Glimmers

Writers: Halyonix, Iluva
Date Posted: 2nd September 2025

Characters: Zaidi, Tindral
Description: Two little birds of a feather flock together ahead of the impending hatching
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 10, day 7 of Turn 12

Zaidi

Notes:

~*~

Tindral spotted the girl across the Barracks. A girl her age. Her height. Small. Instantly a kindred spirit in this big, big, big place. Maybe a friend? “H-Hello,” she greeted shyly, standing in front of the girl’s bunk with hope in her brown eyes.

Zaidi stared back at her in a mirror image of recognition, a little dumbfounded that there were actually others here her age at all when everyone else looked nearly the same age as her parents. And this girl - this girl looked as adrift and uncertain as she felt. “Hi!” She enthused, louder than intended as she scooted closer to the edge of her cot. “Hi.”

The other girl fiddled nervously but stepped closer. “I’m…I’m Tindral. Are you…are you a C-Candidate too?”

“Yup!” Zaidi said with hushed excitement, as if this were a delicate secret they were about to share. “Yeah, I got here… uh… er, a few sevendays ago?” She didn't know and it for sure sounded like it, but she continued, “I got Searched. None of my brothers. No sisters.” And she still wasn't sure if that was a good thing, an exciting thing, an adventurous or brave thing, either. But it was a thing she did, and was somehow still doing. “My cothold's by the ocean, too. So I'm glad this place is also like that. Oh-! I'm Zaidi. Tindral's such a nice name. Where are you from?”

“Um…a cothold too. I don’t…I don’t think we really have a name for it. It’s just our cothold,” Tindral answered. She ducked her head at the compliment. “I like your name. Zaidi.” Emboldened by how well the conversation was going, Tindral sat on the bunk so that they could keep talking. “Do you…do you like it here?”

Zaidi scooched over to make room, glancing across the barracks like she might be about to say something taboo that could get them caught and punished for it. “Um… sometimes,” she admitted, a little more quietly.

“I miss home a lot.” Zaidi often felt like she didn't know what she was doing or what was going on. It was disorienting and more than a little scary. Worse than that, she felt alone. But she and Tindral looked similar enough that they almost looked related, and that was one of the few things she'd been excited about in a good way since she got here. “Do you miss your home?”

Tindral nodded fervently. “It was small but…I…I knew where everything was.” The Weyr was _huge_ comparatively. “The…the food here is better but…” The food wasn’t the same as family. Yes, the Weyr usually ate together for the evening meal, with everyone crowding to the tables, but at her cothold, it had been a little table with just her family and it had been perfect. “Do you think…after the Hatching…they’ll let us go home?”

Zaidi chewed her lip, wanting to say what she hoped: “yes”. Of course they would let them go home. But she didn't know that exactly. “I… hope so. But - what about a dragon? What happens if one picks you?” She didn't say ‘us’, but she may as well have.

Tindral paled. She didn’t have an answer for that and yet everyone wanted her to have a dragon! “I’ll…I’ll ask it to pick someone else,” she said quickly, knowing that it wasn’t possible but she was grasping for any way out.

No one had said anything about deterring a dragonet to Zaidi - if anything, everyone in the barracks was always talking and obsessing and treating them like they were the only things that truly mattered. A handful of candidates were so many turns older than her and without dragons that they seemed rather angry and desperate about it.

“There are lots of older candidates here.” Zaidi said with a cursory glance around the barrack again, not entirely sure where she was going with it, “Maybe it takes a while for most people to get a dragon. The riders go /between/ all the time, someone… someone will take us home.” ...Right? And almost certainly a dragon would want a grown woman over a small girl, anyway.

But part of Zaidi wondered. Part of Zaidi hoped a dragon _would_ choose her, though she really had no idea what that would entail or how it might feel or anything else yet. She still couldn't square what her family did in the ground with what the dragonriders did in the air above them everyday; it still seemed so beyond her. But the idea made her heart proud.

“But if you like, we can sit together and do stuff together til we go home.” Zaidi offered, desperately hoping she would say yes.

Having someone to do things with and sit with sounded way better already. She’d never had much in the way of a friend, growing up in a small cothold. Hope lit up Tindral’s eyes as she nodded shyly. “I’d...I’d l-like that.” Little tendrils of ideas threaded through her mind. They could do chores together. They could share stories of home. Maybe…maybe they could study together too. And share dessert. As she thought about it, Tindral’s head bobbed with more certainty. “I’d like that,” she repeated, surer this time.

Zaidi's breath caught and a huge well of emotion opened up in her chest as she beamed at Tindral, beyond delighted. “Eeeee okay! Okay, okay, okay, great.” She clasped her hands in front of her in excitement, and relief, and whatever else made this whole thing - the candidacy, this place, the sometimes oppressive lack of familiarity - feel less daunting, even if it was just for a little while.

“Okay, _so_.” In her excitement she grabbed Tindral's hands, leaning in with the realization that this was the first time she'd befriended someone who wasn't kind of obligated to be - because they also happened to be cousins. “What do you wanna do first?”

Last updated on the September 18th 2025

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Glimmers