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With the bandits taking care of her father's troublemaking team, but Hogsden Hold now high on her mind, she wondered. Had the old man died yet? It'd been time enough for the Holders to bicker about the dividing up of things... What had happened with Polldyn? Had she been forced into a marrige? Perhaps even with the man that Landry had tried to sell Fara off to?

It was possible. It was even likely, knowing that now the menfolk as well as Polly's stepmother would be talking about it. It seemed to Faralona that the world was cursed to have unpleasant people making far too many decisions for those below them. And, that those people were cruel, hard, undeserving of such an honor.

She stalked around Spiral Hold from top to center, having put Backy up carefully as ever in her rented stall with Carson's runners. Even when she was distracted and angry, Faralona never quite lost her ability to focus on a task. It simply got done: she cleaned the stall, fed and watered and briefly cleaned Backy, got herself a bit spruced up... All on automatic, while she thought of her home Hold.

Fortunately, the locals had gotten used to her by now, and the scowl on her face told even the worst of the bunch that they should stay clear of her today.

Now, truth be told, even though she would consistantly swear that she despised men and everything they stood for, she also had grown to like many of them. The gate guards, Carson, some of the younger kids, even one of the Harpers that came drifting through and wound up remaining - drunk as he usually was - at the nearby inn. It was there that she too wound up, and it was to that Harper that she came to sit beside.

"The looks of you say you're in need of more than advice," he said gently, his voice was probably what Fara liked most about him. It was kind, soft, and he could sing so much better than other Harpers she'd heard. "Though I'm not sure what to offer you besides an open ear and a strong shoulder to lean on."

Fara gave off a pfff-noise, "your shoulders are so round and soft it's a wonder you're not in use as a pillow for some Lady or other."

"Been there, have to say it wasn't as great as anyone might make it out to be," Journeyman Kebev swished his ale around in its mug, "It's a lady you're thinking of, I would put a Mark on."

"You'd win that bet," Fara admitted, accepting a drink even though she knew she wouldn't be in a good mood later from it. "How could I just leave her like that... with those people. Hogsden Hold is a miserable place."

"You could send her word, or -"

"Anyone from here would be questioned if they rode with Spiral colors," Faralona said.

"I was going to say," Kebev restated, "or you could find a flitter and get that to her with a private letter."

"Well I..." Fara started to say, and then tilted her head. "A flitter... well they didn't have many, or maybe even any when I was there, it'd be a bit strange, but if it could get in without being seen I might think..."

Kebev patted her shoulder, "now we need to find you one."

***

That wasn't all that hard, really, because there was always someone breezing through Spiral Hold on their way to or from another location. While flit eggs weren't common inland, there were some number of them being used as trade. A few sevendays after determining herself to find a flit, there would be a good sized gather, it would be the first time in many weeks she actually wanted to attend one. The last two - held around once a month - she'd avoided, by going out hunting and bringing back her meats, sharing it with the local folk before the gather got rolling. Even if her father was still looking for her now, and might even be doing so actively, this time, she hazarded the gather. She needed that flitter.

Fara had plenty of Marks to spend on them, she wanted to make sure to get one that could be trained to head where it was needed. She briefly considered finding two, but again could not figure out a way to get one to Polly. There were at least four stalls, all from traveling traders, that had an assortment of flitter eggs and 'demonstration' pairs. The burly man with the long-necked gold showed off his flit's talents, while another who had both a gold and a bronze upon her shoulders had smaller, but seemingly smarter offspring. It was hers that Faralona decided to buy.

"There's no guarantee what rank you'll find, remember," the woman said, scratchy voice made smoother by a long breath from a pipe. "We only guarantee that the flitter will be live, and likely train well."

Fara nodded and handed over her mark, hearing the scoffing from some passer-by about how much they cost. She wondered whether they worked for another booth. Besides, the little pot that the egg was nested in right now would be nice to use for something else later on. Faralona wondered where the sand had come from - warm and brighter yellow than the dirt or sand found near Spiral's lake.

Eventually Fara headed back to her cothouse, paying for her way now that she did have a reasonably regular hunting job. The fire place would be best for the little jar filled with foreign sand. She wondered how long it would take to hatch. The woman had indicated that they generally didn't start to sell them until shortly before they hatched.

It was only a day later, when the egg began shaking. The gather was still going, but Faralona had no interest in heading back to it unless she really needed to. Here before her was a little life just starting, she was needed right here! The egg was hard, brittle, she'd felt it and some others - the ones sold by the burly man were slightly soft, and... truth be told, a bit cold. This one was nearly hot, the warmth of the fire had aided it for certain. The little egg bulged and swayed, she helped dig it out a bit so that the flitter within didn't get trapped under the sand. A splay of cracks suddenly webbed across it, and a little goo wetted the edges.

Just enough of a little blue nose came peeking out of its shell to make Fara laugh.

His eyes ... they swirled with colors, just like the Harpers said they would! Not that she had reason to doubt their songs, but she'd just never experienced such a thing right up close! Emba's flitter rarely stuck around while she was helping a visitor unless she called for him, and uniformly other flits were mostly seen from below as they swept over the Spiral on their way... wherever.

The little blue yawned, gave a gurgling cry. She offered him food to come all the way out of his shell, holding it higher and higher until he moved, he had quite the long neck even if his parents were sturdy. Overall though, he was hardly the length of her longest finger, and when he crept up that finger and nibbled at it, she got such a wonderful sensation of adoration in her mind that she wondered how she'd lived without it.

"Nibble, you're called." He seemed to like that - maybe just the sound of her voice. The flit ate a goodly amount of scraps from her dinner, and didn't seem too bothered by what it was he stuffed into his mouth - meat, fat, lettuce, peas, breadcrumbs, no matter at all. He didn't gobble, either, Nibble was aptly named, he took delicate little bites even of a small piece of food. Their first night together, Faralona was careful that he remain near her but not crushed by her. She put the pot, cleaned of the shell shards, back beside her bed, and he crept into it happily.

"Like your own little weyr!" Faralona giggled. She had an exhausting day, slept hard, and woke happy.

Her life centered around that little flitter for quite some time. He was sleepy, and hungry, and quite clingy. So Faralona kept a packet of scraps on her person at all times, and the blue nested in her collar as she went out to hunt. He'd be small, so said anyone else that had a flitter, but she was fine with that. As long as he could do what she needed him to do, that was the key.

Fara had asked for advice on how to best train the blue, at the next Gather. She found the traders who'd bred him, and they were reasonably happy to oblige - while he was still quite young, it was clear that Nibble would be a dedicated little flitter. Reward good behaviors, but don't scold too much on the bad. Always offer food, because even if he's a little 'delicate' in his eating habits, he was still a flitter and they always loved it.

Faralona spent the next few sevendays intensely training the little flitter. As promised, Nibble was receptive to her commands and hardly ever forgot what he was doing. Faralona was very focused, that helped. After he'd grown as big as he was going to get (she'd asked around - this was no helpless kitten or pup, flitters were reasonably self-sufficient out of the shell but it would be nearly a turn before he was fully mature), it was time, she felt, to put him to the test. He had been able to fly after only a few sevendays, his wings were sturdy though he'd never be a hefty flitter like some around the Hold. But it would be his skills going between that would be the key point. He could do that, in theory, since hatching. He hardly had, though, sometimes when startled, but little else could tear him away from his beloved keeper.

Clearing her own mind, she imagined the gate guard Roynan, the big bearded man, and told Nibble, "to Roy, now - bring him this." She tucked a little moss flower into Nibble's waiting hands. He didn't try eating it, which was good. Then, he flapped up, and vanished between.

A few minutes later, Faralona went up the path toward the city gate. Perplexed words, and a bit of silly coo-ing, were coming from Roynan, until he saw Faralona striding up the path.

"Is this yours?" He said, bursting out laughing, and holding up the tiny (only slightly chewed) flower along with the proud blue flit.

***

Faralona's experiences in Spiral Hold were generally positive ones, and she relished the chance to learn interesting skills from those around her. Emba helped a bit to train Nibble. They found that he was quite adept at accepting multiple instructions, and that was something that Fara knew would be key to all her worries. He could be relied upon to serve up to three fairly difficult tasks, before his little flitter brain could handle no more. But he was richly rewarded whenever he succeeded, Nibble was definitely a flitter worth his weight in treats!

After a few experiments here and there to prove his worth, Faralona at last decided to send him with a letter to her beloved Polly. It was bland - meant to merely prove that she'd gotten it. An instruction to greet the girl in a way that only she could know who it was from. To scribble a note of her own and then send the blue flitter back to her owner's side.

While she was quite nervous about all of this, Fara pulled in a deep breath and gave Nibble a clear mental image composed of several important parts. He was first to try the room where Polldyn spent most of her time. If she was there, that was that, deliver and wait to be sent home. If not - the difficult part of the blue's training would have to be called upon - he was to find her but not deliver the message until she was alone. Fara repeated this and gave him a little sweet-pea as a treat, and watched as the flitter vanished between.

Her stomach grew tighter as the minutes went by. Minutes that Emba could tell were bothering the girl. The Healer brewed some tea, handed it to Fara, who barely even acknowledged its warmth. "Oh my you are the distracted one," the older woman muttered. But thankfully, nearly two painful candlemarks later, Nibble arrived with the message in his eager little paws. Faralona could hardly manipulate her own hands, they were shaking - Emba's drink not withstanding, it would have been much worse!

Fara lavished treats upon the blue, rewarding him for a job well done. She was able to finally unroll the parchment and searched for the words she longed to see. It was much harder because of the tears in her eyes, which she managed to not get dripping all over the ink. "She was there, she was there..." Fara whispered mostly to herself. Emba couldn't help but peer over the girl's narrow shoulders, to see a simple statement. Fara's shoulders began to shake, she was a bit of a slower reader than the Healer.

stubborn lady needs a bronze rider to save her from threadfall

"That's her," Faralona whispered, half a sob. "She needs me, I have to... do... something."

Emba collected herself and picked up the half-full teacup that Faralona ignored. "If you do anything, it'll be after a good night's sleep, Fara."

Everything in her gut screamed now, but Faralona knew that the Healer was right. If she went off - or went back - to Hogsden in this mental state, she would do something stupid and probably get herself killed.

"I don't think I'll be able to sleep," Fara stated flatly. "Now that I know she's still there..."

"Dream of her, then," Emba pushed a small packet of herbs into the girl's hands. "Go to your cot, put some food in your stomach, and drink that down as a tea along with it. Go. Shoo."

Faralona did as she was instructed, numbly reaching her own cot which was only barely closer to the edge of the Hold than Emba's healing chambers. As a hunter she'd enjoyed a fair amount of money coming in, and could bed down near anywhere she'd liked, but... She liked the freedom of the forest and farmsteads nearby, more than the slightly confined center of Spiral Hold. A bit of a walk to collect Backy on regular days didn't hurt her health, kept her in better spirits than she was now.

Now, Faralona picked at a small loaf of bread and finally determined herself to make a nice meal. Bread, thin sliced meat, and a good layer of cheese, on a pan to melt and get crisp. Her tea brewed while that was cooking as well, and it smelled... sweet, already enticing. Though her gut still churned with darker worries, her mind let up a bit as she ate and fed Nibble ample crumbs. She didn't start the tea until she was nearly done with her meal, which was good because it knocked her out almost with the first sip.

Fara dreamed, deeply sleeping off a day's fretting, of the skies and of dragons, and seeing the Hold from above. She'd never actually been above it, but... It felt so real. So real.

***

She was groggy and had a tremendous kink in her shoulder; when Fara woke it was to a strange noise that she'd only rarely heard before. Dragons? Trumpeting? What were they saying - and what a strange thing to think. Not everyone considered dragons to be 'talkative', so she'd heard just by wandering both her childhood Hold and this one. But surely they were chatting up there, were they flying, or landing or...?

As Faralona woke a bit more, she noticed that Nibble was excited, flying around her room and pulling at her shaggy hair. It had grown quickly, since she'd insisted Emba cut it more than half a year ago, but it wasn't as long as it once had been, and she'd kept the top of it shorter, allowing the back to grow out more because Nibble seemed to like it. (That, and he would scratch her neck a little - it was padding!)

She brushed last night's crumbs off of her clothing (she'd just... passed out like that? What was in that tea?!) and emerged carefully from her room to see the common room was filling up with groggy folk as well, so it wasn't just her! Their shared area had half a dozen rooms directly off of it, and another half dozen down the hall, with their bathing area beween. One young farm hand came out from the bath with just a towel and wet hair - and even Faralona appreciated his fine form for just a moment.

"What's going on out there?" Faralona asked, more curious than disgruntled.

"All the noise in the world, apparently," one other farmer grunted, "too early for this, going back to sleep."

Was it that early? Apparently it had barely started getting bright in the sky - when she clung near the doors and someone pulled the bar to open them, it was hardly brighter outside than in! Nibble as well as two other nearby flitters (a green and another blue) flew outside as though they'd forgotten they could between. She and a fair few others - all uniformly young - exited their cothouse and looked around. Outside there were more flitters than they'd seen in a while, all flocking together - they weren't normally apt to do that, since many were from traded eggs and hardly any of them the same localized breed. But now, they flew as though someone was commanding them, gracefully.

Faralona had listened to the Harper's stories of how their kind had inspired those who created the dragons - and now she knew without a doubt why they'd done so. But then she heard another sound, above the excited chirping of those flits. Deeper, rumbling, the tones of dragons. Since there wasn't room for them down in the Spiral itself, the dragons that visited Spiral Hold had a landing spot between two of the farms, not exactly near the exit that Faralona had been living by. So she and the others headed to the Flats, joined by a goodly number of those below as they filtered upwards out of their own cothouses. A procession of sorts; some folks were pointing upwards at the flitter faire, doubtless many of those were their owners wondering what had gotten into their flitters.

But what had gotten into these dragons was another thing entirely. There were at least three dragons, with two of those being very similar in looks - a light-colored brown and a smaller bright green. The green seemed to be nosing at the air, the way a person would sniff if they smelled a good dinner being prepared! Her brown companion seemed ever-so-faintly familiar, and when Faralona saw a few of the Holder's men approaching his rider, she understood why - he was a tithe collector, he'd probably flown past this Hold on numerous occasions.

So now he was joined by that excitable green and a long-winged long-bodied... long looking mottled brown that was clearly not from the same Weyr as the others. The bunch of flitters still apt ot sweep around the place seemed to gather over that brown, or more specifically around his rider. While the one brown rider was involved in collecting the records and goods, the green's rider was laughing her head off at their companion.

Faralona had to admit, even in this early part of the morning and after a very tense day before, that the guy covered in flits - her own included - looked to be about the silliest thing she'd seen in her whole life. She began to laugh, as others had, and didn't stop for quite some time. She wasn't alone, a lot of giggling went on behind polite hands as well as outright guffawing. Every time the rider tried to move, the bunch of flits squalled into the air and made noise, but settled almost immediately back to wherever they could find spots on his head, shoulders, even his pant legs.

His dusty-brown dragon would have none of it, shaking his elegant head and causing yet another ripple of laughter. The green though, kept sniffing the air. Someone crassly commented that there were unwashed farm hands and a butcher nearby, obviously she was smelling those folks!

But it wasn't that at all. For some reason, Faralona realized it as the others were chuckling and hoping that the crates were counted correctly. Nibble came flying back when Fara gave her distinct whistle; and though others tried, theirs remained by the platinum-haired brown rider. Fara cooed at her little blue, scratching him on the shoulder and hoping that her flip-floppy stomach was just a remnant from the prior night's worries.

She'd contacted Polldyn and Polly had replied... and now, this. This.

"This is Eryth," the dark-haired and very tall green rider said, "she's a search dragon." Though she'd said it at large, since there were numerous voices asking the same questions, it felt to Faralona like she'd spoken directly to her.

I am Eryth, the dragon's mind blundered into Faralona's, startling the young woman but only for a moment. You would make a good rider. You will come with us won't you!? Her eyes whirled a sort of green and blue, sparked with a brilliant yellow of expectation. Nibble's eyes did that on occasion - usually right before he was given a treat for doing something properly.

If for no other reason than to please the extremely eager and somewhat simplistic minded dragon, Faralona blurted out, "of course I will!" That jolted several of the nearby Hold men, including one of the young hunters that she had enjoyed competing with. He seemed to be the next to understand what had just happened, and his expression was precious.

"So this means I won't have to compete with you to get those boar, eh Fara?" He nudged her, seemingly quite pleased with this turn.

"Well that will mean you'll have to work extra hard for them. After all, I'm much better at it than you," she jibed back with a huge grin.

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