Nelanie was the fourth of five children, though... truth be told, there was a story behind that fact. A story she preferred not to remember.

When she was sixteen, a group of search riders came to her father's Hold, and it was little surprise that the strong-willed young girl was chosen to stand. Never let it be said that this Lady didn't enjoy working hard for her marks, either. Though she admitted she wasn't an 'intellectual' type, she caught on quickly and enjoyed being busy. Of course, whenever there were younger, weaker, stupider or less wealthy folks around, her 'job' was generally to supervise them with a sharp tongue and sneer.

She was difficult to keep up with, when she was on the move. The Weyrleaders and staff of any given weyr would be happy to have her on hand, because she was quite good at organizing people and keeping them focused. They didn't generally hang around long enough to hear her jeering taunts, or her sometimes-painful remarks.

Along with her, several other brats and candidates were sent to Sedona Weyr from Dragonhope. This would be her best chance to Impress - a very large clutch was on the sands, and she was proud to head out. Instantly she befriended another young Lady who displayed whatever traits that a search dragon decided they liked about her. A hanger-on, an ear and an eye out for juicy gossip, Erose clung to everything Nelanie said or did. Woe to anyone that spoke ill of her behind the Lady's back, though Erose didn't seem to notice that Nelanie never backed her up if there were rumors or scandal.

And there was that other girl. Penny, a pale haired brainy girl from somewhere no one knew about. Everything about Penny grated at Nelanie for some reason, it was easy for Nelanie to make excuses to pick on the blonde. She couldn't lift very much, she tripped over things (but never quite fell on her face, somehow) and made a mess of the kitchens... And she was so secretive, though she bedded down with the other candidates in the girls dorm, she never showed up for bathing with them, even when they'd all been dirtied up mucking out weyrs.

Of course, the girl was brainy enough to avoid entanglements, and that galled Nelanie even more. Always slipping away, getting out of range so that the other girls didn't catch on to any of Nelanie's jokes.

That would not do. Since Nelanie almost always got her chores done quickly and well, and was ranked reasonably high in the Candidate classes, no one really batted an eye whenever she ducked out of some other event or wanted a few hours off. That one day, she wished she hadn't.

Penny had been with her and the other candidates, as they were doing some construction cleanup. One of the weyrs needed repairs, and though they didn't really know how to do it themselves (except that one boy) the bulk of the kids were there to make sure stone chips and plaster were all cleaned out. Almost everyone came out of it with bits of plaster in their hair or on their hands and faces, it was almost as comedic as the incident in the kitchens - only, flour was much easier to clean from hair than sticky paint and cement.

The boys had headed out just after the girls, lugging buckets and heavy items, then everyone went down to bathe. Penny had hung back, asking questions of the construction crew, and Nelanie herself had gone to clean up. But she could hardly believe it when she saw Penny slinking along to one of the smaller private baths like always, and followed a bit.

"Why don't you ever come watch the boys with us," Nelanie put all the sweetness of a poison candy in her voice. "I mean, there are some very handsome ones to stand with us. Unless... you don't like boys." Narrowly she watched Penny's posture change: she was ready to bathe, not be confronted.

"I like boys plenty," Penny said, "I just don't need to oggle at them like you girls do. I like what's inside their heads." Pausing to clench the massive pile of towels she always 'needed' up to her skinny frame, Penny said, "now if you don't mind, I'm going to bathe alone. Again. Without the boys."

Nelanie didn't like being snubbed. The hide door flapped loosely, Penny wasn't making an attempt to shut it, why bother.

The thought struck her almost as quickly as she put it into action - Nelanie jogged into the room, not really seeing where she was headed, but not caring, either. She ran right into Penny and took advantage of that moment, 'accidentally' hurling Penny into the warm bath pool.

"Oh no," Penny whispered, "oh, no no no..." Nelanie couldn't even believe what she was seeing. It was like a comic play, unfolding out in front of her. All those towels, they couldn't mean so much to the girl, could they? "No..." They did!

Penny heard Nelanie's cackling laughter from behind, Nelanie could hardly see she was enjoying this so much. Something was different about the girl, though, when Penny started to turn around in the water. Of course Nelanie expected the angry look on her face, but not... Not really what else she saw. For instead of the skinny but feminine torso and breasts, and her smooth looking face, Penny had a flat chest, the start of blond hair on her chin... a boy's face and body!

"What... happened to you? What--" Nelanie's eyes widened, fearfully. She'd never seen anything like this. Penny was a boy? Or - no, it couldn't be, because she'd seen her dressing, and more, they'd all shared their woes of menustral pains.

"Shut up, Nelanie," Penny growled. "Close the curtain." Nelanie did as she was instructed, out of pure shock.

In a very low voice, Penny said, "and now you know - I'm not from here, I'm not normal, and I have secrets to keep. Just like you do."

"Pfff," Nelanie finally recovered with that, "no secret's like that, you freak!" It was going to be the best gossip, the most incredible story - it would be something the Weyrleaders would certainly like to hear about! Nelanie was already making mental plans to head up to the Weyrwoman's chambers when Penny spoke again.

"I'll make sure to tell everyone about your baby brother, then, won't I?" Penny shot back, eyes still fixed on Nelanie's.

Nelanie's face blanched her stomach tightened along with her throat, and before she could get in a word, Penny added, "I'm sure that your father would love that, wouldn't he? Proud as he was of his wife's last child? Shame she hid her pregnancy until it was too late, and ... well, until you stepped in to help deliver the baby that killed her... "

That was too much, it was too much! Memories flooded back to her, all too brightly. Her own pregnancy was to be the shame of her Hold, after all it was with some wandering boy who told her it was just a fling and she'd never become pregnant, not at her age. But... she did, at the same time that her own mother lost her last child to a miscarriage. But it was worse than that, her father never allowed such things to break his beaming smile, his pleasure at having a large family. So... they did the impossible, they claimed Nelanie's child was her own brother, and when her mother eventually died from some blood-related illness that had clearly caused her miscarriage, no one but Nelanie would ever know.

No one. But her. Could know about it.

"How do you even know about that?" Nelanie hissed, and sank abruptly to her knees, weakly. She couldn't stand, in fact she could hardly breathe.

She looked up at the very masculine Penny still standing in the waist-high water, sure enough there was the hint of proper manhood there too... Nelanie was confused and angry, hurt, frightened. She'd never felt all those things except once before: and that led to her 'baby brother'. "I... It doesn't matter. You win." She raised her eyes a little, trying to avoid looking at Penny's flat chest, and failing. "This... is ..."

"It does matter, and yes I do win," Penny said flatly. "And yes," she added after a moment, in a slightly more soft tone, "it's weird. Really weird."

The... Girl? Boy? Slipped out of the water, sat on the edge of the bath, and looked blandly at herself... Himself... Nelanie suddenly realized she was staring too, abruptly blushed, and then burst out laughing at her own confused state.

"And here you wanted me to go look at the boys with you, can't you handle one?" Penny jibed with a smirk. "Look," she said, in a boy-turning-man's voice, "we don't have to let this get out, either of our secrets. We're even, right? We don't have to be friends, but... can you just lay off being my enemy?"

"But -- how did you--" Nelanie finally sputtered, nodding at the request for a truce.

"I just... suss things out, it's easy to see how you act around pregnant women, babies, there are plenty of them here in the Weyr. The way your father showed up all proud and chatty." Penny shrugged. "That, and your brother doesn't look a bit like him," she added.

"I think it will be more obvious as he gets older," Nelanie admitted. For a few more minutes, while Nelanie's color returned and Penny's bathing commenced, they chatted a little. Since they'd spent the better part of five weeks together in the candidates rooms and classes, they already knew each other's background - to an extent. However, Nelanie now knew that Penny wasn't even from Pern - how could that be? She decided wisely to just ignore it from now on, and not pester the blonde girl any more.

That secret could not be let out.

Ever.

And thankfully, Nelanie was hardly the type to arrange for more serious 'accidents' to happen to anyone - and not because of the fear that a dragon would never come to a murderer. More, because it was better to simply have allies or accomplices, than enemies and judges and inquiries. Who wouldn't have seen how Nelanie pestered Penny, right?

So she left - noting that as Penny soaked 'her'self she'd make a great man... Blinking and rapidly trying to stuff that thought away, Nelanie got some dinner... and tried to put this all behind her.

***

It was only another few days before the hatching finally came. A few achingly hot, painfully dry days. In the slightly cooler evening, the dragons crooned their welcome to the new hatchlings. Nelanie wondered whether they did so to announce to each other, or to their riders, or to the hatchlings themselves? What would happen if they were silent?

Well, she donned the white robe and sandals and headed down, still too hot for comfort. There were so many candidates now, she didn't even know all their names. Penny stood somewhere to her right, Erose and Liene and others to her left, and they all stared at the eggs. Wobbly and bulging, some with cracks all along their surfaces.

It would be half an hour before Nelanie realized it, half the hatching, only a quarter of the candidates gone. A number of eggs had broken and the hatchlings were wandering about.

The green was the first to Impress. She wandered aimlessly through the crowd of candidates (by now it had dissolved completely into chaos from the neat half-circle it had started out as). At last, she found herself at Nelanie' s feet and crooned. My name is Risuth , Nelanie!

Nelanie exclaimed her name to the records keepers, and helped her new lifemate off to the kitchen.

***

It became clear pretty early on that Risuth was a bit odd. She was small, even for a green, though not the smallest of the clutch. Perhaps for that reason, she was almost always interested in places she could reach to hide. Not so much because she was afraid, but because she wanted to play hide and seek - or perhaps, as she grew older, to hunt for tunnel snakes which she loved to eat. She was actually quite a good hunter of them, in fact. Though she did have issues with the farmers that ... well, she dug up half their garden space in search of one particular snake. However, since the field was still fallow and they claimed they could use the turned soil, all was reasonably well.

When she was called back to Dragonhope it was clear that her penchant for digging around hunting snakes would come in handy. The difficult and often frozen grounds in the far north could harbor Thread and was quite resistant to human digging to kill the stuff off. She however could use her large claws to seek it out far more easily! This earned her a spot on the Queen's wing, out and about on the ground looking for whatever Thread had escaped their fliers.