"Pinch, you are so in trouble if you don't give that back to me," Udrili sternly warned the smallish green flitter. The green eyed her right back, and would doubtless have hissed at her if her mouth hadn't been full of a batch of herbs at that moment. Of course, those were the very herbs that Udrili needed to finish her stew. "Shard it Pinch! Flitters don't even eat herbs! They eat meat! If you bring it back to me I'll make sure to save you a bit of the wherry going into this stew!" Her voice changed dramatically between statements. And Pinch, being merely a green flitter, fell for it instantly. She felt the memory - meat - and that meant more to her than the bunch of tasteless sticks she had playfully lifted while her human was cooking.

"There's a good girl," Udrili commented and gave a little mental nudge, the flitter stood on her hand and dropped the mouthfull of already-cut spices into the cooking stew pot. "No one will mind a little flitter spit, will they?"

"I should say not," said a man's voice from behind her, and Udrili was so stunned she wanted to follow the flit between. Vanishing was high in her mind, when she turned to see the very tall and very dark (and very handsome) Weyrleader, S'xon standing there.

"Sir!" She said, and took a posture that she'd often seen drudges take. She was not a drudge, by any means, but she knew her place in the Weyr. It wasn't, or so she thought, fit to be making eye contact with those eerie yellow-green orbs the Weyrleader had.

She felt a warm strong hand on her shoulder, while she stood with her body in a right-angle bend. Bowing was the least she could do. After all, they'd taken her in here, after her village was wiped out from the spring flooding last year.

"You don't need to do that," S'xon said, voice deep and pleasant. Udrili could hear the humor in his tone, too, so she stood up. Too quickly it seemed - she was dizzy and had to balance on the counter behind her. S'xon nodded toward her, or something, "your stew smells great," he said.

"Oh thank you!" She started to say, and waited because he seemed to want to say more.

"Even if it is filled with flitter spittle," he remarked with a quirky grin spreading on his dark face. "But I won't tell if you won't. We've eaten worse I think." He winked, "you don't know the half of it."

Nervous but amused, Udrili laughed. "Well if you say so, sir." At last, Pinch came back and landed on the girl's shoulder, hiding among her wild locks. Then Udrili tilted her head, "sir, I know you don't make it a habit of watching over the cook staff, is something wrong? Did I do something wrong?"

"Oh no- no," he said, "finish cooking, when you're ready to serve please come see me first. It's nothing special for the weyr, but something for you I think. I just wanted to say you are a very fine cook, Udrili." With that he left the kitchen. The other drudges and some of the more permanent cooks stared at her with open jealousy.

But she didn't even care. She did notice, that didn't escape her green-grey eyes. No, what hadn't escaped her was that the tall and cordial man was very polite to her - did she deserve that kind of treatment?

***

While cooking, Udrili thought back to just a few years ago. Her village was on a kind of wash area, to the east of Dragonhope. It wasn't a fishing village like most of those which served the Weyr, and her place could hardly have been called a Hold or even a Cothold! It was so tiny and barely established. Her family, and three others were the only ones living there so far. She'd been born there, but anyone older than she had moved to the location.

It was a pleasant spot, on a craggy and bumpy set of hills that led down into the bay. From the highest point one could see not only the Weyr but two of the larger ports below in the wide cold bay. But very little could actually spy up into the hills where they were. Trees surrounded the area, it was rich in plant life which was not uncommon for a locale this far north. It was cold, certainly, but it was not at such a high elevation that they had permanent snow, like the Weyr.

The place hadn't even had a real name put to it yet. They were tithed like all small villages - but they paid with herbs and tubers, whatever they could root up from the ground. They grew small but extremely tasty wherry there. In fact they might have had the record for the smallest of wherry in the world. No one knew for sure. Normally the size of an earthly ostrich, these were merely the size of large turkeys.

But the location proved, after several nice years, to be a disaster waiting to happen. Once when she was younger, there was a smallish flood. They all moved their belongings out of the stone and wood huts they had assembled, and then moved back in. The winters were mild, the spring floods and thaws were not normally high.

Last year though, when Udrili celebrated her thirteenth birthing day, the winter snows had been particularly heavy up in the mountains. No shred of that had reached this village - until it began to drip in from the northern streamlets. The two hunters, men in their forties, came back with very little killed and a strange story of how very few animals were running about in the woods that day. Their canine companions were nervous the whole time. They thought perhaps there would be an earthquake or something.

But they were wrong. In the night, a strange sound could be heard. Almost a deep rumbling, a sound so low that only the animals could hear it. The weather was warm - unseasonably so - Udrili remembered that night clearly.

She stirred the pot a bit, and her flitter - having completely forgotten the earlier threats and promises - nuzzled up against her distressed human with a bit of a chitter.

Udrili heard the sound grow louder. It did not get any higher in pitch - that was what was so deceptive about it. But the problem was that it had neared the village unhindered, unnoticed. Not even the dragons who passed nearly every day overhead, saw it.

The flood had come from under a sheet of ice - cold, hard water that dwelled up in the farthest north reaches of the nearby mountains. The snow pack had melted at the top, slid under the still-frozen top ice and then descended as a wall down to the lowlands. What would have been streams merely handspans wide most of the time, became raging water more than two man's arm-reaches wide. And deep! By the time the villagers realized what was upon them, two families entirely had been swept down the river with the swifly moving waters.

Their houses too - gone. Udrili heard a scream, her mother's, and then saw a break in the dark wall.

"Udrili run - run quickly up hill! Anywhere up hill! Go!" Her mother was in a panic - she held her little brother Dru, too tightly. Udrili swept herself from the bed, without time to even put on day clothing. In her warm night dress, socks and a night cap, the girl sprinted out of her house and up to the hill where she enjoyed watching the dragons.

It was lucky that she had - and a tragedy at the same time. Her mother and father - nor her little brother - made it up the hill before being swept down with the sheets of water brought from the mountains.

Udrili stood in shock - terror slowly creeping in to her mind. From the darkened hillside, she saw only a black mass of water. Under the stars nothing looked right. But everything looked wrong. There were no huts, no barn, the wherry pen was nowhere to be seen. Everything was flat - roiling under a plane of water that covered literally up to her ankles.

Sensibly, she scampered into the sturdy tree on the hill. But the water receeded by dawn. She obviously could not sleep - she'd been awake for hours.

When the day came, she tried to examine what had been left - and found almost nothing. Standing in her night gown, she wept. There was no way that her parents or the villagers could have survived this. Especially not if the water was so strong as to tumble stone and mortar homes to the ground. She saw a trail where the first house had hit the second, and it was obvious that the trees would show the scars of this event for years.

They were all knocked down, a line of timber having been pressed into the ground by the force of the waters. One small part of her mind was still screaming for her mother to be alive. But most of her was so numb and tired, that all she could manage was a weak shout.

A dragon was on the horizon. Then two. Three or four. One landed nearby, and she was sure that she heard someone talking about how the water had reached the port town below - Frothwater - and how it too had been hit so hard that almost nothing was left.

She was taken without a word, into the Weyr. Given clothing and a warm bed, food when she would eat it. The healers came to look her over and declared her none the worse for wear. But then, came the inevitable.

She was asked to explain what had happened, as she could recall it. No one else had survived - bodies were indeed being washed up on the shore some twenty five miles down river.

***

"It's done sir," Udrili said, distractedly serving the stew. She saw S'xon nod at another drudge, and he took the pot as well as the serving ladle from her to help the kitchen staff.

"Come over here, sit with us today." S'xon said. She saw Kira, the tiny blond who was the Weyrwoman, sitting beside the dark-skinned man.

Her heart was racing, "thank you sir," she said. Her flitter was away - roosting in the rafters with the other few flits. How she got this one was a story into itself, but not one she was ready to recollect just that moment. For the drudges were serving her - along with everyone else - and she didn't have to clean up.

"What's the occasion, if I might ask?" She finally summoned her wits again. It was fairly overwhelming, after all, to be invited to sit with the leaders of the weyr when they chose to eat with everyone else. Dragonhope wasn't a very populated place, but big enough that if one didn't see the weyrleaders for a couple days it wasn't unusual.

"Well, that's a nice question," Kira said. "We've been talking to other Weyrs recently, to increase our ridership."

"Yes," S'xon continued and Udrili noticed that most of the nearby tables had gone quiet to listen in as well. "And there's a weyr which we had thought was gone to us all until recently. Aneris Weyr has a clutch on the sands. A small one, a white's clutch. They've already had a gold's - it's a shame we didn't get there for that one."

Others - mostly riders - at the table nodded and spoke quietly in agreement.

"But sir, what does this have to do with me?" Udrili asked at last.

"You're going to stand there, to hopefully bring back a new dragon and join our riders!" Kira said. Her big smile was bold enough to win Udrili's confidence.

"You... you mean that? I'm to stand? When was I searched? I didn't even know!" She was excited now, and saw how the other riders were examining her with a closer, keener eye than just as a cook or drudge. Perhaps they'd always looked at her that way - she didn't remember it so much though.

"Of course, you were searched a year ago," S'xon said, somewhat grimly. "We felt it more appropriate for you to wait and grow into the Weyr, before setting another shock upon you."

"If we've done wrong," Kira added, "please do forgive. You... were in a bit of a state for quite some time. Standing on the sands at another new place might have damaged you permanently."

"You've taken your new life here quite well, though," S'xon commented while eating the stew she'd made. "But I think you're meant for more than just a kitchen worker. We thought that ... on that night."

Though silent, she nodded. It still stung, but not as deeply as before. The loss of her family and land was hard - very hard. But it had brought here here. While she was grateful to the Weyr's inhabitants, she was also somewhat restless. She liked searching for things, like herbs and plants, small animals which would go into stews.

Then, Udrili began to imagine things that she could find if she were on the shoulders of a dragon soaring above...

The memories of standing below them, all those years, came back. Had she always longed to be a rider? Or just to look at the dragons? She decided while eating her own very tasty stew - flitter spittle and all - that she did indeed wish to touch the skies on a dragon's back. There could be no denying it.

"We don't know what your family history is, for riders," Kira said. "But you're going to make a good rider. You're sensible and thorough, and quick to find an alternative to a dilemma."

Udrili noticed the silly look upon S'xon's face, and chuckled. "Oh you found out about that, did you?"

"Do you think I'd allow my wife to sample it without knowing?" S'xon muttered. The others at the table were confused, and that led to the three - the weyrleaders and Udrili - to laugh even harder.

Udrili stood near the barracks doorway, and heard the sound of humming. "The dragons eggs are hatching," She said absently. Suddenly it occurred to her what she'd just uttered, and bolted toward the closet where the white robes for candidates were hung. Only five eggs, and only five candidates - one of those somewhat grudgingly there.

A green hatched first, but did not go to Udrili.

Two eggs broke simultaneously. One seeming to explode in a shower of fragments revealing a strong nearly defiant brown. The other splitting neatly in two and leaving another green lying upside down in the remnants of her shell.

The little green began to creel piteously as she tried to right herself without success. She just couldn't seem to flip over. "Oh, Iboroth, stay still a minute, and I'll come get you. I don't want you to hurt yourself. I couldn't bare it," Udrili called out as she hurried toward the emerald dragonet. Pinch chittered excitedly from somewhere above. It took only a moment before the young cook had her new companion back on all fours. "There you are. Now how about some food. You're so hungry it's making my stomach rumble." Pinch agreed whole- heartedly as she swooped down and joined them as the pair made their way out of the Hatching Cavern.

The hatchling was warm, secure, the feeling of happiness came from her as she slept in the new weyrling barracks. The feast that the cooks here had prepared was wonderful, a bit spicier than Dragonhope's fare. As hungry as the dragon was when she was hatched, Udrili had to wait a little longer for her own food! The feast was successful - it was a rare occasion when there were just enough candidates to go around, and no accidents in the sands, so no one needed to be consoled the way she'd seen before.

Udrili packed in another serving of pudding before the feast was over. Pinch landed on her shoulder as she proudly went into her new room to rest.

Udrili got along well with the other weyrlings, it was as though she'd really been destined to this life. But she was still called upon - rather often she thought - to cook for the Weyr. Why waste a good talent, anyway, was the general consensus. And besides, that meant that some weyrbrats would clean and muck for her, it was more of a pampering than she thought she deserved.

I do not think it is too much, you deserve much pampering! her dragon Iboroth bespoke. The weyrling was growing quickly but would not be a big green. That suited Udrili just fine, it was easier to get down close to the ground and go quickly - or hover - on a small dragon than a large one! Which reminds me, when do we get to go hunting for herbs again? I liked that exersize! It was hard but we found everything on the list!

"Soon, I think," Udrili said to her dragon aloud, as she was close enough to the shared weyr she lived in now to not look like she'd forgotten how to send her thoughts without speaking. "The pantry is always hovering around half-empty at any time, so I would hope we'd be sent out soon. And," Udrili sat down near her sunbathing dragoness, "We'll be learning to teleport between soon, that will make it all much easier."

Not too much easier, I like flying...