Tiriana makes a man out of K'del.
RL Date: 4/11/09
IC Date: 6/11/19
For a Weyr that's been on edge all day, the release finally comes late in the evening, when the sun is heading down behind the clouds rolling in from the west. It's then that Iovniath, waiting patiently on her ledge for so long, finally takes off toward the feeding pens, a pulse of pure cold howling out from her and over the Weyr's dragons. She streaks over the bowl to the corrals to slice down a herdbeast. And thus does all hell officially break loose.
F'rint should not be doing this, should not be doing this. "And neither should you," he calls across the bowl toward a pair of well-worn brown wings that sweep down from a stumpy ledge not so high up over lake. The old man, who never did start wearing his interim knot, just Glacier's, trots across the bowl toward Tiriana's weyr. But done was done, and Oranyuth followed in his queen's wake, no fool like an old fool, all set to take his rider from Acting to the Real Thing.
In the feeding grounds, Iovniath snarls once over her meal, but it's only a halfhearted complaint. And then she's blooding, head lowered to the first beast she's struck down. It's quick work to suck it dry and abandon it, but before she snags another one, she's shooting a look around, neck arching just so to make sure all her suitors are there, to do one last wild appraisal of all of them. And in the Weyr, Tiriana waits, still leaning up against the doorway of her weyr: watching the spectacle just beginning, Iovniath plainly visible even from this distance.
K'del's swearing can be heard across the distance between the Snowasis and Tiriana's weyr - mostly, it's just bad words, but in between, something about an agreement, and the need to leave, and /not on my turnday/. That one's pretty specific. The young rider is mostly silent, though, by the time he actually makes it to the weyr, wobbling slightly tipsily as he clambers towards the stairs, hesitating as he glances up at Tiriana. He's quite pale, despite the alcohol. Beyond, Cadejoth was one of the first to leap after Iovniath, and he kills and drains with increasing enthusiasm, the blood splattering pale hide.
A'son walks in, clearly in some sort of daze. He's muttering under his breath and chewing his lip. He's basically the poster child for crazy. With a curse he drops down onto the floor, smushing himself up against the wall and looking highly disgruntled. Nikoth however, outside, is enjoying himself immmensely. He's ripping apart his kills and blooding expertly. An old hand, indeed.
Mecaith has been in the bowl this little while, as frost spread through the Weyr, mental frost that has been creeping, growing in his mind. It has seized him now, Iovniath's ice and he watches the grounds, eyes purpled, though he shifts restlessly in place, leashed for now it seems. His head cranes towards where the gold bloods her kills, everything stretching towards her, sands whirling, reaching to try to touch, to knock down a wall of ice made earlier. Tension runs visibly through his flame as blood hits the ground, as other males tear into beasts. Then suddenly like a branch snapping, something changes and with a rare bugle, Mecaith launches himself into the pens to join the fray, two kills in rapid succession, neat and efficient.
F'rint raises his eyes toward Tiriana's while he makes his way in, not the first time passing this threshold lately but the first time he's worn this particularly apologetic look, feeling especially awkward coming in right behind K'del-- a kid barely a third his age, and they're supposed to compete on the same playing field? "Forty-four turns and you won't give a man a break," he can be heard to mumble while Oranyuth slashes determinedly at the belly of a passing beast. Passing A'son, confronted with the age-old problem of what the hell to do with himself to pass the time, he remarks, "Hey, maybe it'll turn out better for you this time, mate." He smiles with his teeth, Oranyuth slashes with his teeth.
There's Oranyuth--is he really that stupid? And Cadejoth, even more so, though he and Nikoth both earn disgusted looks for their messiness, Iovniath's cold disdain touching their minds in turn. She's neat even now: a ruthless slice across the throat of a second herdbeast and she bloods it as well, so delicately licking her mouth clean when she sneaks another look up, reveling in all that attention. It's more Tiriana's prodding than even her own lust that keeps her moving, finishing off her kill rather than wasting her time on the chasers. Tight-wound Tiriana's not nearly so interested in the showing off: each chaser that comes in her door, from the baby-faced K'del to old F'rint gets the same glower before she sweeps further inside, out of the doorway with jerky steps.
Mecaith takes his time drinking down those carcasses, neat and tidy enough to maybe make Iovniath proud before he goes looking for a third. His gaze though, lifts frequently to the glowing, snow-minded queen and to the others as well, cataloguing movements, tracking paths through the grounds, taking measure just as much as she measures /them/. She sent frost and ice howling out over the Weyr, out of his mind creeps a tendril of heat, challenging maybe the dominance of winter. There's still nary a sign of T'rev, the Fortian bronzerider's nowhere to be seen and his footsteps do not ring up the stairs.
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth projects, << Don't be scared. No one's gonna get cold-clocked this time, baby boy. >>
For now, Cadejoth is less concerned with pleasing Iovniath (beautiful Iovniath, burning-cold Iovniath) than with finishing his meal, preparing himself, though he rumbles in her direction, his tail twitching, his wings fluttering, his bloody maw reaching for the skies though the time is not quite right to seek into them. K'del's expression is bland, Tiriana's glower earning nothing more than that, before he, too, stumbles inside, seeking out a wall to lean against. And, okay, his gaze goes back to Tiriana, glazed, but still watching. Not his fault Yuliye part primed him already.
Midst those chasers is little E'dro, now all of eighteen, though still little, lanky, and timid. Spying out Tiriana and her glower almost immediately upon entering, he starts a litany of a frantic, "OFaranthOFaranthOFaranthpleasedon'tletthisbemyfirst." Over and over and over again.
Dragon> Typically, Mecaith has a well-ordered mind. That is not the case now. Howls of wind toss sand dunes to and fro and ice freezes channels of water that extend in a vast network from a hidden spring are spidered on their surface with lacey white. << Do not mistake understanding or the quest for it, for fear. But I thank you for your concern. >> Ignoring utterly, the insult to his age. (Mecaith to Oranyuth)
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth's just trying to be a warm-and-friendly welcome-wagon, really. << Do not mistake the 'Reaches hospitality for carte blanch. The /new/ Weyrleader hasn't been decided yet. >> Which means, technically, the ball's still in his court.
Oranyuth's... not exactly the hot-and-heavy type. He's here because he's male, and she's a queen, and a combination of hormones and duty call. Iovniath has his attention when she needs it, but the primordial necessity to blood has the majority of his focus. Of his competition, only Mecaith-- kill the heretic foreigner!-- gets more than a passing glance.
Dragon> To Oranyuth, Mecaith squints against the gale in his mind. << It is never proper to assume so, >> Mecaith answers steadily enough though he's still trapped, encased with a growing web of icy patterns that he can't see his way out of.
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth, in a somber moment, the weeks of chaos that this Weyr has suffered, imparts a calm, << You know you shouldn't be here. >> It's not a rebuke exactly, more a wish that the Fortian would understand: Oranyuth is High Reaches through-and-through, and his Weyr's been through enough without the possibility of an outsider coming to lead. << You know. >>
They're not watching her enough. Iovniath has an uncharacteristic snap of her jaws for Oranyth, who has the temerity to act more interested in his blooding than in wooing her. She might not want /him/, but he's damn well supposed to want her! She's emotions everywhere, that lust and fury, while her rider crosses her arms, closed off as she glances around her own males, paces a jittery circuit of the hearth. And Iovniath, she'll show them, all of them: she crouches, an instant later springing upward, into the air. Iovniath rises rapidly to the top of the bowl, a wisp of frost-tipped fur sent backward at all those suitors, to draw them onward after her as she climbs higher, sets a westward path into the strong wind blowing in from Tillek.
Skywards! K'del lets out a long, low breath as Cadejoth takes flight, as though his own breathing will send his lifemate-- faster? Slower? His expression is so glazed it's hard to know whether he's happy to be here or not, now, now that they're in the midst of things. Cadejoth hurtles higher, as fast as he can, making use of the thermals to hasten his celestial voyage. Now, as the blood dries about his mouth, Iovniath is everything again: look he can fly! Look, he can fly fast! Look, he can call after her, that low, howling kind of lust, westward across the plains. Mountains. Whatever.
Dragon> To Oranyuth, Mecaith is silent except for the howling of the storm in his mind. << I know. >> At last. << Can you resist her? >> ANd there's another tug of lace-shaped ice pulling all of his carefully ordered sands willy nilly to cleave to frosty crystals.
"Hroxeth," says the rider of Pern's answer to Obiwan Kenobi-a-la-bronze-dragon. It's a despairing sound that ends in a choke, as a powerful boost sends E'dro's bronze into the air, one of the first after Iovniath's glowing body. To F'rint, "Jays, this is really gonna be my first isn't it?" He's already sure he's going to win; it'd be just his luck, of course.
It's a breathless T'rev who comes up the steps, footsteps a little unsteady and quite loud. When he arrives though, he doesn't quite come inside. He lingers in the entryway, shoulder turned to stone and its outward he faces, looking up at the sky where dragons have taken off, Mecaith included. If Iovniath was worried about not being admired enough, focused on enough, she might be pleased to find Mecaith hopelessly ensnared. He's watching, observing, focused on how she moves, when she moves, where she moves. For now it's all about speed and position and getting up high enough to get into the right place to be able to shift at a moment's notice to catch the right angle for her. His rider though, is tension incarnate, one hand curled into a fist against the weyr's rocky entryway. A glance is cast back over his shoulder towards Tiriana and his eyes stay fixed there for a moment. Renewed determination sets his jaw and T'rev resolutely looks away and presumably sends his thoughts up after Mecaith to pull him free of Iovniath's mental clutches.
F'rint, chuckling, "Sure it is, kid. And it's gonna be my last." Because Tiriana would absolutely be the death of the old man, and that's the look he gives the goldrider now, one that knows full well that discretion is the better part of valor. /Run/, F'rint; run while there's still time-- oh, there goes Oranyuth, pulling away from Iovniath's snapping jaws and right into the rush of chasing her. Agility left him long ago, temerity left for those young fools-of-dragons who don't know what this Flight /means/, he just dogs the queen's trajectory. Let her snap at him, he's not in this for /her/, he's in this for /here/, because the 'Reaches could really use a decent dude to be Weyrleader for a while. And he knows just the man for the job!
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth? << I don't need to resist. I can have her. I can be what we need. You... >> Don't belong here.
For Iovniath, it's a game: a very important one, admittedly, but still a game, the bronzes pawns to toy with. Her mind reaches back to touch them again, to make sure they're with her as she climbs higher, letting the headwind lift her up. Her pace is just fast enough to keep ahead of them, not enough to fly off and leave them; such overconfidence in her ability to orchestrate it all. Tiriana has it, too, enough so that she laughs, not pleasantly, when she catches E'dro's words. And then there's footsteps on the ledge, and she turns to look, even though nobody comes in. Such second-guessing won't do, and she stalks to the ledge as imperious as Iovniath. "/In/," she orders T'rev.
Dragon> To Oranyuth, Mecaith struggles with something, his mind is in such disarray and the old brown is very distracting. << We could. There are reasons. Many. That we could. >> A shadow slips across his mind, much smaller than Iovniath, the color on the snow that's mixed up with his sand olive in hue. And vaguely, traced in that odd snow-sand mix, other dragon shapes and faces too, friends, people /here/ that they care for. There is no line, in Mecaith's mind, no 'we are Fort'/'you are Reaches', only the idea of strengh that stems from caring and a unity that's wider than the division between Weyrs as his mind ticks over the analysis of the flight, slots all the pieces into place and seemingly, finds the right pattern.
Cadejoth? Still here. He doesn't try to watch his movements wingbeat for wingbeat to Iovniath's; for now, he's content to trail in her wake, lower than she is, though not by too much, and certainly not quite as close as he might like, given his straining efforts to get closer still. His tail, usually always in motion, is still for once, straight, and flung out behind him: it's his wingbeats that matter, now, and the elongated length of his neck, streamlined into the wind. K'del pays little attention to those around him: breathing, that's where it's at. In. Out. In. Out. His palms flatten against the wall; his eyes shut.
Oh shit, she's looking at him. She's /laughin/ at him. E'dro sinks into himself, taking steps backward until he's found a wall to melt into and possibly disappear.
Dragon> But there is a line. There is. On one side of it... << You don't know, Mecaith. You don't know us. >> He has images of his own: people who /need/, people who have hurt, who have been through enough! << You know the fringe, the edge, perhaps a thread that runs all the way through, but could you--? >> Keep it together when the Weyrwoman's dead, the Weyrleader's fled? Because he has. Oh, he has! (Oranyuth to Mecaith)
Nikoth is for now residing in the back, unusual for the showy bronze. He's moving slowly, but steady and keeping in pace for the most part. There's a steady determination emanating from him. A'son? Well, he's still hiding in the back of the weyr. He's looking annoyed still and is unresponsive to just about anything around him.
/In/. F'rint looks across the room, lowers his head, shakes it with a look of abject disappointment to behold the arrival of the Fortian. Out there, Oranyuth still relentlessly believes he's got a snowball's chance in hell of taking this flight, still thinks he's the right dragon for the job. But soon, with the first glide instead of flap, with the first conservation of energy, certain facts will become insurmountable: he's too old and the wrong color for this crap.
T'rev's head turns, face a mask of punch-drunk desire mixed with resistance. "No," he tells Tiriana quietly, firmly. "I won't be the one to do this to him. Or to you." His voice is kept low, not really meant to echo back to the others and he turns back to the sky, sweat beading along his brow as he pushes against his bronze above. Mecaith's still in the thick of things, lifting up higher and higher after Iovniath, his pursuit seemingly single-minded, intently focused. Is T'rev at all having an effect on him? Or is he just too bound up in it all now?
Dragon> To Oranyuth, Mecaith is answering Iovniath, all the more committed by the touch of her mind it seems. << Yes, we can. We can learn. You don't know /us/, you don't know my T'rev. He can do this if he puts his mind to it, commits to it. He knows /her/. >> Tiriana, angry-faced and resplendant is vividly drawn in his mind. << And we were /there/. >> Crom. Footsteps pounding down hallways, the chase after those who stole. << We don't know all, but we know /much/. >> And then more distraction and Mecaith cuts off the connection. Someone else is arguing with him and water, not frozen by Iovniath's snowstorm is flooding his thoughts in steady waves, warm, against the cold.
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth only, << You were /there/. I was /here/. >> He flags... what will he has to argue with Mecaith is dwindles...
Dragon> To Nikoth, Oranyuth, frantic, << Take her! Take her before-- >> Cadejoth, a child! Mecaith, an outsider!
Any other day, Tiriana probably wouldn't want anything to do with T'rev. Today, though? Today anger flashes across her features for the snub, and Iovniath howls, fury directed at Mecaith but leaking away from her, onto her other chasers. But it's not attention she can long focus on him, with other chasers breathing down her neck. She flies higher, no fancy tricks. She's tiring already, a growing desperation at the back of her mental presence. Her head tilts back to look at them under her wing, searching until she finds what she wants: Nikoth at the very back. What's he doing there? Iovniath hesitates, a wild glance around and then she's turning sharply, to cut around behind the pack--not the brightest move, probably, but she's desperate, and not planning very clearly in the moment.
F'rint rubs his hand across his dome, slides his palm down his face, gives up the ghost. "We really are f--ked," he announces summarily, looking around the room with increasing disappointment: T'rev, /who does not belong here/; E'dro and K'del, still wet behind the ears; A'son, oh my god just grow a pair already. There's nothing left in Oranyuth for the end, he saved nothing, and he breaks away the same way he has a bajillion other times before tonight. They leave.
Slumping against the wall, T'rev really looks like he could use a stiff drink right about now. And then ... as Iovniath howls and breaks for the back of the pack, Mecaith swerves like he'd try to intercept. His rider's fist curls tight, his jaw sets and then the Fortian bronze is changing direction again, sweeping wide and tucking his wings to drop out of the flight all together. A splash down in the lake follows and the tension seems to bleed out of T'rev all at once, hands covering his face. He doesn't even look back as he stumbles away again and if anyone is paying attention, he apparently winds up going down the steps on his ass if the strangled: "OW!" from somewhere out there is any indication. Fort's out. Relief all around, most likely.
Nikoth, who's been hiding in the back of the pack this entire night? He sees Iovniath make that move. He gets a sudden surge of strength. Broad brozen wings beat hard, hurtling him to the front and beyond. He catches up to the forerunners and it seems that he may even be close to getting near Iovniath herself. Then with a gut wrenching, ear splitting cry he folds his wings and plummets down to the ground. It's this action that drops him so unexpectedly from the race when moments earlier it seemed he might even take it.
A'son: He's been sitting sullenly quiet in the back, not speaking. Not acting or moving. His eyes have been distant and empty this evening, while tensions otherwise have been running high. Suddenly, his shoulders tense and he comes into the moment. He looks around the weyr with a clarity in his eyes that's perhaps frightening. It's then that he dips his hand into his riding boots and removes the small dirk. The sheath is thrown across the room and in one swift moment he buries it into his right shoulder. To the hilt. He screams, gets up and staggers out.
Cadejoth's far enough back in the pack, despite his best efforts (he's young - who can blame him?), that Iovniath's turn around places him, in fact, much closer to her - not quite close enough to grab at her, not yet, but close enough to surprise both him, and his rider, whose eyes flutter open, seeking back to Tiriana, wildly. But they don't linger: A'son, then, takes his attention, the young bronzerider seeking out the older one, considering him with what attention span he can muster. Cadejoth alters his path again, to shift closer still, and beneath; so close, now! Except for stupid Nikoth. F'rint's assessment? That goes unheard, uncomprehended. For now.
IC Date: 6/11/19
For a Weyr that's been on edge all day, the release finally comes late in the evening, when the sun is heading down behind the clouds rolling in from the west. It's then that Iovniath, waiting patiently on her ledge for so long, finally takes off toward the feeding pens, a pulse of pure cold howling out from her and over the Weyr's dragons. She streaks over the bowl to the corrals to slice down a herdbeast. And thus does all hell officially break loose.
F'rint should not be doing this, should not be doing this. "And neither should you," he calls across the bowl toward a pair of well-worn brown wings that sweep down from a stumpy ledge not so high up over lake. The old man, who never did start wearing his interim knot, just Glacier's, trots across the bowl toward Tiriana's weyr. But done was done, and Oranyuth followed in his queen's wake, no fool like an old fool, all set to take his rider from Acting to the Real Thing.
In the feeding grounds, Iovniath snarls once over her meal, but it's only a halfhearted complaint. And then she's blooding, head lowered to the first beast she's struck down. It's quick work to suck it dry and abandon it, but before she snags another one, she's shooting a look around, neck arching just so to make sure all her suitors are there, to do one last wild appraisal of all of them. And in the Weyr, Tiriana waits, still leaning up against the doorway of her weyr: watching the spectacle just beginning, Iovniath plainly visible even from this distance.
K'del's swearing can be heard across the distance between the Snowasis and Tiriana's weyr - mostly, it's just bad words, but in between, something about an agreement, and the need to leave, and /not on my turnday/. That one's pretty specific. The young rider is mostly silent, though, by the time he actually makes it to the weyr, wobbling slightly tipsily as he clambers towards the stairs, hesitating as he glances up at Tiriana. He's quite pale, despite the alcohol. Beyond, Cadejoth was one of the first to leap after Iovniath, and he kills and drains with increasing enthusiasm, the blood splattering pale hide.
A'son walks in, clearly in some sort of daze. He's muttering under his breath and chewing his lip. He's basically the poster child for crazy. With a curse he drops down onto the floor, smushing himself up against the wall and looking highly disgruntled. Nikoth however, outside, is enjoying himself immmensely. He's ripping apart his kills and blooding expertly. An old hand, indeed.
Mecaith has been in the bowl this little while, as frost spread through the Weyr, mental frost that has been creeping, growing in his mind. It has seized him now, Iovniath's ice and he watches the grounds, eyes purpled, though he shifts restlessly in place, leashed for now it seems. His head cranes towards where the gold bloods her kills, everything stretching towards her, sands whirling, reaching to try to touch, to knock down a wall of ice made earlier. Tension runs visibly through his flame as blood hits the ground, as other males tear into beasts. Then suddenly like a branch snapping, something changes and with a rare bugle, Mecaith launches himself into the pens to join the fray, two kills in rapid succession, neat and efficient.
F'rint raises his eyes toward Tiriana's while he makes his way in, not the first time passing this threshold lately but the first time he's worn this particularly apologetic look, feeling especially awkward coming in right behind K'del-- a kid barely a third his age, and they're supposed to compete on the same playing field? "Forty-four turns and you won't give a man a break," he can be heard to mumble while Oranyuth slashes determinedly at the belly of a passing beast. Passing A'son, confronted with the age-old problem of what the hell to do with himself to pass the time, he remarks, "Hey, maybe it'll turn out better for you this time, mate." He smiles with his teeth, Oranyuth slashes with his teeth.
There's Oranyuth--is he really that stupid? And Cadejoth, even more so, though he and Nikoth both earn disgusted looks for their messiness, Iovniath's cold disdain touching their minds in turn. She's neat even now: a ruthless slice across the throat of a second herdbeast and she bloods it as well, so delicately licking her mouth clean when she sneaks another look up, reveling in all that attention. It's more Tiriana's prodding than even her own lust that keeps her moving, finishing off her kill rather than wasting her time on the chasers. Tight-wound Tiriana's not nearly so interested in the showing off: each chaser that comes in her door, from the baby-faced K'del to old F'rint gets the same glower before she sweeps further inside, out of the doorway with jerky steps.
Mecaith takes his time drinking down those carcasses, neat and tidy enough to maybe make Iovniath proud before he goes looking for a third. His gaze though, lifts frequently to the glowing, snow-minded queen and to the others as well, cataloguing movements, tracking paths through the grounds, taking measure just as much as she measures /them/. She sent frost and ice howling out over the Weyr, out of his mind creeps a tendril of heat, challenging maybe the dominance of winter. There's still nary a sign of T'rev, the Fortian bronzerider's nowhere to be seen and his footsteps do not ring up the stairs.
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth projects, << Don't be scared. No one's gonna get cold-clocked this time, baby boy. >>
For now, Cadejoth is less concerned with pleasing Iovniath (beautiful Iovniath, burning-cold Iovniath) than with finishing his meal, preparing himself, though he rumbles in her direction, his tail twitching, his wings fluttering, his bloody maw reaching for the skies though the time is not quite right to seek into them. K'del's expression is bland, Tiriana's glower earning nothing more than that, before he, too, stumbles inside, seeking out a wall to lean against. And, okay, his gaze goes back to Tiriana, glazed, but still watching. Not his fault Yuliye part primed him already.
Midst those chasers is little E'dro, now all of eighteen, though still little, lanky, and timid. Spying out Tiriana and her glower almost immediately upon entering, he starts a litany of a frantic, "OFaranthOFaranthOFaranthpleasedon'tletthisbemyfirst." Over and over and over again.
Dragon> Typically, Mecaith has a well-ordered mind. That is not the case now. Howls of wind toss sand dunes to and fro and ice freezes channels of water that extend in a vast network from a hidden spring are spidered on their surface with lacey white. << Do not mistake understanding or the quest for it, for fear. But I thank you for your concern. >> Ignoring utterly, the insult to his age. (Mecaith to Oranyuth)
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth's just trying to be a warm-and-friendly welcome-wagon, really. << Do not mistake the 'Reaches hospitality for carte blanch. The /new/ Weyrleader hasn't been decided yet. >> Which means, technically, the ball's still in his court.
Oranyuth's... not exactly the hot-and-heavy type. He's here because he's male, and she's a queen, and a combination of hormones and duty call. Iovniath has his attention when she needs it, but the primordial necessity to blood has the majority of his focus. Of his competition, only Mecaith-- kill the heretic foreigner!-- gets more than a passing glance.
Dragon> To Oranyuth, Mecaith squints against the gale in his mind. << It is never proper to assume so, >> Mecaith answers steadily enough though he's still trapped, encased with a growing web of icy patterns that he can't see his way out of.
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth, in a somber moment, the weeks of chaos that this Weyr has suffered, imparts a calm, << You know you shouldn't be here. >> It's not a rebuke exactly, more a wish that the Fortian would understand: Oranyuth is High Reaches through-and-through, and his Weyr's been through enough without the possibility of an outsider coming to lead. << You know. >>
They're not watching her enough. Iovniath has an uncharacteristic snap of her jaws for Oranyth, who has the temerity to act more interested in his blooding than in wooing her. She might not want /him/, but he's damn well supposed to want her! She's emotions everywhere, that lust and fury, while her rider crosses her arms, closed off as she glances around her own males, paces a jittery circuit of the hearth. And Iovniath, she'll show them, all of them: she crouches, an instant later springing upward, into the air. Iovniath rises rapidly to the top of the bowl, a wisp of frost-tipped fur sent backward at all those suitors, to draw them onward after her as she climbs higher, sets a westward path into the strong wind blowing in from Tillek.
Skywards! K'del lets out a long, low breath as Cadejoth takes flight, as though his own breathing will send his lifemate-- faster? Slower? His expression is so glazed it's hard to know whether he's happy to be here or not, now, now that they're in the midst of things. Cadejoth hurtles higher, as fast as he can, making use of the thermals to hasten his celestial voyage. Now, as the blood dries about his mouth, Iovniath is everything again: look he can fly! Look, he can fly fast! Look, he can call after her, that low, howling kind of lust, westward across the plains. Mountains. Whatever.
Dragon> To Oranyuth, Mecaith is silent except for the howling of the storm in his mind. << I know. >> At last. << Can you resist her? >> ANd there's another tug of lace-shaped ice pulling all of his carefully ordered sands willy nilly to cleave to frosty crystals.
"Hroxeth," says the rider of Pern's answer to Obiwan Kenobi-a-la-bronze-dragon. It's a despairing sound that ends in a choke, as a powerful boost sends E'dro's bronze into the air, one of the first after Iovniath's glowing body. To F'rint, "Jays, this is really gonna be my first isn't it?" He's already sure he's going to win; it'd be just his luck, of course.
It's a breathless T'rev who comes up the steps, footsteps a little unsteady and quite loud. When he arrives though, he doesn't quite come inside. He lingers in the entryway, shoulder turned to stone and its outward he faces, looking up at the sky where dragons have taken off, Mecaith included. If Iovniath was worried about not being admired enough, focused on enough, she might be pleased to find Mecaith hopelessly ensnared. He's watching, observing, focused on how she moves, when she moves, where she moves. For now it's all about speed and position and getting up high enough to get into the right place to be able to shift at a moment's notice to catch the right angle for her. His rider though, is tension incarnate, one hand curled into a fist against the weyr's rocky entryway. A glance is cast back over his shoulder towards Tiriana and his eyes stay fixed there for a moment. Renewed determination sets his jaw and T'rev resolutely looks away and presumably sends his thoughts up after Mecaith to pull him free of Iovniath's mental clutches.
F'rint, chuckling, "Sure it is, kid. And it's gonna be my last." Because Tiriana would absolutely be the death of the old man, and that's the look he gives the goldrider now, one that knows full well that discretion is the better part of valor. /Run/, F'rint; run while there's still time-- oh, there goes Oranyuth, pulling away from Iovniath's snapping jaws and right into the rush of chasing her. Agility left him long ago, temerity left for those young fools-of-dragons who don't know what this Flight /means/, he just dogs the queen's trajectory. Let her snap at him, he's not in this for /her/, he's in this for /here/, because the 'Reaches could really use a decent dude to be Weyrleader for a while. And he knows just the man for the job!
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth? << I don't need to resist. I can have her. I can be what we need. You... >> Don't belong here.
For Iovniath, it's a game: a very important one, admittedly, but still a game, the bronzes pawns to toy with. Her mind reaches back to touch them again, to make sure they're with her as she climbs higher, letting the headwind lift her up. Her pace is just fast enough to keep ahead of them, not enough to fly off and leave them; such overconfidence in her ability to orchestrate it all. Tiriana has it, too, enough so that she laughs, not pleasantly, when she catches E'dro's words. And then there's footsteps on the ledge, and she turns to look, even though nobody comes in. Such second-guessing won't do, and she stalks to the ledge as imperious as Iovniath. "/In/," she orders T'rev.
Dragon> To Oranyuth, Mecaith struggles with something, his mind is in such disarray and the old brown is very distracting. << We could. There are reasons. Many. That we could. >> A shadow slips across his mind, much smaller than Iovniath, the color on the snow that's mixed up with his sand olive in hue. And vaguely, traced in that odd snow-sand mix, other dragon shapes and faces too, friends, people /here/ that they care for. There is no line, in Mecaith's mind, no 'we are Fort'/'you are Reaches', only the idea of strengh that stems from caring and a unity that's wider than the division between Weyrs as his mind ticks over the analysis of the flight, slots all the pieces into place and seemingly, finds the right pattern.
Cadejoth? Still here. He doesn't try to watch his movements wingbeat for wingbeat to Iovniath's; for now, he's content to trail in her wake, lower than she is, though not by too much, and certainly not quite as close as he might like, given his straining efforts to get closer still. His tail, usually always in motion, is still for once, straight, and flung out behind him: it's his wingbeats that matter, now, and the elongated length of his neck, streamlined into the wind. K'del pays little attention to those around him: breathing, that's where it's at. In. Out. In. Out. His palms flatten against the wall; his eyes shut.
Oh shit, she's looking at him. She's /laughin/ at him. E'dro sinks into himself, taking steps backward until he's found a wall to melt into and possibly disappear.
Dragon> But there is a line. There is. On one side of it... << You don't know, Mecaith. You don't know us. >> He has images of his own: people who /need/, people who have hurt, who have been through enough! << You know the fringe, the edge, perhaps a thread that runs all the way through, but could you--? >> Keep it together when the Weyrwoman's dead, the Weyrleader's fled? Because he has. Oh, he has! (Oranyuth to Mecaith)
Nikoth is for now residing in the back, unusual for the showy bronze. He's moving slowly, but steady and keeping in pace for the most part. There's a steady determination emanating from him. A'son? Well, he's still hiding in the back of the weyr. He's looking annoyed still and is unresponsive to just about anything around him.
/In/. F'rint looks across the room, lowers his head, shakes it with a look of abject disappointment to behold the arrival of the Fortian. Out there, Oranyuth still relentlessly believes he's got a snowball's chance in hell of taking this flight, still thinks he's the right dragon for the job. But soon, with the first glide instead of flap, with the first conservation of energy, certain facts will become insurmountable: he's too old and the wrong color for this crap.
T'rev's head turns, face a mask of punch-drunk desire mixed with resistance. "No," he tells Tiriana quietly, firmly. "I won't be the one to do this to him. Or to you." His voice is kept low, not really meant to echo back to the others and he turns back to the sky, sweat beading along his brow as he pushes against his bronze above. Mecaith's still in the thick of things, lifting up higher and higher after Iovniath, his pursuit seemingly single-minded, intently focused. Is T'rev at all having an effect on him? Or is he just too bound up in it all now?
Dragon> To Oranyuth, Mecaith is answering Iovniath, all the more committed by the touch of her mind it seems. << Yes, we can. We can learn. You don't know /us/, you don't know my T'rev. He can do this if he puts his mind to it, commits to it. He knows /her/. >> Tiriana, angry-faced and resplendant is vividly drawn in his mind. << And we were /there/. >> Crom. Footsteps pounding down hallways, the chase after those who stole. << We don't know all, but we know /much/. >> And then more distraction and Mecaith cuts off the connection. Someone else is arguing with him and water, not frozen by Iovniath's snowstorm is flooding his thoughts in steady waves, warm, against the cold.
Dragon> To Mecaith, Oranyuth only, << You were /there/. I was /here/. >> He flags... what will he has to argue with Mecaith is dwindles...
Dragon> To Nikoth, Oranyuth, frantic, << Take her! Take her before-- >> Cadejoth, a child! Mecaith, an outsider!
Any other day, Tiriana probably wouldn't want anything to do with T'rev. Today, though? Today anger flashes across her features for the snub, and Iovniath howls, fury directed at Mecaith but leaking away from her, onto her other chasers. But it's not attention she can long focus on him, with other chasers breathing down her neck. She flies higher, no fancy tricks. She's tiring already, a growing desperation at the back of her mental presence. Her head tilts back to look at them under her wing, searching until she finds what she wants: Nikoth at the very back. What's he doing there? Iovniath hesitates, a wild glance around and then she's turning sharply, to cut around behind the pack--not the brightest move, probably, but she's desperate, and not planning very clearly in the moment.
F'rint rubs his hand across his dome, slides his palm down his face, gives up the ghost. "We really are f--ked," he announces summarily, looking around the room with increasing disappointment: T'rev, /who does not belong here/; E'dro and K'del, still wet behind the ears; A'son, oh my god just grow a pair already. There's nothing left in Oranyuth for the end, he saved nothing, and he breaks away the same way he has a bajillion other times before tonight. They leave.
Slumping against the wall, T'rev really looks like he could use a stiff drink right about now. And then ... as Iovniath howls and breaks for the back of the pack, Mecaith swerves like he'd try to intercept. His rider's fist curls tight, his jaw sets and then the Fortian bronze is changing direction again, sweeping wide and tucking his wings to drop out of the flight all together. A splash down in the lake follows and the tension seems to bleed out of T'rev all at once, hands covering his face. He doesn't even look back as he stumbles away again and if anyone is paying attention, he apparently winds up going down the steps on his ass if the strangled: "OW!" from somewhere out there is any indication. Fort's out. Relief all around, most likely.
Nikoth, who's been hiding in the back of the pack this entire night? He sees Iovniath make that move. He gets a sudden surge of strength. Broad brozen wings beat hard, hurtling him to the front and beyond. He catches up to the forerunners and it seems that he may even be close to getting near Iovniath herself. Then with a gut wrenching, ear splitting cry he folds his wings and plummets down to the ground. It's this action that drops him so unexpectedly from the race when moments earlier it seemed he might even take it.
A'son: He's been sitting sullenly quiet in the back, not speaking. Not acting or moving. His eyes have been distant and empty this evening, while tensions otherwise have been running high. Suddenly, his shoulders tense and he comes into the moment. He looks around the weyr with a clarity in his eyes that's perhaps frightening. It's then that he dips his hand into his riding boots and removes the small dirk. The sheath is thrown across the room and in one swift moment he buries it into his right shoulder. To the hilt. He screams, gets up and staggers out.
Cadejoth's far enough back in the pack, despite his best efforts (he's young - who can blame him?), that Iovniath's turn around places him, in fact, much closer to her - not quite close enough to grab at her, not yet, but close enough to surprise both him, and his rider, whose eyes flutter open, seeking back to Tiriana, wildly. But they don't linger: A'son, then, takes his attention, the young bronzerider seeking out the older one, considering him with what attention span he can muster. Cadejoth alters his path again, to shift closer still, and beneath; so close, now! Except for stupid Nikoth. F'rint's assessment? That goes unheard, uncomprehended. For now.