Oni Ailea - originally written around 2000

Oni Ailea

A young and very intelligent girl, she will grow to 5'10" at adulthood, but for now she is a small and fairly frail looking child. She has strawberry blond hair which she keeps loose and long, with teal-colored eyes. She has fair skin which burns easily, but she rarely covers up her skin, favoring the experience rather than the cowardice.

She is smart in many ways, quick to think and often the one who solves a puzzle first. Oni is excellent at motor-skills and mazes as well, and has studied Thread fighting in her spare time, finding it intriguing and not in the slightest a challenge for her mind. She is not as open as a clever girl might be, she keeps secrets and is often found to be blunt when she finally speaks her mind.

Oni was brought up to respect the ways of a Weyr, dragons and Thread. She could be an excellent teacher if only she'd be a little more open around people. Her math and other such skills are very strongly developed and she could easily outwit most of her Masters in many ways.

If Oni Impresses: she would be an ideal candidate for a Gold. She is too canny for most people but she would be stable, quick to think, and learn very fast the ways of Thread fighting. Though she would have to use a burner in a Threadfall, her skills in assigning movements to others would be crucial. (She would be an excellent Wing Leader on Bronze... if she were a boy!)

This big Bronze flit came from Honshu Weyr.

His name is Treaty, not because he likes to eat treats (which he does) but because one of my Harper instructors offered him to me as a kind of peace gift. We had argued for days about certain kinds of Threadfall tactics, and eventually he gave up. I thought that he was still mad at me, but instead, he gave me a large egg and told me to keep it warm and feed the flit that came out of it when it hatched! Imagine that, he was so impressed, he let ME impress a flit of his own pretty Gold's clutch!

Oni waited with infinite patience.
The other candidates for this large clutch were... well, few and far between so far. So she continued to reflect on wind trends and rain patterns in fighting Thread.
She turned the pages of her book with care, for she was intending to return it to her teacher later on.
Perhaps some day, soon if the eggs hardening on the sands cooperated, she'd be putting into action those theories and actions.

Some day soon, she thought, she'd be flying and fighting for the benefit of all Pern!

Though ... she could still think of a few people she'd leave out of her sweep rides. She smiled with half her face at that, but of course wasn't serious. Estage and his little troupe of horrid boys were already regretting their words to her as a little girl: she'd been Searched, and they had not. Perhaps they'd get a chance, if the clutch's candidate list didn't shape up soon!

She really didn't want to stand on the sands with any of them. She'd rather have a tunnel snake riding up her leg than that.

Read more about her waiting at Nate's weyr!

***

To Oni's pleasure, it didn't take very much longer before the eggs had hardened and began to hatch!

But to her worry... There were so many candidates, and the eggs were rapidly dwindling! Even the queen egg was chosen long before the last green had stumbled out of her egg and chosen someone else...

Oni was not going to give up hope. There were still eggs, albeit after that queen hatched it was all downhill.

A quiet little bit of desperation hit Oni when her newfound friend Nataniel, or now N'ate, Impressed a Bronze and carried him off the sands proudly. The whole hatching went smoothly for everyone but Oni.

Then someone said something about the last egg. It was small, much smaller than the rest, and it was half-assumed that it might be a dud egg. But it began to hatch, and soon...

"Purple?!" the crowd had much to say about THIS event! The general consensus was that this was a female hatchling, though how anyone knew was beyond Oni's grasp. The dragon was tiny, so small but her wings were huge! They dragged on the hot sands as she trundled toward the candidates left! Oni couldn't stand to see this, it wasn't pity but more sort of a gut instinct that led her to cry out.

"Hey, slow down! It's easier that way..." Oni said, and the hatchling did as she said, while turning to look at her. She did this barely before running into Oni, and they found themselves nose to nose!

You are right! If I slow down I may see something I might have missed, like you, my friend! My name is Julanith, and I will be with you forever!

Half a moment went by before Oni realized that her words to the dragon had led... to her Impression!

Excited as if for the first time in her life, the thrill of being Searched paled to this, her flit dove in frantic circles of joy above her head to express it.

"The purple is Julanith!" Oni said, proudly to the crowd.

Then, to her prize violet dragon, she said, "we will get you something to eat, and then we will talk to everyone at the Protectorate... They will find you endlessly interesting!"

And interest them she did! For this was a tiny Queen, everyone knew that she was a fertile egg bearer but who could find her a mate!? The weyrwoman at Sapphire told Oni that it was likely that only another purple, or perhaps a small white male dragon might ever fly her.

Oni was not dissuaded from the idea that her little violet wonder ought to be a productive member of their weyrs. She sent out tendrils, putting Treaty through his paces and sending him out to find her a proper mate!

There are several possibilities, T'ran at the Cothold has a white... As does his foster brother Than'! And Oni has heard tell of a tiny tiny blue, one which has been hidden from sight for years.

Perhaps one of those fine males will fly her little wonder?

Over the last couple years, and before completely moving off Pern, Julanith has flown in one or two flights. Particularly at the Healing Den, and has shown her true colors and laid beautiful, remarkable eggs. Her latest work will be at the Healing Den's Halloween Frenzy!