Shalna
Shalna peered down at the weyrbowl of her new home. It was much different from Quinalt, yet there was that same homey feeling that all Weyrs had. The bustling of the lower caverns, the comforting smell of dragons. She caught a glimpse of the hatching sands where one green dragon rested around a clutch of eggs. As the green turned, her view was changed to that of the weyr's lake and the feeding pens, where a brown was hunting.
Pellith, as K'tal had introduced his green, trumpeted a greeting to the watchdragon, who bugled a reply. A few other dragon calls rang out over the bowl as Pellith circled lazily to land in the center of the weyrbowl. K'tal dismounted first and helped Shalna down. A drudge shouldered her bags and waited patiently for further orders. "So this is Dark Moon," Shalna remarked to herself. "Home sweet home."
K'tal nodded. "Thank you for coming, Shalna. We are in need of more dragon healers. We only have one, and he has been asking for an apprentice for some time now. I'm sure he'll take a journeywoman."
Shalna managed a hesitant smile. "It's nice to have a change of scenery every once in a while. I just hope I don't have to make myself too useful."
K'tal grinned. "I should hope not. Still, it's a comfort to know you've got a good dragonhealer ready to help just in case you do, Faranth forbid, take some injury."
Mavcha, who had, until now, been quiet, shrieked a protest at something and conjured an image of the Hatching Sands at Quinalt. "Mavcha said something about the Hatching Sands?" Shalna said, her statement more of a question to the greenrider.
"We do have a clutch on the Sands," K'tal replied after a moment Shalna knew, after many turns of dealing with dragons and their riders, he spent conferring with his green. "Would you like to go see it? It's a green's clutch, and I don't think Resarith will object much to the new dragonhealer visiting her eggs."
Shalna blushed at the respect in his ton. Did this weyr really expect that much of her? How could she, only barely a journeywoman, expect to live up to such high expectations? "I don't see why not. I'm sure I'll see them eventually, but now's as good a time as ever."
"Take those to the journeywoman's new quarters," K'tal instructed the drudge, who nodded, evidently knowing where these were. Shalna's question about where her new quarters were must have shown on her face before she gave voice to it, because K'tal smiled and added to Shalna, "I'll have one of the weyrfolk show you to your quarters later. You'd find your way eventually anyway."
Shalna gave K'tal a smile much more confident than she felt and nodded. "I've managed to find my way around one weyr for sixteen turns, I think I can manage to find my way around another."
K'tal smiled reassuringly. "Don't try to be brave. There've been plenty of Candidates, weyr and holdbred, lost in these caverns. Thankfully, all of them were found within an hour or so of going missing."
"I'll cling to that when I get lost on the way to the evening meal tonight," Shalna replied with a chuckle. "I doubt Mavcha would allow me to stay lost for long anyway."
The two reached the Hatching Sands quickly, Pellith padding along some distance behind them. Shalna wondered breifly why the green didn't go up to her ledge, but gave it no more thought once they stood at the edge of the Hatching grounds.
The green was curled around a small clutch of eggs, perhaps seven or eight, from her angle Shalna couldn't quite tell. Her opalescent eyes whirled gently, half lidded as she dozed, though obviously alert, on the hot Sands. Her rider was curled up on a chair a few handspans away from her sleeping green. "How long since they were lain?" Shalna asked as she gazed at the eggs. Being weyrbred, she had always wanted to Impress, though she had satisfied her need to be close to dragons by becoming a dragonhealer. Perhaps she'd be found acceptable by a dragonet here, even though she hadn't been at her home of Quinalt.
"Not quite two sevendays ago," K'tal replied. "They're still looking for Candidates." He sounded slightly exasperated by this fact, as though he had expected more Candidates to be found by now.
Shalna felt a bit of hope flicker somewhere in her chest. "Really?" she replied in a conversational tone.
She must not have done as good a job covering her insterest for K'tal arched an eyebrow at her. "Really."
An uncomfortable silence settled over the Sands. "So," Shalna began, "what is the green's name?"
"Resarith," K'tal replied after a moment, eyes un-glazing. Shalna kicked herself for not realizing he had been speaking with his dragon. She ought to have noticed.
With a curious trill, Mavcha launched herself from Shalna's shoulder zipped over to examine the eggs. Resarith opened an eye to regard the hovering green. Mavcha hummed her approval and settled down in the warm sands, eyes intent on the eggs. Resarith snorted and sent a protesting Mavcha into the air. Scolding the dragon furiously, Mavcha winged her way back to Shalna, giving an indignant cheep before flipping her wings into place.
"That's what you get for disturbing a broody green," Shalna chided her flit. "You ought to know better," she added, wishing there were some way she could apologize to Resarith.
No need to apologize. I don't mind flits as long as they do not bother my eggs, someone said, and Shalna looked around to see who had spoken.
"Did you say something?" Shalna asked K'tal, looking up at the greenrider.
"Not that I know of," K'tal replied with a grin. "But I was about to."
"Oh," Shalna replied, thoroughly puzzled now. She didn't see why Pellith would have spoken to her, and how could Resarith have known who Mavcha belonged to?
"Whyever that may be a dissapointment to you," K'tal continued, "I do have something considerably less dissapointing to tell you. Pellith has decided that you would make a good Candidate for Resarith's clutch and Resarith quite agrees, or she would not have spoken to you."
"Resarith? Candidate? What?" Shalna stammered, eyes flicking from Resarith to the clutch to K'tal and back to Resarith. "But you're not..."
"A Searchrider?" K'tal finished for her. "Of course I am. I just stopped by Quinalt on my way back to Dark Moon from another unsuccessful day of Searching. Which," he added, "turns out not to be quite so unsucessful."
"But you need a dragonhealer," Shalna insisted, still reeling from the mental blow dealt her. Searched! Acceptable! All those years at Quinalt, watching a brother and sister Impress, and not even a day at Dark Moon and she had been Searched.
"You'll still be here, whether you Impress or not. Plus," K'tal grinned, "you'll be able to go see P'sol."
Shalna blushed but smiled in spite of herself at the look on P'sol's face if she showed up at Quinalt, astride her own dragon. "Well, why not? I don't really have anything to lose. I'm sort of stuck here anyway."
K'tal finished giving Shalna a tour of the weyr and handed her over to a very round, bubbly middle aged woman who led her to her generously sized quarters where her things had already been arranged for her. As soon as the woman had left, Shalna seated herself on her bed and began to write a letter to P'sol.
Scrawling her signature, she rolled the letter up, attached it to Mavcha's leg and gave the green an image of P'sol. Mavcha cheeped and winked between, leaving Shalna to collapse from an exciting yet rewarding day.