Myths & Legends

Wyth will not attack.  Check his rider.  Hurry!

Anath didn't like this, not one bit.  He was not what many considered to be a particularly intelligent dragon, but he knew trouble when he saw it, heard it, smelled it.  And these men, the ones who had attacked Wyth's rider?  They were trouble.  Big trouble.  They were afraid, and not just of him and Azarth; the stench of their fear had been thick in the air when the two browns arrived, and while it might be true that they were afraid of what a panicked dragon might do and it was slightly possible that their story might be true...

Tegan didn't think so.  Not when Wyth was broadcasting images like that, very vivid and intense visuals in spite of the panic he was in.  Dragons were not well known for being liars, and most of them lacked the sort of imagination necessary not just to make up a story as wildly insane as their rider being attacked, but to put together pictures of said attack taking place.  She wanted to confront those men with this information, wanted to act brave, be tough... but all she could do was glance at them nervously before quickly crossing the remaining distance between herself and P'tai.  She and J'age were outnumbered; though they had dragons, so had P'tai and that hadn't helped him any.  If those men would attack one dragonrider, they would attack others.

But she needed to focus on P'tai, who was still unconscious on the ground.  Tegan crouched down next to his prone form with a final nervous look up at Wyth, trying to remember the sort of basic first aid lessons she'd been taught as a Weyrling.  None of it seemed helpful, though it did enable her to check the bluerider's pulse and determine that he was at least still alive--for now.  That dent in his temple, though... it was bad news.  Very, very bad news, and she didn't need to be a Healer to realize that.  They would need to bring a Healer for P'tai, regardless of what J'age wanted to--

"J'age!"

She all but shrieked his name when the other brownrider lunged for one of the herders, his knife drawn, Azarth lunging for the rest of the clustered Southerners.  No, no no nonono this wasn't good, not good at all they could kill J'age and Azarth with him or what if J'age and Azarth killed them, what then?  They could claim self-defense but it wouldn't be, not really, and he'd want her to lie about that and P'tai was still just laying there unconscious--Anath!

The young brown roared, a deafening sound as he flared his wings in response to his rider's panic.  His first reaction was to place himself between Tegan and the maelstrom of chaos, a solid, snarling wall of dragon that anyone who wanted to get close to his rider would have to get past first.  Then he instinctively reached out for aid, calling reflexively to the one dragon he thought might be able to fix this, whose rider Tegan trusted implicitly;

KAVATH!  The summons contained with it a thick miasma of indecipherable emotions and images, as if Anath was trying to explain everything to his Wingleader all at once, but it did end with a single solid image of the clearing where they were.  There is trouble!  Bring help.  Bring a Healer!  Come quickly!

Tegan liked J'age.  J'age was tough and independent and smart (and unreliable and unpredictable and any other number of negative qualities that she willfully overlooked on a regular basis) and, unlike a lot of other riders, knew how to have a good time.  There were plenty of people she was sure did not approve of her associating with J'age, but she was ready and willing to tell all most of them to go take a long walk off a short cliff because J'age was cool.  He bucked authority, did what he wanted to when he wanted to do it, was the sort of hellraising son of a bitch that generally gave dragonriders a bad name but inevitably attracted crowds of young impressionable folk who thought raising hell was the best thing to do with one's life.

In short he was exactly the sort of person that someone like Tegan, who badly wanted to fit in somewhere even while she protested the idea of fitting in anywhere, needed to avoid.  So of course when J'age had approached her with the idea of taking a trip down to the now off-limits Southern Continent, mainly because it was now off-limits, she had agreed without hesitation.  Tegan was cold, Tegan was hungry, and though she was no stranger to being dirty, having spent an appreciable amount of the last few Turns relatively clean on a daily basis had gotten her used to it.  And then there was Anath who was always hungry and always grumbling about how skinny Fort's herdbeasts were and how few of them there were nowadays...

And really, Southern was gorgeous this time of year.  Hot and bright and so unlike the cold, desolate, gray Fortian winter they were being forced to endure.  There were herds a-plenty for the dragons to eat from, and there were rumors that felines as big as a runnerbeast prowled the jungles.  They hadn't seen any--yet--but she had a mind to catch and skin one.  One of the giant striped ones whose pelt would look awesome hanging from the wall of her weyr, or maybe slung across her bed.  And there were firelizards of course.  Tegan wasn't all that sure she actually wanted one of the little critters, useful though they might be.  She was willing to bet that the eggs would sell for a nice sackful of marks, though, which might make scrounging up a nest of them worthwhile.

Later.  Once the sun wasn't so bright and hot overhead and she wasn't tipsy on overripe fruit.  Tegan didn't care much for alcohol but hey, this tasted more like fruit than booze and had the added bonus of still being refreshingly cool as it slid down her throat.  If not for the fact that J'age kept lobbing them at her (she was willing to bet he was hoping to catch her off guard and nail her in the face with a squishy one) Tegan might even have drifted off to sleep in the sun.  A bad idea since she was liable to burn to a crisp, not to mention if she fell asleep with J'age nearby he was definitely the sort of person to bury her in sand or use mud to draw embarrassing patterns on her face so that she had little normal colored, penis-shaped patches of skin on her cheeks while the rest of her was lobster red.

She was kind of hoping he'd fall asleep first so she could try that.  He'd be pissed when he woke up but it might actually be worth it.

"They were stupid just to hand the place over," Tegan agreed with a scowl for the morons who had just let this place slip through their fingers.  Fort needed Southern and its bounty until the drought broke, and even the politically-ignorant Tegan could see that.  She might not know much about the whole leadership game, but she did know about going hungry because there wasn't enough food for everyone, and the best way to make sure that didn't happen.  Namely, don't give away your only food source.  Idiots.

And then someone screamed.

Tegan didn't realize that it was in her head, not at first, not with J'age also bolting to his feet and Anath charging out of the water like a giant brown steamroller.

Wyth hurts!  His rider hurts!  We must go NOW!

Their straps were nearby but Tegan didn't even stop to spare a thought for them, scrambling aboard Anath's dripping neck before the brown launched them skyward in a violent spray of sand.  Without a visual to go off of, and with Wyth too panicked to provide them one, they would have to fly to him directly.  It wouldn't take long for dragons of Anath and Azarth's size... but would they get there in time to help P'tai?  Or was it already too late?

And he grinned at her then.

Good natured.

Affable.

Oddly unguarded.

And it was kind of freaking her out a little bit.

Which wasn't to say that Tegan thought V'turo was some sort of heartless, emotionless automaton who didn't know how to smile or laugh or be relaxed around people.  She knew that wasn't the case, she just wasn't really used to him being... well, drunkenly open and relaxed.  Especially around her.  It was strange almost to the point of being unsettling, though aside from being a bit more easily sociable and somewhat verbally impaired he seemed relatively normal.  Except for the whole eating a tuber with his hands thing.

"If I didn't sass you you'd think I was sick," Tegan retorted, and if he was just going to dig right in, well, so was she.  Predictably she went for dessert first, plucking a sweetroll from the top of the pile (it had a bit of gravy on the bottom of it now, but that didn't hurt it any) and taking a bite.  "'Sides," and her mouth was full but so what?  So was his and that hadn't stopped him.  "You don't usually miss this kind of stuff, so I figured I oughta make sure you hadn't got lost.  Since you're old and all.  And drunk."

Anath wasn't the sort of dragon to usually care about other peoples' feelings.  Tegan's were enough, really, and though they weren't quite so off the wall as they'd been when the two had first Impressed, Anath still... well, other riders had their own dragons to take care of them, so why should he bother?  He might have just grumbled some vague, nondescript answer to Kavath (because he couldn't ignore Kavath, who was his Wingleader after all), except... well, Tegan liked V'turo.  And if V'turo was upset about something, Tegan would want to know.

Anath couldn't see what good could come from her knowing, but she'd still want to know.

What bad things? he asked after a moment's pause.

Finally the hatching was over.  Which, you know, grats to all the new Weyrlings and all that jazz, but Tegan already had her dragon so she didn't really see the point of sitting around just to watch a bunch of other people Impress.  Especially when it was a bunch of people she didn't know.  Sure, it was fun reminiscing about her own Impression, though even with a queen egg this hatching was way less exciting with not half as many maulings (not that she'd wish harm on anyone [unless they deserved it] but they did liven things up a bit) as there'd been when Anath hatched.  And yeah, she'd probably have to deal with at least a couple of those new Weyrlings at some point if they graduated and ended up in the same Wing she was in, but Tegan wasn't much for thinking that far ahead.

Except for maybe when food was involved.

The feast that followed every hatching was, in her opinion, the best part of the whole fiasco.  Maybe it was just because she'd grown up Holdless and it was habit to never turn down a good meal.  Maybe she just had an unnaturally high metabolism, because she could eat like a dragon and was still about the size of a twig.  Maybe Tegan just plain liked food.  She wasn't the first one in line at the buffet tables, but she was damn close, and who cared that she was getting dirty looks because really food wasn't supposed to be stacked that way or up to that altitude?  Now she just needed a place to sit...

Which was usually with her Wingmates, who she sometimes thought maybe stuck around and acted nice only because they had to.  That was nicer than just being told to piss off, mind, so she'd take what she could get.  Barring the entire Wing there was at least one rider who (maybe) didn't actually mind her company, or at least did a pretty good job at acting that he didn't, and... where was he?

Looks like he's late.

V'turo is never late.

Or at least not often enough for her to remember it.  And he always did his duty... except technically he was no longer duty-bound to attend a hatching feast where his dragon hadn't sired the clutch, and T'raev got a long, dirty look for that.  Because he was totally to blame for V'turo taking Kavath out of the Weyr instead of letting him chase.

Where's Kavath?

On his ledge. So what? Just stay and eat and let me go back to sleep.

Ass.

She should, really.  Just stay and eat and enjoy herself.  But even someone as normally oblivious as Tegan could tell that V'turo hadn't really been himself, lately.  Oh, he led the Wing and did his duty (which was more than could be said for T'raev), but he was... distant.  And if he was late to the feast then he probably meant not to come at all, and if he wasn't planning on coming then he probably didn't want visitors, but...

The Precarious Plate was piled a little higher, and the brownrider snagged a full skin of wine and a couple of glasses ("It's for my Wingleader", nice excuse, shut people up real quick) before ducking out of the living cavern.  It was easy enough to reach V'turo's weyr, and thankfully being a Wingleader meant he got one relatively close to the ground so she wasn't hauling a massive plate of food up several flights of stairs or else trying to get aboard Anath without spilling.  Then she was there, and--

What if he was busy?  Or maybe he wasn't feeling well.  Or--

Her hands were full so Tegan kicked the door instead.  Gently.  Mostly, anyway.

While most people were staying carefully neutral in regards to the most recent shift in leadership, or at least attempting to be discreet in their dislike of the new Weyrleader... well, not everyone could be so rational.

It sucked.  Flat out, it was one of the most horrid things to have happened in a long time.  She'd gone from being a rider in the Weyrleader's wing to just... a rider in V'turo's wing.  And Tegan was fine with that, really, mostly, because she liked V'turo and T'raev could go dangle off the Weyr rim by his underoos for all she cared.  V'turo had been a good Weyrleader, for Faranth's sake, and T'raev hadn't even been a Wingsecond and now suddenly he was the big boss, the head honcho, the man they all now had to listen to until the queen rose again.

What was worse, if rumors could be believed, was that V'turo had deliberately absented himself from the flight.  He'd thrown away the title, passed it up, defaulted on it.  Tegan just... couldn't fathom that.  Moreover, she didn't much want to; it was easier to just blame T'raev, to cast him as the bad guy rather than admit that her Wingleader held equal responsibility for losing his rank.  The simple logic of it was, unfortunately, that you couldn't win if you didn't chase, and Kavath had been conspicuous in his--

Thread!

Anath all but bellowed the declaration through her skull, and Tegan cringed, pulling herself out of her brooding just in time to grab her flight harness as the young brown veered to the side and down, going for a clump of Thread that in truth they should have left for a more nimble blue or green to chase.  They were already committed to the catch, however, and to pull him back now would only cause that much more trouble as a different dragon scrambled to pick up the slack, so Tegan let him go, felt his grim satisfaction as he charred the tendrils to ash, and then immediately had him move back into position.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.  She knew better than to let her thoughts wander like that, especially during 'Fall, especially knowing that Anath would gladly take advantage of her distraction to do something stupid and foolhardy.  V'turo would probably give her an earful once they were done--and she would deserve it, Tegan had to admit.

No more of that! she chastised her brown, reining in his urge to go haring off after another snarl of silvery Thread.  You're not a green, and if you keep trying to act like one you're gonna get both of us killed!

Tegan snorted a laugh, though she did at least have enough instinctive decency not to leer at him with a mouthful of half-chewed food.  He was a funny man, this one, his humor made all the more hilarious by her inebriated state.  Surely his sly quips would not have been so funny if she were sober--not that she cared enough to make that distinction right now.  She was drunk and had a plate full of good food and a companion next to her who appeared to have a decent enough sense of humor, even if he wasn't an entirely willing one at the moment.  Anath was asleep and not causing any trouble for once, there was no Thread to be fought on the morrow, and dammit she deserved to have some fun every now and again.  Now seemed like a perfectly good time.

"First time for everything," she answered him once she managed to rinse down her current mouthful of food, switching her fork to her other hand for a moment so that she could reach over and give Gavin's proffered one a shake.  "Tegan, rider of brown Anath.  We're in the Weyrleader's wing."

That last bit added because, well, why not?  As far as drunken confessions went, she could have done far worse on the scale of informing Gavin of things he likely didn't give two shits about.  And on the scale of pointless confessions to 'oh shit why did I just tell him that?', it ranked pretty low.  That counted as a win in her book.

"You a Candidate?"  It seemed a likely assumption to make, since they were going to have a brand new shiny batch of eggs on the sands soon.  Hatchings were the number one cause of new, unfamiliar faces in a Weyr, after all.  Though she supposed he might be from Harper Hall to do a bit of music playing for the festivities and such.

Anath was an obnoxious lout of a dragon.  He was at that annoying teenager state where he considered himself to be an adult, which meant he didn't have to listen to you irritating, restrictive, parental types anymore.  He could do what he wanted (sort of), could stay up late and eat cake for breakfast (if he'd liked cake, that was), and there was nothing anyone (except for Tegan) could do about it.  But Anath was still a dragon, and though he might not like it, he was still ingrained with the same instinctual hierarchical knowledge of his kind.  He obeyed bronzes if they gave him an order, even if he did grumble under his breath the whole time.  He especially obeyed the Weyrleader's bronze, so when Kavath spoke to him directly, there was little choice but for him to do as he was bade.

Kavath says that his rider wishes for you to join him and Aerith's rider, he relayed to Tegan, trying to affect affronted boredom in his tone.  He failed miserably, of course, and sounded eager to know just why the Weyrleader was interested in his rider.  He didn't say where. They must be able to see you.

The summons stopped Tegan in her tracks, and before she could stop herself and appear as if she wasn't alarmed by it, her head swiveled around until she spotted V'turo and Nydia.  What did the Weyrleader, of all people want with her?  And with Nydia?  Logically, it must have something to do with their currently being Wingless, and while some might have rejoiced at the notion of possibly being placed in the Weyrleader's Wing, Tegan's thoughts immediately went to the opposite end of the spectrum.  He was here to tell her that no one wanted her in their Wing, that she and Anath were a burden, that they wouldn't be placed and were doomed to be stuck on sweeps and transports for the rest of their lives, or else shipped off to some other hapless Weyr where people didn't know what Anath was like...

She wanted to turn and run.  She wanted to vomit.  But V'turo had seen her, and an order was an order, so Tegan swallowed the queasy lump in her throat before turning to slowly pick her way across the dining cavern.  It was like jumping into the lake mid-winter; best to just do it quickly and get it over with.  That didn't make her any less uneasy, however, but she still flopped down onto the bench with an air of casual negligence, as if the summons didn't want to make her run screaming.  V'turo was speaking with Nydia at the moment, so she said nothing, simply waited in silence for him to reveal why he needed to see her.

(OOC: Sorry this took so long, but I uh... kind of completely missed Rensire pestering Tegan to come join them, and since so much has happened in that little group, this seemed the best response for her. >.>)
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"Hey!"

Someone was stealing her sweetrolls!  She had a scowl all in place and was ready to tell the offender off--but then there was a familiar drawl of her name, and it was Rensire grinning down at her, and suddenly she didn't mind too much about the sweetrolls.  There were plenty more, of course, and she could play nice and share this time.  Tegan cracked a smile for him in return and nodded, seeing little wrong in spending the hatching feast in his company.  She'd managed to miss it during her own, unfortunately, so this would more than make up for it.

So Tegan filled her plate (pretty much with the most unhealthy stuff available that morning), grabbed a drink, and turned to begin elbowing her way through the crowd once more.  It shouldn't be too hard to spot Ren at whatever table he'd parked himself at, and after a few minutes of searching, she found him.  Him and an entire cluster of people, including some woman who she thought was a greenrider.  Shilo, was it?  Who'd been helping the Weyrlings recently?  Yeah, that was her, and... well.  What?  Why was Rensire--

The brown Weyrling stopped in her tracks and stared.  No, she hadn't been seeing things.  Rensire was flirting and winking and hugging and--ugh!  And that was why Shilo wasn't in the fighting wings.  Tegan hadn't thought much of it, because mating flights were a way of life and all, but it had never crossed her mind that the reason Shilo was pregnant--and she was, for all that Tegan was in a foul enough mood to simply consider her a fat cow--was because of Rensire.  Her and Rensire.  She and him, he and her.

Suddenly, the last thing she wanted to do was spend the hatching feast in Rensire's company.

It was ridiculous.  Really, it wasn't like she owned him or anything, and she sure as shards hadn't made any allusions to them being anything but friends.  Not that she ever would have.  But that was logical thinking, at at the moment Tegan really didn't care to be all that logical.  In fact, all she really wanted to do was lob a sweetroll across the room and see if maybe she could hit Rensire in the face with it.  He'd probably see her, though, and then want to know why the feck she was pelting him with sweetrolls, and while it would be satisfying to do so she just... didn't care for him to want to ask her anything at the moment.

But he'd have to catch her to do that, and though it was a horrible waste of a sweetroll, Tegan plucked one from her plate, took aim, drew back her arm, and let fly.  She had a strong enough throw to her, so assuming the lobbed roll didn't smack some unfortunate bystander in the side of the head it ought to at least make it to the table.  But Tegan didn't stick around to find out.  It was easy enough to turn away and lose herself in the crowd.  Not like he was gonna miss her or anything, not when he was too busy schmoozing with his greenrider girlfriend.  Tegan pushed her way through the crowd to a table tucked off in a corner somewhere with a miraculously empty chair, all but dropped her plate and cup onto it, and flopped down into the seat.  She wasn't even all that hungry anymore.

Stupid Rensire.