Standing At Falas Special Clutch

Name: Lethe Gray

Aliases: Shard, Baeris, Vanya, Sanger, Tani, Viridia, Charybdis, endless others

Gender: Female, obviously

Gender preference: Male, but wants to be one. Go figure.

Age: 36

Hair: Brown, often dyed multiple colors

Eyes: green hazel with gold and orange flecks (requires glasses, not shown)

Skin: Art! (as shown!)

Rank: Manager, Comic Gallery in San Diego CA

Marital Status: single, ex boyfriend (yummy)

Pets: Cats. Lots of Cats. (Toots, Boxer, Purrsephone, 13375que4k, Rex, Mews) and Snake (Carmine at a friend's house)

Talents: Artwork, Scripting, novel writing, website design, lording over comic books at work.

Prelude - Drew and Lethe at work

***

It came as a bit of a shock to me, that the whole thing was 'real'. It was actually still way more unreal in my mind. Dragons DID exist. Really. And thus, I could assume that a whole walloping batch of other things did too.

For that reason alone, I set about putting myself into shape for dragon bonding. Impressing. Whatever. I would have to find out what they called it at the place I was headed. I'd heard of it. More than that, I knew in a sort of way the 'owner' of it. Would she be there? Would everyone be there? Would I recognize them?

They'd have to recognize me, because I'd be the 'geezer' of the batch. And I was the only one who claimed to have a batch of tattoos on me. Absently I tried to remember the name of the girl who wanted one of my dragons on her skin - came up with a blank.

Everything was blank - because we were between worlds. The rider told me to relax before hand, but frankly I knew what to expect. I wanted the chill to the bone, as the stories went. I also wanted my mind to be opened up. To feel the dead - to sense the remnants of everything else that passed through this null and void space.

But I felt nothing - just nothing - but cold. My mind never stopped working, even if my teeth chattered in my jaw. It was fucking cold. And I was if anything, "not" a cold-type person.

Born and raised in the Southern California sun and sea, among the eucalyptis trees imported generations before... I was used to the weather being close to 70 (that's F not C of course... and I'm lousy with calculations - so leave it at "warm") all the time. Including winter. And I would rather roast in a hot summer than freeze in a chilly winter.

Not like my mother. Who was born in Chicago and didn't seem to have the sense of when to use the heat and when to turn it off. Nor when to just leave me the hell alone... And it was partially to get away from her that I chose to go with the search rider. Even though it would leave my cats with her for the duration, I knew that she would just have to bear it and keep feeding them. They were too adorable to just kick out.

Weren't they? I really wanted to take one with me. But then I also didn't want my cat to become dragon food. Wher food, whatever.

With a strange shudder we came out from between over a fantastically beautiful island. One which I thought seemed more familiar, because in "my" version of this universe, the Kshau Protectorate had left this isle in a Pass on Pern just before the current time line started. Falas Weyr was built on the same isle that I lovingly detailed in some page or other - one which was probably going to get deleted by Geocities and their idiotic rules...

We were very high up. The wind wasn't nearly as cold here in the clouds as it was between, though the wind stung my eyes and threatened to whip my glasses off my face. I couldn't afford that - there was ocean below us, and my eyes weren't all that hot to begin with. I was glad I'd taken the belongings that meant something to me, which happened to include the little screwdriver and magnifying glass that I could screw in that annoying left-lens screw that always came loose.

I got back to my senses shortly - because we were really high up. I clutched the dragon's back with my knees, but I didn't feel unsafe. I'd long passed that fear of heights stage when I realized that I wasn't hallucinating and there really was a dragon standing there and his rider was telling me to grab my stuff.

The heights thing would just have to be put into perspective, in the back of my mind. Where it would fester, and give me nightmares, but it wouldn't prevent me from actually working on a dragon.

A dragon.

My heart lept again, and I passed my hand along the beautiful blue's hide. Not scales, hide. That was both a blessing and a curse, I thought. With a snake, its shed skin smelled something awful, and it could get parasites in places that wouldn't be nice to clean on a limbed creature. But hide, though it'd have to be thick, was more supple and could be cared for easier.

Yet they weren't mammals... Whatever. Weirdness that I'd just have to ignore. If things went like in the books - or the online stories for that matter - I'd be needing to take some classes on maintenance and whatnot.

Gads I hated school. And, likely, I'd be the oldest one there because most places just wouldn't allow anyone over twenty five or so, to impress.

That was innane, I thought. Why take a child who hasn't even figured out what they want or can do with themselves, and mold them into something like an army toy? I was told that no, even though they were taking me to Pern, we wouldn't be expected to fly up against Thread. That was good - because while I was good at video games of such things, I would probably suck at it in reality.

Why didn't they take older folks? Because they're geezers set in their way... Maybe? I laughed a little to myself as we circled downward toward the islands.

Glimmering green and white, forest surrounded by sands... Azure ocean, and I realized that I was compensating for the odd color of the sun here. Maybe what "blue" meant here was really different? But the dragon was blue standing on the street, and it was still blue here. How about that.

Or maybe, I was completely insane.

But if that were true, I was enjoying every single breath of it.

*** Interlude One ***

The orientation meeting was too brief for my taste. There were a batch of people - women mostly but a few men, and I thought to myself, "why didn't I think of asking someone to come along? Nakia would make a great rider." And Nakia, Nick, or as we loved to call him at work, Nabib, probably would have jumped at the chance too. I needed to suggest it to someone. But I didn't know where he lived, and I didn't think they had the internet here on Falas. I couldn't contact him now. Drew said something about it too, and he'd managed to get himself a little flitter! Bastard!

I thought more about Nakia, maybe I could get him here later. That would rock. If I impressed, I'd come back there and really wreak havoc. Heh.

I thought about what was said at the orientation though. We were all expected to do the chores and get physically fit enough to ride and manage a dragon. And they weren't "small". When I first stood next to the blue, he was about the size of a tall horse at the shoulder joint, higher with the wing joint, and his head was about the length of my arm. And blues were among the smaller of the dragons.

I don't know that I wanted to take care of anything larger than a blue, but ... I think also the lot of us just stood numbly and watched as we saw our first Gold. A queen, beautiful. Her wings were pale like sunlight, and ... wow. I was just floored. Because there are no earthly animals that have four legs and wings too, it was weird watching how they "really" moved, how they flew.

I sat down right there on the ledge, dragged out my digital camera and snapped a couple pictures. The batteries would keep and I had two sets of spares. The charger plug fit into the electrical outlet in my dorm, but I didn't much trust the charger itself not to die. It'd done so before. Batteries and cameras aside, once they were dead, I didn't know if I was planning on using the drawing pads I brought. I drew from my mind, not from life - but here there were dragons to draw from.

We'd have to get scrolls and books out - passing them among one another and learning about the anatomy and such. But ... we're all artists. Earthly artists anyway, and so much of that stuff was old hat to us! We would have to go over the names of the wing spars, muscles and the internal organs that not many really thought much of.

And rank. Something I'd always hated because I was just 'not' military. Here was a wing leader with his particular loop of cord around his shoulder. Here was a second, there was the kitchen head and this was the steward... Words to me. I'd have to figure out rank by experience, then.

That first night, spent in a dorm with two others... Was weird. It was lonely for all of us, even though we were now in the same place together - where we'd been spread out all over the world before. I laughed about how the internet was a marvelous thing.

And we all groaned because our email accounts were TOTALLY going to fill up while we were gone!

I missed my cats. Keeping me warm, demanding to be fed in the morning, waking me up by their antics in my room. I woke on my standard three hour intervals - a lousy sleeper anyway, and in a foreign bed. I would have to get used to this crap. But I never... NEVER just fall to sleep. It's so hard for me to even sleep when I'm exhausted physically, so this was monumentally difficult.

And I missed more than anything, having my computer to write out my dreams that next morning. A ritual done for more than fifteen years - longer than some of my new friends had been alive. Every morning. Someone suggested I write, and I suggested they screw themselves, because there was a reason I didn't write - my hands were halfway ruined by carpal tunnel syndrome - brought on by too much typing of course. But also my hands and arms would sieze up if I wrote too much or even really used a pen for too long at all. That made inking my artwork really hard - but now I might hardly have time to draw anyway. Others had brought their computers or laptops - but I didn't have a little computer. A big monitor, heavy case... No. It would keep.

Then came breakfast. I prayed to the god I didn't believe in, that they had something other than wheat grains here, something beyond the cow's milk that I couldn't digest either. Damn digestive disorders... But though I was worried at first, the breakfast cakes and the klah - no substitute for coffee - were quite good. Cane sugar was all but unknown, but there was something sweet like honey in the drink, and to pour on the cakes... My first offworld meal. I'd been told to eat before, because they didn't know when everyone would arrive. That made a certain kind of sense. But still... Dinner would be an adventure in meat. Fun!

We got right to studies. The days were suddenly more regimented than I could have imagined. And free time? What was that? At least it was warm - well, warmer in the caverns and toward the inner areas of this big supposedly-extinct volcano. Down at the beaches, yeah, it was nice and warm, with a stiff breeze off the shore that blew sand into my eyes and made me shivver. This was another world... I looked into the sky and knew that it was different. The Red Star was there- huge, but not so close that it was a danger just yet.

"Wow," I said.

When I got back up to the dorms, weyrs, whatever, the others were going through their stuff to see what all they each thought was important to bring.

I myself packed lighter than I expected to. Clothing, yes, but that too was going to be provided after a while. (And presumably, I'd be earning some kind of money along the way that could be spent if there was a gather. whooo - a gather!) I took my camera and some memory chips, the batteries. But also a number of half used and one completely blank drawing pad, giving me what I estimated about two hundred blank pages. My drawing style meant that I only ever used one side of the page, and usually large images. Because it was a simple style, it used a lot of space. I'd have to get over that, and start drawing small.

Also I brought some graph paper and blank typing paper - ostensibly for inking artwork but it could be used for just about anything. I brought my dice, because I would never live in a world that didn't have dice. If we were ever bored, we could play my Zekiran game, which I'd also brought (along with the many blank character sheets - hell, I could playtest this thing here! finally!). I took along the Harry Potter books but I didn't have book five, and four was monsterous enough and took up so much space, I wondered whether I had lost my mind or what. I took a batch of stomach medicines with me, because if I was gonna eat anything bad, I'd want to be able to fix myself.

And I took my towel. Not the shitty bathtowels that I had, there were towels here. My plush purple and brown "Unicorns Running" towel I had since I was in junior high school, the one that I proclaimed would help me leave the doomed Earth when the Vogons came to blow it up. Hitch hiking across the galaxy.

Which was, suddenly, a real possibility. I brought Bat, my little stuffed Beanie, but left Cat, the white beanie cat, because one stuffed animal would be enough. I thought about taking Brad the Drunken Frat Dragon with me, but that would have been altogether too silly. I did take the small Cthulhu doll that someone had asked about in the group - but I didn't offhand know if they'd be here, either. I could give it to them, if they showed up and maybe mentioned it. Right. That'd happen.

The fact that I always had a Grand Moff Tarkin toy in my back pack should say volumes about many aspects of my life. I took the repainted and remixed Sanger version and put him in a soft eyeglass case, taped shut. An assortment of color photos, printouts and such - mostly of people I'd never met, like Hugo Weaving as Smith, and Alan Rickman as Snape. And that guy from Deviant Art who looked exactly like Sanger. I wanted that guy with me. But then he lived in Belgium and Belgium was a swear word in the Hitch Hiker's guide.

I lauged myself to sleep and remembered that I also brought enough birth control to last three months. After that, I'd be on my own.

*** Interlude Two ***

"I need a tattoo," I muttered as I swept the floor of a brown weyrling's home. Someone else muttered that I needed another tattoo like I needed a hole in my head, or threadscore.

"There's a thought," I said with a grin. "I don't mind scarification either, I've never done that."

"You are a sick sick woman," Sunny replied. "Thread's supposed to be really painful."

"Yeah, but only for a while. Once the skin is burnt the nerves are gone." I indicated my arm, "this was eleven hours," she gave off a gasp, "not all at once...sheesh."

I did want a new tattoo. Of course, I hadn't had the one finished, either, because my artist had taken a bit more of a vacation than everyone expected after her boyfriend passed away. Talk about unfinished business. The cheetah gryphon on my chest was blank, everything else was in full flying colors. Maybe I'd try to get someone here to finish it... Or how about not.

The extent of that craft was 'rubbing charcoal in wounds' and didn't do much for me, really. Maybe I could make my own tattoo gun. They could do it in prison, I could certainly do it here... Shee-yeah right, I thought. How about I wait...

I'd need the right design too. I already had dragons aplenty. And it was odd, because some of the riders here actually seemed to recoginze them - as real dragons. Because of course, all of the images that I put on myself, were ones I'd written up... For others. But I stopped writing on Pern a ways before. Alskyr was out there somewhere, and the Healing Den. And as soon as I could, if I impressed, I'd be seeking them out.

And some Sangers I knew needed a bit of a boost.

The slop of weyrling shit had stopped turning my stomach a while back. I had six cats using two litter boxes in one small bathroom at home. I could handle a breezy weyrling den. And it was good hard work. My back needed help desperately, though, and I didn't know for sure if their healer could do chiropractic adjustments. I was used to those... Maybe I could just get one of the healthy and handsome riders to work it out of me, later.

Thinking about starting a relationship here made me suddenly twinge. I really was still in love with Ilya after all. He was my life - but even at home, he was three thousand miles away.

Three thousand miles I could travel in a blink of an eye, on a dragon.

And he wouldn't mind if I played around - he'd done it while he was in Japan and I approved of it then, even though I wasn't sure about him and protection and trust. The girl was a riot - so cute. And he went to her wedding later on anyway. That's why I loved him. We were so comfortable together... No one else had ever made me feel that way. And no one had *ever* given me the kind of sweet sweet lovin that he could.

I guessed that I didn't feel so bad about being out here, alone, with people who had been bizarrely close yet so far apart in the "real world" - because I didn't honestly think that I'd never go back. If they came to earth to get me, logically I could do the same.

Then came the memory tests... The endless star charts. I'd been fond of playing with astronomy when I was a kid - and the problem became that I wasn't at all familiar with their stars here. The constellations I knew kept coming up into my mind. So I tried harder. If my life depended on me landing somewhere at a particular time and place, then dammit, I would have to learn.

I hated school - but this was something else. It wasn't like my old schools, of course. It was more like a military academy or a specialty school.

Once the initial rush of classes had drained down a bit, leaving us with a bit more time as whatever eggs on the sands hardened, I started taking notes about the people living here. I knew them - or of them - by the websites. I faintly recognized this rider or that infamous dragon by their strutting walk or the way that they demanded the other dragons leave.

I wished more than anything, that the "old school" of weyrwomen would come. Just to this hatching. Because I knew them all by heart. And suddenly tears came to my eyes when I thought that there were so many that were dead and gone - whether they were real or imagined, there were weyrwomen and leaders that had been documented, and I made the leap of faith to believe they had been real.

I started using the graph paper to write notes, who was on watch, what books needed to be brought to whom. Because I'd been managing a store, I knew the process of ordering and making sure that people got what they liked to buy - and that came in handy when it came time to assign duties, when a gather was going to be held.

This person was great with numbers - get her on the ordering duties and organizing the logistics. Get him on setting up the stalls, he's got a good strong back as well as a loud voice and commanding air. I offered to help the headwoman, because it seemed like she needed the help - and appreciated it.

The responsibility was great - fresh, and new. Hard work, and lots of it. And for some reason, I really didn't care that my hands were rough or my back ached once in a while. The sun was shining down on the gather grounds, there were faires of flitters darting through the tents.

I flashed back to a story I'd written about The Endings, when some event would come through - called Occasion. Did this mean that my other riders - Kitty and Feng - were real enough too?

I wasn't sure. The possibilities were staggering, and I was distracted. I had to get back to work.

***

I wasn't sure how to contain my excitement, when the time came to view a hatching. There weren't many eggs on the sands, true, but the candidates standing for them were wide eyed and amazed. We earthers weren't for this clutch - ours was waiting.

"Wouldn't it be silly if one of us impressed from the stands?" I asked, and someone laughed and agreed about how completely trite that would turn out to be. Heck what if we all impressed from the stands? We could all just sit up there and let the damn dragons come to us.

Hardly! Mostly because the eggs that we were going to be bonding to were down in the Hold, waiting in their special hightech containers. They'd hatch normally, or one would guess they would, but it would be a bit different than here. But we still all had to have the training, and our eggs were still hardening. We'd have to move down to the hold properly before getting all of our training.

When the first of these other eggs hatched it was a fantastic moment for all of us. The thrilling sound of all the dragons making that humming noise for one thing. I lived under a military flight path - I knew noise. This was music. I took pictures. Some day I might even be able to print them out for these kids.

"Yup," I said, "those are Falas dragons all right," when they paraded by.

When would our turn come? I didn't know. But once it did... Life would get a lot more interesting...

***

It was after a while that I fell into a routine. I tried to help out with the duties of the headwoman as much as possible, and I enjoyed working with the mad science guys even more. I asked if any of them had encountered one of My Sangers - but fortunately for them, I supposed, they had not. Not here. Sunny claimed that she would love to have one of My Sangers to play with.

But only after Her Shy had one too. We had a good laugh about that. Our collective mad scientists were real. And some time, they'd have to come meet us. Or we'd track them down. And then, we'd make them make out for us. But that was just a silly fantasy...

It was one I certainly dwelled upon for a while. With a big big grin on my face.

The days weren't quite as hot as one might want, it was 'winter' though the island was still about as nice as San Diego. I found myself wandering to the flitter incubation room. I'd been there a couple times before, Drew had shown me where it was. His accidental flit, Nightwind, fit him perfectly. Now if only I could find one that was more my speed? I missed my cats immensely. I needed something to take care of, another responsibility? Sure why not.

Unlike Drew, I managed to fill out some forms. I went in with the knowledge that there would be some surprises or disappointments, depending on whether I really expected something or if I just wanted a flit.

I found myself an egg. It was warm, wobbly, and the room - it was stifling hot to some people but frankly if I could have stayed in there all the time? I would have. It was sweet warm.

My egg was about to break, so I found a little scrap of day old meat, and waited. When I saw the nose poking out I was confused. It was mottled, colorful. I wasn't sure if there were bits of yolk or something...

Nope. The flit, upon breaking his shell up in my hand, was blue with golden speckles all over his skin and wings. Beautiful!

He? I supposed it was, because it was more blue than gold, and if it'd been the other way around I would have thought it was a she.

"Of course I am a he!" He said, and I nearly squished him in surprise.

"You - you - you're a talking flit!" I exclaimed breathlessly. I bounced a bit, vibrating with excitement. "I got a talker!"

"Yes, and apparently I got one too," the little flitter said.

"Don't be mean," I said. "I get enough of that shit at home. Oh, the cats will just love you..."

"Not for dinner, I hope - mmm, dinner!" The flit dug into the meal I'd found, and soon his red eyes swirled to a beautiful teal.

"I need to show you off to my friends," I said.

"As though I have a choice in the matter?" He replied and I thought about what to call this guy.

"Whiplash," I muttered.

"What?"

"Whiplash. It's short," I said with a grin and an evil squint, "for Snidely Whiplash - because man you're snide."

The cartoon reference of course went right over the flit's head. That was good. I don't know how I'd have reacted to a flitter who talked AND knew old cartoon characters...