
Talking to people was strange. You couldn’t just walk away from them, like she could when the wall or a rock started getting uppity or nasty. People could follow you. In this instance, Rennin was the one following, though, catching up with the other Candidate when he paused and looked back at her, falling in a little behind him to keep him in view.
“I’d never seen so many either. Only my cousin ever...” she paused, then continued on a different track, “Harper Hall had a lot of them coming and going, but I…usually didn’t see many.” It was unclear whether she was talking about flitters or dragons, but she didn’t seem to notice. Both were equally true.
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Azhdarchid
Jr. Weyrwoman
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 2, 2011 21:59:44 GMT -5
"No, the wall would not." Lexony was very good at a stoic face, but his smile crept into his voice. Rennin had an odd way of speaking, but it fit into the pattern of finding her alone in the dark, painting masterpieces no one could see. He had known more than a few drudges with similarly unique tendencies, though Rennin's was nice in that it did not involve anything destructive-- to herself, or to others. He was trying not to display too much amusement when she was clearly not entirely enthused by her own talent for visualization where the fire and its aftermath were concerned. "Oh, I did not realize," he continued, this time on the matter of the flit.
Oracle did not look very big, just very vicious. "I am sure we can find a few that are too large for her down here. She might be content on a nibble." He had always thought a firelizard might get too weighed down if her meal was too expansive. It certainly happened to wherries; it was hardly necessary to breed small wings when the birds were too fat to fly most of the time. But he knew very little about firelizards, or dragons.
He had watched a tiny (relatively tiny) Pink consume no less than three herdbeast bulls not a day ago and then rocket off into the sky as if the consumed meat had all gone between rather than down her gullet. Apparently it had been a mating Flight, because several of the males around the grounds at the time followed, and Lexony-- well, it had been distracting. And yet he still managed to wonder if the fighter wasn't supposed to blood the kills before she Flew, or if that was only necessary for the queens.
The young man smiled at Rennin when she caught up. "Is your cousin a harper?" he asked, having an ear for tiny details. Advancing down the tunnel, he soon came into a mass of crawler webs which he batted down with his snake-stick.
The crawler living there rattled out of the way, about the size of his palm and navy blue, with six silver-striped legs. It hissed at him, and when he started walking again always stayed about two paces ahead of his glows' halo, hissing at him every time his advance forced it to move. "Oracle can have that if she wants," he advised Rennin after a few minutes of this treatment. "Is the Harper Hall at Fort the one you're referring to? I'm from there. I mean, from Fort."
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Chek
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Post by Chek on Oct 4, 2011 16:33:52 GMT -5
Rennin wasn’t entirely sure that her new companion wasn’t deeply, deeply underestimating Oracle’s ferocity, but resigned herself to letting Lexony discover it for himself the first time the flit shredded something into tiny, tiny pieces. “I can hope. Perhaps we’ll find a nest – she can’t devour them all at once, I suppose. It might be our only chance.”
She considered her flitter for a moment, the tiny thing perched on her shoulder and trembling with, as Rennin was able to pull from her incredibly focused little mind, the desire to devour Lexony’s eyes. Where her flit had gained his obsession with eyes, she’d never know, but she soothed Oracle while denying her desires firmly. “Eating people’s eyes is rude,” she whispered to the flit quietly.
Lexony’s question dragged her attention back, at least somewhat. “No, my cousin married into a Weyr. Much of my family didn’t think to well of him after that,” she said quietly as she watched him clear up the crawler webs. With an eye for a bare spot of wall that looked ideal for painting, she continued, still quietly, “Technically, I’m the Harper.”
Oracle hissed in her ear, and she turned in time to catch the offer of the crawler – Oracle didn’t wait a moment longer, diving and landing on the pest in a flurry of wings and teeth. She didn’t eat it – no, she ripped it to pieces, flinging blue bits of pest all across the hallway in an explosion of gory delight. The green went so far as to roll around in her victim once it was good and dead.
Rennin watched her flitter’s antics patiently, “Fort Harper Hall, yes. I stayed in the Archives, so I don’t really have much familiarity with the area though. Other than from maps. I’m sorry.”
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Azhdarchid
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 6, 2011 16:51:05 GMT -5
"Sorry?" Lexony mumbled, but he heard Rennin quite well. He peeked over his shoulder at Oracle, brown eyes wide, but a smile toying with his lips. "But they're not even pretty. Can't I keep them?" he pleaded with the flit. When Oracle responded by zooming off her bonded' shoulder, straight at him, Lex cowered, hands-over-head, and silently cursed himself a few hundred times for trying to joke a wher-hearted firelizard. He only became aware that Oracle had not been interested in him at all when a couple crawler legs bounced off his arms, leaving gooey blue ichor patches on his shirt. The Candidate poked his head up, blinking and fixing his mouth around words that never came as the green firelizard splashed through the remains of her-- could it even be called a meal?
Being ever the intelligent and thoughtful man, the ex-guard managed to utter a comment: "...what?" It was Rennin's steadfast continuation of the conversation that pulled him out of his bewilderment and got him moving again. He sidled around Oracle's bloody victory pit with his back pressed to the wall, then turned to watch Rennin in the event that the firelizard was dangerous to more than strangers. That would be an interesting defense, warring off a creature that could disappear and reappear behind him at whim. It probably would not be much of a defense at all. For a brief moment Lexony had a vision of a coup by the firelizards of Pern, the entire world's flock swarming into every Hold.
Only the Weyrs would be safe, and only then if the flits simply did not pick apart the riders because of the dragons' presence. He bit the inside corner of his lip and wrinkled his eyebrows at himself. "I didn't know anybody at a Weyr got married," he said, naivete before logic. "But it can't be the worst thing. Dragonriders are our heroes." But even Lexony spilt reservation in his voice. He was sure that with the addition of Thread in the next Turn, any oddities associated with the riders or even Dalibor in particular would be forgiven worldwide.
He pointed at the massacre Oracle had left strewn about the tunnel. "If we don't find anything deeper, we can come back in a bit and they'll be massing on that." He glanced over Rennin's face, admiring her reserve, and smiled briefly before moving along. "You don't have to apologize for anything. I certainly don't need much help finding my way around Fort...at least I hope I don't."
Lexony stopped again soon enough. "Hear them?" he asked. The tunnel ahead was broadcasting a whole symphony of tantalizing rustles. He adjusted his grip on his snake-stick and turned the pinning points on the end out ahead of him, opening one of his bags. When the first slippery shadow manifested on the edge of the light, it immediately crawled out of range. Most of the 'snakes behaved in a similar fashion, worming away from his advance along floor and walls and ceiling like a film of black skin peeling off the rock.
The tunnel split, and the 'snakes picked their poison. Lexony kept moving left, leaving the rightward fork alone for now. And at last there came a tunnelsnake that did not flee. It rotated its armored head upside-down as it considered them, its body fixed in parts to the ceiling and the wall. It was as thick as his wrist, with shrunken eyes that nonetheless whirled visibly crimson. Its neck and head protruded out into the corridor, but the rest of its coils were firmly entrenched against the stone. It very slowly realigned its foresection with the intruders. Its thick skin was a rusted orange-brown, but there was a bright purple blot on its forehead. There was a green encrustation on its lower jaw, dripping from the corner of its mouth.
Lexony frowned. "Right. Let's try the other way."
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Chek
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Post by Chek on Oct 10, 2011 18:13:21 GMT -5
Rennin figured that Lexony had a better idea of Oracle’s character and abilities after that little display – the way he kept an eye on the frolicking green flitter as he edged around her mess lent credence to the theory. She let him get a few more steps ahead, more to give Oracle time to finish wallowing in her victory than to give Lexony space, then carefully stepped over the mess, bending and scooping up the by-then rolling firelizard as she went. She got a bite for her trouble, but it was lackluster for an Oracle bite.
“I think it depends on the individual’s background. My cousin married a cook, not a rider. I think the family would have accepted it more if it had been a rider, because they do have a valuable function…” she trailed off, not actually sure what the family would have thought. Terrible to have a Trader run off for a stonewaller, but would the inclusion of a dragon have made things better? It was one of those questions that made her wonder how the family would view her actions – though she regretted nothing.
She let herself be distracted, glancing back at the ex-crawler puddle, “Yes, I suppose that is true. They do seem to cluster anywhere Oracle and I are for any length of time, especially once Oracle has had…a snack or two. She’s a bit messy.”
Following along behind her companion, Rennin heard the tunnelsnakes when he did, and from the way Oracle started vibrating, projecting thoughts of ichor and excitement, Rennin knew Oracle heard, and likely smelled, them too. She tucked the green into her elbow and readied her snake-stick even as she quietly followed Lex into the left branch of the tunnel, watching the slithering masses retreating before their advance just beyond the light of the glows.
She stopped when Lexony did, stepping to one side to examine the large tunnelsnake that barred their path. Oracle was trembling now, not in fear, but with barely restrained violence, her claws starting to cut into skin under the fabric of Rennin’s jacket. Slowly, Rennin shifted her hold on the flit, shifting the gripping claws onto her forearm and tapping Lex’s foot with her snake-stick to have him step aside. She extended the arm that was Oracle’s perch, and the green latched eyes whirling a violent, vicious red on her prey.
“Go, Oracle.” The green betweened from her owner’s arm and reappeared, screaming, behind the massive tunnelsnake’s head, latching teeth and claws into it’s spine and beginning to rip away at the monstrous thing, easily three or more times her size. It flailed and thrashed, biting at it’s tormentor, but Oracle knew how to attack tunnelsnakes, especially big ones –she swung her tail around to crack against it’s eyes like a tiny whip whenever that dangerous mouth got near her body, and kept her wings open and flailing to add to the confusion.
The snake dropped from the ceiling, forcing Oracle to let go and between away to avoid getting landed on, and Rennin took a few placid steps down the hallways and swung her snake-stick, cracking the thing upside the head before it could get a bite in on her flitter, and therefore dazing it enough for Oracle to safely resume the attack, ripping the armored hide off the back of it’s head in chunks, splattering green ichor everywhere.
Rennin calmly stabbed at the body and legs of the snake, keeping it confused, unable to focus totally on one attacker, until finally Oracle, squealing in glee, broke through the tough skin and muscle and started worrying bone, gnawing and pulling violently on the snake’s vertebra until, jerking and twitching, it finally started to go still, paralyzed but still alive. For the moment.
“If we can get it away from her, we can finish it off and bag it,” Rennin told Lexony idly, already looking for the next tunnelsnake, sounding like having a monumental battle with a massive tunnelsnake was an everyday, and even boring, occurrence. “But the noise may have scared them into their holes for the moment – we probably will have luck the other way, like you said.”
((OOC: ORACLE MURDERS EVERYTHING, AZH. EVERYTHING.))
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Azhdarchid
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azhct[M:-1490]
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Post by Azhdarchid on Oct 19, 2011 22:04:41 GMT -5
Was her entire family made of Lord Holders? Master Crafters? Most Pernese did not sound out against marriages with those of minor skilled occupation. Even drudges had a function. Marrying into a Weyr might not be ideal, but dragonriders and their ilk needed support more than anyone in the coming Turns. Lexony paused his own thoughts on the belated realization that he was here now, seeking to become one of said riders. The elusive and the strange. Changed men. The Weyrfolk would be his pillar too. Just ask anyone how enjoyable the food had been since the fire, without an immediate resurgence of cooking.
Yet none of these musings did Lexony voice, and he could hardly fault Rennin for her family's ugly opinions. He was taking the slight personally too-- his grandparents were still kneading meatrolls in Fort to this very day, as far as he knew. An unpleasant hitch started in his chest at the lack of verification. It was entirely possible, given the demands of riders during the Pass, that a similar fate would befall his knowledge of Eywren and Lexen. But more likely, if he could only manage Impression and survive the training, he could have them brought. If Eywren would be brought.
The young man said nothing for Oracle's second spectacle of mortality. He had already come to terms with the firelizard's hunting temperament. He saw the clever utilization of her tail, and did not interrupt when Rennin moved forward to aid her. When he finally did speak, it was only in praise:
"And to think the kennelmen wanted me to take one of their pups-in-training along. It would have been bitten thrice over by now. She is quite dashing in her cleverness." Lexony opened a pouch at his belt and pulled out a lukewarm meat roll. It had been intended as tunnelsnake bait. He tossed it over the breathing carcass of Oracle's victim, and the firelizard would have to fly off a good ten feet to massacre the pastry.
A little less enthused, he gestured to Rennin's hand once he had let the sacrifice fly. "She bit you?" When the girl had held out her arm, he thought he had seen the evidence. "It can't be easy to discipline a flit," Lex thought aloud. Tough skin, and betweening away from anything they did not care for, firelizards operated permanently by their own whimsy. As he understood it they did not even necessarily take to death alongside their owners, so the bond had to be more a token offering of companionship than anything real. He did not see Rennin as sharing much in common with her little monster. "But I heard they will obey dragons."
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Chek
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Post by Chek on Oct 28, 2011 16:55:28 GMT -5
“She’s dangerous because she’s clever – she wants to kill things all the time, and she thinks only because it makes her better at it.” Rennin almost sounded sad as she said it, “And it’s nearly impossible to keep her aimed at something rather than someone all the time. But yes, she is a much better hunting companion than any kennelhound – no fear, you see.”
Oracle was distracted slightly from her prey as the piece of meat roll went sailing over her head – she turned to follow it’s descent, but then turned back to shoot the human who’d thrown it a look, twittering at him in obvious disgust before turning back to her prey. As if she’d take a little bit of not-meat and cooked-meat over fresh, living-meat. Except that the tunnelsnakes would take it – Oracle might not want it, but it was an offering to her, that made it hers, and no tunnelsnake would be allowed to have it.
At the first slither, she lifted off and, shrieking her warcry, attacked the first pest who dared take her offering, ripping it apart in an instant before moving on to the next. Rennin calmly scooped up the dying tunnelsnake, cracked it’s head on the floor to finish it off, and offered it to Lexony. “Here. I think we could just follow her down the hallway and easily pick up enough pieces to please the Candidatemaster.”
She rubbed the bite on her hand, “Like I said, it’s sometimes hard to keep her aimed away from people – but since she’s mine, I have to try. Even if it means loosing pieces – she’s a bit like a tiny, flying, hateful wher, I think. And I’ve never seen her willingly obey a dragon – she just avoids them. I don’t want to even think about the type of dragon she’d willingly obey.”
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Azhdarchid
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Post by Azhdarchid on Nov 5, 2011 12:02:03 GMT -5
"I stand corrected," Lexony answered with soft retreat as Rennin filled in all the jagged parts of his pedestal for Oracle. Apologizing to her would be rude, a way of dismissing whatever efforts she had put in to garner a firelizard egg in the first place. Suggesting something to do with the Green was beyond his knowledge. Firelizards did not bond so strongly as dragons-- that much was in evidence when one of the little beasts had gotten snapped up by a wherry at Western, and the owner moped for a mere day or two. But even if there were some method of turning them out prematurely, Rennin might consider it irresponsible. She seemed cognizant of the flit's every malevolent twist, like a herder would know their most hot-blooded stock.
Perhaps if they were not so much in Oracle's element, the other Candidate might not have had to suffer this pessimistic conversation. "Let's follow her then," he agreed, taking the offered portion of the snake and dropping it in his bag. "I did not mean to preoccupy you with concern," the young man added, for Rennin's casting-off of the appropriate dragon for Oracle management sounded dire. "It is no good to doubt a dragon unHatched. Impression will strengthen you, too. Where else do the riders acquire their ah, swagger?" Lexony grinned. "Oracle may hear you better then. But there is little I can do but pester you about it I suppose, so I shall sentence myself to silence in the matter." Or altogether, it seemed, for as another tunnelsnake shriek rocketed out of the darkness ahead, Lexony tucked away his smile and advanced down the stony corridor.
He left the bulk of the pieces for Rennin, as it was her firelizard doing all the hard work. When they had passed through the Weyr's guts and come back to that first forked path, Lexony turned around to face his newest acquaintance. "If you want to go back to painting, give me your bag and I will turn it in for you. But take this." He unclasped one of the glows from his hip and carried it down the colorful inlet where Rennin had been working. His shadow loomed huge against the painted fires as he set it on the floor. "And these." He pulled off his snakecatcher's gloves, simply wherhide meant for just about any man's hand. The wrists had already been saggy when he was wearing them-- they would be enormous on Rennin. But the fingertips could still be pulled tight.
And the wherhide would be tough against both cold and flit bites. "See you soon, Rennin."
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