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Early morning was the best time to be in the rainforest. Wait until midday, and the sun could burn you alive. Wait until dusk, and the bigger predators come out to hunt. Night's no good -- dark and dangerous. Renna had lived on the island all her life and knew these things as surely as she knew the sky was blue and dragons were pristine. The sun had just peeked over the fuzzy ocean horizon, spreading orange rays over the ground. It made Renna's exposed skin prickle, collecting dew as she leaned against the volcanic shell of the outside of the Weyr. Normally, the young candidate liked to keep covered, but she knew she'd be spending quite some time outside that day. She had no intention of melting to death in her usual tunic. She wore her usual fitted riding pants, but with a light cream top with capped sleeves. On her feet, she had a fitted piece of leather held in place by strips of rope, her grandfather's creation.

Leaning against the uneven wall, she tucked stray wisps of bangs behind one ear, folding her arms. Moira should be there soon. They'd agreed to meet up at this spot to search for reeds for Renna's bedroll. The girl could make a hammock sure enough, but she'd never made her own bedroll. Chalking it up to another new experience in this new life, she welcomed some assistance from Moira -- if for nothing else, then for some company.

So, wind blowing tangles of curls about, Renna drank in the quiet morning and waited for the other candidate to arrive.

The sound of Moira's footsteps reached Renna before the girl herself did. An early morning run? How productive. Wow. Not one to keep her thoughts to herself, she took a few long strides toward Moira and said, "You're very productive this morning. Do you always run at this time?" Renna was tall and slender, always had been, but it had everything to do with genetics and nothing at all to do with effort. Next to Moira, she felt... lazy.

"We can rest here for a minute, if you want to catch your breath." Renna certainly would need to rest, if she had gone for a run. If exercise was on the schedule, it was more likely to find the young candidate swimming off the shore, not hiking through the rainforest. She loved the weightlessness of being in water. In her mind, it was the closest she could get to the feeling of flying, of riding a dragon, at least until the day she actually Impressed. As a child, she spent much of her time in the ocean, floating on her back until her fingers pruned up and her grandfather came searching.

Tugging at the long ponytail that curled around one shoulder, she toed at the ground, squinting her eyes out at the sun.

A low whoosh whispered in the air high above them, pushing a flurry of loose bangs into Renna's eyes. She glanced upward and caught the swooping arc of a small green dragon as it shot into the air above the Weyr, rider a black blur on its back. The girl said nothing, just watched the pair as they disappeared above the tree line. A glisten in her eyes, that was all, and then she glanced back to Moira. "My mother had me sing. Not sure that is as useful." She laughed, low in her throat, and took a few steps away from the Weyr.

"Yeah, I don't want to get baked." Renna was olive-complected and tanned quite easily, but she could still burn -- and really hated to risk it. "You want to lead the way? I don't really know my way around the Weyr, let alone the forests outside it." Towering over Moira, Renna kept stepping away from her, trying to depreciate the height difference. She really only liked talking down to people metaphorically. Literally it gave her neck a bit of a pain. Having stepped a few more paces away, Renna added, "Thanks again for helping. I've never made a bedroll before. A hammock once or twice, but not a bedroll."

Renna laughed, trailing alongside Moira as they made their way into the forest. She was still learning the rules of the Weyr, still trying to pick up all its nuances. It ran like the Hold to a degree, but the presence of dragons and their riders gave the air a militant aura that had been much less apparent at Ista Hold. Stepping over a tangle of vines, she nodded along with Moira's words and then chimed in, "I've been kicked out of enough places here just for trying to sleep on the floor. I wouldn't be surprised if someone cut a hammock down while I was still in it." She snorted and shook her head. The crowding problem at the Weyr was all over the mouths of people at the Hold -- a Hold that was fairly crowded itself -- but it was so much worse than Renna had expected. This was surprising, especially since Renna tended to err on the side of expecting the worst and hoping for the best. Very rarely did the situation end up being worse than her expectations. "Honestly, the overcrowding is worse than I expected. I mean, I'm not a person who usually complains, but yeah... it's a lot more crowded than I expected. Most people have told me that the candidates' barracks are the worst of all so maybe my view is skewed." The girl shrugged, swatting at a bug as it landed on her shoulder.

Moving under a heavy blanket of humidity, the progress came quickly, passing trees, vines, and low-lying shrubs. Each step deeper into the forest brought flashbacks of her time at the Hold. The moment her chores were done, Renna would escape into the forest. It was nice to be away from her mother and her constant insistence that Renna perfect her voice in the hopes of becoming a Masterharper. Plus, when alone in the woods, Renna believed that she was closer to her father in some way, as if going between forever had simply transformed him into a part of everything -- the air, the soil, the trees, the sun. When she was younger, she would talk to her father and his dragon Dazuth as she picked her way through the forests, as a person might talk to a grave. It was a vain hope that she gave up on in her early teens, but every now and then, she found herself whispering things to people who weren't there, a part of her still aching to speak to her father.

Shaking the thought away, she returned focus to Moira. "Singing," she began, a sardonic note ringing in her voice, "is really my mother's craft. Not mine. I don't really see what is useful about it. A good singing voice isn't going to prevent the Pass, or heal a wound, or... solve an overcrowding problem." She laughed again, pulling a few clinging leaves from her hair. "It is my mother's passion. If you ever meet her, be careful about mentioning it. She'll feel compelled to give you lessons until you won't be able to stand the sound of your own voice." Thinking of her mother now brought no joy to Renna, just guilt and frustration. If her mother ever learned of her true purpose in being here... the young candidate couldn't bear the thought. Despite all their fighting, Renna and her mother loved each other very much, even if they never quite understood the other. It would be a terrible loss to feel her mother's love torn away.

Hoping to move away from the thought of her mother, Renna tried to change the subject. "How long have you been at the Weyr?" Of course, what she really wanted to ask was -- have you stood on the Sands before? It seemed a bit tactless since Moira was still essentially a stranger. She appeared close to Renna's age, which put her several Turns into eligibility for Impressing. There was no telling how many clutches she had seen pass her by. Renna had been prevented from coming to the Weyr earlier because of her mother, but she imagined that most of the candidates had arrived here at a younger age. Probably, at least. Stumbling briefly over a fallen tree, Renna regained her balance and continued following Moira through the forest.

History -- eh. Her mother, like all harpers, had learned the ballads, performed them to the vanishing point. The young candidate was sure she probably had memorized most of them just from hearing her mother sing them over and over. Renna had never been one for history, which implied a certain foolhardiness. Still, it was not out of ignorance that she neglected her studies of history. It was a two-fold dislike; one, she tended to avoid anything that her mother loved, and two, she simply preferred reading more creative works to the stuffy studies of history and fact. She believed in the power of experience and of gut feelings more than the precedent set by some long-dead public figure. It never occurred to her that her own obsession with her father's life was a kind of preservation of history -- perhaps, later in life she would, but not now. The parallel was lost on her.

"My father was a rider too," Renna said. He had ridden at this very Weyr, only about sixteen Turns ago. It hung in the back of Renna's mind that many of the people at Ista Weyr might remember him. In fact, it was nearly certain that someone would recall L'den and blue Dazuth. His story was tragic, the kind of warning call that might still survive in the weyrling training. "Over-confident weyrling and dragon die tragically in a misdirected journey between" -- it read like a headline a harper might sing out. Don't be like L'den. Don't push. Don't make a mistake. The thought stacked bricks in Renna's gut. She had considered this before, but without her mother there, the girl didn't see how she could be outed as his daughter. They looked similar, sure, but she doubted anyone would press the issue. It was a bridge she would cross later, but not now -- and not with Moira. She simply didn't volunteer anymore information, just listened to Moira speak of her own mother.

"What happened to her dragon?" The question escaped Renna's lips before she had a chance to process it. In retrospect, it was a bit callous, but she honestly was curious to know. Besides, it was easier to talk about that than to ruminate on how Moira felt about being a poor substitute for her mother's loss of a companion.

Renna had heard whispers of the events of the last hatching. Still, she didn't feel lucky to have missed it, as so many suggested. A quiet part of her wondered whether, if she had been there, that betweened blue might have looked to her. She didn't say this, no sense in looking stupid and idealistic in front of Moira. "I really haven't met anyone, save you, since I've been here. There are so many people that, I don't know, it almost feels more lonely. In a sea of people, how can you meet anyone? Everyone is just in transit, trying to find a quieter place." Renna was open to meeting the other candidates -- not that she could possibly hope to meet them all. She preferred to make her own decisions about people, but nonetheless, she nodded thoughtfully at Moira. "Most won't Impress. And those that do, well, the dragons know better, I suppose. Plus, they're the ones who'll have to live with the dimglows." She smirked, imagining some dopey girl looping her arms around the neck of a slender green, and the dragon -- like an amused parent -- sighing out a stream of hot air and nuzzling the girl anyway. A dragon of her own, someone to love every good and bad bit of her; it was a beautiful thing.

As Moira signaled to the sugarcane up ahead, Renna quickened her pace, spotting the wide circle of stalks -- some bent, some still upright -- likely before her shorter companion. She approached the edge of the reeds and reached out to smooth her thumb over the nearest stalk. "I brought a dagger," Renna said, pulling a very small, blunt dagger from her waistband. "I figured I might need it." She eyed the stalks again, trying to deduce which would be best for a bedroll. Well, no sense in screwing it up by trying to do it all on her own. Turning to face Moira, she asked, "So, speaking of dimglows... where do I start?"

Placing both hands on her hips, Renna glanced over her shoulder toward the direction of the shore. Wow, it was a good day to swim. Really, any day out in this heat brought the thought of a cool dip whirring to Renna's mind, but today she was listless, bored, and not wanting to work. It's not that the girl was habitually lazy; she was just selfish and liked to follow her whims. And yet, she also wanted a place to sleep -- so it was bedroll-making time. Dropping the subject of Moira's mother's deceased dragon, Renna dropped to her haunches and examined the weaving reeds. It seemed simple enough. Grab, cut, stack, carry, and worry about the complicated part later.

Well. Time to get cutting. "I like meeting people. I'm, I don't know, personable." A pause. "At least I think so." She wrapped a hand around the top of a stalk and used the dagger to saw a jagged line across the bottom, eyeballing the four-finger space. As she worked, she kept up the conversation. "I think almost everyone is interesting. It just differs on whether that is a good or bad thing. And whether I feel enough interest to continue trying to get to know them." Reed after reed, she tossed them to the side in a semi-controlled stack. "At my old Hold, I kind of prided myself on knowing the names and, I don't know, basic stories of all the people -- at least the ones my age, and the ones I saw on a regular basis. It kept me busy." She shrugged. As a kid, she lived for adventure, and as she grew, the adventure sometimes became trying to collect the stories of others. There was more of a harper in her than Renna would ever be willing to recognize, but it remained there, creeping under her skin like a phantom part.

Stabbing at another reed, Renna yanked hard and the dagger tore a jagged line up the center, splitting the reed in half. "Shards," she muttered, tossing the ruined reed to the side. She stepped to the side and cut away another reed, tossing it onto the pile between glances over to Moira.

"I'm sure it's a bit of a disappointment to not Impress, especially if you stand on the sands turn after turn without ever getting looked to, but it's all about the dragons. I don't know. I just know that I don't mind waiting for mine. I don't mind the passing time as long as it brings me the dragon that I was meant for." Of course, the obvious flaw in her logic was simple -- what if she never Impressed? For Renna, this simply was not an option. She was certain she would find her dragon, and it would find her. It might take time, but she believed it as firmly as a child might believe in some deity or mythical caretaker. It was the purpose of her life, just as it had been her father's. Failure did not exist as a possible outcome in her mind, not even in her subconscious. Success seemed imminent; only the timing was subject for change.

Renna paused for a moment to pick dirt and bits of sugarcane out from under her nails, listening to Moira. As a child, Renna had a lot of friends. There was one little girl in particular that she had spent her time with, but it was a distant, fuzzy memory. She only remembered running all over the Weyr and stealing sweets from the kitchen when they could. The girl disappeared eventually, though Renna didn't remember why. People were constantly coming in and out of the Hold though; it wasn't uncommon to lose track of others. "You're from Ista Hold? Wow, I grew up there too, my whole life actually." She returned to the reeds, cutting another few free and tossing them to the quickly growing pile. Wow, how curious. Another dragon-fearing harper at Ista Hold? Her mother would be thrilled to learn that. Of course, Renna knew almost every harper at Ista, aside from most of the new apprentices, and she had never known any of them to harbor the same mistrust of dragons that her mother held. How peculiar.

"That's bizarre. I thought I knew every harper at Ista," Renna said. In fact, she was certain she would have to know anyone who had been at Ista when she was growing up. Her mother never stopped talking about the other harpers, even those who specialized in areas completely separate from her own. "Are you sure she was a harper? My mother is a Masterharper there, and I've never heard her mention another harper who, um, doesn't appreciate dragons." Truth be told, Renna was fairly ashamed of her mother's attitude toward dragons, and Olira herself had taken a lot of flack in her lifetime for that attitude. Most people in Pern didn't take kindly to those who hated dragons, especially when many of the ballads that Olira must perform in her craft involve the very creatures who she blames for her misery and loneliness. Renna really didn't want to talk about that though, especially to someone like Moira who most certainly loved dragons. Still, it was incredibly odd to think that there might be two dragon-fearing women harpers at Ista Hold. Very strange indeed.