Forty-four Little Drawings

Writers: Jane
Date Posted: 15th December 2009

Characters: Zharesti
Description: Zharesti records Veyeth's first Hatching at River Bluff Weyr through a series of sketches.
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 6, day 18 of Turn 5

It was cool and cloudy day at River Bluff - for which the New Weyrwoman, in her rather too heavy-weight deep green gown with the glorious iridescent blue embroidery, was grateful - and forty-four Candidates were about to become Weyrlings.

Forty-four if all the eggs were viable.

}:They all live.:{

Zharesti nodded at her gold, as grateful for that reassurance as she was for the cooler day and that the rush and bustle was over for her, for the moment. From the moment Veyeth had woken her with the announcement that her eggs would Hatch Zharesti had been busy - the whole Weyr had. But now, as the humming of the dragon was becoming louder, as the first white-robed Candidates were stepping onto the heated Sands of the Hatching Grounds, now there was a quietening as everybody who could left their work and gathered to witness the unalterable changing of the lives of forty-four young people.

She patted the cushion beside her, making sure her drawing pad was still there, and the heavy pencil she had tied to it with a long piece of twine. When the time came - when everybody's attention was focused on the Sands - she would start sketching. She remembered best through the act of creating her little drawings. Though she hadn't needed to make as many as forty-four little drawings for some Turns - six? seven? Not since the new queens had started to rise, anyway. Could she record _every_ Impression?

She was certainly going to try.

On her other side was the Weyrleader.

The dull roar of voices dropped away as the eggs rocked even harder, and around the Hatching Grounds the ranged dragons humming grew. This was the moment. The first egg -

Two eggs! The goldrider smiled and started to draw, wondering how all the wagers would fall when two eggs had undoubtedly cracked open at the same moment, tumbling out a green who had quickly righted herself and a brown who had seemed to be content to rest on the sands on his back for the moment.

The pretty girl who Impressed the green was small and slight and Zharesti remembered her as a rather gangly thirteen or fourteen Turn old. At the moment of Impression, though, there was no sign of any awkwardness, and with a few strokes Zharesti's pencil caught the moment.

And that when the group of boys had approached the brown and the hatchling raised his head and found his lifemate. The young man helped his lifemate to his feet - not a task as easy as the uninitiated might think.

A bronze! Zharesti was too busy to look at K'sedel since the bronze didn't have the forethought to arrive in one of the lulls that sometimes happened in a Hatching but broke his shell in the wake of two greens and a blue. Four, five quick lines sketched out the dumpy boy who barrelled past the others, seemingly as determined to get to the bronze as the bronze was to him.

Two lines at waist height showed the one of the greens and the young man with the glorious red hair butting heads. The Weyrwoman thought she actually heard the blow over the noise which had now risen to fever pitch.

She flicked over the page without taking her eyes off the scene below her. More greens, another blue. The tall woman from one of the other Southern Weyrs Impressing a tiny green - they looked an unlikely pair and Zharesti's sketch caught and exaggerated that.

Blue, brown, brown, green, green, blue, blue, blue.

Was that a lot of blues?

Ahhh. The last one had found the woodcrafter. The local one. Labarr. She supposed that was the end of the shelves in her office he had promised.

More greens and browns and then another bronze. Two? Another, so it must have been two, now three. And another ... Just as she went to speak to the bronzerider beside her three more greens and a brown hatched, and then there was one of those lulls.

"_Four_ bronzes," she murmured, without really looking at K'sedel, her hands and eyes still busy recording the scenes. Each pair could almost be in their own world and she captured them at the beginning of their new life. "Is that how many you make it?"

Before any answer was possible the lull was over.

_That_ was a bronze who knew already how to make an entrance, exploding shell in all directions and starting off another flurry of hatchings that seemed for the most part to consist of two blues for every green, one of those greens finding the local girl, a crafter, one of the ones who hadn't wanted to Stand because she was so newly a mother.

And the last egg, wobbling, rolling, and then breaking cleanly to reveal a blue that seemed to pop out, ready for anything. With a happy sigh Zharesti sketched the face of the Dragonsfall woodcrafter - Imarre wasn't it? - as he Impressed the hatchling who had broken shell right at his feet.

~ ~ ~

Congratulations to our two new weyrlings:

* Paula's Im're, weyrling rider to blue Gormth

* Cali's L'bar, weyrling rider to blue Hazrith

Last updated on the December 20th 2009

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Forty-four Little Drawings