Month 6: Dragon Ages 11-12 months
Overview:
While you're still expected to salute and grant respect to full riders, it is understood that you are now in a very intense portion of your training. While full riders will have drills only a few days a week and even then for only part of the day, you are still learning. Most of your waking hours will be involved in drills. When the wings go out to fly Threadfall, the weyrling wing assists in resupply as often as not.
Although your dragons eat much more at a meal and those meals come less and less often, they're not quite done growing yet. They'll wean down to one meal a day, then less than that, with blues and greens making these transitions sooner than their larger siblings.
All of the practice forming and memorizing images will be put to use almost immediately: the eleventh month begins with lessons in going between. Dragons are made to between; they do so over short distances naturally, needing human help only to fix images from distant places in their minds. Still, betweening is dangerous business and it's not at all uncommon for a weyrling to go between for the first time only never to return. The threat of losing a weyrling hangs heavy over everyone, weyrlings, trainers, and even general riders about the Weyr. D’ven is even harsher during these times, and less likely than ever to let Weyrlings out of his or Teraneth’s sight for very long.
Once betweening is mostly under control, you'll begin lessons in flaming as well. Weyrlings will be instructed in the vagaries of firestone, a lightweight phospine-rich rock used to fuel the dragons' flames. Firestone comes in a wide variety of purities and densities; purer firestone is reserved for use in Threadfighting, while some of the most impure isn't even fit to train weyrlings with and must be culled. Dragonriders don't spend their time sorting and bagging firestone - such tasks are left to the weyr's young laborers and other people who need to earn their keep - but riders must understand intimately how firestone affects their beast's performance in Threadfighting, so you'll all get to do it a few times as a part of your training. Basically, you take an unsorted heap of broken bits of firestone and sort it into heaps by purity, then density, then size. Finally the stuff is bagged - and of those bags, some will be retained for practice.
Ah, practice. During this time the weyrling barracks takes on a faint smell of phosphine, charcoal and ash. The first few flaming lessons can be quite entertaining and it's not uncommon for some of the full riders and other members of the Weyr to turn out to watch dragons coughing up their first guttering, uneven gouts of flame. It's also not uncommon for eyebrowless or singe-haired weyrlings to be taunted gently in the living cavern! No matter how hard it may be to begin with, flaming is another one of those things that dragons do naturally, and with a little encouragement to swallow into their second stomachs and some help to stop them accidentally biting their tongues, they'll all learn quickly enough to char whatever they might point their fiery belches at.
As your independence and that of your lifemates increases, you will increasingly be viewed as junior members of the Weyr. This new status takes on a name: once you are cleared to go between without an escort, you are officially a 'senior' weyrling. Senior weyrlings rank junior weyrlings when both are present, and a wing of senior weyrlings may in some cases contribute more firepower to fighting 'fall than just resupply. Beyond these changes, senior weyrlings still live in the barracks under the same restrictions as junior weyrlings.
Sample Schedule
At least twice a week now you'll have a shift flying elevator duty in the bowl.
6:00 AM - Wake up; barracks inspection, aerial firestone toss to 'work up an appetite'
8:30 AM - Cleanup
9:00 AM - Breakfast
9:30 AM - Formation drills in the bowl until lunch time
12:30 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Lessons in betweening and/or flaming
4:00 PM - Drills and exercises until dinner
6:00 PM - Dinner
6:30 PM - Academic presentations or time to work on new straps. Again, something will be found for any weyrling without anything to do, and this time is expected to be spend communally
10:00 PM - Lights-out