I am fine up here, the dragon bespoke his rider.
"But I want you down here, my friend. Come on back."
I like it up here. I can see everything. So could you if you had chosen to be on my back this morning.
"Don't be snide, Keath." L'ren rolled his eyes. He did have good reason to be on his dragons back, however. Thread fall charts showed that there might be a fall on the way very soon.
Keath, come back down and let me mount up. I want to see if those charts are right.
The thread will fall ... I have been practicing betweening as well, so if it does... We will avoid it.
"Good," L'ren muttered. "Now I need to take the chart and read it right..." He turned the scroll so he could allign it to the starstones on the weyr's ledge, and checked the Red Star to it. "Yes, it's coming. Perhaps soon."
He got onto blue Keath's back and told him to head over the valley, into the Protectorate area. There, they warned some of the outlaying farmers and holders that thread was probably coming.
And just in time! A bugling of dragons flying overhead alerted Keath first, but then L'ren heard them.
"They're off to fight it! Oh, we were just in time!"
He watched the people on the ground scurry and find their flame throwing equipment, and then urged Keath back to the weyr.
We will be fighting soon, won't we?
We will, but not today. The weyrling master will have both our hides if we went out with them!
Back to L'ren's Weyr
"The Sea Blessed wing is a fine fighting wing!" L'ren said, annoyed at his sister. "Your flame-thrower can't even compare to the real thing." He patted Keath's neck and the blue rolled his head and purred quite like a cat.
Loni laughed in her musical way.
"But she'll be fertile, my dear brother. And you know that our weyrs will still need every dragon they can get."
"Fighting ones," L'ren countered, "are the ones who will keep yours alive long enough to breed."
"You'd allow Keath to fly a green, wouldn't you?"
"Not yours," L'ren rolled his eyes.
"I wasn't saying anything of the sort dearest brother..." Loni fluttered her eyes. "But Rivaath is probably going to fly sometime soon. At Blackstone."
"We're going to be in the weyr long enough to get aquainted," L'ren said. "That's Spring's crazy dragon isn't it? She's not fertile, Loni, she's in that silly spy wing too."
"Keath would fly her even if she wasn't proddy," Loni snorted, and the blue turned his eyes toward the woman.
I would like to tell you that you are wrong, but you are not. I have heard of this Rivaath. She knows her mind. I like that.
Loni grinned hard at her brother and then skipped daintily out of L'ren's weyr before he managed to throw anything at her.