Do You Think The Next One Will Be Yours?

Writers: AL, Kastaka
Date Posted: 2nd May 2008

Characters: Vasha, Serta
Description: Vasha fails to Impress at the Hatching
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 9, day 25 of Turn 4

Vasha was, as is traditional, elbow-deep in a bowl of redwort and surgical implements when the dragons started to hum. She looked up at the supervising Journeyman, who gave her a nod, and took off down the corridor, wiping her hands on her shirt as she went.

Entering the Candidate Barracks, chaos reigned as various candidates were trying to find their Hatching robes, long buried at the bottom of their trunks.

"Where is it where is it where is it?" Serta scrambled through her trunk, throwing things on top of her bed and not really caring that she was making a mess of it. She was in a hurry, and that blasted robe was nowhere to be found. She dumped her clothes off to the side, then exclaimed triumphantly when she found what she was looking for. "Finally!"

The girl jumped up and quickly dressed in her robe and it wasn't until it was on that she caught sight of her neighbor. "Vasha! Hurry up!"

Vasha sidestepped around the other candidate, declining to mention that she'd have had her robe on already if she hadn't been keeping out of range of Serta's frantic flailing, and began sorting through her trunk, the example set by the frantic atmosphere around her inspiring her to do so methodically and take her time over it. Having carefully piled half the contents of her trunk onto the other half, she spotted the robe several layers down and yanked it out, dumping it over her other clothes. Then she fished out a pair of oversize sandals she'd liberated from a store-cupboard earlier, and slipped them on over her shoes. Finally, she was good to go, and glanced around the barracks to see who had run off already and who was still hopping around impatiently.

"Come on, Vasha!" Serta grabbed the candidate's hand, a wide, warm smile plastered across her face. She tugged at Vasha, pointing towards the exit.
Her eyes sparkled with excitement, animating her face. "The humming is getting louder! We don't want to miss a second!"

"Yeah, okay," smiled Vasha, glancing at the other candidate's feet and submitting to her tugging with good grace. She was trying very hard to project a cool and calm exterior - after all, she was weyrbred, it was hardly the first Hatching she'd been to, even though it was the first time she got to be on the Sands - but as the humming rose she couldn't help but skip a little down the corridor. After all, she might meet her dragon today, and even if she didn't, lots of other people were going to.

Serta's enthusiam was evident in her every movement. The shining of her eyes, the light upon her face, the way she leaned forward as she walked, as if she were struggling to keep from breaking out into a full out run. The crowd thickened as they made their way to the hatching cavern, the noise of the hum growing to almost a roar. Serta literally jumped up and down with excitement. "Over there Vasha!" She pointed to a straggly crowd of candidates who had already made it to the sands. They shifted from foot to foot, the heat not unbearable, but certainly not particularly comfortable. "Come on, let's go meet our dragons!"

Vasha smiled quietly and nodded, not wanting to spoil the mood by the usual careful warnings that there was no guarantee of a dragon in any particular clutch for any particular person. Her sandals-over-shoes arrangement seemed to be holding up from the heat, but also forced her movements to be slower than she expected the other candidate would like, reducing her to a slow shuffle across the sand. As they reached the other candidates, Vasha looked up (from her feet, which she had been paying careful attention to) and grinned at various of her acquaintances, then looked over to the eggs.

Serta didn't let go of Vasha's hand even when they had reached it.
She clung to the other candidate, as if afraid that by letting go she would be doomed to fail somehow. Serta didn't look at anyone else, her eyes were all for the eggs, those great, rocking eggs that would soon shatter and give way to the newest crop of dragons that would eventually grace the skies to fight Thread.

"Look!" Serta leaned over and whispered fiercely into Vasha's ear.
"There's a crack in that one. I bet it hatches first!"

Vasha obligingly looked in the direction that her friend was pointing, but while it was rocking quite impressively and had a natural dark line down it, there didn't appear to be a crack. At that moment a small explosion made her look round to see the actual first hatchling, brown and making straight for one of the boys.

"It's bad luck for a green to hatch first anyway," she consoled Serta.

"I know." The smile that had faltered as the first hatching had not been one that would have come to her returned at Vasha's consolation.
She didn't understand why it was bad luck for a green to hatch first.
For her, a green meant good luck, especially if it chose her! "What colour do you think the next one will be?"

"Blue," replied Vasha, confidently. Her first instinct had been to say green - after all, it was always going to be most likely that the most numerous type of dragon hatched - but she didn't want to increase Serta's excitement any further, in case the girl squeezed the life out of any hatchling that came her way in her exuberance, or a similar fate overtook her hand which the other candidate was holding.

"Who do you think will impress blue?" Serta managed to tear her eyes away from the eggs, some of which were moving as the dragonets inside struggled to get released. "Maybe Hessendt?"

"Nah, Hess is totally going to get a green," replied Vasha without thinking. "Jassefran, maybe." She looked over at the rocking eggs which were starting to crack, a couple of greens and a brown almost falling out of their shells. For a moment she tried to make eye contact with one of the greens, but the little creatures seemed to have their minds made up and neither were heading in her direction.

"Hessendt? Really?" Serta hadn't realised. Of course, she didn't really know the boy that well, but maybe Vasha had been around him more. She jumped when she saw the greens and took a single step forward, as if trying to draw their attention. Her face fell for a moment when others were chosen and she took back the step she had taken. After a moment, she perked up. "There are still eggs left, and still time. Do you think the next one will be yours?"

"Maybe," said Vasha distractedly, standing on tip-toe to try and see over the chaos of hatchlings and broken eggs, candidates and new riders. Maybe there was a little green hatchling, over the other side of the Sands, hunting desperately for her _right now_.

Or, maybe not. Probably it was hunting for Serta. Or Hessendt.

Serta pointed to an egg that was rocking violently. "That could be one!" No sooner was the last word uttered when it broke open, a green tumbling onto the sands, gooey and glistening in the heat.
"Oh...maybe she's for one of us!"

Vasha studied the creature that had just fallen out of the egg. It was kind of pretty in its own way, but somehow she could hardly see it as a person in its own right, let alone a life partner for one of the girls. She guessed babies weren't much like people either, and tried to wipe her mind of such thoughts. It wouldn't do for her dragon's first taste of her thoughts to be that kind of thing.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Serta whispered the compliment, then her mouth made a small 'o' as the dragon uncurled herself. She stretched her wings, the glow of light warmed by the gentle spring green of the membranes. She swiveled her head, her pale green body still sparkling from the residue of goo from the egg. She paused, then turned, her whirling eyes settling upon the two girls. Then she took a step, she stumbled but managed to catch herself, then made a beeline and headed straight for them.

Vasha looked into the creature's eyes, and for a moment she fancied that she heard what it was saying. It was hungry, she knew that much, and it would want to tell her its name. Tildereth? Senecreth? No, she was just making them up. She looked at the hatchling with a frustrated half-smile. **I can't hear you.** The faceted eyes whirled with confusion and hunger. She couldn't tell if she was making eye contact or not. What did a dragon see with those faceted eyes? She realised she didn't know whether they really did eye contact at all.

"Oh!" Serta's hand suddenly released Vasha's and she hurried forward, her arms encircling around the green's neck. The baby dragon crooned softly and Serta's eyes grew wider. "Of course, of course Deilith, there's food...there's food over..." Her eyes turned to where other hatchlings had gone, meat waiting to ease their stomach's growlings and she motioned just as she began to walk, the green toddling beside her. She didn't even look back at Vasha, caught up in her green's hunger, in the presence that had made its way into her heart and mind, and the wonder at the even, how she could ever have thought she was complete without this amazing creature.

Vasha watched quietly, somewhat detached from the scene, as the few remaining eggs burst into all the colours of dragonkind, and as the eggs' contents stumbled or strutted or fell into the laps of those they were destined to be with. She was vaguely aware of the gathering of remaining candidates together, the comforting words spoken over them, of walking off the Sands towards the tempting smells of the Hatching feast. It was not until she was filing into the dining caverns with the other unsuccessful candidates that common sense reasserted itself.

**There are years ahead of you. You don't want any old dragon. You want the right dragon. It's okay.**

As she headed to the correct table, she caught Serta's eye, in the group of new weyrlings being poked and prodded into the Caverns under protest, and smiled encouragingly. And, to her surprise, the smile reached her eyes - she was genuinely happy for the other girl.

Last updated on the May 5th 2008

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Do You Think The Next One Will Be Yours?