Doll made at dollwizard.com

Yngsame had always been a popular, attractive and outgoing girl. Though she didn't know any of her spliced donor parents personally (and likely wouldn't be able to, as two of them had died several years before she turned 11 and passed her first Status exams) she was still on the list of Inheritors for them all. She had several partial-siblings, but Yngsame was probably the best bet for any of them to succeed.

It was in fact the loss of two of them from an Alien attack that helped her on her way toward her goal Status of Penjagan. The High Ownership laws had been in effect for at least forty years now, and it seemed odd to her that they had not existed before. But she knew she wanted more than just to bond, her first Status would be Membayar like many who had plenty of money but little else to do with it than throw it at indebted folks. But she didn't care for it. Not the way she cared for people she owned.

Like many young Holders, Yngsame's first Budak was a family inheritance, an older gentleman with faded but once-rich orange skin that had delicate markings on it of deep black. Yngsame thought highly of him, he was polite and proper, but he was also a hoot and a half when he started telling stories! Also like many young Inheritors, her first Held Land was one spot that her dearly deceased semi-father-on-her-tail-and-coloration-side (that's how her Breeder referred to her parents...) had Held but never developed beyond a smallish cottage home. At the ripe young age of thirteen, Yngsame had moved herself into that cottage, and began looking into other things to do with the surrounding land. It wasn't a small plot, either, just that the developed part was so tiny. Zogan by this time was well known as a Steed racing and 'family settlement' zone.

But her house wasn't anywhere near the little suburbia-happy planned communities. It was an outlaying region which was surrounded essentially by endless tall-grass and slightly rolling hills. Yngsame would have put dragons on it even if she hadn't then started developing strong Dragon tunings. While she was busy gathering resources and learning tricks of the Dragoning trade - and gaining momentum as a retitled Pemilik now, able to Own as well as Bond - she turned fifteen.

She also developed an incredible power, one which for years after she was terrified to use. Following a Stone dragon Master around, listening to his descriptions of their nature and habits within a ravine near Efesta, Yngsame's senses started tingling. She thought perhaps it was just the dragons, or perhaps bats which she'd recently learned how to command. It was neither of those. She crouched onto the dusty walkway, almost 'listening' to the ground.

Her hands passed through the ground, and in her panic at not understanding what was happening, she managed to transmute a large volume of the sandy stone into even finer sand - sinking down deeply over her head. And further panicked, Yngsame then turned it back to stone. That obviously was a terrible mistake, because now she had encased herself into the very ground. It took half an hour of mental screaming, and five pure minutes of hell realizing that another useless freakish dangerous power had surfaced! She'd stunned her instructor almost half to sleep and he could hardly figure out what was happening until that wore off.

Obviously, he got her dug out and to safety. But it would be more than ten years before she tried using either power again, and certainly that long before she trusted herself to use any. So instead of merely latching on to a random breed of dragon and focusing all her psionic energy at it, she studied. She studied genetics, finances, land law. She sponsored two Budak from their service into Dragon Mastery before she herself actually bought a dragon egg to see what all the fuss really was about.

By that time, she was a full fledged Penjagin, a High Owner with plenty of investments and two more Inheritances to split among her semi-sisters. They often deferred to her, because their Tunings had made them dedicated to their Mastery tasks, rather than spin off into normal Zekiran society so much as she did. She knew laws they didn't care to learn.

More, though, she knew machinery and how to use it, machinery that aided her own final power - she took that Stone dragon egg and made it into something completely different. She could see the genetics in her mind, memorized them years before but then they appeared to her as visual, tangible things in her mind. Since she did know what she was doing in theory, she put it all to the test without even having to use a splicer or egg manipulator. Through trial and error many others had gotten half as far as she did, taking years and thousands of credits for their efforts. The egg hatched and from it came a lovely rose-colored dragon, six legged, with foreclaws shaped like spades - designed for digging. This burrower wouldn't catch on for a while, but eventually it did. Not just for rousting out buried encampments of Aliens (which there were far more than they originally suspected) but for excavation, construction and rescues.

When the time came that her first Budak breathed his last, there were already thirteen more working in a quarry using her clever digger dragons rather than machines. She would export stone from that quarry and make a tidy profit, all the while still researching and continuing to refine her own fully blossomed powers. After reading up on a very old artisan's works (gold figures and sculptures - solid gold - only one of which still survived intact... probably thousands of them had been melted down by her husband shortly after she created them) Yngsame realized the trick to her transmutation power lay in volume. She didn't want to be surrounded by stone ever again. Her homestead was airy and open and all made of wood. She hardly entered the quarry itself, except to monitor the dragons. But if she had access to a little clay or mud, or even just plain dirt with water in it... She too could sculpt little earrings and necklaces, and with a touch change them into something far more profitable.

Since she wasn't really directly involved in the fighting aspect of Dragons, Yngsame contented herself to applying them to other portions of Zekiran life. But while she was doing so, she still came into contact with many eager young Dragon Masters who wanted to see if she could arrange something 'special' for them. Most of those would be Desert dragons, or more Stone with mutations for short flight or more aggressive psionics. One afternoon however, she caught sight of a totally different sort of dragon. It might have been a Sky dragon once, but perhaps not. It landed and her own guardian Stone puffed himself up until she swatted at him and gave him a little meaty treat to distract him.

"What brings you here, Peridian?" Anyone who followed genetics knew who this was, the rich brown skin and violet-blue hair were enough to know. Megami Sengihr, arriving on a snowy-marked green dragon with fluffy leg fur and what looked to be a bad attitude.

Megami apparently had to have the same conversation with her mount as Yngsame did with her guardian dragon - but this one was far more intelligent, he all but spoke aloud.

"Checking up on things, I bought some marble from you last year, and I realized that I'd been reading an article about stone dragon genetics, by you... Made the connection. It isn't often that someone manages to combine mundane and miraculous like that."

"I'm quite flattered, Peridian!" Yngsame smiled widely. She invited the woman in, and Megami immediately put herself at home glancing around the spacious and brightly sunlit home.

"I was wondering... If you would like to see some... other dragons." Megami came to the point after half an hour of small talk and not so small - they were both reasonably well versed in genetics, and thus had something to talk about outside of any business deals to be made. "Not like my Sonaeralta," she said of the green outside who was now getting screeched at by the guardian Stone.

"How many different kinds can there be?" Yngsame asked, thinking at first that her hard to pronounce dragon was merely a variation on that Sky dragon type... perhaps mixed with a Forest.

"Thousands," Megami said, and Yngsame nearly choked on her water. "Indeed," Megami gently waved her own glass in a toast, "thousands. They are not from here, not from Zekira."

"What, the Aliens homeworld?" was her first guess, but Megami actually looked surprised at that.

"... No, I don't think they actually have any - at least, not any longer..." She pondered for a moment, but then smiled again, and said, "no, there are many other worlds, reachable by certain types of teleportation. I know you're familiar with that," Yngsame nodded, "so I will get to the point. Dragons like mine and my half-sisters, and my other extended relatives..." She made a spinning motion with her head and fingers, there were so many! "They talk to each other. No matter the distance, it seems, there is always something they know about that we'd never stand a chance of learning through conventional means. And they've spoken of a place that has certain sentient dragon forms, some of whom are in need of a caring and productive ... guide."

"And you think I'm up to this?" Yngsame said, "I am flattered."

"I believe you should come along with me, we can take you there and back. It is a chill trip, heading through the Nexus. The teleportation is very, very cold but also very quick."

Yngsame agreed instantly. She wasn't really sure where they went, only knowing that the two nights she spent there showed her that there were stars that she'd never be able to see from her own home's sky. She wondered, too, what would the Aliens think! They were petrified of dragons, which was why the Pelatih had shifted their efforts to create dragon tunings instead of merely animal ones... And here was a world that was filled with them!

Even as she chose two among the dozen or so that were wandering in a creche area, in need of homes and purpose and loving care, she knew that they were both intelligent and short lived. That would be a shame, she thought. The darker of the pair was striped and female; the lighter one male and less easily read. They clung to her and Megami, as they traveled back to Zekira.

Warm and sunny, hardly after they'd gone - but Yngsame didn't need to know that... She would be so tired out by these little Aelith dragons that she'd hardly be able to tell what day it was when she rested up!

***

Their personalities became evident very quickly. Though they were still obviously 'children' and would be for a number of years, Ryaral was clearly the more businesslike of the two, while Irith could hardly care less about orderly behavior. She also seemed to relish being outside, just like her keeper.

Owner? Holder? Bond agent? Yngsame was having a difficult time figuring out what to call them - they were people-smart, in dragon-bodies. She settled for 'Holder', since most other people wouldn't understand that they were sentient, conversational, and not the kind of animal-dragons that everyone else had! She couldn't really afford to tell people about them, much, but she did love her time with them.

Somewhere between her Zogan Hold and the smaller Quman site, out in the tall-grass, Yngsame put down Hold markings and got her plot certified by the Difar council. It would never likely be on Zoned land, so distant from pretty much everything else. That suited her fine. This pair of dragons entertained themselves with toys at first, but then when Yngsame brought in some conventional genetic alteration and artificial birthing devices, both of them hovered by her with wide eyes and baited breath.

"What... what?" Yngsame said, "what do you want, this? This is a--"

"It can harness genes," Irith whispered. The first time she was quiet in nearly a year. Her companion was equally entranced, and finally Yngsame just backed away and let them look over the devices. They asked some questions, but it was obvious that they understood what it was for, almost subconsciously. They didn't have any amount of psionic powers, but they certainly managed to make up for it in manipulating things with their elegant paws! Between the pair of them, it was very clear they wanted to try out the machinery...

"Could we? Please?" Ryaral asked, "you have spare dragon eggs, don't you?"

"You want to make a dragon... of your own?" Yngsame chuckled. "Well, I suppose there's not much harm in it, the machine's very hard to break, and whatever comes from it will be interesting to see!"

Thus this pair of foreign dragons, Aelith dragons, slinking around the new machinery with their low-to-the-ground tails twitching, started learning how to use Zekiran genetic engineering machinery.

It was a good thing that they couldn't put time-stamps on egg creation, because half of what Yngsame would wind up selling for the next decade had been made by them while she was out supervising her quarry!

Name: Irith
Gender: Female
Home Biome: Temperate Grassland
Color: Black Striped Tabby and White
Personality: sloppy, athletic, and scared of small spaces
Code: XX Bb DD AA tt Mme ii ww Ss CC wiwi LL

Name: Ryaral
Gender: Male
Home Biome: Desert/Scrub
Color: Lilac Ticked Tabby and White
Personality: cold, responsible, and cheerful
Code: XY bbl dd Aa TiTi MM ii ww Ss Cch wiwi LL

Irith and Rayaral are Aelith from Kitsuneko's giveaway. Darkling Dawn

Irith and Ryaral got along well enough that they had bred, once they were both fully adult. And though Yngsame could predict the varieties of coloration and markings in the pair's potential, she was delighted to see a beautifully ticked black female emerge from one of the two shells. She announced to Megami that there was a 'spare' - perhaps heading back to their home world would be in order, new blood and all!

So the female would be named Iari, and she was a ball of nerves. She jumped at the littlest thing, but sometimes the littlest thing might mean a doorknob, or a massive thunderstorm. Yet she followed in her parents paw-steps, easily accomodating the language needs as well as learning the ropes about the genetic engineering machinery around her.

She wouldn't really be of much use as a fighter, but oh how well she did as a guard! Her hair-trigger responses saved them numerous times as she grew up, from anything between an alien who wandered too close to the grounds, to a sinkhole that was forming below one of the distant boundary posts.

Shortly after Megami had delivered the other hatchling to its new caretakers, she returned with another bundle of squirmy, spotty fur!

"He's a bit snippy," Megami held up her finger which he'd bitten, "but I don't think he'll be much of a problem for you."

Raedai was his name, and he spent as much of his time as he could glowering at the others. "Why not come on and at least enjoy the sun? The storm season will be coming soon, you won't get the chance to play in the warmth again for a while..." Yngsame pleaded with him, but no - the dragon cub steadfastly decided that whatever it was that the others found fun or interesting was something he didn't want to touch with a ten span pole.

Of course, he did run out in the rain, got completely soaked, and came back only to shake himself dry all over the warm insides of the communal den!