Hajimi on the left is what most of his peers call a "Mad Scientist". He delves into anatomy and technology, mechanics and genetics with equal vigor. He learned from Kalkin on the sly, during a stay at Alabaster's healing seminars, and they have corresponded frequently since then. Hajimi is just over 21 years old, and already has it in his head that he must become the most brilliant scientist Alskyr or any other world has seen.
MarisihiTen on the other hand is a more sedate outlaw-type. That's right. Even though this 22 year old young woman had a life of ease and wealth before her in Dawnlight's hold, she chose to exit rapidly -- with a number of other people's posessions in her 'care'. She is canny and very observant, so much so that sometimes she is found just staring at someone from across a crowded room for more than an hour, before she even realizes she's planning to steal something they have.
How could these two have met? Well, they were at an Alabaster-sponsored party. Hajimi was showing off his newly aquired talents at sewing muscle tissue together (on his steak of all things), and Marishi had just liberated one of Lord Engell's nicer cut-crystal goblets. And while Hajimi was busy offending people, Marishi used the distraction to get out with three loads of silver before anyone noticed... She went back to grab him for future use. He didn't mind. Who would?
"Look, it's just a little piece of skin. They can't possibly mind if it's gone, I mean, their riders would just have to pick it up anyway..." Hajimi insisted while he crept ever closer to the blue dragon with the shedding problem.
"It's your funeral... Don't think I'm going to help..." Marishi watched as one of the bigger browns and his rider stomped over to the parade grounds. She whistled a little ditty while Hajimi -- oblivious -- reached out with a collection tweezer...
The blue dragon yelped loudly, as the tweezer began to rip his skin off. It hadn't exactly shed off yet! Marishi chuckled to herself, and leaned on the low stone wall watching. Someone was nearby her, as well, and she had her eyes remain focused on her stupid man, while her ears tried to pick out if this was a rider, guard or just a weyr brat coming up to her.
"He's going to get into trouble," said H'lis. "You should really keep a closer eye on him."
"I AM watching him, weyrleader. He's making a complete fool of himself. I can't imagine him any other way." She smiled broadly, her dark green eyes narrowed in a catlike glee from his trouble. Ever since Hajimi got into dragons -- like INTO them, helping fix a wounded wing sail here and assisting a problematic impacted bowel there -- he was on a never ending quest for more pieces of them.
H'lis wondered if he wasn't going to just get a dragon and taxiderm it's sorry butt. He wouldn't put it past the wild guy. Shaking his head, the platinum-haired weyrleader sighed. "Look there's something I need to ask you both. If it's not too much of a bother."
"Annnnnd," MarishiTen leaned on the wall seductively, while beyond her Hajimi ran hither-and-yon with an irate blue weyrling trundling quickly after him. "That would beeee?"
H'lis blinked a few times, and said, "waiting until Hajimi's been brought down and -- oh, there he goes." He winced, and Marishi turned to see, much to her surprise, the blue standing on top of Hajimi's chest with his forelegs, and he was... Violently licking him. Almost like a puppy. Apparently the dragon thought this was a great game. Hajimi on the other hand was swearing loudly because he hadn't brought any metal vials to collect dragon saliva.
***
In the serenity of H'lis' new office, overlooking the wide valley which complimented Blackstone Caer's height, the trio of he, a smirking Marishi and a sopping wet Hajimi, sat and talked. H'lis explained something to the pair. That they were both dragon-riding material was obvious by the way that the dragons acted -- or rather did not react badly -- around them. Both were highly empathic, both were, well, brilliant in their own ways.
"And you want us to try bonding, right?" MarishiTen asked, sweetly. "I've always wanted to, but like, who hasn't?"
"Believe me," H'lis said, "there have been a few. Hajimi? Are you ... done with that?" H'lis said, and Hajimi jolted as he realized he'd been sitting and examining the remains of a squished grass-bug that had found its way into his mop of hair. Hajimi slipped it out of his fingers and into the small rubbish pail by the door. "Thank you." H'lis sighed.
If they weren't so distracted, he thought, they might both make wonderful riders. But first things first... "Well, there's a clutch which I think you both ought to attend. It's a final clutch, I have been told. At Dragon Soul. It's an old world weyr."
"What about a caer?" Hajimi asked, "why not bond here?"
"Well, I've been hearing interesting things about this clutch. It's rather like that Talor clutch ... Ahh, you wouldn't have heard of it..." He rolled his eyes. The clutch along with its weyr went its way quickly after the dragons had hatched. "Well, anyway, the dragons of this last clutch might bond very appropriately. If you've the minds to go, I'd be more than happy to take you both. IF --" he stuck his finger into the air, "if you both promise not to get into TOO much trouble."
"Why, Weyrleader H'lis, how much trouble could there be at this place?"
***
"I can't believe you got us into this," Hajimi grumbled. They both sat in a darkened smallish room, waiting for someone to question them. At long last, a stern-faced man came into the room with two large burly-men by his sides, lest the pair of prisoners try to escape.
"You're going to have to explain why these were found in your den," said the man. He waved a bunch of silken scarves at the two, menacingly.
Well, it was menacing, but for some reason Hajimi found it in his head to start snorting out a laugh. The appearance of the man with such a dangerous glare on his eyes -- and a fistful of limp-wristed pretty-colored sashes -- was too much for him. Even MarishiTen wasn't laughing all that hard by the time the two guards started giggling. At last, the hard face of the search rider softened. He was sent to make sure that this pair didn't get out of control and darnit he wanted to make a strong impression.
That was blown all to bits with this silly theft. If she had stolen something important, like a records book or someone's jewlery, he could see... but this was just silly. Finally T'kel let out a guffaw himself, and waved the scarves as hard as he could at MarishiTen. "Look, you've got to stop this. I realize you might have some ... disorder or something, stealing things is still wrong, even in a weyr. Even in this weyr. Clear?"
With tears still hanging in her eyes and her cheeks sore from grinning, MarishiTen choked out a "yes sir," around her silent laughter. "I'll return them to their owners, if you like--"
"No, no, you just go back to your den. I'm sure that if I half-trusted you to put them back you'd probably wrap something else with them and ship them back to Blackstone before we knew it."
"Now there's a thought," MarishiTen said, as they stood and were let out of the little cell.
"Don't even," Hajimi said. "Don't even bother. We'll get what we came here for, and that's a pair of dragons. Nothing more, nothing less."
"Oh, much more," MarishiTen said, eagerly gazing at the greens and browns down in the weyr's lake, "we'll come away with our own riding gear, leathers aplenty, and probably a wing rider's badge. If you're lucky, you'll come away with ... I don't know, fish guts and a fire lizard."
That provoked an odd look from Hajimi. "Fire lizards... Yessss...." He turned on his heel, and said, "there's nests of those everywhere. I wonder what they look like when they're three weeks laid..."
MarishiTen rolled her eyes and dragged her husband away from the hearths before he did steal a flitter egg and break it open, just to see what it's foetal state looked like.
"But it's SCIENCE!" Pleaded the man, to no avail.
***
Eventually, however, Hajimi did get his wish. But not the way he expected. Marishi and he were wandering around Dragon Sands hold, near Dragon Soul weyr, trying to scout out, well, people to rob and things to examine, respectively.
Marishi found a nest, almost standing on it. Her sense of hearing and balance meant she noticed below her booted foot a small cascade of sand that didn't much feel like the other steps they'd been taking near the beaches. The sound of ... was it creeling? Tiny noises, barely noticable to normal ears, came from below the surface of the warm dunes.
"Hajimi, listen," she said. Excited, she began to dig in the sands. He soon joined her, with an intense look on his face.
"What are we digging for?" He asked, and she glared at him.
"Flitter eggs, you dimwit," MarishiTen said, and found one. "Ah! Do you -- argh, do you have any of that sandwich you were eating earlier? I totally forgot to bring any meat for -- What are you DOING!?" She screeched, as he found an egg and smashed it open. The flitter inside -- well, it had been a brown, but it didn't look ... it was dead long before they found the eggs. To her relief. To her utter disgust, though, he picked out the slimy mess of half-formed flitter body, and dangled it up in the air.
"No, but this will do, won't it?"
"I don't know if they cannibalize..." Marishi grunted, looking away from the icky still-dripping mess. She hoped that the flitters did eat it, because she didn't think she'd take well to having that thing stuck in a glass jar back at the den. That's exactly what he was going to do with it anyway... Until a green muzzle reached up and snapped it out of his hands. Two others, a blue and a brown, also joined in the fray as their shells broke open. But the blue flew away before either human present could seek to soothe it.
The green and brown, however, looked eagerly at the pair, and had that ever-so-demanding look on their faces.
"We've got to get them more food," Marishi said. "I can... feel how hungry they are. Don't you?"
"I thought that was me, but I guess I ate, didn't I?"
"Hajimi, you'd forget your head if it wasn't bolted on, of course you ate. Unless you've taken to dissecting sandwiches too. You could ask the headwoman or the cook about how they make those things. They're not impossibly hard to figure out..." Marishi said, while holding on to the brown flit. The green scurried into Hajimi's vest, where she located a little bottle of something and ripped it's cork open. Horridly foul smelling something-or-other came spilling out of it, and Marishi, the green flit, and the brown all backed away from Hajimi as one.
The rest of the eggs had broken open and the flitters crawled away, no other dead eggs were to be found. Marishi stood and propped her brown on her shoulder, saying, "look, you better wash whatever that was off, before coming into the weyr again. I'm NOT sleeping with you smelling like THAT!"
"I ... smelling like what?!" Hajimi pleaded, honestly not certain -- apparently he'd long since burnt out his sense of smell with his experiments.
He wasn't sure to laugh or sob, knowing that Hajimi would very likely set out traps to get 'the good ones'.
And then there was MarishiTen. Why oh why couldn't she keep her hands off things? If she'd been raised in Alabaster, she'd have been one of Engell's best filches, but then again, she might also have never gotten the chance to stand at a weyr. It was hard to imagine a kleptomaniac dragonrider, but... There she would be. Certainly.
H'lis wrote yet another apology and an assurance that the pair should remain. They'd just have to learn to steal the stuff BACK, he told Zyala. Someone should get a weyrbrat to break into their den while they were out at candidate classes. At least they attended those classes dilligently. Both of them, not just Hajimi. They'd both gotten very high marks on typical things, like recognizing wounds or memorizing patterns for flight. But then Hajimi would be able to tell one kind of wound from another at just a glance. And Marishi... She was an amazingly perceptive young woman, and would clearly be able to command a dragon well. He hoped that she bonded properly.
Otherwise she might steal a dragon. Right off the sands, probably right out from under the queen's nose. H'lis chuckled while he sealed the letter up, and placed it into his "out -- far out" bin for transport to Dragon Soul.
What happens NEXT?
