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Gender/age: female, 18
Physical: fair skinned (very pale actually), with short, fluffy platinum blond hair, hazel eyes. She is 5�8, and built with pleasant curves, not extremely strong but well balanced.
Mental: aggressive, very much so. Especially when cornered. She is a strong willed woman, but also loves being near people. She is, to say the least, lusty. She has little tolerance for House lords and other high-ranking folk, but she respects those who lead caers, or fly against Ants or Rampage. Rita�s distant sister Rigel and she get along when they are near one another, but they have very different expectations about their lives.
Skills: Like the others in this group, Rita is a wanderer and as such her skills are all oriented upon herding, cooking and survival. However, she has taken one particular skill to an art, that of Alis-Gryphonry. She loves birds, and has an affinity for the swift falcon-cats she uses to hunt small game. She claims that she can understand their chirping speech, or perhaps she can actually tap into their minds. She also likes other small creatures, and has a mysterious flying lizard which is inexplicably from a place called Dark Moon Weyr. Rita is also a good leader, however she herself prefers not to be one, leaving the responsibilities to others.
Maybe. Or maybe, just maybe, she wanted to see if there were more differences than their striking personalities, or the shaggy cut of Dane's hair? Maybe there were other things.
She heard Dave say something about "experiences being unique" but honestly, Rita wasn't interested in that. What she was interested in was that Dane truly seemed to know something that Dave didn't. That Dave ... loved her?
He'd finally said it. Finally. It was a relief, she cried and was over it. But what about Dane? He was so despondent about everything. Even being taken from his hard captivity was something he seemed to resent. But then, he hated himself more than anything else. Perhaps even his brother. That bothered Rita to no end. She wanted them to be happy.
She folded her clothing around her still-damp skin, and approached the brothers.
Her little hummer-gryph would normally be buzzing around her head with all the activity going on, but it was so late now that he was asleep. Curled in a little ball with the bronze flitter that had come with them from ... wherever they had been before. The place lacked a name, and even Dave didn't seem to remember anything about it. No matter. Even when she and Dave had been making love in the wagon, they had slept.
So had Dane, later. That was the subject of their animated chatter. She snuck up and surprised both of them, with a smile. It was when Dave suggested that Rita needed to see if there were more differences between the brothers than met the eye, that she let her heart do flip flops.
She was so in love... With both of them? With one came the other, surely. Though they were like night and day, they were her night and her day.
She proved it to Dane, wonderful, innocent, lusty, untamed Dane, until the morning broke above the hillsides.
When the others gathered their things up, they stared at the trio insessantly. Dave was intent on getting the group progressed past the main outposts of the House lands, and as soon as humanly possible.
When the Phoenix boys, a trio of disparate brothers, began to make angry mutterings, Rita shook away from Dane and got out of the wagon to watch. Dave was obviously tired, but the boys were fresh and annoying. Very annoying. The little pests thought that it might be wise of them to just scamper back to the House land, get their things settled. Or just stay there forever.
Their parents had long since disappeared, and the boys were orphaned like most others in the Triptych clan. Yet, they had been obviously fallen head over heels for the House way of life. They had not known what disasters might have befallen them if they were like Dane...
If they showed any promise at all, which at least one of them did. Andrew was by far and away smarter than both his older brothers, and he was the only one with even a slight grip on how the House had behaved by stealing their ancestral lands.
Rita stepped up to Alexander, as he sputtered about not having any idea where they were going. "Dave wants us safe, Alex. Safety can't be found at the House lands, any more. Everyone here has lost family to them. I did, you did. You would rather stay with murderers and thieves like them?" She let her voice rise in ire. The red-headed boy snarled back at her.
"I was safe! I was safe and I had food and clothing, and we were learning our maths!"
"You might have been," muttered Anthony, the middle brother, "I wasn't learning a cursed thing." He was ignored by most people nearby.
"Your safety came at the cost of your own parents!" Rita snapped, and the young boy jerked away. "And mine!" Rita's glare burned into the boy, and he gulped back a response.
Others would have interrupted her tirade, but they knew better even in the short time they had known her. Rita's temper was well known, and it was also clear where her loyalty lay. Drake was the first to shelter the red headed boy Alex from Rita's wrath, and glared at both Rita and Dave with equal anger.
"Back off. We're all hungry and have no place to stay, Rita, or have you forgotten now that your boyfriend has 'freed' us, we're considered criminals?"
"The only criminal thing here is that you didn't just remain with them," Rita spat. "But you came along of your own free will as I recall, so just shut up." She spun, and almost ran into Dave in doing. "They do need food, and we must find a home, Dave..." She said, hoarsely quiet.
"I know. If we had a ... well, I'll be..." He said, looking up into the light of the dawn. There was a blot across the big wavering light, and it grew bigger by the moment. "That's a dragon," he commented.
Others turned at his words, some less willing to believe him, but curiosity always won out with a Triptych Clan member. It was a blue dragon, with a woman riding him. They landed in a dusty cloud, and the woman smacked her pants clear of the dirt.
"There's a large party down in the vale, there," she pointed east at the House lands. "They have weapons. Thought I'd warn you. I'd bet you're the group I've been hearing about."
The woman was mature, sensible seeming. She tilted her head and looked at the dragon. "No, you think?" She said to him, and shrugged. "Well, Mitanth here tells me there are some potential Bonders among your children and young folk. Believe it or not, I think he likes the smell of most of you." She shook her head, "I've never heard of so many of you in one place before..."
The mutterings started almost immediately. Rita's hummer-gryph perked up and nearly speared himself on Rita's ear. He perched carefully, and watched all the sudden bustling.
Rita looked at the woman in astonishment as she looked with her dragon, at almost every one of the orphaned or lost Clan members. While it was true there weren't all THAT many of them, fewer than thirty total, the fact that the woman's dragon nosed practically all of the group that Rita was part of into the 'selected' area.
"Um, search rider," said Rita, her eyes wide, "um, thank you --" the dragon pushed her toward the group as well, then snorted loudly at Dane and Dave, who also recieved the same careful and practiced nudge. "Um, we *are* kind of on the run and such."
"I was going to say, if we had a dragon or two to help us move faster, or to scout out places to settle..." Dave said, and fortunately those who had been searched out were too busy chattering among themselves to care.
"Yes, yes," Rita said, "but they're coming! The Faustas House men are coming... I can see the dust from their Skirr..."
"Then you've got falcon's eyes," commented Nora, the dragon rider. "But yes, I see them too. Well, Mitanth can't possibly carry you all. But what I can do is ... delay them a bit?" The older woman had a clear mischevious glint in her eye. She mounted up on beautiful Mitanth, and hefted into the air. The sky had lightened completely, and the sun would prove hot today. Hotter for the men in their hard leather armor and pounded steel caps, looking for the Triptych.
"I wonder where... we'll be going. To whose dunes?" Rita said, and Dane answered.
"Caer Talor Cliff. I doubt there is room for everyone, but... surely some of -- us," he almost seemed surprised to use the pronoun on himself, "will be accepted."
"I hope so..." Rita breathed, "I hope so..."
read what happens next!