Her mother rode a fast, brightly colored green dragon. Her father wore dark green leathers as he worked replanting and harvesting precious trees. Her mother bore her in her weyr, but her father raised her in the woodcrafter's hall.

Myuhezhme's head was always in the clouds, but her feet always on solid ground - and her fists just as strongly sure around an axe handle as they were a sparring knife. Even as a young girl, Myu was known to outwit those elders around her even at their own games. Sure she was a girl, but a girl that knew her way around the woods with such ease no one could deny her admittance to the guild.

Her mother hardly visited, but when she did there was always a celebration. Plus it was understood, at least by the adults in the guild, that Myu had been Searched not long after her tenth turn-day - too young to stand for a queen, but also just a little too young for a green or other dragon. And speculation went wide where it was concerned what rank of dragon this sturdy, tall girl deserved to ride.

When she was a bit older, she decided to head up to the Weyr herself, accompanying the wood guild's traders and appraisers. She enjoyed the trip so much that she begged to stay on, and the Masters were eager to have her do so: she knew her way around the wood trade, and she would do well to help them get their work sold properly among the Weyrs.

She was neither attached nor distant from either of her parents, truly. Her father was a strong, but mostly silent man. Her mother was a boisterous green rider with everything that implied. Myu... was somewhere in between. She always backed up her statements with facts, quietly and calmly. And when those facts weren't enough to convince someone of their worth... She could always heft a candle-holder or a block of wood, a dinner fork or even a glow-basket to 'convince' them.

But Myu didn't seek out such conflicts. She was more than happy just watching the dragons, examining the woodwork, and chatting with girls and boys her age. There were plenty, at least two of them were her half-siblings. If anything, she fit better in the Weyr setting than the Guild hall because she didn't automatically assume that family presence meant family ties. Her older sister was involved with the head Steward, and her slightly younger brother was in training to ride dragons. Both of them had weyrbound families otherwise, so they hadn't been brought up away from dragons.

Perhaps it was that, having lived most of her life down below the Weyr instead of up in it, that Myu continued to have the abject appreciation for the beauty of dragons, and the ways of Weyr life that she did. Every time she passed a particular hall, she would gaze at it: it was the big riders' meeting place, stacked with maps and demonstration tools, and having three huge wood and stone tables around which were gathered the finest collection of comfortable seating the crafthalls could manage.

She wasn't terribly talkative, but she was social enough at gatherings that she quickly had a series of boyfriends. She knew none of them could be serious, unless of course one of them became a rider!

By her fourteenth turn-day, Myu had been inserted into the dragonry classes, to learn everything she could about the care of dragons, their skills and how to fly against Thread. And like her mother, who had also done very well, she learned rapidly and kept her knowledge clear for later review.

"I treat it the same way as I had to learn the woods," she explained to one of the other students who was struggling a bit. "Each piece of wood might be cut in the same dimension or with the same saw - but the grain and color, the texture... all those things are different from each tree and each breed."

"Ah, that's over my head too!" Said the other, "Don't confuse me! I'll start saying you can figure the age of a dragon by counting its rings!"

They laughed hard, and parted ways, but then Myu wondered silently on her way back to her own dorm... What if she had to depend on that boy for wing duties? What would she expect out of him? How could he best be taught which way to dodge if he...

"That's it!" Myu hissed to herself, and determined that she'd talk to the Weyrling master and instructors first, before starting on a rather radical course of 'education'.

***

"Well... it'll either beat him senseless or pound the right thing into his head," the white-haired brown-rider R'vfen said with a chuckle. "It certainly should see if he's proper rider material, at that. It ... almost surprised me that you'd bring it up, just now, because... Well, frankly Fuiaam and I were talking about the trouble he's been having as well."

"If he doesn't learn, he would be a liability," Myu said. She didn't state it harshly, to her it was merely just a fact. So they gathered up what she'd need, and sent her on her way.

So throughout the day, Myuhezhme watched her friend and fellow student as he went about his other duties. He did good work in most ways, helping clean and wash the dragons, making sure that riding gear was in good condition and reporting any damage to the leathercrafters on hand. He even could figure out wounds and poultices, but not which herbs to best use on what wounds - that would be something he could pass on, not everyone needed to know how to dress dragons. He learned how to keep their blood from being lost to an open wound, and that was good enough to pass the class that day.

But he couldn't get through his head how to memorize flight formations. Myuhezhme ran up behind him, smacked him on the back of the shoulder hard enough to spin him around in the hall, and did a tumbling roll. "That was your right-side wingman! Try again!"

But she vanished down the hall before anyone could even ask her why she'd done it.

This went on, dawn to dusk, in public and private, for four more days. Myu enlisted the help of some of the older students and one or two of the weyrlings, all with the permission of the Weyrling masters. They would walk together, sometimes surrounding the younger boy. Myu and he - obviously, he wasn't much caring to talk to her these days. But she would still run up, do something weird, and then run away.

And sometimes, the others would scatter too. What they knew however, was something he was only faintly aware of. Eventually, he heard her coming up behind him with a flapping ribbon in her hands. He ducked out of the way and headed to the left - and she let off a triumphant squeal. "You did it! You did it!" And then bolted off yet again.

That evening, he stalked into the dining hall and located the red-haired girl. He was about to throw a pretty sound punch at her from behind when she gently turned to look at him. He couldn't hit her in the face, he just didn't have that kind of courage. Especially not after she'd been so mean. "Why do you keep hitting me!" He asked, eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

"I'm not hitting you. Thread and your wingmen are hitting you because you're not getting out of the way in time and you're not following your wing instructions."

"What are you talking about!" He yelled. "You're just running up and --"

"Thread runs up silent too - Thread comes down from above," she recalled the moment when she actually jumped on him from a rafter, "wings beat hard and fast, and whip around in the wind, and if you're going the wrong way you're going to cause an accident."

"But what does that have to do with anything! You just hit me and laugh--"

"Thread doesn't apologize. Thread doesn't laugh. I never laughed. And if you're done pouting, you'll notice that none of the other weyrlings laughed either. They went apart, held back and then moved forward, ducked the other way. Until this morning, you didn't do any of those things. But today, you did. And the Thread missed you. It might have hit you, but you moved the way a rider would move."

"I... I did?" He swept his sleeve over his face, clearing out the last of his angry hot tears. "Wait, you ... you mean that wasn't just a bunch of jokes?"

"Why would I joke, if you're going to Impress and be on a wing? I don't want to be paired up with someone who can't fly to save his life. You just learned how to save your life." Again, this wasn't said by Myu as any kind of insult, far from it. She meant it, and made it sound like she did, as a grand compliment. Others were suitably impressed as well. The Weyrling master and his assistant in particular.

And the Weyrleader. S'xon leaned down a little to hear his Weyrling Master tell him, "that girl's a natural, look at how she does it... Even just sitting there, it's like she's on a dragon's neck. If there was anyone I'd want on a good wing, that's her."

"I'd want her in the classroom too," said Fuiaam, R'vfen's class assistant. "The proof will be tomorrow night at the testing. Do you think he'll have learned enough?"

"He's learned enough," R'vfen said, "to have an instinct kick in that hadn't been doing so well before. Down on the fields I think we'll see progress. If it translates to his writing hand, I don't know for sure."

Back at the tables, Myu and her friends complimented the boy on finally learning - he knew he was still a bit young yet, and promised them that even if he didn't test well enough this time, now he knew better what to think about and what to let happen all by itself.

***

"They say you're ready for an assignment," Fuiaam said, both red-haired girls radically different in appearance otherwise, but each with a mop of hair that certainly attracted attention. "Do you think you want to go stand at Shintaru Weyrhold?"

Myu said, "I don't even know where that is, but ... Yeah, I think I am. And when I come back... I don't know, don't think I'm going to steal your job beside R'vfen."

"Oh no, nothing can tear me away from his left side, but you," she chuckled, "you're good for his right wing any day."

***

It turned out that Myu's estimation of her own readiness was nowhere near enough for the hatching. Shintaru's hatching sands were bustling, packed in ways that Dragonhope's had never been! So many females, vying for space. Several hatchlings had already bonded and wandered off, but there were scores left. One of the gorgeous Pernese (there were other breeds, Myu remembered seeing tidbits about them) queens stood and showed off her brood as the eggs began to shake and crack. One of those eggs was...

It would be a queen! Such a large egg, obviously golden in hue, and when it broke there was hardly anything delicate about the gold that came from within. There was absolutely no doubt that this was a queen in the making. A queen whose shining golden hide was dappled with incredibly detailed bronze shading, making her glimmer as though she was freshly oiled even when she was drying off her wings!

Her little green sister, however, took the spotlight as she bumbled past the little queen, who gave off a snort and pawed at the much smaller dragonet to get it over with.

It was in those words, too, which sprang into Myuhezhme's mind. Get it over with you little shard. What is wrong with that girl?

Myu chuckled a little, and saw the glowing, whirling hungry eyes of her bond. It seemed that the young girl that the green approached was petrified of dragons. What a thought, to be at a hatching this size, among all these incredible dragons, to be afraid of the one which would call you hers? They left and cleared out of the way. With that done, the gold walked straight to her choice of Myuhezhme . The girl gave a nod, " Memelinath ." The pair walked from the sands.

***

Memelinath grew steadily, and Myu's strength had to grow with her. That was never going to be an issue, she could keep up with the scrubbing and oiling (and with the weyrbrats back at Dragonhope that would be made so much easier). Along with her strength and flight capabilities, however, Memelinath's mind expanded greatly. Curious but reserved, she always managed to put things into perspective: partciularly, the perspective of fighting Thread.

But she would be a queen, massive to say the least, and important to the Weyr as much as a dignitary as a tactician. With Myu's smart application of her knowledge, and Memelinath's elegant genius in flight, it was a wonder that Thread itself didn't run in fear when she took to the skies! Though they had a spot in that training wing, where they would do the most good was with the other Queens: guiding the entire wing in the absence of the Weyrwoman, collecting strays and making sure that every individual dragon and rider were where they were meant to be. Even the Weyrleader's bronze deferred to her in times of confusion.

Through all that, though, Myu remained steadfast against the idea that she herself would be in the running for Weyrwoman. There were plenty of fine queens before her in the heirarchy, and Memelinath agreed. If she did fly to mate, it would be for the glory of the Weyr, not for her own status.