Story below originally written waaaaay back and is reproduced here as-is. Note that this was before Zekira was a proper planet with regards to Pernese adopts or dragons in general, and didn't have the AU Dragonmasters until later. So the story bits may mention Paveh Hold, and other such places, those do not exist in the DMZ. References to Breeder would be Peridian instead but I hadn't even gotten that far in my rule book to change it...

Note that her original page was located at geocities.com/paveh_hold/amaranth.html and ""2.html, and ""3.html, then later reproduced in the droppin the fork directory droppin-the-fork.com/dragonsites/zekiran/paveh_hold/amaranth.htm <- it's this one I'm taking the info from as it's more recent

Daughter of Mirage and Judge Aeroch, both of the Zekiran world. Amaranth has a lovely long tail which she adores, her father's violet-colored skin shows up much lighter on her, yet her mother's rich black hair is not diluted at all. She has eyes which are at the same time lavender and green. She is a tall, slender and healthy young woman. She has inherited her mother's "hyperfertility" gene, and has begun to have almost animalistic "heats" every other year. Remember that Zekirans mature later, and live almost 250 years, so she's still barely out of her adolescence.

At the age of 24, she is one of Zekira's quickest-to-advance Healers. Born into quite a lot of money, Amaranth has always been rather pampered, however she has never taken her family wealth for granted.

Her mother Mirage takes great pride in her daughter, and has given her the chance to study medicine with as many different healers and breeders as possible. Amaranth's basic training in medicine has come from Lady Morgontain, one of the most venerated of House Paveh's inhabitants.

Devoted to her work, yet enjoying her time away from study, Amaranth has often been seen traipsing around at parties with Morgontain or her mother. She is learning the "Breeder's Eye" from Morgontain, that allows her to judge the genetics of those nearby for how well they might work with a chosen partner.

From her earliest years, Amaranth has had an ability which both her parents share, that of mind stunning. She can use it but rarely does so -- only in dire circumstances would she even think about it. More often than not, however, she finds herself daydreaming -- not realizing that this too is a power she has, of Out-of-Body vision. She will learn to control these, and other powers, when she has the time.

**

"It's not cooperating," Amaranth muttered. Morgontain raised her scarred face from her own microscope and smirked.

"You must be patient, Am. It will do what you want it to. Coax it out. Gently."

Amaranth used one hand on a tool which had been made for surgery, the other held a sample of tissue steady. The tool impacted the skin cells, and injected its dyed contents.

"Ah! There! I did it!" Amaranth said gleefully. She watched under the lens as the cells adopted the color of the dye, and showed where a certain imperfection lay. "And now I can see the damage. It's so obvious now." She stuck her tongue into the corner of her mouth, and made a tiny motion with her tool-holding hand. A little plume of smoke, and the cells were cauterized together.

"You have it now," Morgontain assured her student. One of her youngest little prodigies, and one of her best friends, Amaranth looked up from the microscope and beamed with pride. Her mother's beautiful features showed so well in this dear child. Her wild hair and her fringed tail -- well, and her hooved feet, too -- were the only indications that Mirage hadn't just turned lavender. "Let us take a break, my dear. My old eyes are tired."

Amaranth helped Morgontain to a soft chair in the next room, while the servants and other students cleaned up the lab. "So... Now that you know how to recognize and cauterize a wound, what would you say about celebrating? You've earned it." Morgontain suggested. Though she was old, the woman was fairly spry. Of course, she also hid a secret addiction to pain killing medicine from her prized student, from everyone... She merely seemed much too young to be so old.

"I'd love to. Do you have a place in mind?" Amaranth said, her tail curled around her elegantly hooved feet. "Or should I find one of my mother's wines and sneak it in here?"

"Oh, no, no," Morgontain laughed, waving her orange-skinned hand in the air. "I've an invitation to a party we simply must attend."

"You were going anyway!" Amaranth exclaimed with a laugh. "You were just looking for an excuse?"

"To take you along? Any time. You should work for your rewards, my sweet child. You earn them and the reward tastes much better."

The rest of the afternoon was spent collecting clothing and the right accessories to apply, for the party.

***

Amaranth swept her eyes around the patio.This was a borderland party, someone's little Hold out in the middle of nowhere. But it was owned by someone important (at least according to Morgontain, it was a woman by the name of Jherita), and she insisted that they also be on the look out for good breeding stock. So many Zekiran women were infertile nowadays, and an increasing number of the men as well, and the Breeders were always welcome to provide hints for the next generation. If one couple couldn't bear, it was always hoped that one member of that couple might... Amaranth gazed at the rocky desert, and the people around her with a bit of boredom.

"Morgontain, are you sure this party is really a Party?" Amaranth quietly moaned. She swished her wine around in its glass, and glanced back up at the older woman.

"It's what you make it, my dearest," Morgontain suggested. "Ah, look. didn't we know those boys over there? The riders?"

Amaranth turned her violet-green eyes up to the mesa where two brown dragons rested. They were not from this world, they were ... "Pretty," she said. Morgontain chuckled, and Amaranth huffed, "I mean their dragons!"

She stomped away, in the direction of the dragons. But before getting there, she ran into one of their riders. H'sh and O'sh Chanay were sons of a very famous and important woman. Though Amaranth had never met her, Iolen Chanay was well known. Her sons, not so much.

They were handsome, both of them seemed somewhat exotic. It looked as though they had been in disguise -- for O'sh's tall horns seemed to 'reappear' when he left the side of his dragon. His brother H'sh had littler horns, small attractive ones, Amaranth thought.

She wondered absently if this was the Breeder's Eye speaking up? It would be a fine thing to see how he and her could get together. As the meeker H'sh removed his riding gloves Amaranth noticed that he had hooved hands, like her hooved feet. Intrigued, she placed herself near them and offered both a mug to drink. H'sh attempted to deny it, using a muttering "I can't hold this properly..."

So Amaranth merely held it FOR him. The blush on the dark-skinned brother was apparent, even though the charcoal-shade of his face. It seemed that he was a bit taken aback by the healer's closeness. She was oblivious to it, herself.

Of course, Amaranth's attraction to H'sh was more... Shall we say "biological?" She leaned in to the poor rider and whispered, "I like your hooves. They're strong and hard..."

Suddenly, Amaranth looked into H'sh's pale -- and very embarrassed -- eyes. "I'm so sorry -- Um," she stammered. From across the open scrub-desert party plain, Morgontain watched her young companion get all flustered. To his credit, the brown rider held his ground. Even though it was obvious that Amaranth was coming on to him far more strongly than even a weyr-born companion might. Surely he'd been among baudy women at Ryslen?

But this was something new. Morgontain saw one of her peers among those present, Vanya who looked both miserable and utterly appropriate here. She sauntered toward him, and he greeted her with a wide, bold grin. "Morgontain, she's going to mount him if you don't do something." Vanya said, looking over the tall orange-skinned healer's shoulder. "I can smell her pheremones from here."

"Can you." Morgontain said, looking up at the dark Breeder. "I'm ever so impressed. I am surprised that you haven't begun fighting him for her attentions."

Vanya sighed and handed Morgontain his drink. "I will take care of her," he said. Morgontain quickly followed the mildly insane healer.

"I do think you ought to leave her be," Morgontain suggested, tugging on the tall man's robe. He pulled up short, that robe brushing the sand by his feet. "She will get over her impulse soon enough."

"Yes, my dear Morgontain, but only after she's pulled that poor boy down with her and conceives..."

With a bit of shock, Morgontain watched Amaranth apologize to H'sh and again get just-too-close to him. She was posturing in ways that said she was ... well, horny. Too horny. "I repeat, I'm surprised you haven't started fighting for her..."

With a dramatic smile, Vanya turned and escorted himself over to the pair. H'sh gave him a pleading look, weakly raising his thick stubby fingers in a greeting. Amaranth didn't even notice the man's arrival. Vanya gently took Amaranth's drink out of her pale hands, startling her.

"I think it would be best if you slept this off," Vanya said, "Alone."

Suddenly, just as suddenly as the minute before, Amaranth took in a sharp breath and turned her attention from H'sh to Vanya. And again, her amazed apology (a squeaky "I've done it again, haven't I?") came just slightly before a hasty retreat into the brightly lit party house nearby.

Vanya smirked at H'sh, "She'll want to arrange something more formal, later... In fact I would second that, breeder-bait." He swished away, and H'sh's brown dragon communicated something about Vanya's blue dragon, Ruarth, snickering fiercely in the background of the dragon-minds.

***

Amaranth paced about the wood-paneled room, fiercely punctuating the air with her sharp fingers as she angrily spoke to herself. "Stupid, arrogant, ignorant, idiotic, self-centered genetic mistake!" She pounded on her own abdomen, snarling, "why can't you be normal like other women? Why do you have to send me into idiotic fits of lust every year?! Why!" She fumed and then plopped with a huff into one of the soft chairs in the room. It was the same color as her skin, with little nubs of grey-black texturing it. She felt every one of the little bips because her skin was overreacting to everything. The wine she'd been drinking didn't help her state any. And if Vanya came walking in, she wasn't sure she'd be able to control herself.

He'd been the one to explain her "condition", her mother had it and many in both their lines had a generous number of children because of it.

"But why ME?!" She wailed, grimacing. Curled into a ball, Amaranth's black hair slid down around her shoulders and her tail twitched around her neck. She sensed Vanya long before she heard him open the door to the room and slip inside. "Go away." She muttered, muffled. Instead of obeying her, her elder healer instructor knelt beside the anguished girl and almost -- almost touched her hair. Instead, she felt his hand hesitate and then saw his dark fingers wrap around the arm of the chair.

"Amaranth, it will pass. So you should sleep. There are rooms here. This one will do fine. If you want to have a guard I will do it."

Right about then, his scent -- the overwhelming scent of a fully-compatable and very fertile male -- came to Amaranth, and her poor conscious mind lost its contact with reality again. Three days a year, her moment of fertility -- her heat, as Vanya would tactlessly call it -- would appear. And for three days she would stalk a mate. So far, she had only had five such heats. But her mother promised her they would get more entertaining as she grew older.

In all five of those cases, she wore out her partner long before she realized they were almost completely infertile. Poor saps never knew what hit them. But then again, she got lucky. She had no time for a child, not even with her family wealth. She was a healer in training, a young Breeder. She would have to prove herself on those grounds before she herself could become a parent.

But when she looked at the vibrant blue of her teacher's eyes, she simply purred out, "why don't you stay with me?"

Vanya's smile took Amaranth off guard. "Because my sweet young breeder, I already have one tactical error because of this condition, I'm not supposed to have another. Later perhaps, when you're older we might arrange something..." He ran his fingers through her hair, stood, and locked the door on the way out.

With a sigh of relief, and a wish that he'd have stayed, Amaranth cried herself to sleep.

***

The desert-born wind was chill, Amaranth noticed it when the party had fizzled out slowly outside. It was nearly three in the morning, not Amaranth's preferred time of day. She uncurled herself from the ball she'd fallen asleep in, rose from the chair, and unsteadily stood up.

A long, catlike stretch and yawn put her in slightly better spirits. She was still insanely aroused, and knew better than to think that she could go outside and talk to some of the stragglers at the party.

She stood at the square window of this small 'crash room' she'd found, looking outside at the deep velvet black of the sky. It was paired with a haze from Reant in the distance, but the party lights had all been dimmed down to mere firefly-lights. Bulbs hung cold and dark along lines which several hours before had been bright with color, loud with people yammering and drinking and dancing to the badly performed but fun music.

"My brother really needs to learn how to play an instrument properly," she muttered to herself. It was true, her half-brother Juvon had found himself taken up with a small band, but they allowed him to play WITH them. Instead of just letting him dance and watch. He well and truly stank at performance of any other sort. With a tiny grin, she thought, 'well, not 'every' kind of performance...' and with an evil giggle -- Amaranth tried to rouse herself from the depths of this unusually sharp sexual morass she was in.

It wasn't working very well. She kept thinking about H'sh, his lovely little pointed horns and the way they joined his skull, skin bunched up around their bases. She thought about his embarrassment, at having been accosted at a party he'd barely been invited to, and sighed deeply.

She knew that Vanya was right, if there was any pairing to be done it would have to be done with a full set of legal Bonders rules, a contract which she ought to have had on her but somehow Morgontain allowed it to slip her mind.

Perhaps she was in on it anyway. Morgontain knew that she had hyperfertility. Perhaps the older woman was jealous of it? "Hah!" Amaranth laughed out loud, "she's been used by all the breeders alive today for genetic stock, how could she possibly be jealous of me and my stupid condition?"

She slumped against the wall, looking out still. The dragons were still up there, though she couldn't see their colors. Merely their gigantic outlines. Their high crests were a mark of Ryslen, even Amaranth knew that much. Two fine dragons -- apparently had come from but one egg. That was an odd occurance indeed! See, she DID pay attention to his words when H'sh was attempting to stop her from mounting him...

She snickered. Amaranth realized that she was not tired, and there weren't enough people outside to really cause her trouble. She glanced at the locked door behind her, wondered if there really was someone guarding it as Vanya insisted. She felt out a little with her mind powers, found no one. She slid the window open enough to pass through, there was no screen thankfully. Her hooved feet found the solid but dusty ground below the window, and her tail escaped last.

Amaranth walked alone for half an hour, just gliding along the trail up to the dragons mesa. The landing spot was convienent, but it was usually treated as a party locale moreso than the lowlying area around the house. That much was obvious from the lanterns and string lights that decorated the area. The dragons had outright crushed a number of them, and slid others out of their way so they could sleep properly.

"Aren't you cold out here?" She asked one, she didn't know whose it was. The greyish-yellow hide of the dragon shimmered in the star light, as the dragon breathed, but it did not answer her.

Since the aliens had come back, and dragons had been created to fight them, Amaranth knew that some of her favorite people might be riding dragons and never coming back. Some were sent off-world, to other places only reachable BY dragon, where they bonded and returned. Some just didn't return.

Amaranth stood up at the edge of the mesa and looked into the darkness. Earlier in the day she had seen the lay of the land here. It was solidly packed clay-dirt, but dry and covered with only the poorest of plant life. There were many nooks and gullies, washes which obviously had been dry for more than a century before anyone had even seen them.

"If I had a dragon, I might bring them here. It's nice and warm. They don't need hardly any cover, except if a sandstorm came..." She said to herself. "Ohh, I wish this damnable urge to procreate would do me a favor and disappear..."

"I would want to spend even one moment of my life that way," Said a woman's voice, behind Amaranth, making her jump and squeal. It was Lady Breeder Jherita, the owner of the land and the hostess of the party. She was apparently still up and tending to those who were about in the house. Amaranth calmed herself, and tilted her head.

"Why, Lady? I mean, you're a breeder."

"But I'm infertile, I'm afraid. I've never born my own child. And I've too much of a disability running through my genes to make a good subject for even the best Genetic engineer." The pale blue-skinned woman had a gently sad look upon her face. She must have been about the same age as Morgontain, only she wore it with more grace and fewer scars. Her orangey-pink hair was piled high around her head in complex braids, and bobbed low toward her waist as she walked closer to Amaranth. "But you, my dear, you have so much potential. You've not had your first born yet?"

Amaranth shook her head. "Morgontain says I'm still too young to really bear properly."

Jherita looked the younger woman over and clicked her tongue, "and you're so slender too... You might have difficult births when you do bear, young Breeder."

Amaranth took in a breath, and examined her narrow hips. "Do you think so? I don't know what I'd do then... What ... Hmn..." Jherita successfully distracted Amaranth from thinking too hard about her condition, until the light of dawn began to brighten the sky.

Jherita finally yawned and laughed, "It will be time for me to send my guests home. You may stay and sleep, if you wish. Did you bring that frightening breeder with you?"

"Vanya?" Amaranth smirked, "no, he apparently got dragged here by my brother Juvon and his friends. He's still here?"

"Though he came and went all night, he's there now guarding your door, sound asleep." Jherita smiled and hooked her arm through Amaranth's. They stepped down from the mesa and gently woke some of the guests. Most members of this party did not have what one could call "full time jobs", they worked when they needed to, or when the opportunity arose, such as breeders and Animal masters, and the rare Dragon Masters who had begun to grace parties now.

When they got to the slumbering Chanay brothers, both of them propped up against a couch cushion and pillows between them, Amaranth looked at H'sh and purred to herself. She whispered to Jherita, "he's on my to-do list," and giggled as the older breeder blushed with a laugh held-in.

Amaranth woke O'sh first, though. The bolder and louder, and slightly less desirable brother shook his head and his large horns tossed in the air. He was obviously careful not to hit things with them. His dragon on the mesa woke with him. Then, H'sh started to groggily rise.

"I'm so very sorry about last night," Amaranth stated, carefully avoiding the rider's eyes. She knew if she looked into them she would fall right back into heat. "But I do still think that you and I might get together at some ... future date. I --" Amaranth realized that she hadn't taken any of her business cards, "I will be working with Morgontain, until I have my own practice."

"She's a very respectable breeder," H'sh said, as he brushed the tangles out of his short hair, smoothing it down with his hooved fingers. "And I expect that you are as well... Just a bit... um, aggressive?"

Amaranth laughed, and obviously that had an effect on the rider. He smiled broadly, and added, "I accept your apology, my Lady Breeder, and ... I can't refuse your contract. I ... hardly refused your requests. It certainly isn't that I didn't WANT to --"

"Brother, come bring the girl out and see what my Wim has to say..." O'sh announced from the glass wall near the patio. The dragons had come down from the mesa and were delicately striding through the flats toward the house.

"Oh so now I'm 'the girl'..." Amaranth mock-glared at O'sh. "I happen to be a High Holder, you know... AND a Breeder."

O'sh took it in stride, "Apparently so," he smirked at them, and while his brother blushed and glared at him, Amaranth laughed again.

"Why do they need to see me? I was up there with them last night, and they said nothing." Amaranth watched the rusty-red dragons approach. Then, the bigger of the pair, apparently belonging to O'sh, began snuffling at Amaranth. His slightly smaller twin did the same and they conferred.

"Because they believe that you ought to become a rider." O'sh announced. "And Ryslen has a clutch which apparently is a strong one. We could take you there, if you want to go."

Amaranth's thin black eyebrows shot up, and her head swam a bit. ".... Really? Me? I joked about it last night, but ... Do they really think I would?"

"I think so," H'sh said, quietly. His honest statement, and his gaze of pure adoration told Amaranth more than his loudmouthed brother ever could.

"Then I'd like that. But I will need to continue my Breeding work." She huffed. "How could I do that?"

"You can come back here no later than you'd have gone, these dragons aren't found on Zekira you know." O'sh said, patting the wide dark muzzle of his dragon. "We travel back and forth and through time as well as space. It's not hard to learn, and well, frankly if you're half the breeder that you seem to be you're far smarter than either my brother or myself, so it won't be so hard to learn."

"Thank you," Amaranth said, almost letting a laugh out. She was more intelligent than they, perhaps because of her parentage, but more likely because she'd been altered in the womb by Morgontain. "And I accept. I wonder... Everyone is getting rides home the normal way, by Steed or carriage..."

While it was normally O'sh's domain to transport and know where everything is, H'sh bowed deeply and said, "I would be honored if you would allow Wavkokith and I to escort you home."

"I shall. But hold on for just a bit, and I'll come back out. I need to thank our hostess properly." She darted back into the house, and caught up with Jherita. Morgontain had left hours before, apparently in the company of another old friend, and since Amaranth had been going so nicely along with her own interests she decided that the girl could handle getting home on her own. How sweet, Amaranth thought. Jherita turned at the gentle, "ahem."

"Yes, my dear?" Jherita asked, and one of her servants helped yet another party goer to their carriage.

"I'd like to know something, do you know if this land nearby is Held by anyone?" Amaranth waved her arm at the vastness of the scrub plain.

"Oh, dear, no. My homestead is the last for hundreds of miles until you reach T'dal. It's in the middle of nowhere, of course." She nodded to puncutate this. "Why?"

"Wellllll then." Amaranth indicated that she might want to buy some of that land, Jherita told her it was 'less than dirt cheap', because there was next to no dirt ON the land. "So much the better!" Amaranth cheerfully clapped, and then gave Jherita a kiss on each cheek before leaving.

The riders had harnessed up their dragons, and waited for Amaranth's return. H'sh held out his hand, gloved again, and then turned to put his warmly lined jacket around Amaranth's shoulders. "You'll be needing this. It's going to be chilly flying about. So... Where are we going?"

"First to my home in Keri," Amaranth said, "and then to Ryslen!"

***

As Amaranth got used to the steady influx of people to Ryslen, she found someone who claimed to be her half brother, not born in her era yet. She blinked, and assured him that he was quite the catch. Then, realizing that she could very well get into some deep trouble with that thought, warned Alchemy that he'd best stay away from her when she started being more desirable than she ought to be. Not that she and he were headed back to the same eras, when they bonded. Their conversations between dragon-riding seminars and instructions on how to hold control straps, went to the 'I know what will happen when' lines. And Alchemy helped his sister out by telling her just what he knew about land investments about ten years after her return to Zekira.

Grinning, Amaranth tucked that information away. She'd become rich, of course. But then again, she was able to do that anyway. What she wasn't really sure of, was whether she was going to bond at this wonderful hatching. Her family insisted it was proper for her to expect a good result - Morgontain had not been in the slightest surprised when she discovered her prize student had skipped out with a note to the effect that she'd be back 'sooner than you think' with a dragon.

The confidence that Amaranth brought with her to the red sands of Ryslen might have made some people think she was rather egocentric, but she wasn't anything of the sort. She merely worked as hard as she could, to make herself able enough to ride and work with a dragon.

And as the eggs were shaking on the sands, and the candidates were finally allowed to get close enough to them to touch them, she felt all the wonder and joy of the first bonding go on beside her. She barely had time to think about it, when others started. And what a surprise, Alchemy bonded a strong large bronze. She knew that a bronze was the finest male that might come from these sands, though someone said something about the sire being different enough... She wasn't sure if that meant a night-bronze was better, or equal to, or just what?

But all of those thoughts evaporated when the big golden queen Arosambyth got up and exposed her chosen 'queen' egg. Was it really a golden dragonet within? Amaranth had been told that gold eggs hatched gold queens, not pale creamy eggs. But this one shook and opened up, showing off a gold nose and head that people cheered at. Then, as her wings and rear end were exposed, the dark color made everyone (except perhaps one cranky hidebound search rider) cheer with glee -- she was a Night gold!

Amaranth found herself clapping right along with the others. But then she became silent, as the dragoness stepped right across the warm sands with her black tipped wings behind her. She looked like she was perpetually stepping from shadow into sunlight. What a beautiful dragoness!

From you and I will come wonderful things, If you will have me, Amaranth.

As if there was any sort of question? "Of course, Racynioth," Amaranth stated. She regained her poise and the dragoness emulated her, stepping proudly away with her to the feeding areas. Their brothers waited, happily full and full of themselves.