Fic: Wings, Lift Hope and Sing [Percy Jackson/Dragonriders of Pern][Part 1]
Title: Wings, Lift Hope and Sing
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Dragonriders of Pern fusion
Characters/Pairings: Percy, ensemble (some background Silena/Luke, Silena/Beckendorf, otherwise gen)
Summary: And what was so special about a scrawny twelve-year-old with behavioral problems, anyway? What could a Search dragon want with him?
Word Count: 11,300
Notes: THIS GOT REALLY LONG IDEK HOW TO EXPLAIN IT. I have no idea where it came from or why it insisted it had to be written. I cherry-picked what I wanted out of the Pern world, so I apologize in advance to any purists. Um, I tried to make it so that those who haven't read DRoP could understand it, too, but it'll probably be a lot more fun if you're familiar with the canon XD
Also, I used this to determine dragon sizes by color, starting with the second from the right.
i.
When Percy gets up the next morning, it's to find Seth flirting with Lilianath up on the watchtower.
"Does he always do that?" he asks when he finds Grover in the mess hall, almost buried beneath a veritable stack of riding goggles. Curious, he picks up a pair, turning them over and inspecting them. Scorch marks warp the edges of the lens, bitter-smelling, black, and charred.
Grover snatches the pair away from him and tosses them onto a stack of equally sorry-looking goggles. "What, Seth?" he mumbles, somewhat absently. "Yeah, he always does that. I think he's a bit bored here, to be honest."
Percy makes a face. "But Lilianath's like, a bajillion and a half years older than him."
Grover's mouth quirks in that way Percy's used to associating with people communicating with their dragons. "Erraolth says you shouldn't say that anywhere where she can hear you."
He snorts easily, since he wasn't planning on it. He's from a big Weyr, so it's not like he gets knock-kneed at the sight of a queen dragon alight in the sky, so golden she puts the sun to shame, but he hadn't actually gotten within touching distance of one until he met Lilianath. She's old, though, more gray-white basalt build-up to her skin than gold, so it's still strange to watch Seth dance around her up on the watchtower, snorting playfully.
Seth's not even five years old, which makes him not quite fully grown, but he's still small for a bronze nonetheless; three hands-spans bigger in the leg than a stallion, where Lilianath is more like double that -- the kind of size that would make it really comfortable to step out of a two-story window right onto her shoulders. Seth's a transfer from another Weyr, Grover told him, and about the only bronze in the wings that Lilianath didn't spawn, so maybe it's the novelty that helps him get away with it.
And indeed, if anything, Lilianath and the Weyrleader's bronze mostly just seem amusedly tolerant of Seth's behavior.
"Well, that's because it's a foregone conclusion, innit?" goes one of the Stoll twins later, in line for porridge and breakfast fruit.
"What is?" Percy blinks. Travis and Connor are fifteen and taller than him by half a head, which annoys him, but they're all right when separate and absolutely brilliant together, and they seem to know everything about everyone. It'd be cool if they both Impressed dragons -- that way, they could stay together. They came from somewhere way far down south, and while distance is nothing to a dragon, it'd still be sad if one of them had to go home.
Holding his empty tray up in front of his face like he's afraid someone's going to overhear, the other twin leans in. "Well, they brought Seth in to fly the junior queen when she's old enough, didn't they?"
"Think about it," goes the first twin, keeping his voice down, too. "Silena's gonna be Weyrwoman once her dragon's old enough to clutch, and everybody likes her, and everybody likes Luke. They'd be fantastic Weyrleaders."
Percy thinks about it. Politics is a little beyond his grasp at this point, but he can't deny that pretty much all the Candidates look up to Silena and Luke with the kind of reluctant awe reserved for those who are incontrovertibly that much older and cooler than you. And he gets that Candidates will become dragonriders, and dragonriders make up the fighting wings, and the fighting wings are the important voices in a Weyr, so he supposes that it's a good sign if the Candidates like potential new Weyrleaders.
"But," he starts. "There's a queen egg on the Sands right now. So when it hatches, we'll have three queens; Lilianath, Silena's Zererith, and the new hatchling. Doesn't that make too many queens for a Weyr?"
Travis and Connor grin at him.
"Yeah," one of them shrugs. "But since when do we follow typical Weyr rules?"
The line moves them, so Percy just shrugs and grabs a tray.
ii.
They're not a proper Weyr, of course. Mostly everybody here just calls it Camp; they don't have the cragged cliffs and labyrinthine caves that dragons love, the ones that house the proper Weyrs. There are a couple places like it in the world, he knows -- strongholds in the wilderness where dragons and riders live in baracks, not caves -- but in the Weyr he grew up in, people treat them like they're temporary, not even worth an actual name.
It didn't escape Percy's attention, the way Smelly Gabe kind of wrinkled his nose when Grover came on Erraolth on a winter's day, Searching, like he thought it was farcical.
"Ruddy thing won't last five years, I'm telling you," he grumbled into his cards. "Dragons are meant for the seaside and mountains, not the plains upstate."
"They have two full fighting wings, Gabriel, and they've got Chiron for Weyrleader. They're not some backwoods gathering of dragons," Sally remarked mildly. She was trying to make Percy's hair lie flat. All children over the age of twelve and under the age of eighteen were required for presentation to a dragon on Search, and although it was a bit not-kosher to Search in another Weyr instead of the smaller Holds and towns, there wasn't any rule against it. Percy was only just old enough to qualify, and his mother seemed a little uncertain as how to handle the unexpected summons. So she attacked it with a hairbrush.
Grover and Erraolth were both brown, sturdy, and down-to-earth, smiling easily as all the young potential Candidates were gathered before them, and they'd seemed completely unperturbed by the subtle derision from the local dragonriders gathered high on the rocky crags surrounding the Bowl. Grover had a mass of insanely curly hair that attracted and held everybody's attention more than his speech did, and Erraolth stood behind him, slender peacock neck curved back at rest position and wedge-shaped head tucked over Grover's shoulder.
"There's something different we look for in our dragonriders at Camp, something most Searchers and their dragons overlook." Grover put a hand on his dragon's muzzle, rubbing at it affectionately, the same easy, unconscious movement all dragonriders make. "It's not your typical adventure, pioneering new strongholds out in the wild, so trust us when we say that we don't Search lightly."
Which, Percy supposes later, was their politically correct excuse for only Searching one person out of the hundreds of kids available from his home Weyr.
"I don't get it," went Gabe, after. "You're just some snot-nosed twelve-year-old. Who'd want you for a dragonrider?"
"Well, shit," had been Sally's equally dumbstruck remark, and Percy's eyebrows jumped. His mother never cussed. She put her hands out, smoothing his hair down compulsively; Erraolth huffing down on him joyfully had been enough to completely ruin all her efforts from before. "You're not supposed to leave my nest until you're eighteen, Percy. Now what am I going to do?"
"Mom!" Percy went, mortified to see she was on the verge of crying. "It's not like I can't visit."
"Oh, he'll be back," Gabe waved a hand around dismissively. "Can you see him Impressing anything?" He squinted meanly at Percy. "Well, maybe the runtiest green of the lot. The ones not even the girls want."
Grover frowned at him, but Sally beat him to it, saying with an icy amount of venom, "I'd be no less proud of Percy if he Impressed a green than I would if he Impressed the biggest bronze on the Sands. We need every dragonrider we can get."
"A boy on a green is just damn unnatural," Gabe said, mulishly but too quietly to provoke anything.
Don't tell anyone, but saying good-bye to his mom was the hardest part of being Searched. Accepting a hand-up from Grover onto Erraolth's back, he made a mental note to ask if maybe she could come to Camp, too, once he Impressed. There's really nothing for her here. Especially not her husband.
Then again, thinking back on it now, he remembers the thoughtful expression on her face as she was helping him pack and thinks that she can probably handle herself.
iii.
Candidates are allowed forty-five minutes on the Sands every day to mingle with the dragon eggs, stroking shells and talking to the hatchlings inside. Everybody says that's where Impression really happens: the dragons know who they want the instant they crack shell, all from the pressure of a handprint and the sound of a whisper.
Sometimes Lilianath is there, tail and claws curled protectively around the queen egg on its own separate mound of sand and curling her lips back over her teeth when someone gets too close, her eyes chaotically colorful, but most of the time, the safest point to bring the Candidates in is when she's out hunting cattle or doing her shift up on the watchtower, a familiar silhouette golden against the sky.
Even Percy can tell this will be her last clutch: she and the Weyrwoman are getting too old for this Hatching business, and anyway, Grover said that Zererith will be old enough to mate come spring, so the next clutch of eggs on the Sands will be hers, making Silena the new Weyrwoman, and whatever bronzerider (Luke, the Stoll brothers nod, like it's already happened, although technically it's all supposed to be chance) flies her will be the new Weyrleader. If Percy Impresses, he'll be here to see it.
The Hatching Grounds is actually a shallow pit scraped out of a dried-up river delta with an arena built up around it, kept warm with a mixture of hot rocks, dragonfire, and mulch. It's open to the sky, which makes it different than any Hatching Grounds Percy's ever been in. He can't really get over it.
He's not the youngest Candidate standing, nor the smallest -- that honor belongs to a yellow-haired girl named Annabeth, who recognized the position of vulnerability this put her in early on (nobody ever likes being the youngest Candidate standing -- everybody loves an underdog story, about the littlest Candidate going on to Impress where the bigger, older ones don't, so everybody watches the smallest ones on Hatching day and it's not like they aren't insane with nerves already,) and she's probably tougher than the rest of them put together. Also, she has very sharp elbows and a tendency to find the softest spots to stick them in when she's displeased. She doesn't really band together with the other Candidates; her closest friend is the greenrider who Searched her, Thalia, a sentiment that Percy can appreciate: moreso than anybody else, he likes hanging around Grover, who's not so old that he treats the Candidates like kids.
Technically, all the girls are standing for the queen egg, since it's the most important, but most of them get chosen by greens before the queen even cracks shell. He looks over now just as Annabeth crouches down, stroking a hand down the mottled gold-hued curve of the egg, the shape of her fingers tiny against the shell.
"Imagine if she became Junior Weyrwoman," he hears Castor whisper. Pollux shushes him quickly, but Castor's got the biggest flare for the dramatic of anyone Percy knows and does sotto voice almost by default. He sees the line of tension enter Annabeth's shoulders, and she pulls her hand back, too abrupt to really be casual.
Percy bites his lip. "I think she'd be just fine," he tells the egg he's closest to in an undertone. It's a whole swirl of colors -- unlike the queen egg, you can't tell what color of dragon are in the smaller ones, nor do the sizable ones always hatch bronzes, whatever anybody says. "So you go and telepathically tell that to the little queen in there."
For good measure, he pets the egg a little, and startles when he feels something turn over inside. The shell is hard, clicking against his nail when he taps it experimentally.
Soon, then, he thinks, unable to suppress a shiver of excitement, and when he looks up, he unwittingly catches Charlie's eye. Unlike most of the boys, who are encouraged to get acquainted with as many of the eggs as they can to widen their chances, Charlie picked one egg that first time and he stays by it for the full forty-five minutes every day, talking lowly.
Nobody bothers him about it. He's the oldest Candidate here, the Stoll brothers told him -- he's the Weyrwoman's nephew or something, so he's stood at two Hatchings before this and Impressed neither times, and this is probably his last chance too.
Unexpectedly, Charlie smiles at him, wide and toothy and eager. Soon, he mouths back.
iv.
Being Candidates puts them at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to chores, which kind of sucks some days. Percy's seen more toilets in the past few weeks than he has in pretty much his entire life. It seems like the sort of life experience he could do without.
"Percy!" Rachel finds him after breakfast, entirely too cheerful-looking for the time of morning and carrying a bucket in her arms. Percy's never really figured out exactly what Rachel's relation is to everyone at Camp: he's seen her in with the cooks, in with the stablehands, in the library with paint under her nails. The most he's ever got was that she's a favorite of the Weyrleaders -- she alarmed a bunch of the new kids this one time by dropping in between Chiron and the Weyrwoman on the bench at dinner, chattering away like this was all par for the course. She's just one of those Camp fixtures you get used to.
She rummages in her bucket and pulls out a thin stick of wood. "Dragon bath requested by weyr 221," she reads off of it, and looks over at him. "They're on drill rotation right now, I think, but they get back in at ten."
Percy wrinkles his nose a little bit. "Dragon toe jam is exactly how I want to start the day."
"Suck it up!" she responds chirpily, smiling easy and without rancor. Her hair's wet, he notices, watching the water drip off the end of her damp-darkened braid, and then remembers the rather enthusiastic game some of the younger blue dragons had been playing earlier that morning out in the lake. Looks like she'd been there for that.
He takes the wood slat from her and pretends to swoon. "You always save the best things for me!"
"That's because you never do anything remotely exciting," she answers immediately. "And therefore don't attract anyone's ire, so I've run out of all the nasty chores by the time I get to you."
Percy's not quite sure how to handle that. "Thank you, I guess. That was a very backhanded compliment."
"My specialty. Let me know when you decide to be interesting."
"You'll be the first to know," Percy goes, dry, and then goes to get the dragon bathing supplies from the Big House.
In all honesty, dragon toe jam really isn't that bad. It stinks bit -- all dragons coming in off of drill rotation smell unpleasant, like burning hair and compost, for reasons Percy's sure he's going to have to learn at some point. But drawing baths for them is actually kind of fun: Percy likes the excuse to be that close to a dragon, even one that smells offensive and likes splashing water everywhere with thoughtless sweeps of its wings, which means more for Percy to have to clean up later.
He cuts it so close that there's still small curls of steam coming off the surface of the tub when the rider and dragon make their appearance at the bath house, and Percy realizes with a start that the occupants of weyr 221 are Luke and Seth.
He's heard it from the twins so many times now that it's practically canonical, but even Percy has to stop for a moment and let it really sink in, just how much Luke looks the part of a dragonrider. He fits his leathers like they're wearing him instead of the other way around, goggles cocked at a jaunty angle high on his forehead and his hair's at just the right length to stick out from under his helmet in tufts, which, according to Thalia is a rather attractive look.
"It makes his smile look fabulous, you'll see," she said conspiratorially, tapping the side of her nose.
When he sees the tub and the rubbing oils and the sandpaper all already laid out, Luke's whole face cracks open, revealing a row of wide, white teeth, and Percy's not a greenrider (yet, at any rate, though according to his stepfather it's as much a foregone conclusion as Silena being the next Weyrwoman,) but Thalia's got a point: that's definitely a Cool Guy smile.
"Perseus, isn't it?" he goes, stripping off his riding gloves and rubbing circulation back into his bloodless fingers; it's cold up there at dragonflight height.
"Percy, actually," Percy corrects, as Seth makes a happy noise and circumvents his rider in order to scrabble into the tub, talons and tail ungainly on the tiles. He submerges all the way up to his spine ridges in a single, loud dive, making a subvocal sound of appreciation that vibrates against the sides of the tub. He ducks his head under, lidding his eyelids so that they glow in contented blues and greens under the surface, diluted and a little eerie.
When he finally manages to tear his eyes away from the sight, it's to find Luke doing pretty much the exact same thing: watching his dragon with fondness, joy, and something that's close to childish awe, like he can't quite believe he's here.
"No," he says dryly, dragging it out. "You can't splash everywhere. This is getting clean time, not play time."
It's only when Seth flips a wingtip at him dismissively that Percy realizes he was talking to the bronze, who'd been eyeing Percy with something like mischief.
"Why is there a whole separate compound for bathing dragons? Why can't they just get clean in the lake?" he'd asked Rachel once, and she'd given him this fish-eyed look, like she was wondering what backbirth Hold they'd brought him in from.
He's figured it out since then; the way dirt and debris and ash gather in the cracks in dragon skin, and how riders need to sandpaper their scales down and oil in between them, which all sounds luxurious and kind of ridiculous when you put it like that, but it's crucial to dragon health, and there's some important bonding element to it that you wouldn't understand unless you're a dragonrider.
There's an oily sheen of dirt swirling on the surface of the tub now, and thanks to Seth's careless movements, there's probably nearly as much water on the tiles now as there is in the tub.
Percy thinks about going for a mop, but that'd probably only prompt Seth to make more of a mess.
Luke finishes unbuckling his chaps, hanging them up and going over to sit cross-legged next to the tub. Immediately, Seth blows bubbles at him from underwater.
"Grover Searched you, didn't he?" the bronzerider says suddenly, making Percy jump.
Recovering, he says hastily, "Um, yes?", unable to keep it from coming out like a question.
Seth rumbles lowly, finally lifting his head out of the water in order to deposit it in Luke's lap, soaking him. Luke just laughs, trailing his fingers over the shape of Seth's face -- the ornate ridges above the eyes, the thin flaps of skin like fins that protect a dragon's ears, the soft spot right behind the notch at the top of the skull.
"You worried about the Hatching?" he goes, stroking along the eye ridges, and Seth presses eagerly into the touch, eyes lidding with pleasure.
"About Impressing? Not really. It happens or it doesn't, right?"
"I suppose," Luke shrugs, his lips turning up at the corner. "You know, I always thought it was a bit more complicated than that, even if it's what they'll tell you, and it's not until you're too old and it's too late do you really realize just how much someone can manipulate a Hatching."
Not liking the tone in his voice, Percy worries his lips and tries to think of something to say to that -- manipulate a Hatching? It's the dragon's choice, isn't it? How can anyone manipulate a dragon? -- but Luke distracts him, lifting a hand to finger over the scar that cuts down underneath his eye. It's healed nicely, he can tell, but it's still starkly visible on Luke's tan and wind-chapped face. He has no idea how Luke got it: he asked Grover, who asked Erraolth, who heard from Mirth, Thalia's green, that he got it at the same Hatching he'd Impressed at. This probably means it'd been one of the hatchlings, maybe even Seth, and like a bolt out of the blue, Percy wonders if that's what he meant.
Fortunately, Luke seems to snap out of it, dropping his hand and hiding the gesture by popping his knuckles.
"You hoping for a bronze?" he asks, flashing Percy a grin, and there's totally a note of teasing in his voice now.
It's not an uncommon question. Just like all the girls stand for the queen, all the boys stand for the bronzes, and Impressing all the other colors just seems to happen while everyone waits for the queen egg to hatch, or some boy they know to Impress a bronze. Status symbols, her mother sniffed once, surprising him with how poisonously she said it. Her brother, Percy's uncle, had been a bronzerider when he was alive, so he didn't really understand her comment, but the unease still lingered. Looking at Luke, you wouldn't think there's a single thing wrong with bronzeriders, and Percy wouldn't dream of saying anything bad about Chiron.
"I guess," he settles for, because it's ambiguous enough. Unbidden, he blurts out, "My stepfather thinks that it's unnatural for boys to Impress greens."
That startles Luke. His eyebrows shoot up, and he huffs a laugh, the sound of it echoed with Seth's snort. "We should introduce him to Ethan."
"Ethan?" Percy blinks, momentarily diverted. "Wait, Ethan's a greenrider? Ethan with the missing eye and the bad attitude? A green?" Ethan's got a reputation for busting kneecaps, not wholly undeserved: he has, on more than one occasion that Percy knows of, picked a fight with several of the blueriders and a brownrider or two at dinner. Percy always thought it was over some girl.
Watching him work through several things at once, Luke's mouth curves again, something that's half-twisted and half a genuine smile. "You know, I can't help but think sometimes that all the typical stereotypes are crap."
"What?"
"You know." Luke shrugs. "Queenriders are always beautiful, headstrong women. Bronzes Impress the manly, the confident, the hero-types," he stops petting Seth long enough to flex his muscles in demonstration, looking gratified when Percy can't help but laugh. "Browns always go for the completely average, the laid-back and reliable. Blues go for the witty and the problem-solvers, and greens like the sl--" he cuts his eyes at Percy, trips over his tongue, and says instead, "-- the flighty."
He digests this. "What sort do you think the dragons look for?"
Luke shakes his head. "I just don't think it's fair to stick those kinds of labels to people. That just because you ride a bronze means you've got some predetermined fate." Seth burbles something reassuring, and Luke ducks his head, smiling at whatever his dragon just told him inside his head. "Personally, I think it's the greenriders who are the strongest of all of us," he continues, more meditatively. "They're the ones that really fight, harder and longer than everyone else. They're the backbone of any Weyr. Tell that to your stepfather next time he gets mean."
Percy goes back to biting at the inside of his lips, because none of that really sounded like him -- is there a kind of dragon for the weird kids with behavioral problems?
Catching something in his expression, Luke gives him one of those easy-going smiles and beckons with one hand. "Come here for a sec, will you?"
Percy does, of course, and Luke shows him the spot right behind a dragon's eye ridges that they can never reach for themselves, no matter how they rub their heads on rocks (or, in their case, fallen logs and branches, given Camp's lack of natural caves,) that soft, itchy skin that makes them croon like children and push into your hand, like that. It always surprises Percy, just how warm dragons are, like they're constantly lit on fire somewhere deep down.
"Don't worry about it," Luke says quietly, after several minutes of getting Seth to relax into a boneless lump of bronze scales, his eyes the deepest shade of cerulean, swirling so slowly and peacefully it looks like sugar. "Erraolth's a good Searchdragon; if you're here, you've got everything you need to be a dragonrider. Spirit, maturity, willingness to follow orders -- speaking of which!" He brightens. "Seth says he wants more hot water. You should get on that, Candidate!"
So, with the full maturity of a possible future dragonrider, Percy pops a "W" with his fingers and goes to pull down the pump to let more hot water into the tub.
v.
"Actually," Rachel drums her fingers against the tabletop, the sound of it lost against the patter of pouring rain against the roof. The mess hall is separated from the elements by corrugated sheet metal, which makes everything sound that much closer and immediate. "I always thought the Search dragons looked for the kids that need it most."
Percy, busy contemplating the way the rain seems to mist off the trees, it's coming down so hard, almost misses this. "Sorry, what?" he goes, snapping out of it.
She doesn't seem to notice she's disturbed his zen. "Whatever it is they see in people that makes them pick them as Candidates. I've watched a lot of you guys go by in my years -- " which Percy rolls his eyes at, because she's what, fourteen, fifteen, tops. "-- and it always seemed to me that the Search dragons and then, in their turn, the hatchlings always pick the kids that need the dragons as much as the dragons need them. It makes for the best kind of fighting wing, the ones that have each other to fight for."
"Are you sure about that?" another voice cuts in, and Percy and Rachel look up to find Clarisse standing over their table, tray in one hand and the other firmly planted on her hip. Next to her, almost like she's been attached as an afterthought, is Silena, the Junior Weyrwoman. ("Oh, don't look so surprised!" Travis waves his hand around extravagantly. "They're best of friends. Yes, Silena and Clarisse. This is the first year Clarisse has been asked to stand as a Candidate -- she's nearly as old as Charlie is. Personally, we think Silena's hoping she'll Impress the queen so they can stick together, but you'll have to ask her that.")
Rachel looks more annoyed than intimidated, which Percy admires, because he's feeling very intimidated right now: Clarisse is enormously tall and built like a miner, and the rumors say she got into a fistfight with Ethan a week ago, blacked his eye, and never got caught. "Yes," Rachel says, and goes back to chalking chores down on her little wooden slats.
Clarisse's eyebrows go up. "Really? Because I always thought the Search dragons looked for the nymphos."
"Clarisse!" Silena jerks, startled. She sets her tray down so fast that soup splashes everywhere. "There are children present!"
"What?" Clarisse rolls her eyes, opening her mouth again. Silena makes an attempt to cover Percy's ears, and -- momentarily forgetting who she is, which is the excuse he'll use later -- he tries to bat her away, because if Clarisse is saying something she shouldn't, then he wants to hear it.
"-- think about it," she's saying. "How many times a year do greens go into heat? And don't greens make up, like, half of all fighting wings? Anyone can fly a green: blues, browns, bronzes. That is an insane amount of sex. Like I said, nymphos, all of us. We have to be."
"I really don't think the Search dragons are looking at a twelve-year-old's sex appeal when they Search him, Clarisse," Rachel goes, voice dry.
"And a dragon can choose who flies her, it's not like it's a partner roulette unless they want it to be," puts in Silena, not trying to censor Percy from the conversation anymore, even if most of it is going over his head. He's Weyrbred, so some of it he knows already: greens mate a lot, everybody rolls their eyes about it, it's no big deal. Greens don't lay eggs, so it's not really relevant and it's not anybody's business. It's when queens fly to mate that everybody pays attention, and only bronzes can fly queens. He glances up at Silena -- Luke's right, she is remarkably beautiful, even muted by the rain and frowning -- and wonders if she knows how many people are making a bet out of her and Zererith's sex life.
Clarisse seems to have realize she's hit a line she shouldn't cross, and, possibly because it's Silena and nobody else, she backs off. "Well, true. You can't really imagine anybody flying Lilianath but Ibboth, can you?" she says, gruff, and there's a pause in which they all try to contemplate anybody but Chiron as Weyrleader, and simultaneously make faces when they hit that mental block.
Then she swings one leg over the bench and sits down next to Rachel. "Come on then," she says to the Junior Weyrwoman. "Apparently we're eating with small, dimwitted children today."
"You know," Rachel remarks to Percy, cupping her whisper behind her hand. "I think that's the nicest thing she's ever called me."
They duck the grape tomato Clarisse tosses at their heads.
continued -->
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Dragonriders of Pern fusion
Characters/Pairings: Percy, ensemble (some background Silena/Luke, Silena/Beckendorf, otherwise gen)
Summary: And what was so special about a scrawny twelve-year-old with behavioral problems, anyway? What could a Search dragon want with him?
Word Count: 11,300
Notes: THIS GOT REALLY LONG IDEK HOW TO EXPLAIN IT. I have no idea where it came from or why it insisted it had to be written. I cherry-picked what I wanted out of the Pern world, so I apologize in advance to any purists. Um, I tried to make it so that those who haven't read DRoP could understand it, too, but it'll probably be a lot more fun if you're familiar with the canon XD
Also, I used this to determine dragon sizes by color, starting with the second from the right.
i.
When Percy gets up the next morning, it's to find Seth flirting with Lilianath up on the watchtower.
"Does he always do that?" he asks when he finds Grover in the mess hall, almost buried beneath a veritable stack of riding goggles. Curious, he picks up a pair, turning them over and inspecting them. Scorch marks warp the edges of the lens, bitter-smelling, black, and charred.
Grover snatches the pair away from him and tosses them onto a stack of equally sorry-looking goggles. "What, Seth?" he mumbles, somewhat absently. "Yeah, he always does that. I think he's a bit bored here, to be honest."
Percy makes a face. "But Lilianath's like, a bajillion and a half years older than him."
Grover's mouth quirks in that way Percy's used to associating with people communicating with their dragons. "Erraolth says you shouldn't say that anywhere where she can hear you."
He snorts easily, since he wasn't planning on it. He's from a big Weyr, so it's not like he gets knock-kneed at the sight of a queen dragon alight in the sky, so golden she puts the sun to shame, but he hadn't actually gotten within touching distance of one until he met Lilianath. She's old, though, more gray-white basalt build-up to her skin than gold, so it's still strange to watch Seth dance around her up on the watchtower, snorting playfully.
Seth's not even five years old, which makes him not quite fully grown, but he's still small for a bronze nonetheless; three hands-spans bigger in the leg than a stallion, where Lilianath is more like double that -- the kind of size that would make it really comfortable to step out of a two-story window right onto her shoulders. Seth's a transfer from another Weyr, Grover told him, and about the only bronze in the wings that Lilianath didn't spawn, so maybe it's the novelty that helps him get away with it.
And indeed, if anything, Lilianath and the Weyrleader's bronze mostly just seem amusedly tolerant of Seth's behavior.
"Well, that's because it's a foregone conclusion, innit?" goes one of the Stoll twins later, in line for porridge and breakfast fruit.
"What is?" Percy blinks. Travis and Connor are fifteen and taller than him by half a head, which annoys him, but they're all right when separate and absolutely brilliant together, and they seem to know everything about everyone. It'd be cool if they both Impressed dragons -- that way, they could stay together. They came from somewhere way far down south, and while distance is nothing to a dragon, it'd still be sad if one of them had to go home.
Holding his empty tray up in front of his face like he's afraid someone's going to overhear, the other twin leans in. "Well, they brought Seth in to fly the junior queen when she's old enough, didn't they?"
"Think about it," goes the first twin, keeping his voice down, too. "Silena's gonna be Weyrwoman once her dragon's old enough to clutch, and everybody likes her, and everybody likes Luke. They'd be fantastic Weyrleaders."
Percy thinks about it. Politics is a little beyond his grasp at this point, but he can't deny that pretty much all the Candidates look up to Silena and Luke with the kind of reluctant awe reserved for those who are incontrovertibly that much older and cooler than you. And he gets that Candidates will become dragonriders, and dragonriders make up the fighting wings, and the fighting wings are the important voices in a Weyr, so he supposes that it's a good sign if the Candidates like potential new Weyrleaders.
"But," he starts. "There's a queen egg on the Sands right now. So when it hatches, we'll have three queens; Lilianath, Silena's Zererith, and the new hatchling. Doesn't that make too many queens for a Weyr?"
Travis and Connor grin at him.
"Yeah," one of them shrugs. "But since when do we follow typical Weyr rules?"
The line moves them, so Percy just shrugs and grabs a tray.
ii.
They're not a proper Weyr, of course. Mostly everybody here just calls it Camp; they don't have the cragged cliffs and labyrinthine caves that dragons love, the ones that house the proper Weyrs. There are a couple places like it in the world, he knows -- strongholds in the wilderness where dragons and riders live in baracks, not caves -- but in the Weyr he grew up in, people treat them like they're temporary, not even worth an actual name.
It didn't escape Percy's attention, the way Smelly Gabe kind of wrinkled his nose when Grover came on Erraolth on a winter's day, Searching, like he thought it was farcical.
"Ruddy thing won't last five years, I'm telling you," he grumbled into his cards. "Dragons are meant for the seaside and mountains, not the plains upstate."
"They have two full fighting wings, Gabriel, and they've got Chiron for Weyrleader. They're not some backwoods gathering of dragons," Sally remarked mildly. She was trying to make Percy's hair lie flat. All children over the age of twelve and under the age of eighteen were required for presentation to a dragon on Search, and although it was a bit not-kosher to Search in another Weyr instead of the smaller Holds and towns, there wasn't any rule against it. Percy was only just old enough to qualify, and his mother seemed a little uncertain as how to handle the unexpected summons. So she attacked it with a hairbrush.
Grover and Erraolth were both brown, sturdy, and down-to-earth, smiling easily as all the young potential Candidates were gathered before them, and they'd seemed completely unperturbed by the subtle derision from the local dragonriders gathered high on the rocky crags surrounding the Bowl. Grover had a mass of insanely curly hair that attracted and held everybody's attention more than his speech did, and Erraolth stood behind him, slender peacock neck curved back at rest position and wedge-shaped head tucked over Grover's shoulder.
"There's something different we look for in our dragonriders at Camp, something most Searchers and their dragons overlook." Grover put a hand on his dragon's muzzle, rubbing at it affectionately, the same easy, unconscious movement all dragonriders make. "It's not your typical adventure, pioneering new strongholds out in the wild, so trust us when we say that we don't Search lightly."
Which, Percy supposes later, was their politically correct excuse for only Searching one person out of the hundreds of kids available from his home Weyr.
"I don't get it," went Gabe, after. "You're just some snot-nosed twelve-year-old. Who'd want you for a dragonrider?"
"Well, shit," had been Sally's equally dumbstruck remark, and Percy's eyebrows jumped. His mother never cussed. She put her hands out, smoothing his hair down compulsively; Erraolth huffing down on him joyfully had been enough to completely ruin all her efforts from before. "You're not supposed to leave my nest until you're eighteen, Percy. Now what am I going to do?"
"Mom!" Percy went, mortified to see she was on the verge of crying. "It's not like I can't visit."
"Oh, he'll be back," Gabe waved a hand around dismissively. "Can you see him Impressing anything?" He squinted meanly at Percy. "Well, maybe the runtiest green of the lot. The ones not even the girls want."
Grover frowned at him, but Sally beat him to it, saying with an icy amount of venom, "I'd be no less proud of Percy if he Impressed a green than I would if he Impressed the biggest bronze on the Sands. We need every dragonrider we can get."
"A boy on a green is just damn unnatural," Gabe said, mulishly but too quietly to provoke anything.
Don't tell anyone, but saying good-bye to his mom was the hardest part of being Searched. Accepting a hand-up from Grover onto Erraolth's back, he made a mental note to ask if maybe she could come to Camp, too, once he Impressed. There's really nothing for her here. Especially not her husband.
Then again, thinking back on it now, he remembers the thoughtful expression on her face as she was helping him pack and thinks that she can probably handle herself.
iii.
Candidates are allowed forty-five minutes on the Sands every day to mingle with the dragon eggs, stroking shells and talking to the hatchlings inside. Everybody says that's where Impression really happens: the dragons know who they want the instant they crack shell, all from the pressure of a handprint and the sound of a whisper.
Sometimes Lilianath is there, tail and claws curled protectively around the queen egg on its own separate mound of sand and curling her lips back over her teeth when someone gets too close, her eyes chaotically colorful, but most of the time, the safest point to bring the Candidates in is when she's out hunting cattle or doing her shift up on the watchtower, a familiar silhouette golden against the sky.
Even Percy can tell this will be her last clutch: she and the Weyrwoman are getting too old for this Hatching business, and anyway, Grover said that Zererith will be old enough to mate come spring, so the next clutch of eggs on the Sands will be hers, making Silena the new Weyrwoman, and whatever bronzerider (Luke, the Stoll brothers nod, like it's already happened, although technically it's all supposed to be chance) flies her will be the new Weyrleader. If Percy Impresses, he'll be here to see it.
The Hatching Grounds is actually a shallow pit scraped out of a dried-up river delta with an arena built up around it, kept warm with a mixture of hot rocks, dragonfire, and mulch. It's open to the sky, which makes it different than any Hatching Grounds Percy's ever been in. He can't really get over it.
He's not the youngest Candidate standing, nor the smallest -- that honor belongs to a yellow-haired girl named Annabeth, who recognized the position of vulnerability this put her in early on (nobody ever likes being the youngest Candidate standing -- everybody loves an underdog story, about the littlest Candidate going on to Impress where the bigger, older ones don't, so everybody watches the smallest ones on Hatching day and it's not like they aren't insane with nerves already,) and she's probably tougher than the rest of them put together. Also, she has very sharp elbows and a tendency to find the softest spots to stick them in when she's displeased. She doesn't really band together with the other Candidates; her closest friend is the greenrider who Searched her, Thalia, a sentiment that Percy can appreciate: moreso than anybody else, he likes hanging around Grover, who's not so old that he treats the Candidates like kids.
Technically, all the girls are standing for the queen egg, since it's the most important, but most of them get chosen by greens before the queen even cracks shell. He looks over now just as Annabeth crouches down, stroking a hand down the mottled gold-hued curve of the egg, the shape of her fingers tiny against the shell.
"Imagine if she became Junior Weyrwoman," he hears Castor whisper. Pollux shushes him quickly, but Castor's got the biggest flare for the dramatic of anyone Percy knows and does sotto voice almost by default. He sees the line of tension enter Annabeth's shoulders, and she pulls her hand back, too abrupt to really be casual.
Percy bites his lip. "I think she'd be just fine," he tells the egg he's closest to in an undertone. It's a whole swirl of colors -- unlike the queen egg, you can't tell what color of dragon are in the smaller ones, nor do the sizable ones always hatch bronzes, whatever anybody says. "So you go and telepathically tell that to the little queen in there."
For good measure, he pets the egg a little, and startles when he feels something turn over inside. The shell is hard, clicking against his nail when he taps it experimentally.
Soon, then, he thinks, unable to suppress a shiver of excitement, and when he looks up, he unwittingly catches Charlie's eye. Unlike most of the boys, who are encouraged to get acquainted with as many of the eggs as they can to widen their chances, Charlie picked one egg that first time and he stays by it for the full forty-five minutes every day, talking lowly.
Nobody bothers him about it. He's the oldest Candidate here, the Stoll brothers told him -- he's the Weyrwoman's nephew or something, so he's stood at two Hatchings before this and Impressed neither times, and this is probably his last chance too.
Unexpectedly, Charlie smiles at him, wide and toothy and eager. Soon, he mouths back.
iv.
Being Candidates puts them at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to chores, which kind of sucks some days. Percy's seen more toilets in the past few weeks than he has in pretty much his entire life. It seems like the sort of life experience he could do without.
"Percy!" Rachel finds him after breakfast, entirely too cheerful-looking for the time of morning and carrying a bucket in her arms. Percy's never really figured out exactly what Rachel's relation is to everyone at Camp: he's seen her in with the cooks, in with the stablehands, in the library with paint under her nails. The most he's ever got was that she's a favorite of the Weyrleaders -- she alarmed a bunch of the new kids this one time by dropping in between Chiron and the Weyrwoman on the bench at dinner, chattering away like this was all par for the course. She's just one of those Camp fixtures you get used to.
She rummages in her bucket and pulls out a thin stick of wood. "Dragon bath requested by weyr 221," she reads off of it, and looks over at him. "They're on drill rotation right now, I think, but they get back in at ten."
Percy wrinkles his nose a little bit. "Dragon toe jam is exactly how I want to start the day."
"Suck it up!" she responds chirpily, smiling easy and without rancor. Her hair's wet, he notices, watching the water drip off the end of her damp-darkened braid, and then remembers the rather enthusiastic game some of the younger blue dragons had been playing earlier that morning out in the lake. Looks like she'd been there for that.
He takes the wood slat from her and pretends to swoon. "You always save the best things for me!"
"That's because you never do anything remotely exciting," she answers immediately. "And therefore don't attract anyone's ire, so I've run out of all the nasty chores by the time I get to you."
Percy's not quite sure how to handle that. "Thank you, I guess. That was a very backhanded compliment."
"My specialty. Let me know when you decide to be interesting."
"You'll be the first to know," Percy goes, dry, and then goes to get the dragon bathing supplies from the Big House.
In all honesty, dragon toe jam really isn't that bad. It stinks bit -- all dragons coming in off of drill rotation smell unpleasant, like burning hair and compost, for reasons Percy's sure he's going to have to learn at some point. But drawing baths for them is actually kind of fun: Percy likes the excuse to be that close to a dragon, even one that smells offensive and likes splashing water everywhere with thoughtless sweeps of its wings, which means more for Percy to have to clean up later.
He cuts it so close that there's still small curls of steam coming off the surface of the tub when the rider and dragon make their appearance at the bath house, and Percy realizes with a start that the occupants of weyr 221 are Luke and Seth.
He's heard it from the twins so many times now that it's practically canonical, but even Percy has to stop for a moment and let it really sink in, just how much Luke looks the part of a dragonrider. He fits his leathers like they're wearing him instead of the other way around, goggles cocked at a jaunty angle high on his forehead and his hair's at just the right length to stick out from under his helmet in tufts, which, according to Thalia is a rather attractive look.
"It makes his smile look fabulous, you'll see," she said conspiratorially, tapping the side of her nose.
When he sees the tub and the rubbing oils and the sandpaper all already laid out, Luke's whole face cracks open, revealing a row of wide, white teeth, and Percy's not a greenrider (yet, at any rate, though according to his stepfather it's as much a foregone conclusion as Silena being the next Weyrwoman,) but Thalia's got a point: that's definitely a Cool Guy smile.
"Perseus, isn't it?" he goes, stripping off his riding gloves and rubbing circulation back into his bloodless fingers; it's cold up there at dragonflight height.
"Percy, actually," Percy corrects, as Seth makes a happy noise and circumvents his rider in order to scrabble into the tub, talons and tail ungainly on the tiles. He submerges all the way up to his spine ridges in a single, loud dive, making a subvocal sound of appreciation that vibrates against the sides of the tub. He ducks his head under, lidding his eyelids so that they glow in contented blues and greens under the surface, diluted and a little eerie.
When he finally manages to tear his eyes away from the sight, it's to find Luke doing pretty much the exact same thing: watching his dragon with fondness, joy, and something that's close to childish awe, like he can't quite believe he's here.
"No," he says dryly, dragging it out. "You can't splash everywhere. This is getting clean time, not play time."
It's only when Seth flips a wingtip at him dismissively that Percy realizes he was talking to the bronze, who'd been eyeing Percy with something like mischief.
"Why is there a whole separate compound for bathing dragons? Why can't they just get clean in the lake?" he'd asked Rachel once, and she'd given him this fish-eyed look, like she was wondering what backbirth Hold they'd brought him in from.
He's figured it out since then; the way dirt and debris and ash gather in the cracks in dragon skin, and how riders need to sandpaper their scales down and oil in between them, which all sounds luxurious and kind of ridiculous when you put it like that, but it's crucial to dragon health, and there's some important bonding element to it that you wouldn't understand unless you're a dragonrider.
There's an oily sheen of dirt swirling on the surface of the tub now, and thanks to Seth's careless movements, there's probably nearly as much water on the tiles now as there is in the tub.
Percy thinks about going for a mop, but that'd probably only prompt Seth to make more of a mess.
Luke finishes unbuckling his chaps, hanging them up and going over to sit cross-legged next to the tub. Immediately, Seth blows bubbles at him from underwater.
"Grover Searched you, didn't he?" the bronzerider says suddenly, making Percy jump.
Recovering, he says hastily, "Um, yes?", unable to keep it from coming out like a question.
Seth rumbles lowly, finally lifting his head out of the water in order to deposit it in Luke's lap, soaking him. Luke just laughs, trailing his fingers over the shape of Seth's face -- the ornate ridges above the eyes, the thin flaps of skin like fins that protect a dragon's ears, the soft spot right behind the notch at the top of the skull.
"You worried about the Hatching?" he goes, stroking along the eye ridges, and Seth presses eagerly into the touch, eyes lidding with pleasure.
"About Impressing? Not really. It happens or it doesn't, right?"
"I suppose," Luke shrugs, his lips turning up at the corner. "You know, I always thought it was a bit more complicated than that, even if it's what they'll tell you, and it's not until you're too old and it's too late do you really realize just how much someone can manipulate a Hatching."
Not liking the tone in his voice, Percy worries his lips and tries to think of something to say to that -- manipulate a Hatching? It's the dragon's choice, isn't it? How can anyone manipulate a dragon? -- but Luke distracts him, lifting a hand to finger over the scar that cuts down underneath his eye. It's healed nicely, he can tell, but it's still starkly visible on Luke's tan and wind-chapped face. He has no idea how Luke got it: he asked Grover, who asked Erraolth, who heard from Mirth, Thalia's green, that he got it at the same Hatching he'd Impressed at. This probably means it'd been one of the hatchlings, maybe even Seth, and like a bolt out of the blue, Percy wonders if that's what he meant.
Fortunately, Luke seems to snap out of it, dropping his hand and hiding the gesture by popping his knuckles.
"You hoping for a bronze?" he asks, flashing Percy a grin, and there's totally a note of teasing in his voice now.
It's not an uncommon question. Just like all the girls stand for the queen, all the boys stand for the bronzes, and Impressing all the other colors just seems to happen while everyone waits for the queen egg to hatch, or some boy they know to Impress a bronze. Status symbols, her mother sniffed once, surprising him with how poisonously she said it. Her brother, Percy's uncle, had been a bronzerider when he was alive, so he didn't really understand her comment, but the unease still lingered. Looking at Luke, you wouldn't think there's a single thing wrong with bronzeriders, and Percy wouldn't dream of saying anything bad about Chiron.
"I guess," he settles for, because it's ambiguous enough. Unbidden, he blurts out, "My stepfather thinks that it's unnatural for boys to Impress greens."
That startles Luke. His eyebrows shoot up, and he huffs a laugh, the sound of it echoed with Seth's snort. "We should introduce him to Ethan."
"Ethan?" Percy blinks, momentarily diverted. "Wait, Ethan's a greenrider? Ethan with the missing eye and the bad attitude? A green?" Ethan's got a reputation for busting kneecaps, not wholly undeserved: he has, on more than one occasion that Percy knows of, picked a fight with several of the blueriders and a brownrider or two at dinner. Percy always thought it was over some girl.
Watching him work through several things at once, Luke's mouth curves again, something that's half-twisted and half a genuine smile. "You know, I can't help but think sometimes that all the typical stereotypes are crap."
"What?"
"You know." Luke shrugs. "Queenriders are always beautiful, headstrong women. Bronzes Impress the manly, the confident, the hero-types," he stops petting Seth long enough to flex his muscles in demonstration, looking gratified when Percy can't help but laugh. "Browns always go for the completely average, the laid-back and reliable. Blues go for the witty and the problem-solvers, and greens like the sl--" he cuts his eyes at Percy, trips over his tongue, and says instead, "-- the flighty."
He digests this. "What sort do you think the dragons look for?"
Luke shakes his head. "I just don't think it's fair to stick those kinds of labels to people. That just because you ride a bronze means you've got some predetermined fate." Seth burbles something reassuring, and Luke ducks his head, smiling at whatever his dragon just told him inside his head. "Personally, I think it's the greenriders who are the strongest of all of us," he continues, more meditatively. "They're the ones that really fight, harder and longer than everyone else. They're the backbone of any Weyr. Tell that to your stepfather next time he gets mean."
Percy goes back to biting at the inside of his lips, because none of that really sounded like him -- is there a kind of dragon for the weird kids with behavioral problems?
Catching something in his expression, Luke gives him one of those easy-going smiles and beckons with one hand. "Come here for a sec, will you?"
Percy does, of course, and Luke shows him the spot right behind a dragon's eye ridges that they can never reach for themselves, no matter how they rub their heads on rocks (or, in their case, fallen logs and branches, given Camp's lack of natural caves,) that soft, itchy skin that makes them croon like children and push into your hand, like that. It always surprises Percy, just how warm dragons are, like they're constantly lit on fire somewhere deep down.
"Don't worry about it," Luke says quietly, after several minutes of getting Seth to relax into a boneless lump of bronze scales, his eyes the deepest shade of cerulean, swirling so slowly and peacefully it looks like sugar. "Erraolth's a good Searchdragon; if you're here, you've got everything you need to be a dragonrider. Spirit, maturity, willingness to follow orders -- speaking of which!" He brightens. "Seth says he wants more hot water. You should get on that, Candidate!"
So, with the full maturity of a possible future dragonrider, Percy pops a "W" with his fingers and goes to pull down the pump to let more hot water into the tub.
v.
"Actually," Rachel drums her fingers against the tabletop, the sound of it lost against the patter of pouring rain against the roof. The mess hall is separated from the elements by corrugated sheet metal, which makes everything sound that much closer and immediate. "I always thought the Search dragons looked for the kids that need it most."
Percy, busy contemplating the way the rain seems to mist off the trees, it's coming down so hard, almost misses this. "Sorry, what?" he goes, snapping out of it.
She doesn't seem to notice she's disturbed his zen. "Whatever it is they see in people that makes them pick them as Candidates. I've watched a lot of you guys go by in my years -- " which Percy rolls his eyes at, because she's what, fourteen, fifteen, tops. "-- and it always seemed to me that the Search dragons and then, in their turn, the hatchlings always pick the kids that need the dragons as much as the dragons need them. It makes for the best kind of fighting wing, the ones that have each other to fight for."
"Are you sure about that?" another voice cuts in, and Percy and Rachel look up to find Clarisse standing over their table, tray in one hand and the other firmly planted on her hip. Next to her, almost like she's been attached as an afterthought, is Silena, the Junior Weyrwoman. ("Oh, don't look so surprised!" Travis waves his hand around extravagantly. "They're best of friends. Yes, Silena and Clarisse. This is the first year Clarisse has been asked to stand as a Candidate -- she's nearly as old as Charlie is. Personally, we think Silena's hoping she'll Impress the queen so they can stick together, but you'll have to ask her that.")
Rachel looks more annoyed than intimidated, which Percy admires, because he's feeling very intimidated right now: Clarisse is enormously tall and built like a miner, and the rumors say she got into a fistfight with Ethan a week ago, blacked his eye, and never got caught. "Yes," Rachel says, and goes back to chalking chores down on her little wooden slats.
Clarisse's eyebrows go up. "Really? Because I always thought the Search dragons looked for the nymphos."
"Clarisse!" Silena jerks, startled. She sets her tray down so fast that soup splashes everywhere. "There are children present!"
"What?" Clarisse rolls her eyes, opening her mouth again. Silena makes an attempt to cover Percy's ears, and -- momentarily forgetting who she is, which is the excuse he'll use later -- he tries to bat her away, because if Clarisse is saying something she shouldn't, then he wants to hear it.
"-- think about it," she's saying. "How many times a year do greens go into heat? And don't greens make up, like, half of all fighting wings? Anyone can fly a green: blues, browns, bronzes. That is an insane amount of sex. Like I said, nymphos, all of us. We have to be."
"I really don't think the Search dragons are looking at a twelve-year-old's sex appeal when they Search him, Clarisse," Rachel goes, voice dry.
"And a dragon can choose who flies her, it's not like it's a partner roulette unless they want it to be," puts in Silena, not trying to censor Percy from the conversation anymore, even if most of it is going over his head. He's Weyrbred, so some of it he knows already: greens mate a lot, everybody rolls their eyes about it, it's no big deal. Greens don't lay eggs, so it's not really relevant and it's not anybody's business. It's when queens fly to mate that everybody pays attention, and only bronzes can fly queens. He glances up at Silena -- Luke's right, she is remarkably beautiful, even muted by the rain and frowning -- and wonders if she knows how many people are making a bet out of her and Zererith's sex life.
Clarisse seems to have realize she's hit a line she shouldn't cross, and, possibly because it's Silena and nobody else, she backs off. "Well, true. You can't really imagine anybody flying Lilianath but Ibboth, can you?" she says, gruff, and there's a pause in which they all try to contemplate anybody but Chiron as Weyrleader, and simultaneously make faces when they hit that mental block.
Then she swings one leg over the bench and sits down next to Rachel. "Come on then," she says to the Junior Weyrwoman. "Apparently we're eating with small, dimwitted children today."
"You know," Rachel remarks to Percy, cupping her whisper behind her hand. "I think that's the nicest thing she's ever called me."
They duck the grape tomato Clarisse tosses at their heads.
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