Rogue and Dancer - originally written around 2001

Dancer (on left) and Rogue (on right) are quite the odd pair. They are near one another in age, Dancer is younger at 19 years old, while Rogue is 22. Both of them were raised with the idea that they should express themselves without worrying about who they were offending.

They offended. Lords, ladies, guildmasters, you name it. They offended.

Dancer and Rogue are lovers, they have been since their early teen years. Never once have they questioned their loyalty to one another, but they do have some practicality to deal with. When they wished to have children, they found a proper sire. Their daughter is Amalia (who impresses later than they do, really, honest).

Dancer is trained as an entertainer, hence her choice of name, but she is also an expert thief. Her father was a thief, and two of her brothers. It was how she met Rogue!

Rogue fancies herself more of an enterprising sort, a dealer in things found. She's a fence, of course. But she's a far more physical person than Dancer, aggressive and dangerous with a weapon in her hand.

Neither Dancer nor Rogue can read at the moment, though they know some symbols and can count better than most people who can read. Needless to say, they rely upon numbers and money more than many others do.

Dancer is a good animal handler as well as thief, and can remain on a bucking steed's back longer than many men! Rogue has a thing for going fast. Very fast. She'll get more than a bit of a kick from a dragon's flight!

"I tell you, he's out there. He's trying to tell us something." Dancer said. Rogue rolled her eyes.

"Shard left. He's gone." She sighed. "Leave it be."

"No, really," Dancer turned, with a concern on her face that made Rogue gulp back any comment. Dancer's brown eyes were tinted with some amount of desperate confusion. "I think he really is trying to tell me something."

Rogue tapped her head with her fingers, and Dancer nodded. "Well, what is it?"

"I don't know!" Dancer wailed, tugging on her own shoulders and stomping about while growling to herself. "I wish I could figure it out. There's ... there's three of something. Three ... somethings."

Rogue waved at the air, "three... lords? No? Three days?..." Dancer glared at her wife. "Well, sorry. Three dragons, then." She huffed, and turned.

"... That's it!" Dancer squealed, startling Rogue. "Three dragons! There are three clutches on the sands somewhere!"

With a dramatic pause, Rogue asked, "where?"

Throwing a small wad of stolen silver chain at Rogue, Dancer hunkered down over her table and smacked her head upon its hard surface.

It was only a few minutes later, when Amalia had awakened and it was Dancer's turn to soothe her, that a knock came at their Eden's Gate hovel. It was, to their great surprise, Shard.

He was panting, dripping wet from the storm outside.

And he was blue. From the top of his strangely pointed hair, down to the long eerie claws on his feet, he was blue. He was still wearing nice leather clothing like they had usually seen on him, but --

"Dwagon!" Squealed Amalia. She struck out her hand at Shard, who grinned like it was his own child -- which it was not. Shard took Amalia from her mother and bounced her a bit. He looked over his shoulder at the blue dragon which was almost precisely the same shade as his own skin. Amalia giggled again, and wrapped her three-year-old pudgy hand around his hair. She stood in his arms, and yelled, "DWAGON! WIDE!"

"She wants to ride," Shard said, smiling. The rain had lightened, in just the few moments he'd been standing there. "And, I think, she will, won't she?" He tapped her nose with his, and then gave her back to Dancer. Shard looked at the woman and raised an eyebrow. "You got my message?"

"Three clutches? Where?" Dancer gasped.

Shard looked annoyed that his message hadn't apparently gotten all the way through. "At Ryslen. It's a trio of green clutches, and I think there's room for you two. Both of you. And we can send someone to take care of Amalia here if you want. Standing at any sands requires a lot of effort, and time."

"I am not fostering my daughter," growled Rogue, and almost defensively took Amalia from Dancer's arms. "We'll take her with us. She'll obviously have to be part of a busy schedule."

Dancer grinned widely, then threw her arms around Shard. "We thought you'd abandoned us!"

"You didn't notice?" Shard looked out around his dragon and the land that Eden's Gate was on. Sodden, but gleaming. Green. Not scrubland, not desert, but wide green shrub covered hills. "You came with us. I'm just getting used to being able to send out mental messages. I do it best when I'm asleep, apparently." He rolled his eyes and shrugged. "So, any time you're ready, we can go. Rue is here, she can take one of you, if you like."

"I'll go with her," Rogue said, grinning with a lusty gleam in her eyes. Shard grinned right back.

"I bet you would." He assisted them in packing away things, tying them down, and then watched as they wandered around Eden's Gate. Shard reminded them that they would need to know the area, now that they were no longer where they had been. Any confusion on a dragon who teleported, might wind up somewhere or some when that they didn't know how to get back from. The pair said their good byes, and climbed on the blue and green dragons, on their way toward their new lives!

***

Ryslen's sands were filled with eggs. Three green clutches at the same time, and so many strange candidates that Rogue and Dancer felt immediately at home.

They knew that when they were summoned back to the Protectorate, they'd be where all the other riders were again. Home there too. Then, the day of the hatching, the pair of women clung to each other but grinned madly at their child who was sitting with an attendant in the stands.

It was ten eggs in to the odd hatching, when a half-white and very elegant blue dragon emerged. He was so perfect in his motion, even just out of the shell! He wound his way through the boys, and apparently made a couple of them squirm -- though why, Dancer could hardly imagine. For this beauty then made his way right toward her! Hello Dancer. I am Choreoth.

"Well, that's a fine name for you! Now... do you want to watch for Rogue to see if she'll impress, or are you very hungry?"

I am hungry, but you love her. I will wait. I think there will be something fine and strong for her here.

The wise little dragon's words were heeded, they sat at the edge of the sands and Amalia was allowed to touch Choreoth's damp face. While they did this, a brown dragon hatched and then somehow managed to get himself gone. Disappeared? Not like Between, but simply out of everyone's view. But he showed up directly behind Rogue, suddenly!

"Rascalth!" Rogue laughed, for that was the brown's name, "let's get you and your brother something to eat now. And you can meet our daughter too!"

I do not understand how you can have an egg with another female...

"Don't worry... You'll understand when you're old enough. Just like Amalia..."

***

It was all Dancer's idea. When the weyrlings at Ryslen were learning how to fly, she was getting a great idea.

Rogue practiced like the others, and insisted on keeping their daughter with them at all times. She wasn't all that for this great idea.

But their dragons loved it.

The moment they stretched their wings out and began to practice their drills in the air, rather than on the ground, the idea got more solid and secure in their minds. And because Rascalth was quite the charming and smart dragon, he kept it secret from even the other dragons in their wing.

So when one night, they were outside with some supplies and a picnic basket for a late evening party, Rogue and Dancer and their dragons flew out of Ryslen with the intent to travel somewhere new.

To between. To teleport away for just a little bit, to see some places they'd been to before.

Of course they knew the risks, but they'd lived in Eden's gate so long that risk was nothing new to them. And it was also totally against the rules. But that too, disobediance, was nothing new to them either.

It was new to Wing and Ling, and their precious night and light green dragons, and they wound up tagging along too.

They wound up on a trip that none of them would ever forget. Or perhaps be forgiven for.

"You are so going to love this place!" Dancer squealed while the others gathered their little picnic baskets and blankets. "It's a beautiful place, and it's like the most secluded part of the Protectorate ever."

"It'd better be worth this," Ling said, hesitating where the others were ready. "I mean, the weyrling master will be furious."

"Let him be," said Rogue. "Amalia is asleep, she'll be fine when we get back, and no one will miss us. You don't have any duties, tomorrow anyway, do you?" Ling shook her head, and her pale green shaded dragoness twittered that she wanted to have fun.

"Then we're off!" Dancer said, climbing onto the back of her small lithe light-blue dragon. Choreoth flew in the lead, having the best idea of where this place was, that his rider was so fond of. Ielth and Eilth were next, and big brown Rascalth followed last. He made sure that no other dragons were following them.

They flew overland for a few minutes, drifting under the cloudy skies. The moons could only be seen as vaguely brighter spots, some parts of the land were even being rained upon.

It is good that you brought blankets, your hide is more sensitive to that cold rain stuff, isn't it? Asked Eilth. Nervously, Ling nodded.

At last, Choreoth decided it was time to go between. Though none of them had done so before, and were expressly forbidden to do so while they were unsupervised, they all knew in theory how it was to work. Three or four long seconds in the blackness of between, and then out where you need to be! How hard was that?

They reached their destination perfectly. The sun was shining, but was not terribly high in the sky. It was mid morning, on a beautiful stretch of beach that the Protectorate had hidden away and Dancer had been privy to as a young child.

"I used to love watching the dragons come here, when they were..." She drifted off, her eyes growing wide. "Oh... oh no..." She drew in a breath.

"What?" Said Ling, sure that something had gone horrib--

"We are the dragons I was watching." Dancer said, flatly.

***

Across the lake, there was a small clump of trees, beneath which lay a fair-skinned girl, entranced by the presence of four beautiful dragons. The greens were dark and light, the blue exceptionally pale, and the brown was remarkably sturdy looking.

Dancer jumped back onto Choreoth's back and urged the others to do the same. Worried at last, Rogue tightened her grip on Rascalth's riding straps and watched as Ling and Wing took to the air behind the blue.

But then, confusion struck. Choreoth had not gotten any kind of look at the stars or moons before they had left. They went between, and found Ryslen all right -- found its craggy peak, and vale below. But no Weyr. There were no signs of habitation, no dragons, nothing. They'd overshot, they'd traveled between times and horribly missed their mark.

Twice now. With sickening knots in their stomachs, the four young women huddled together with their cute picnic lunches, their hastily found blankets...

And they cried.

***

Frantic, the foursome found an area that had good wild wherry and a source of water. It was Wing and Ling's experience with wood and leather that allowed them to build an admirable shelter.

This place and time they'd landed in, was more barren, frightening to say the least. There were no dragons. None.

Of course, that meant they had come back in time so far that... Pern had no other humans on it whatsoever. They were stunningly alone. They worked together with a desperate ease, they'd been training together after all, so they did know how to form a wing, how to find Firestone, and the like. But they were apparently also in a time without Thread falling. The ground had been recently charred, but the Red Star was nowhere to be found, at least not properly, in the skies. Meaning that its Pass had just finished. They were safe, for the moment.

Far from sound and happy, however. The four women and their four growing dragons behaved sullenly, and certainly had no room to err. For several weeks... which dragged into months, they collected food, made shelter, and managed to keep themselves relatively healthy. Both Dancer and Rogue were apt to break into wailing over the 'loss' of their daughter Amalia, however the green riders with them always managed to bring them back down to reality by reminding them that neither party was dead, and they were in fact trying their best to return -- and to return would require their absolute devotion to their skills and training.

As if by magic, however, they trained themselves in the design of handy devices. They worked a sort of star chart, and managed, finally, to put together a plan.

The red star would have to be high over the north end of the Weyr. The star stones would be in place... Those very same star stones were what they eventually decided were their best option. They would home in on them.

At last, well-sick of their wilderness camping trip and well-aware that their weyrling dragons who had gone out of Ryslen's weyrs small and lithe were now almost adult-sized, the foursome returned to Ryslen.

Two days after they had first left it. They appeared, cheering, sobbing and relieved. Wing and Ling watched their friends zoom into their weyr and found one of the weyrlings tending little Amalia. The green riders returned to their own weyr to find that both their dragons no longer quite fit in the single space. Of course, Choreoth and Rascalth didn't either, to a much larger extent!

And... The Weyrling master had "words" for them, too. But that was later. He did listen to their escapade, and did congratulate them on their efforts -- and their very live presence confirmed that he'd taught them well. But they were to be heavily chastised, and Rogue wanted none of that. But that is a story that no one needs to hear...

***