An Old Friend (Kisha

[dragon]

It had been a long walk ... but then it always was, to get this far. Emoyan could remember when it had been but a flash of an eye to get here, but that was turns and lifetimes ago. Now, he just walked. On his back was strung his favorite instrument, wrapped carefully in a soft blanket to keep it from getting marked by any stray branches as he followed the river. All the way to the ocean.

Standing on the beach, he had stood there nearly unmoving for nearly a solid candle mark, just listening to the surf roar on the rocks, breathing the salty air. Refreshing it was. It was entirely too long between breaks from his duties. But getting anywhere away from it all was a long drawn out affair, and as such made it an even harder thing to do. On occasion, though, it was just needed.

That and after such a long, hard winter, it was due time to get out. Even if it was still just a touch chilly in the spring air. Normally he just brought a rolled blanket along to either sit on or sleep on should he stay the night at the beach. But this time he'd also brought along a small tent ... because it was just too chilly yet, at night, for open air camping.

Whirling overhead in blissful freedom, Rascal was having the time of his life. He always enjoyed it when Emoyan took off for the relative solitude of the beach. Of course, there was always the off chance that someone would turn up, but this time of year it really wasn't likely. Riding on Rascal's back was Skink, feet braced back with her snout crammed forward into the wind as Rascal wheeled through the air. The green mandyr was enjoying it altogether too much, the rush of cool air over her frill and wings, tail strung out long behind her.

His pets having a good time and feeling good also served to improve Emoyan's mood as well. Turning, he started trekking along the beach away from the river. Farther along, there was a rock outcropping of boulders that sat just in the edge of the surf. High enough to be out of the water, but close enough that one was very close to the warm ocean. He often sat atop those boulders, picking his soul out on his gitar.

Rascal turned and tucked his wings, swooping low over the ocean as he arced out over the waves. Beating his wings quickly, the brown made his way back up into the sky, rolling wing over wing once, earning a high squeal from Skink. She stuck with him the whole way, but she had also not been prepared for the sudden change in direction of gravity!

Chuckling to himself, Emoyan paused in his trek to crouch and dig his fingers into the sand of the beach. Flicking some of the sand away, he inspected the shell he'd found. Standing up again he walked toward the water, not caring in the least when it lapped and washed around his well-oiled leather boots. Crouching down again, he washed the shell in the water, revealing the mother of pearl rainbow colors that glinted from the inside of the twisty thing. It was almost white on the outside, obviously sunbleached. Just slightly off from true white. Smiling slightly to himself, he stood up again and slipped it into his pocket as he splashed back toward dry beach.

[Kisha-Ra]

Well, thought Mortanyal, shaking his pale blonde hair back from his face and shedding a feather and three beads in the process, Selenitas was pretty big. At least he was getting plenty of time to explore it, since Darya had just booked him into the candidate barracks and more or less left him to his own devices, apart from a few queries about how he was doing. Mort felt reasonably sure that wasn’t what his father had in mind when he’d packed Mort off to the Weyr, but it was too late now wasn’t it? Yes indeed!

Somehow he’d managed to come all the way down the river to the ocean, how long had he been walking for anyway? He did walk at quite a brisk pace but the river had seemed quite long, he’d been hoping to find some nice pretties down there, but it looked like the banks had been picked over and over by humans, dragons, and firelizards over the turns, until anything that remained was buried in the sludge at the river bottom. In any case Mort found he couldn’t recall how long he’d been walking along beside the water, when he was concentrating on other things his sense of time tended not to get a look in.

Quite suddenly Mort was distracted by a shriek. A non human one, surely not even the most excited girl could make a noise that shrill, unless there was a giant crawler somewhere around. Mort shuddered, crawlers were gross.

Oh, t was alright, it really wasn’t a human that made that noise. It seemed to be… a very small green lizard riding on the back of a firelizard? Mort squinted at the wheeling firelizard as if he couldn’t quite believe it. It must be one of those salamandyr things, like Imp, only the greens must be terribly small, which now that he came to think of it, wasn’t all that surprising since Imp was only as nig as a small green firelizard, and he was supposedly a large bronze.

If there was a firelizard, and a probable salamandyr, there was bound to be a firelizard-and-probable-salamandyr owner around here somewhere. Hopefully a native of Selenitas, so Mort could find out where the best pretties came from, a beach like this was bound to be filled with shells and interesting rocks, and bits of smooth, coloured glass, too. Purposefully the boy tugged his emerald green shirt straight and strode out onto the beach, abandoning the river.

Spying a trail of bootprints Mortanyal changed course to follow them out along the beach, deep prints here, did the boot wear pick something up? How did Mort’s foot measure up? The boy carefully placed his own feet into the boot marks in the sand and stood in the exact same place that another person had. Nothing here to pick up, nothing here to see either. Oh well, on with the hunt!

Mort grew so very intent on following the tracks in the sand that he very nearly walked headlong into the man who’d apparently been leaving the prints. ‘Oh I’m sorry I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ Mort apologised, stepping back hastily to avoid the imminent collision. ‘I think I’ve been looking for you though, I was following your trail.’ The boy pointed proudly to the trails of boot prints in the wet sand. ‘I’m Mortanyal, or just Mort if you prefer.’ He added, blithely ignoring any reaction to what he said until he was finished talking, then he paused and looked at the man he’d almost run into (did Mort know him from somewhere?) with an expectant expression.

[dragon]

Emoyan had glanced over at his pets for a moment to see what they were up to, and in that glance had caught movement in his peripheral. Turning a bit further, he'd seen the lad. What in the world the kid was doing way out here, and apparently by himself and unarmed, Emoyan had no clue, but he didn't approve. However, that notion was quickly displaced by a notion of amusement as the kid hopped from foot print to foot print, clearly absorbed in the ground beneath his feet ... and following Emoyan.

He didn't bother to move from where he was, until it became apparent the kid was going to just keep walking until he hopped right into the man. So he stepped back away from him, to avoid a collision ... and good job he did, too. In that moment the kid realized that he'd wandered up on the person leaving the tracks and reversed his direction. At his babbling excusing, Emoyan could only chuckle a bit. "I noticed." He answered, simply.

Mortanyal. That ... was an interesting mouthful of a name. "Mort." He agreed, with a nod. "You can call me Emoyan." He answered in kind. "But, Mort, I do have to ask. What are you doing out here alone?" Surely the kid realized the chances he was taking with his life, doing that. Even Emoyan was taking a mighty risk doing it, and he was a well trained adult. At one point in time he might not have even cared if it had ended him, but slowly, over time, he was starting to find reasons to live again. So, now ... yeah, he wasn't going to be easy prey. Unlike ... Mort.

"Are you from the Weyr?" It was a pretty fair bet the kid was, given the direction he'd taken to get here was identical enough to his own that he'd been hopping his tracks. But that didn't mean Emoyan would know who he was. There were so many kids wandering around in the Weyr it wasn't even funny. Mostly, he just knew the ones that were his lot. The Candidates.

[Kisha-Ra]

He’d… noticed? Mort looked back along the beach and realised it was all open, of course, anyone who looked behind them would see Mort tracking them. Not that he’d been trying to sneak, if he’d had been he’d feel more than a bit silly right now.

Emoyan. Mort marked the name and face down in his mind, yes he’d heard the name before. ‘Oh you’re the candidate master aren’t you? I guess I’ll be seeing more of you then.’ Mort chose not to mention his ambitious plan to Impress a gold dragon just at the moment. Not until he figured out why it had made Darya laugh so much anyway, maybe these weyrfolk were just a bit strange. Oh wait golds were rare weren’t they? Maybe this clutch didn’t even have a queen in it, that would be a shame but didn’t some people have to wait ages for their dragon? He couldn’t see how it was amusing at all, if there was no queen he’d just have to wait.

Mort fixed bright blue eyes on Emoyan’s face, totally unaware that the expression (which he thought radiated sincerity) made him look as bright as a dead glow fifty feet underground. ‘Oh should I have brought someone with me? I don’t know many people yet. Only my aunt really, she’s my father’s sister, but she’s not all that likely to want to come out and walk along the river with me. I don’t think she’s very interested in pretties.’ From the tone and expression he was faced with Mort gathered that he probably shouldn’t have been walking out here alone, but it was clear from the confused look on the boy’s face that wild felines, feral canines, and whers were things that it wouldn’t even occur to Mort to think of.

Mort nodded seriously at the next question. ‘Yes, or at least I am now.’ For a moment it looked like Mort had actually managed a simple reply without elaborating too much, but as usual he felt a compulsion to explain himself. ‘I came from Lighttower to start with. I haven’t been here long and I thought there’d be some good pretties in the river, you know rocks and shells and things, but it looks like everyone and their dragon already looked there. So I was following it along anyway, because there might be something that everyone missed just a bit further along, you know, and I came to the end of it.’ Mort paused for breath for a moment, and realised he didn’t have anything else to add right now. ‘That was alright wasn’t it?’ he asked.

[dragon]

Emoyan chuckled again. This kid was something else. Completely a different creature from most of the kids he got handed and expected to straighten out in time for the next clutch. "Indeed I am." He agreed. The kid's remark sort of put a kink in his thoughts though ... that made it sound like this kid was a Candidate. Emoyan was not aware of him if he was. "Wait. You're a Candidate? Why didn't anyone send you to see me?" He asked. "Who brought you in?" There was a rather drastic hole in procedure there, if this lad had managed to slip through his awareness. That ... or he was brought in after he'd left the Weyr for his stroll. In that case, it was horrible timing. Absolutely horrible. But not fixable.

"Yes ... you shouldn't leave the main paths and halls of the Weyr without being with at least one Adult. The jungle is not a friendly place." Emoyan clarified, not willing to go into specifics on maimings and killings done by wild whers and felines. Or ... worse yet ... Northern spies. A Nothern Rider wouldn't think twice about offing a kid to keep their anonymity. However, bright eyed gems were hard to come by these days, and Emoyan was reluctant to soil that innocence. The kid was certainly a breath of fresh air from all the somber or uptight attitudes.

"Lighttower?" He asked, somewhat surprised. Having anyone come to the Weyr from that Hold was a tad unheard of. Much less a Candidate. Emoyan was quite curious how that had come about to be, but didn't ask. "Well, no ... the river gets walked a lot. Swam in a lot ... dragons can really make a mess of a river, wallowing in it. So you're not going to find much, beyond maybe some lost bits of jewelry if someone managed to lose it. Your best bet for finding interesting things is a few miles up the beach from the river. But again, I strongly caution against taking off on your own. In fact, it would be best if you caught a ride down here with a Rider." People were less likely attacked when a dragon was present, after all. Hopefully, most of the riders that would bring a kid down here wouldn't leave them here alone. Hopefully. Emoyan would really go chew some people out if he found out that they were doing that, at any rate.

The kid was here now, though, and Emoyan wasn't about to send him all that way back ... alone. "How long were you planning on snooping around out here?" He asked. Emoyan had planned on spending most of the day and probably the night out on the beach as well ... and maybe the kid would be smart enough to stick around instead of wander off on his own again. The Weyr might never see him again if he did that.

[Kisha-Ra]

Mort cocked his head one side as if he’d just been asked a very complicated question. ‘Um, yes, or at least I think so.’ He sounded slightly confused, and then brightened up. ‘Maybe not officially quite yet?’ He suggested. ‘I did sort of turn up in the middle of the night, my father insisted on it. He didn’t want anyone knowing I’d gone off on a dragon, not a dragon friendly place home. I don’t know why my father works there when he came from here.’ Mort blinked at Emoyan a few times, as if it should be blindingly obvious who brought him in. ‘My aunt. I mentioned her right? Darya.’ Truth be told there wasn’t much of a family resemblance, or a similarity in manes, to connect the two of them by, but Mort tended to think if something was obvious to him, it was obvious to everyone. ‘I probably wasn’t supposed to wander off this far, she did say something about getting me properly sorted out, I wasn’t really listening.’

‘Oh.’ Mort sounded terribly disappointed with just that one syllable. Where was he going to find one adult to go pretty hunting with him, much less more than one? ‘Does that mean I’m in trouble now?’ He asked, because it was bound to be better to ask than have to worry, or have extra chores and things sprung on him as a nasty surprise, at least Emoyan didn’t look that type to wait until your attention was diverted and then cuff you. If he was Mort’s ear would be bound to be stinging by now.

Mort could understand why the man looked so surprised at his coming from Lighttower, really everyone there was so serious it wasn’t true, and of course there was that rather unpleasant opinion of dragonkind that everyone seemed to share. Mort really couldn’t understand why his weyrborn father was content to be there, but assumed that Foram noted very little that wasn’t to do with his work. What was he talking about now. Oh, the river. Mort’s head instantly swung around to look further up the beach, his weight shifting as if he might go sprinting headlong across the sand to see what he could find. Only the following caution not to go wandering off alone actually kept him in place. ‘Oh, but I don’t know anyone, and don’t riders have more important things to do than take kids down to the beach?’ Everyone always had more important things to do than look out for kids right? Work and things, poor adults never got any fun.

A shrug. ‘I don’t know, I’m not really that good at planning. You might have noticed. I didn’t even plan on coming out this far. I expect eventually Darya will notice I’ve been missing for rather a long time at set her firelizard to find me. But that might not be for a while yet.’ Eventually, in Mort’s experience, someone always came to haul him home by the ear.

[dragon]

Yes, he'd mentioned an aunt. But there were lots of women at the Weyr who could have been the kid's aunt. However, the name made Emoyan pause. "Darya." He repeated, thoughtfully. Odd as it might be, he'd never considered the concept of her having an extended family somewhere. It had been so many decades since he'd seen any of his own relatives that family just didn't often occur to him at all. "You're Darya's nephew." he repeated, just to be clear. Interesting. "No, not officially yet. I'd have to work you into all the stuff that goes with being a Candidate before it's official. But don't worry, I'll get it done." He assured the lad, with a crooked grin.

Then he laughed softly and shook his head, waving for the kid to follow as he continued his trek toward those boulders he favored. "No, you're not in trouble. You're still alive, be thankful for that. I certainly am. Just stay with me, I'll get you back." Though, it would probably mean heading home earlier than he'd intended. He wouldn't keep the kid out here over night. Partly because it would be stupid, partly because it was irresponsible, and partly because it was as good an excuse as any to go see Darya again. Even if technically he didn't have to do that. He could just take the kid to the barracks and get him all situated and squared away ... but Darya would probably want to know the kid wasn't missing anymore.

"Do you see those boulders yonder, right in the edge of the shore?" Emoyan asked, pointing out the rather large hunks of rock that the waves were crashing around one side of. "That's where I'm going. I bet if you puttered around the bases of them and in between the rocks, you might find all sorts of interesting shellfish." He suggested. Young lads, yes he understood them. Unless they were the warped kind that were no longer lads but something else. Those he had a hard time understanding sometimes.

"As for people coming out here ... it happens on occasion. Not terrible often, but it happens. It shouldn't be too hard to find someone already headed this way most times." He generally didn't go trying to find a dragonrider headed this way already simply because the reason he came this way was to get away from the Weyr. Not to drag it along with him. That and the long, steady walk in silence often did a soul a lot of good.

Rascal swooped in low again, and twirled in the air before shooting off again, Skink's wail first getting louder as they got near, and then trailing off into inaudibility as they zoomed away. It was not an alarmed wail, though, that tiny high voice. She was having a great lot of fun. Something she hadn't done since Voyager had been killed. Normally, it had been the bronze flitter she had ridden, not the brown. But now, brown was all she had.

Emoyan glanced over at Mort for a moment, and then grinned, shaking his head. He didn't know what to think on the thought that Darya would notice him missing eventually. She might either notice right away... or she might take a week to notice, since she wasn't used to having him around. Darya was funny that way, he'd noticed. "I guess we'll see, now won't we?"

[Kisha-Ra]

Mort nodded firmly, he might not be sure about much, but he was sure about this. ‘Yes.’ Mort gave a rare one word answer, as his interest in whether or not he was officially a candidate yet shunted any extra questions to one side. ‘Oh. I did wonder if being picked up by a distant family member really counted as being searched as such. There’s not a test is there? I’m not all that good at tests. I get distracted.’ Mort sounded mildly regretful as he admitted his tendency towards being distracted, he was aware that it sometimes made him hard to talk to, and that his wandering mind was more than likely to make any task that involved writing something down very long indeed.

Mort trotted along in silence for a few moments, mostly because his eyes were on the sand. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ He asked, giving the jungle that lay behind him a suspicious look back over his shoulder. What was out there? A sudden shudder ran over his body as Mort applied his mind to what might be lurking under the trees. A good thing he wasn’t being sent back alone then. Now that he was aware that there was a chance something big and awful might leap out and eat him it was just bound to happen.

‘If I missed those boulders I’d be very short sighted indeed. They’re pretty huge.’ Indeed they were, big enough to climb over, but not really the ideal pretty to bring home, though they did look quite attractive. That sounded fairly interesting, where there were shellfish there was usually a pile of unoccupied shells around too. The boy picked up his pace a bit, trotting happily in front of the candidatemaster, but mindful of the earlier warnings, not too far ahead.

Mort nodded seriously, mostly to please Emoyan, he was fairly sure that dragonriders didn’t normally have time to watch kids, but he chose not to mention it. Maybe it wouldn’t be too hard to find some slightly older people who counted as adults but were still interested in pretties. They could form a little expedition down the river. Of course he might find enough things this time to keep him busy making them into something he could wear for a little while. Obviously he should pick up anything interesting, nothing could be left. Nothing.

A strange noise indeed lifted Mort’s eyes from their scanning of the sand under his feet. Oh the firelizard and salamandyr he’d seen before. ‘They seem to be having fun.’ Mort commented, or at least he hoped the little green was having fun, she was making an awful lot of noise about her feelings though, and she had wings didn’t she? Mandyrs did. If she wasn’t she’d have jumped off.

Mort giggled carelessly. ‘Oh someone always comes to get me in the end. I’m sure father told her I’m useless and to watch me.’ He answered airily, darting sideways after a glint of light in the sand. Argh, too small to use. How very annoying!

[dragon]

Emoyan laughed, quite amused by the kid. "No, you don't have to get searched officially to be a Candidate." He answered. "And there's no test. There are, however, lessons that you're going to have to pay attention to." He stopped at the base of the nearest, lowest boulder and considered it carefully. He was not as young and spry as he used to be, after all. Even if he wasn't old yet ... a slip and fall would still hurt. Hoisting himself up onto the top of the little boulder, from there he climbed up carefully onto the next biggest one.

"The jungle," Emoyan started, taking care to not slip as he made his way up the stony face, balancing his gitar on his back. " ... is full of big nasty things that tend to kill people. Whers, and felines especially. And I'm not talking your typical Hold feline. These felines are big enough to give whers and dragons a run for their money in a fight." He explained. "And then there are people ..." He almost slipped, but caught himself in time to not actually fall. " ... people in the forest as well. They're not nice people, at that, and would make sure that no one ever saw you again." Making it up to the top of the biggest boulder, where it was dry from being above the spray, Emoyan settled down to a crosslegged seat, slipping his gitar off his shoulder. Resting the instrument over one thigh, he looked out over the ocean's incoming waves, and then down at where Mort was.

Attention redirected to his two mindmates, Emoyan chuckled again. "They do that. Eventually he'll get tired and will land, and she'll start berating him for getting tired. All that fun stuff." Emoyan shrugged, undoing the fastenings on his gitar cover and sliding the cloth off of the instrument. Tucking it under one thigh so it wouldn't blow away, he picked a few of the strings experimentally. "I am sure that if she could fly on her own, she would. Until she, too, got tired, anyway."

Always came to get him. This was assuming they knew where to find him. Which this time ... might well not be the case. New territory, unknown habits. Emoyan was willing to bet that while Darya might look for the kid, she stood little chance of actually finding him. He couldn't help but hope that Mort wasn't going to keep up this habit of wandering off. Because if his being a Candidate was true ... it was fixing to be Emoyan's problem as well as Darya's. And he was a tad busy to be trying to locate the kid all the time.

[Kisha-Ra]

‘Oh. Good.’ Mort breathed a sigh of relief at the news that there wasn’t going to be a test. Lessons, of course, were not such great news. Lessons severely cut into the time when Mort could be doing more interesting things. ‘I can read.’ He offered brightly, poking around in the sand. ‘And do my sums, isn’t that enough?’ He hoped it was, how much more did one really need? Once you could read you could learn whatever you wanted.

‘Really? I didn’t see any.’ Mort responded with some curiosity as he fished a long spiralling shell out of the sand and looked in it to check it wasn’t occupied by anything unpleasant with claws. He’d started tugging his boots off in preparation to wander out into the water and rinse his first find before he noticed how obvious that was if there were felines big enough to trouble dragons. ‘I mean, don’t they sleep during the day?’ He added, referring to whers and felines both, though the thought of so many beasts in the trees made him nervous.

Mort gave the trees another suspicious look as Emoyan mentioned people, as if glaring at the trees might force them to yield their secrets to him, after a moment he gave it up as a bad job. ‘People? What are they doing out there? Are they some kind of extreme isolationists? And why would they do anything to me? I’m not very dangerous.’ Mort paused and looked down at himself. ‘In fact I’m about as far from dangerous as you can get, and I’m not important or anything either.’ Yet, the boy mentally added to himself. He would be important, or rather his dragon would be, but he wasn’t yet, so his point was still valid.

Mort considered the firelizard and salamandyr for a while. ‘That doesn’t sound that fun for him. Wait, the salamandyr can’t fly on her own? She has wings…’ Mort looked at the salamadyr more closely, making sure that really was a pair of wings he’d seen on the green. It did seem to be but it was a bit hard to make them out now the pair were heading off again. Finishing the job of removing his shoes and socks Mort wandered out into the sea, which was somewhat cold, to wash off his shell, feeling rather proud of himself for remembering to take off his boots.

[dragon]

The kid could read. Wonderful! "Well, yes. Reading and sums are a great thing to start with." Emoyan answered, fiddling with his tuning knobs. "But considering that you're going to be a Candidate, the lessons you will be learning are geared in that direction. Candidacy lessons prepare you for your life as a Weyrling, and then later on in life as a Rider. For, it would be most awkward and unfortunate if you were to Impress a dragon and not know a thing about them. Candidate lessons teach you about the Weyr, how it works, and what to do should you manage to get lucky and impress. Among a few other rather important notes that you should know before you find your feet irreversibly on that path." He explained, patiently.

"Whers sleep during the day, yes. But Felines do not. They hunt all times of day and night. Thus the term cat-napping. They don't have the same sleep cycles that you and I do." Emoyan offered, leaning over to see what the kid was up to. Oh, he'd found himself a shell. Good! That should make him happy. "Be careful where you step." He cautioned, seeing that he was taking his boots off. "Shells in the feet are painful." Spoken from experience, that.

He sighed slowly at the thought of trying to explain the war to a sheltered, naive little boy. "No. They come here expressly to scare people and make them mad, by randomly attacking people. Anyone they can get their hands on and not run a chance of getting caught themselves." For indeed ... if they did get caught, Selenitas might well do worse to them. There were a few in the Weyr who knew their way around some rather ugly devices. Emoyan knew that beyond a shadow of doubt ... he personally knew a few of those people. "It's just a good idea to try and avoid allowing them the opportunity to make an example of you."

"Skink? Yeah, she's got wings. But they're too small to even slow her if she were to fall. She can't even glide on them." Emoyan answered, strumming a few chords idly, listening to the notes to make sure they were all in tune. A few more knob twists, and then he launched into a full round of musical verse, for the moment lyricless.