There is a life about to start (3/3)

Writers: Sia, Iluva, Duskdog, Devin, Corrin, Avery, Aaron
Date Posted: 9th October 2025

Characters: Q'helias, M'kadja, Hesbia, Jevikas, N'dhavi, Tiyo, Yvase, M'sar, M'thos, H'lem
Description: Galgaith reluctantly allows the candidates to touch her eggs
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr
Date: month 12, day 7 of Turn 12

Q'helias

(cont.)

There were far more candidates than there were eggs. That was always the case, but never more so than on this day. Not since the start of the Pass. Doubling and even quadrupling up was inevitable-- luckily there was plenty of space for the candidates to cluster as the fifteen eggs were strewn generously across the vast cavern, the logic of their position known only to the new mother. Half buried in the warm sands, the mottled shells shone with the promise of a lifetime.

M'thos pulled the soddened cloak from his shoulders as he ushered the kids in. "You all know this is Galgaith's first clutch." He said, loud enough to be heard across the group. "So those of you who have been here before, you know to be on your best behaviour. Our new folks, that means she might be more unpredictable and protective than usual." Though so far, she didn't seem nearly as bad as Chioneth on a good day, so perhaps she'd inherited her sire's good manners.

"Show her respect, no sudden movements, and gentle touches. Be prepared to quickly leave if she's had enough."

There was a lot of competition here. Too much, for too few eggs. Mesarian shot a glare at his fellow Holdless. “None of you better fuck this up for me,” he muttered before shouldering his way to the front. He looked up at the huge golden Queen without a hint of fear and then bowed low. Her rider might be a prissy, stuck up wherry, but he had no problem with Galgaith.

He approached one of the smaller eggs and laid a gentle hand on the hard shell. “Hey there. Are you my green?,” he muttered softly, hoping the others wouldn’t hear.

As he often was, Lemhask was quietly hovering nearby, probably too close.

“You’re gonna get a bronze,” he said.

Mesarian scoffed. “Bronzes don’t pick men like me. Besides, there probably won’t even _be_ one.” He glanced up, hoping Galgaith hadn’t heard him. “I want a green. I want to win every flight I’m in.” He caressed the egg one more time before moving on to the next one. “Wouldn’t mind a blue, though.”

“Who told you that?” A soft, curious voice said behind him, where Tiyo crouched beside a small, unremarkable egg for a moment, at least until it was the person waiting behind her's turn. “About bronzes, that is.”

“Everyone says that.” Mesarian focused on the egg, trying to _feel_ something, wondering if the little dragon inside could really sense him.

Tiyo watched him, watching him trying… something, and immediately went back to what she was doing. There weren't enough eggs to get caught up in the odd behaviors of some of the others, and Galgaith or the Weyrlingmasters would take care of anything excessive. Mesarian was here for his first clutch. She was not. He would figure it out. Still, from such a craggy mother, this egg was delicately smooth, a warm caress beneath her palm. The little life inside - that was what mattered. **Hello, sweet one.**

"My dads are brown and blue riders." Jevikas added bluntly with an adolescent roll of his eyes. "If a bronze doesn't want you, it's a personality issue."

Mesarian was too absorbed in the egg to hear him.

Lemhask considered for a moment pointing out that he, too, had two fathers, one of whom was a bronzerider, but it already seemed like Mesarian was no longer listening. Well, it did not matter. If a bronze wanted him, he would not care whether Mesarian thought he was immune.

Naldhavi had done his homework. Infuriatingly, though, it hadn’t actually told him _anything_. Some people seemed utterly convinced that dragons of certain colors only picked certain kinds of people. Others believed otherwise, or even seemed to stand as living proof against that. Some people seemed to believe that touching the eggs could make a difference in whether or not you were chosen, while others claimed it meant nothing -- that what was meant to be would be, regardless. Among those who believed it made a difference, they seemed torn between what the best approach was: to touch all the eggs and give each of them a little attention, or to concentrate all your energy on one. Could they hear the candidates while still in the egg? Maybe, maybe not. Did the biggest egg in the clutch contain a bronze? Maybe, maybe not.

Honestly, it was all starting to sound like a lot of gobbledygook, the sort of irrational silliness favored by gamblers who swore that touching wood three times before rolling gave them luck with the dice, or old aunties who swore that a woman craving sweetbread was surely carrying a boy child.

Naldhavi didn’t believe in luck, or superstition. He believed “luck” was something you made, yourself -- doing what you could to maximize the chances of good things coming your way. So he moved among the eggs, touching, taking a moment with each of them, thinking very loudly (or at least, what he thought might count as thinking loud) about how badly they each should want a rider like himself.

As he moved, though, he found himself concentrating more and more on one egg that had caught his eye. It was a larger egg, though not the largest, but there was something about it that felt _good_. Now that all the other eggs had been properly touched (one perk of there being so few), he concentrated on this one, putting both hands on the shell, and giving _unwelcome_ vibes to anyone who strayed too close.

Were the colors inside already determined at this stage, anyway? Perhaps he could “turn” a dragon bronze if he projected hard enough. Now there was a thought. And no more ridiculous than anything else he’d heard so far.

Mesarian walked by. “Still set on bronze?” With a smirk, he reached out to brush his fingers over the egg. He almost wished he could steal a bronze from Naldhavi just to see the look on his face.

“Still know my worth,” Naldhavi replied with a smirk, “so yeah. Don’t you have some greens to grope?”

“I’ve got a much better chance than you,” Mesarian said. “The odds ain’t in your favor. Ain’t nothing wrong with greens, either.” He wasn’t going to “settle” for a green, like he’d heard one Candidate say. He _wanted_ a green, and surely that would make him more appealing to a hatchling.

There was an even larger egg than the one Naldhavi was trying to hog, and most of the boys were paying a lot of attention to it, probably thinking it was a bronze. Mesarian felt drawn to it. Well, they did say egg size didn’t determine the color. Maybe that was just a really big green and all those boys were wasting their time. With a little chuckle, Mesarian headed over to caress the smooth, mottled shell while the boys glared at him.

Akadja smirked from the other side of the egg. “What, do you think this is gonna be a boulder of a green?” he asked, unknowingly echoing part of Mesarian’s thoughts. “You’re better off with the smaller eggs.” Sure, the weyrlingmasters had mentioned size wasn’t a surefire indicator, but Akadja had put that down to another of their half-baked attempts to complicate and add mystery to their hatching ritual. He’d seen dragons up close now. Greens were markedly smaller than their bronze brothers. Egg size had to mean _something_.

“Maybe I just want to annoy all you bronze hunters by putting my gay little hands all over it.” Mesarian smiled, the shell warm under his palms. He liked this egg, for some reason.

“Suit yourself,” Akadja scoffed. “It’s your own chance to waste.”

The hulking gold sat in the warm sands and the eggs were scattered around her, not closely nestled like Chioneth’s had been, but Yvase wouldn’t make the mistake of approaching an egg without greeting the mother. Not like some of the holdless seemed to be doing. If she showed manners, and also no fear of the dam, maybe it would give her credit with the offspring. She walked forward, past a few of the eggs that were on the fringes, and met the gold’s whirling eyes with her own. The colors still said ‘safe’ and no Weyrlingmaster was yelling, so she bowed low and deep. “Hello Galgaith. Thank you for this chance to see your eggs.”

The greeting done, she turned to look at how her fellows were distributing themselves. It seemed like one could find the eggs in the Sands only because of the presence of the Candidates. Since there were far more Candidates than eggs, and the eggs were so scattered, she could see patterns of people clustering and infer where eggs were. It did seem the most attention was on the further out and the bigger ones, at least at first. At least from many of the holdless boys. **Jockeying for the bigger colors, and afraid of the adult dragons,** she thought scornfully.

Deciding to be bold, she approached one that was fairly close to Galgaith, a darker colored one that seemed to have a freckled pattern on it. It was warm and hard to the touch, and she spent a moment wordlessly broadcasting that she was so excited to see it hatch and enter the world, and who it would choose. She would have stayed longer, but Glariel was approaching, and Yvase wanted to be nowhere near that older Candidate.

Hesbia had watched how some of the more veteran Candidates like Tiyo had approached the situation before deciding to step forward. While the Weyrlingmaster had been giving them a warning like they thought someone would be stupid enough to piss off a dragon, Hesbia had been looking at said dragon with a mildly disgusted look on her face. The rider held herself in poise but the dragon? That thing was a monstrosity. If Hesbia got her own dragon, it better not look anything like that one.

She was a step or two behind Tiyo but peeled off to touch her own egg, though someone else was already there too. Fine, sharing. It wasn’t like it was hatching or anything. Fifteen eggs made for a lot of competition but Hesbia wasn’t worried. Not yet. She still had Turns to go before she was too old to Stand, or so they told her. So she put her hands on the egg, which was harder than it looked, and exhaled, twitching her mouth left to right as she figured out what exactly she was supposed to be doing. “Do they hear us or something? Is that why we do this?” she asked the Candidate with her.

“The dragonhealers say they appear to react to most stimuli by this stage. Though how much it matters and what the hatchlings retain is really up for debate,” Qelhelias recited mildly. “The general consensus is that it can’t hurt.” But it also hadn’t seemed to have _helped_ him. He must have touched and spoken to hundreds of eggs by now. And yet-- he still had both hands laid firmly on the warm shell, and he still thought as hard as he could: **I’m waiting for you. Come find me.**

Yvase had drifted over by Qelhelias and Hesbia, and scrunched her nose at his words. Shards, that sure was a dry way to talk about it.’React to stimuli’? ‘Hatchlings retain?’ He sounded like he ate a textbook and spat it back out. Bor-ring.

“What he means in normal people talk is, they can notice things,” Yvase chimed in, looking at Hesbia. “My father is a bronzerider and he can hear _all_ dragons, said he couldn’t hear them when they were in the eggs. That he could feel there were presences there, but they weren’t thinking like full dragons yet, with words. But they noticed that people were coming to see them and appreciating them.”

And speaking of appreciating them… this was only her third Hatching to Stand at. The first two, she’d been left alone at. Maybe she was too young then. Maybe her dragon hadn’t been shelled yet. There had been so many eggs at those and so few Candidates compared to eggs. This time, there were so few eggs and so many Candidates. As her hands brushed one egg that had marbled brown tracery, and she sent warm comforting thoughts at it, she hoped that this would be the Hatching for her.

Tiyo said nothing from her side of a little beige egg-- though her smile was noticeably wide, not bothering to hide her amusement with Yvase. She’d forgotten Yvase’s father could Hear, and those insights calmed the churn of her thoughts some. If the dragonets could at least sense them, then the quality of her touch was where she’d funnel her efforts. She ran her hands across the plain parchment-y shell again, speaking in soft strokes and pious fingertips, in openness and enthusiasm for whoever lay inside. In that unnamed, but deep sense of want.

“He can hear all of the dragons?” Hesbia repeated, trying to fathom this. “Like, all at once?” That sounded _awful_. Hesbia would rather throw herself into Thread’s path than hear a constant stream of voices, even human ones. Imagine hearing that _and_ whatever a dragon sounded like in your head!

“All of them,” Yvase said with a nod. “It makes him a good Wingleader, because it means he knows where his people are when Thread is falling. Sometimes people want him to be Weyrlingmaster because of it, to prevent the little ones from getting into trouble. I don’t want him to hear _my_ dragon in case he tries to always keep an eye on me. She’d better tell him it’s not his business.”

"Pff. If he can hear all of them, her telling him to go away wouldn't help. Unless- is there a range on his listening, like with sound?" Jevikas asked thoughtfully. He'd drifted over himself, scooting around all the big holdless guys to at least get a hand on each egg and glaring at them if they tried, even a little, to shoo him off. He wanted a smaller egg anyway, a blue like his Dad, and the thought of it pulled at some untended, empty part of him that he couldn't quite name nor understand. "Dragons can hear all of their kind across the Weyrs. Surely L'val can't do that?"

“He only hears the ones here. Not all over Pern. And he does some kind of blocking so he doesn’t hear them all, all the time, but. It fails a lot when flights happen, or injuries. He says he has more morals than to snoop in people’s personal lives by listening to their dragons. Me, I might listen if I had the talent. But I’m really glad I don’t.” There she went, totally telling on herself that she’d snoop if she could.

Outside the cavern, a cold rain continued to fall, but inside-- there was light and warmth and the spark of new beginnings as hands touched shells and little dragons stirred.

Last updated on the November 2nd 2025

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There is a life about to start (3/3)