Will-o-the-Wisp [Kireon]

[Azhdarchid]

After the brief sizzle of Gather-day and its aftermath, the grasslands icing Western's forests had settled with a moist, gray air that smelled constantly of rain. Each time enough clouds coalesced to shed a little deadweight, bundles of wildflowers dotting the fields washed the atmosphere in their pungent conflict of scents. The grass itself was soft blue-green, scarred with crop-trails where shepherds had led their flocks through. The road where all the wagons had departed over the past few days rested far away, too far for anyone to drop by for a stare.

The grass that remained was already righting itself around the craterous impact point. Halventh had moved to lusher pasture a couple dragonlengths away, and was sitting there now with his arms and legs retracted almost fully beneath him, wings tight on his back. Aside from being several shades less saturated than his already powdery norm, he did not appear injured. His head was cocked up on a jaunty S of a neck and his eyes were wide open, clear, even if he did not have much to look at besides a white herd proceeding sluggishly down the opposite side of the field. He moved his beak under his wing every so often in a normal grooming motion, but he kept doing it again and again to the same spot, which was already very clean.

The dragon would not have been alone had he not already been cleared by the healers, but it did not make his presence in the holdlands any less strange. A few sheep carcasses had been cleaned and dragged to a ditch another three dragonlengths away, thin trails suggesting they had been killed at the blue's side and moved from there. The shepherd was walking through the tall grass with another one now, a fat ewe that batted her ears and blinked her glossy brown eyes as she was led close by a rope tether.

The shepherd handed the rope off to the man awaiting her under a gnarled but healthy crook tree near Halventh. He thanked her, and she returned to her flock. L'xon pulled the sheep closer, looking it over, then started to head out of the shade and toward the dragon. His jaw was lined in the uncaring fuzz of a beard, though like the stuff on his head L'xon's was blond. The clearing had provided a stream for him to wash in every day, but other amenities proved scarce. He still had on his decorative leathers from the Gather.

Halventh lowered his head toward the oncoming gift of fuzz and meat, then abandoned that interest with a surprised skyward jerk.

Wenth, he peeped, and a watery whistle moved out of his lungs and up his throat, dying before it reached his jaw. L'xon looked up into the shadow of another, thankfully more able beast. The sheep at his side considered both monsters, and commented on the entirety of the situation in a single whiny bleat. Wenth, hi Wenth, Halventh babbled, ignoring the surge of caution from his man and peppering the landing tan with bursts of emotion, everything from fear to ecstasy rolling around in the air like flakes of fire. Halventh was a social creature, and had never been away from other dragons for so long, nevermind the great hive called Dalibor Weyr.

He spooled out his front legs and collected them against the dirt, trying to get to his feet. Immediately his wings splayed out for balance, his ankles trembling beneath his weight. But he got moving, stepping unnecessarily high and without any of the coordinated pacing he had polished over the turns. He advanced till his welt-strewn keel was almost brushing his sister's, then sat down heavily, quivering the soil. After a few moments, he laid down on his side, gaping his jaws as little as possible (but still gaping) as he gazed raptly upon his clutchmate. I am good. L'xon is good. Everything is good. Thank you for coming. Thank you for visiting me...[/i] He heaved out a momentous sigh. Relief, it sounded like.

"Did Mifth come around?" asked his rider, approaching the dismount side and still trailing his new sheep. He had no time for pleasantries when his blue had initiated a downpour enough for both of them. "I heard he impacted some trader wagons." The word trader came out as a suggestion that it was the holdless' fault for being in the way when dragons came raining out of the sky. L'xon looked over Wenth and exhaled a very soft sigh of his own, though, before returning his dark stare to Aylina. "Did they take that man as Weyrleader?"

[kireon]

Convincing Wenth to take it easy had been surprisingly difficult, and no amount of cajoling and convincing had worked; the tan wanted to be by Halventh and that was all there was to it. He wasn't home, and that wasn't okay with the subqueen in the least. If he wouldn't be home, she would have to bring home to him, somehow. Aylina'd been surprised at the idea, and had added a few touches herself in thoughtful pause, figuring it'd be better safe than sorry- and it was practical anyway. A knapsack full of bits and pieces meticulously packed in the manner only one used to long trips could possibly manage was attached to the straps, surviving the trip Between as they popped from the skies and went in for the landing away from the flock.

Wenth's eyes immediately sought the familiar powder blue form, and upon seeing the flash of the very specific hue and the speckles of pale and darker color there, answered her favorite with a lower toned croon of her own. There is my Halventh, yes... I found you, I did...[/i]

Aylina felt the relief washing over her in waves, blinking rapidly beneath her goggles as the brief, jarring thump-bounce of landing kicked in and sent her stomach somewhere into her chest and throat. Landings were never Wenth's saving grace, though they'd long since graduated from water-only landings. The tan held still long enough for her rider to dismount, sliding off with an expert serious of rather complicated looking moves before dropping to the ground in a crouch, knees bent until she rose to her feet and gave a pat to her beloved's leg as she lumbered forward to meet the blue.

Wenth's first order of business was to return the affection, in her own slow, methodical manner, she showered the blue with praises and little gestures here and there. Poor Halventh, he didn't do well by himself, he was a good dragon, liked being around others. She would be there until it was time to take him home, and then she would be there too, to welcome him when that time came. You are not home, no... you are not... so I am here to bring home to you, yes... I am...[/i]

She observed, watching him drop to the ground, still exhausted, and lowered herself slowly, steadily in imitation- just as they had done as hatchlings during exercises together. Her neck stretched, snout tapping gently, affectionately nudging the corner of the blue's jaw before resting her great head right beneath his own with a gusty, contented sigh of her own. Her own eyes held a faint, very light touch of the yellow of concern for him, but otherwise were back to the deeply shaded blues just for him.

All was almost right in Wenth's world, now that she had her Halventh back in her range of sight. Do you still hurt...?[/i] She knew he'd been injured, whether or not she'd accidentally inflicted the damage in her haste to save her star from crashing into the ground was entirely unknown to the tan, and Aylina wouldn't tell her either way- other than Halventh needed to recover and rest before trying to come back to Dalibor proper.

Aylina's goggles shoved themselves upward, securing the pale, wind-blown curls away from her tanned face and brown eyes. She smiled at first in greeting, and the smile quickly faded as she rubbed the back of her neck at the questions. "Yep, he'll be right as rain with some rest, we got real lucky on that. 'nother blue rider popped 'is rider to 'im an' vanished t'get 'em help. Never caught the name or who it was though. Nobody injured minus Mifth, though given th' state 'o things, you'd be right hard pressed t'believe it."

She blinked at the sheep. Dinner for Halventh, maybe? The shadows in L'xon's eyes, followed up by the next question was enough to make her cringe just a little. Her hand'd dropped back down to her side, and now came back up as if her neck pained her, old habit she'd picked up from imitating her father for far too long in the stables. "'e won it," the tanrider finally replied after an uneasy silence. "Callistath chose 'is dragon, an' I ain't been 'ere long 'nough t'say one way or 'nother, but th' Weyr's already goin' on some kind o' divide over it. Lot o' unhappy folks on all sides."

Her eyes finally took themselves off of Wenth and turned to L'xon. "Give it t'me straight now, I can tell y'don' like 'im, an' that y'prolly trust 'im 'bout as far as y'can pick up and throw Halventh or Wenth. He the reason why Halventh an' the others...?"

An intellectual, Aylina was definitely not. And she never had been, but she had a keen sense of fairness, and if there was somethin' she hadn't seen in the sluggishness and dangerous amount of what disaster that flight'd been, she wanted t'know 'bout it. She figured she knew her introverted classmate well 'nough to know the man didn't just display a dislike, or refer t'anyone by their gender without respect for a good reason- and she wanted that reason explained, now.

[Azhdarchid]

Halventh clicked his jaws as he turned his head this way and that on Wenth's, till a sublime pillowed posture was reached and he drooped against her. Still breathing hard, throat still pulsing, but now it was mostly through his nose. Every breath smelled of Wenth. One of his paws clutched over the back of her neck, gripping at her tawny hide a few times the way a cat might knead a scrap of rug before resting his palm against it. His inner lids flexed up over his facets.

No, he answered. I used to think you were funny, because you were... Halventh raised his head and momentarily cocked it on one side. 'Wenth!' He drooped back down onto his firm tan pillow. But I am the funny one, and you always do the right thing. Even with my long, beautiful legs I cannot always do the right thing! he lamented with a little coo. I wish I was not a failure. But you saved me... You are the smart one.

The dragons washed the misty meadow with their rumbles of affection. Their riders' conversation held a distinctly less gooey flavor, though it was not as if L'xon did not care for his fellow Firefinder. But unlike a dragon, he did not live in the moment. "Yes and no. Had I paid more attention-" I wish I was not a failure "-I might have stopped Halventh from blooding. But I was having fun," and L'xon said this as if it were a new and rare sort of experience. "And I saw my...wife. She danced with me, so I was thinking about-" He touched his fingers to his forehead, expression painless but trying to recall anything besides the Flight. Queens could do that: steal the whole day for the sake of a few heated minutes.

In a way he did recall, but there was pain after all: in how Eywren had seen him before Callistath Rose, in how she had left him after her, and how the end result failed to fit in the cup called tradition. "I don't know. I am a man. I get distracted by things." It might have been a joke if he'd smiled. Over in the dozing pile, Halventh coiled his tail a little closer 'round his body. "That is my failing to hold." L'xon touched his fist to his chest. "But D'lios' poison did its work on all of us. Even, ah, Durian." He had heard about Mesreath's abortive attempt. A little pink rose in his cheeks, his sensibilities still flummoxed by the possibilities presented by a female brownrider in the race for Weyrleadership. It was better when people were like Aylina, and just stayed inside the lines.

Nevermind that Durian was a woman and, by his earlier "logic," could not be distracted as the men were, ruined by their own appetites. "The poison does work. The dragons don't die from smokeweed. But he had to know this was one potential outcome. That is a Lord Holder's job: to see every benefit and failing from a single action. In the couple Turns when I worked here- not that I ever met him, but the Hold was run tightly. Nothing was ever out of place. My father once told me that was evidence of 'design' by the Holder. He looks into the future and he arranges things subtly, far ahead of time, to his benefit. To the Hold's benefit, supposedly."

He'd been looking around the wild flower beds nestling in the grass while he thought and spoke, but met Aylina's eyes with a glance before he walked the sheep over to the dragons. "Was that too much?" he asked as he drew his belt-knife. Halventh.

The blue's wedge-shaped head tilted toward him and the sheep, then fell back into a laze against Wenth. "Hey," L'xon grunted in protest as he kneeled down beside the animal, one arm over its back. He folded the blade out for a moment and probed through the wool on the sheep's chest for the soft spot right above the collarbone. The sheep blinked, then bleated sharply as the knife disappeared into the spot up to the hilt. L'xon pulled it out and let the animal fall, which it did immediately, a single great gush of blood down its white front. Halventh's nostrils flexed and he lifted his head again.

L'xon lifted his chin at the sheep, then attended to the cleaning of his knife. "He's been eating like a hatchling normally," he confirmed to Aylina. Halventh's snout started nosing down off Wenth, though he hesitated before the collapsed sheep. "Just..." he smiled over his shoulder at the tanrider. "...'distracted' today." Though L'xon assumed the largest beast in the field might be the culprit, past him Halventh's blue eyes were fixed on Aylina, not Wenth. Nonetheless, he eventually nipped up the sheep and pushed it down to the base of his jaw, where it sat in a bulge while he moved his head back over his clutchmate's. After a little bit he snapped his jaws, moving the carcass around and swallowing most of it.

But then he tried pushing a single fuzzy leg out to Wenth. "No," L'xon said, and his blue's neck wrinkled back on itself in wilting disappointment. "Eat all of it. Wenth can get her own." Halventh tossed his head once to send the leg down his throat, then relaxed back over the tan with a snort. His eyes flicked perceptibly toward Aylina, the muted line of sunlight reflected over their tops telling the tale. With a hiss, he tried ducking his head a little further away from her view.

Knife clean, the bluerider took to examining his gloves while he walked back to Aylina's side. He ended up removing the wherhide and tucking it into a belt loop. "Still, the queen does not go to the Gather every day. It is so hard for me to imagine that he could have gotten it down to the very hour."