Name: Azaeda

Gender: Female, she/her, straight

Age/DOB: 15, born ky -11

Origin: Caledrus Hold

Family: Mother Aaryea, father Tzeado; older brother Ryzo

Other: Seems quite happy to entertain offers from men that others may disdain - 'only' a merchant, 'simply' a runner handler, 'a low-ranking rider' - are they smart, are they kind to others? Her criteria is more picky than you'd think, and none of them have 'gotten any' from her. She's no fool; she wants to be ready for a family, not just spitting out kids

Height: 5'10, taller than typical for a woman

Build: long legged, evenly built, but quite strong with those legs used to walking a lot

Hair: honey brown, wavy, and rather long

Eyes: medium blue, intense and focused

Appearance: medium to creamy skin, prefers dresses to pants but has quite a selection of clothing to choose from mostly in natural browns and tans; her voice can be quite loud when needed

Standing At: Ryslen's courts

Dragon: Ymrath

Created/Updated: 10.5.23

Events and History: Born two years after her brother, but keeps up with him quite well once she is up and running. Not as quick to her little infant feet as he was, but she was reading and speaking earlier than he had!

She is well suited to the life of a queen rider's family, but like her mother, she also has taken extensive tours of the hold - all of it functioning properly is important to them, after all. Azaeda never feels like she's 'lost' when she wanders to places she hasn't been before, instead she takes it as a lesson. Which way smells better? Who lives in that slightly-damp area? Did a dragon come here recently? All those things she can figure out just by pausing and listening in on the mood of those around her. Since she is 'that strong' empathically speaking, Azaeda won't hesitate to focus on particular people, locations, or even dragons to get an idea of the overall health of the place.

Her own place in Caledrus Hold is assured, of course, but whether she comes home as a rider or maybe just with a flitter or gifts from far-off places like this Nidus Ryslen, she'll be happy. That said, she does want to ride! She has practice with their care, their organization, tack and equipment. Surprising most folks, she took more to the tack shop and technology available for use with riding and upkeep of dragons than her brother has. Perhaps it's because when fitting someone (or some dragon) with an ill-fitting harness, she knows right away? That won't work, this will, try a looser strap, here is a new buckle... Tapping into memories even if it's unconsiously, she can remember 'for' other people where they put that lost stylus, or how long it's been since they checked their riding gear for wear.

She knows the potential is there for every egg to hatch, every dragon to grow strong and healthy and safe. And also, that many of them will be sent off to fight Thread or Ants or any other given danger. Such was the life of these, but perhaps not all of them needed to fight to prove themselves. Neither rider nor dragon must fight, not on Alskyr anyway, though she has noticed a fair few people from the old world were still very much in that mode of 'fly or die'. Hopefully they would be found by the right dragon too.

**

"I'm positive that your report is false," Azaeda said, calm and collected but growing a little less sweet by the moment. "Ryzo is not," she glanced at the younger lad in the room, "a trouble maker." There was no hint of accusation in her tone, but the boy still couldn't meet her eyes.

"Then who would it have been," the dark-haired assistant weyrlingma-- Azaeda's mind corrected herself - Legatus, asked.

Azaeda gave a shrug, "how would I know? Your local people would be much better suited to asking who broke a whole pot of flitter eggs, but I assure you it wouldn't have been my brother." She paused, "and why aren't you asking him about it?"

J'kyan rolled his head around, tiredly, "because we can't find him."

Azaeda exhaled just a little bit. Patiently, carefully, she let her mind seek the information she'd need. Such an accusation about her sibling was ridiculous at best, scandalous at worst - and it was far more likely that this child who'd reported the incident had done it and happened to have seen Ryzo in the area. But she wouldn't make assumptions. Instead, she turned to the younger boy. "Did you see Ryzo do it?"

Once more he couldn't meet her steely blue eyes, "heard it, saw him run."

Oh I very much doubt that part... Was her internal comment.

"Do you know where he went?" J'kyan prodded the boy.

"Out the south path," was his reply.

But that struck Azaeda as odd. "From... the flitter chambers?" She tilted her head, trying to remember more clearly. If her brother was here, he'd have been able to easily remember the hallways and exits. The young woman turned back to the Legatus. "If we may... return to the area? Together, I think?"

Willing to entertain it since there was little else going on, and since the 'culprit' in question wasn't present to answer for said incident, they followed the boy toward the warm, somewhat dark rooms where the flitters could be laid in less-dangerous conditions than outside or on the currently-busy red sands.

There was the pot on the floor, with several half-formed eggs now ruined among the darkened sand. "They're not even partly ready to hatch," Azaeda commented quietly. "What a shame."

The boy was looking still a little shaken, himself, staring at the broken eggs and their sickly skeletal contents.

"What a shame too," Azaeda added a moment later, while she looked at the room and its hall, "that there is no 'south' path here. North, and west, but no south for several turns. I've been through these halls frequently enough since coming here," the said quietly, "that I know which direction the sun can peek through if the angle is just right.

She didn't really need to bring any further attention to this fact, J'kyan licked his teeth and simply stood behind the boy, quiet and steady.

Azaeda returned to her portion of the dorms - her nidulus? It was shared, with other female novos, though perhaps they would be split up a bit when the hatchings occurred.

Her brother wandered past with a distracted grin, and she caught the smell of grass and fish on him.

"What'd I miss?"

She only laughed and shooed him on his way to his own dorm.

***

She had seen the first queen hatch, among the Light court's brood. Her golden head came out of her shattered shell, and everyone else also watched - but Azaeda had been looking long before then. Was this the egg that had continually drawn her attention when they were permitted to observe, wander through the sands? Touching the eggs wasn't exactly forbidden, but done only under specific circumstances. And while she'd certainly wanted to draw her fingers over each and every one of them, she was positive that this one was the one she wanted to hold.

But the dragoness within simply moved away from the crumbled remains of the egg, carefully extracting herself from it and not dragging herself across its sharp edges. And there she sat, regal, but tired. A hatchling after all, who needed to gather her wits. Her decision was more weighty than many, Azeada realized.

So she, too waited. Azeada watched with great interest all of the other hatchings - there were only a few oddities among those standing, unexpected dragons and a few not-quite-but-might-pass-for-human people. The dragons knew who they wanted, and she realized that was because these were Court dragons. They'd been designed in the past, engineered to be just-so by people several generations before. How many generations? She wasn't sure. One after another, those Twilight-silvered, Night-blackened, and Light-bleached dragons emerged from shells of their Blood, Dark, and Light Court clutches.

It would be quite a while before the dragoness approached any of the candidates, much of the hatching went by as she watched. Azeada felt the elation and sometimes confusion, the confidence and the overwhelming happiness of all those around her, in somewhat short order. And that feeling of doubt, 'never say you will impress, say you may impress' ... Was it just a waiting game?

No, not a game. She felt that this gold and white dragoness was, herself, put to the test at this point. A lot of people were around, not just the novos on the sands, but viewers and important people in the stands. Her choice would have to be made soon though. Patience and care came from her as she now started to look around the dwindling groups and individuals on those red sands.

Azaeda was hungry, and growing more so as the hatching went on. It wasn't her, she knew that. But as that time went on she watched with pride as Ryzo was found by an amazing Blood court brown! Their connection was so much stronger than that she had between strangers and her mind, she knew how grand it would be! But there was now a buzzing in her mind, strangely folded around the edges in a way that she'd never felt before.

Ryzo looked at his dragon, and then at his sister, so he was first to see the dragonet that had walked up while he had been briefly communing with Ziassioth. He nodded his approval, even though he knew that she needed no such approval. Their parents would certainly approve!

Azaeda. A soft voice said her name, calling her attention away from her older brother and his Brown. At her right hand sat the Light Court Light Gold. My name is Ymrath.

She knew this name at her heart, her very core. It came from her lips as a whisper even as she wanted to shout and laugh and cry all at once; there was no reason not to be emotional now - now that this bond was complete. The single more overwhelming sensation was of that singular hunger, the hunger pangs of a hatchling who had waited on hot sands in a cramped shell for months, then here on those crowded sands under the gaze of many for hours...

"We'll get you fed and rested up," Azeada promised, "Ymrath, you're so lovely. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, we're Tiro now!"

***

"They do have somewhat Alskyran traits, don't they?" One of the locals, another draconar, pondered as the siblings studied and were settling in to learn their new roles. Aaryea could not have been more proud of her children - but particularly, of Azaeda. A gold, a Light Court gold... a light light court ... They both got a bit of a chuckle out of that when she visited the Nidus. It wasn't as if Aaryea's wasn't gold-and, they both were so spectacular.

But where Aareya's gold had obsidian wings, this one's 'light' was sparkling white, impossibly delicate colors from head to tail.

"Well, you might be surprised to note that a great many dragons have horns and the like," Azaeda replied after a moment of appraisal. She'd seen Caledrus' 'local' dragons, those smaller native ones on Paniya, and quite a few others on their journeys across space and time as Tiro and later Paro - weyrling riders.

Those earlier days, filled with little more than eat-sleep-care on repeat, had been imposing for some, difficult certainly. But only a few of those new hatchlings were moved out of the Nidus before they were 'ready' to fly on their own. They surely had safe homes and practical needs to address where they would be bound. Here though, at Caledrus, they did things the old-fashioned way: they remained at the Nidus, practicing and learning the care and handling aspects, in conditions that were carefully monitored by the locals.

Certainly, both Ryzo and Azeada could have returned to Caledrus earlier than their full two year growth. Alabaster Weyrhold was nearby, and Caledrus had its own whole dragonry area now. But this felt more... authentic. Because she could learn from others how they did their work: Azeada found herself more and more drawn back to the Legatus, to the trainers and outfitters. She'd helped her brother and he in turn helped her, they would both be very adept with the riding gear, the practical daily care and work, but Azeada enjoyed this more than her brother.

"That inventory checklist was quite thorough, I might say a bit intimidating for a new Tiro," she bit her lip a little when Decurio D'lrik paced across the classroom's floor. "But it covers everything actually needed." He flipped through the other pages, "this would make a very fine starter kit," he added, "it is something that any Weyr or Nidus would be thankful to have at its start."

She'd written up the task list over the course of her last month of training, a sort of final project that would help the Decurio and Legatus decide whether they were fit to fly on their own back home. This would become a manual that her own home dragonry would use, more than likely. Explanations of terms, items of use, rank and order with 'fill in the local term' blanks for other facilities to use.

Dragon

Name: Ymrath (IMM rath)
Gender: Female
Size/Shoulder/Length: Medium-Large 14'6" s
Colors: Light Court Light Gold ** Light/Night/Twilight coloration only available for pure Court clutched/hatched at Ryslen
Features: Ryslen traditional plus Court, high crest, small headknobs, no tail spade, big paws/feet; Light Court features two forward pointing horns
Powers: Winged Flight, Ymrath takes to the air with strength, confidence, and endurance. Though she's not the squirmy agile type, she prefers any flight that she does to show off how high she can soar, or how fast she is, or how long she may remain circling overhead. She expects that there will be bold males that might believe her to be easy to catch, and she intends to prove them wrong
Teleportation, though a bronze might be the leader of a wing and cast his mind across them all to move them in the right direction, Ymrath is the one who can keep track of where others are going and actually bring them back onto course. How she does this is an entire mystery, but perhaps it harkens to a broad command ability found in some lines. She can easily teleport to 'scooch over just a little bit on a ledge', or across dimensions, with equal ease and hardly any difference spent between. One of the few dragons who can just pop here and there without growing tired or cold from movement outside of spacetime, Ymrath will definitely incorporate this into any mating flight she has, because pfff let them wonder how she got behind them...
Verbal Speech and Telepathy, Surprisingly able to speak - at least, surprising to those found here - her voice is clear and confident just like her mind. An evenly toned and genial-sounding normal to chat with, but when she is agitated or commanding, you will know her displeasure or ire. She reserves telepathic speech in that vein to chide or remind dragons of their directives, but she equally will chat and kindly join conversations with both humans and dragons if there's room for her mind. Her range on telepathy is up to 2 kilometers easily, and can broadly address virtually any dragon in that area. Humanoids might be spoken to as groups closer to 500 meters only
Fire Breath and Fireballs - even as a female, even as a queen, Ymrath is capable of letting loose a destructive blast of fire from her mouth. This alone would have distinguished her from other Queens when they came home, and she has continued to train with it because better safe than sorry, right? She can more easily manipulate the flame of fireballs than aim with her breath, so she has taken to carefully spotting where an explosive or broad fire would do the best good, and putting effort into making sure that there are no people in the way before she blasts at dangers on the ground or in the air
Parentage: Mother: White Sinaeath; Father: Brown Andhayath, exclusively Light Court lineage
Origin: Ryslen Court Clutches
Other Info: a queen through and through, Ymrath delights in all the duties that she would have on Pern or Alskyr, being the 'forward facing' member of a diplomatic team, or showing up to make sure that any young dragonets are kept in line and trained well. She is both dignified and very-occasionally impish, she's not always serious-business