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, 13375qu34k, Rex, Mews) and Snake (Carmine at a friend's house), Whiplash, talking flitter
Talents: Artwork, Scripting, novel writing, website design, lording over comic books at work.
When the parties started, I was pretty happy, but remained apart for one fairly important reason: I was twice the age of the average Earth candidate.
I tended to hang with Drew and Nik (the guy Nik, who the searchriders had somehow located) more than anything. But still, Sunny in the room was great fun. Giggling madly about Sanger and Shy took up many a long evening. Though I have to say we were exhausted by the whole learning thing. I hadn't been at school for years, so this was annoyingly like a flashback. However, one big bonus?
I weighed less, had more muscle, and was more fit than I ever had been in school. And with the lifting we'd do, though I had to stop more often because of my back, my arms and legs both grew stronger. Happy me.
Eventually, though, there came the calling to the sands. Of course, this came at some ungodly hour of the night, when most of us were just getting down to bed. There were a lot of us, just plain people, standing on the warm sands, grumbling about how weary we were and how bad off we'd be come morning.
"Maybe they'll just let us all sleep in," Drew suggested, and I laughed a little. He was really hoping - he and the sun didn't get along very well.
A batch of eggs hatched, and Drew's was among the first. A beautiful night-bronze, but female! How cool was that?
Not long after, a number of other eggs had shattered. A sextet of beautiful dragonets all split up to find their friends. A brown nuzzled up to one girl, then the other found his. A green knocked one girl down and then...
The blue that had been somewhat hesitant to join his fellows now strode toward me and Nik with some confidence. He was wobbly, but proudly opened his wings. Nearly falling to one side, though, he steadily came toward ... Me.
Everything in the world dissolved. Like the first time a dragon had bespoken me, it felt like a familiar voice but so much louder than any imagined sound, in my head. I knew a word had come into my mind, when his rolling orange-blue eyes met mine. It was a foreign word, but a beautiful sounding one. One which I knew the meaning to - not just that it was his name.
You know my name, and you know I have an itch. That egg was so cramped! He said.
"Bhavaiyath," I said to him, scrubbing with my stubby nails at that itch on his neck. It soon turned into a warm embrace, just ... just to make sure he was real. His skin folded under my arms, I could feel his pulse, he was warm and ... covered in sand and icky egg crap...
"Let's... get you clean. And you're hungry, Bhav, so ... yeah. Food." I grinned at Nik, who just after me had bonded another night-bronze, a male I think, and we went back to the feeding rooms.
"Well that was an unmitigated disaster," I muttered, pulling straw and leaves from my hair. Bhavaiyath moved his nose into my cupped hands and muttered something into my mind.
"What was that?" I asked, still distracted from our little first-flight-and-first-fall.
I am sorry I failed you. I will do better next time, won't I?
"It's not you, Bhav," I reminded him. "You're the dragon. You've got it in your blood. I'm a writer. I like flying - in those big machines I told you about."
The ones that your friend does not like?
"Yeah, that'd be them." I chuckled. Of course Drew had that dragoness that could do no wrong - Mahtarth was the envy of our little circle. They'd flown back over the gulley with the 'advanced fliers' before I'd gotten the chance to even walk out of the darn thing. At least it was a soft landing, bales of hay and piles of late summer leaves.
It was my fear of heights that distracted Bhav, I was certain. Not just because he started out so well and ended so badly but it was when I looked directly down below us that the vertigo started. We'd cleared the ground at least, not like one or two whose dragons simply balked at the edge. They'd be back later, we would all fly this day or so said the weyrlingmaster.
"Don't look down," I told myself. I heard others saying the same thing. Most of us had never really been up high like in a balloon or outside on a building's high observatory. I'd been inside some high places and I hated it. But... I would do this. I would.
In fact in time? I'd get to like it. Because there was nothing more perfect than the feeling of a dragon's warm body under my legs, and a mind beside mine that knew he'd save me if I fell.
I didn't hesitate to learn how to help send Bhav between. Teleporting was something, unlike flight, that I felt absolutely comfortable with.
My imagination, after all, was something to be reckoned with. I knew where I wanted to go. I had to remember not to go there just yet. Not while everyone was still busy memorizing star charts and crap like that. I couldn't remember more than Orion's position during winter - that did me no good.
But what did, was that I had a feel for where I'd wind up. I did have to learn to adjust for Bhav's height off the ground! Whiplash chittered at me with his nose in my ear, "that was close."
"You don't have to remind me," I whispered back. The ground could have swallowed up Bhavaiyath, me and Whiplash entirely if I wasn't careful.
Though chided for certain moments that I'd rather not go into ('the talk' with the girl candidates and their young dragons, that was a riot. Me? not a virgin, not on a female dragon. Drew on the other hand, was meant to sit in on that talk too - only... where was he?) I tried to behave myself at the weyr.
It was, however, still a weyr filled with people whose destinies it was to fight Thread. And that, I had realized the moment I got there, was not my destiny. Not at all.
While a bunch of dragon pairs were out patrolling, I slipped out with Bhav and the riding gear, Whiplash nestled around my neck. "We're going to find someone, I need to see them."
Who?
"Sanger, one of them anyway. Kalkin I guess." I said, putting myself into the riding harness and making sure everything was snug. I could, even now that the feelings weren't as new and fresh, feel the pull of my own body, on my dragon's neck. It was weird. Supremely weird.
"Down by the kitchen entrance, where the drudges throw the slop," I said quietly, "fly that direction while I get a good idea of where we're going. And be prepared, Bhav, this is going to be a long and cold ride."
Feeling his nod was enough. My eyes were closed, and I held on to him with the images in my mind moving around. Where to find Kalkin where he'd be best receptive to my interruption? Knowing who I was?
At the Den of course, where time moved differently. I'd never been there yet I knew every cranny. Sixth, his tiny teeny blue dragon (only about a third the size of Bhavaiyath!) was flying over the parking lot when we teleported. The trip wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be.
Tired though, Bhav dropped to the ground and lifted his paw up when he noticed the asphalt was warm. Why is it ... it feels like there is sunlight upon it...
"That's the Den all right..." I sighed. I got off his back, and looked at the Den's entranceway. It read 42, which would be fine for me to recall. Being a Hitch Hiker's Guide freak and all... I started walking toward the entrance, and heard Sixth chittering aloud. Maybe... Kalkin was nearby.
I almost started crying right off, when I saw him. My throat tightened and my gut heaved. Suddenly this was a reality: we were on my world, with my creation looking at me. I was dizzy. But... as the vertigo of flight would fall away and leave me elated, this too changed my outlook. My head cleared and I wiped away the tears that had welled up in my eyes.
His were that stunning blue that I'd made them be.
Behind him, Baeris stood with her own shade of Sanger Blue - Kshau blue. Crap - I thought I could get away with talking to Kalkin but... Baeris I had invented to be one of the biggest bitches with a heartbeat.
She'd better appreciate it then.
"Hi," I said simply. "I'm Lethe, your creator."
"Yes," Kalkin said. "You are. We've been expecting you for a while. I am honestly surprised you hadn't come earlier."
"I would have," I said flippantly while Bhav nestled onto the nice warm asphalt, "but there were classes to ditch and thread to avoid fighting."
***
We spoke at length, in one of the Den's plush offices. This was before I designed the Ambassador suites into the place, so we just found a couch and sat down on it. Baeris chewed me out for being so mean to the Sangers. Then she glomped me and giggled about how it was nice having a perfect figure and being immortal and all. Kalkin was what I'd call reserved, speaking to me. After all, he did know that without me he wouldn't have existed. Without me, his life would not have been as painful and bitter either.
"Call it a draw," I said. "You're enjoying yourself now aren't you?"
"Tremendously," he said with that beautiful thin-lipped smirk. "Thank you for the Naughty clutch."
"You're very welcome, I only finished your story..." I laughed. I sighed a moment later. "I've never wanted two ... disparate things so much in my life."
He leaned into the couch, tilting his head. "Those would be?"
"I want to fuck you so bad it hurts," I said first. He rolled his eyes and smiled again. "I want to be you so much it hurts too. And I know I can't have that - it's the one thing I don't get to have." I sighed. "I can only invent another world and another me, and make her happy."
"You are hardly unhappy," Kalkin reminded me. "You are after all completely mobile now. Where will you go next?"
"Another world, another of you. Probably." I wasn't honestly sure, now that I'd found this one. I knew they met frequently here, so it was a matter of time before they'd present themselves to me anyway. "And I want to see some Shard too. He was my first boy-mind, you know."
"Not true," Kalkin said. "Your first, I believe, was Saxxon."
"But I didn't want to be him. I wanted him."
"You still do."
"I'm not going to fight Kira for him, no matter how cool he'd be about it." I laughed.
I really did have to go, though. Something in me wanted to just bolt and explore everything I could. I wanted to see the Grid where I put the Solos. I wanted to see House Domina.
I wanted to visit Zekira. My worlds.
All in good time.
I put in a last appearance to the guys, and got them going too. I know I probably should have waited and let them play with Thread or something. But screw that. Too many lives lost to that crap. I wouldn't be walking into threadfall if I could possibly help it. Maybe they'd think I disappeared between - let them think that. I had no intention of throwing my life away for the sake of a planet I hated. Whose creator didn't know it really existed - whose creator hated me anyway. It was a personal thing, with Pern. Not with Falas on Pern, no, that place kicked ass.
We left. I ... went on.
