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Winderick started to fidget when the angry green came near. Luckily she chose a different candidate, someone Winderick had not seen before. He had mixed feelings about the green's choice. Nearly half the clutch had hatched now and he was still without a dragon. If the green had chosen him he would not have hesistated much.

Just as the green stepped away, the gorgeous blue bumped his hand, illiciting a tenative smile. That other green had bumped him too but she walked right past him in the end. He didn't want to get his hopes up again. Still, what a handsome blue! Not an atypical after all! Winderick felt relieved, but still nervous. There were only a few more eggs to go and his heart was beating like a hammer.

Eliaza's attention had centered, as it rightly ought, squarely on Halifanth. She'd fed her chunks of meat until the green stopped accepting them. Not because she wasn't hungry, not really. There was still plenty of room for more in her belly.

She stopped eating because she wanted to see what was going on. Craning her neck, she looked over Eliaza's shoulders toward the sands. Mine, there is another green. And look, a blue now. He will be my friend. They will both be my friends. We should go say hello...

Eliaza lunged to her feet and threw an arm around Halifanth's neck to stop the eager green from tripping back out to join the others again. "Later," she promised. "We'll say hello later. For now, let's just sit and watch. Watching is just as good."

Watching is only mostly as good.

"See," F'itz nodded to the sands, "another Impression. If things do go the way you fear, old friend, then at least Benden is fading without bloodshed."

"So far. There is time, and there are eggs. Much could yet go wrong, dead candidates, lost dragons, or greater darkness still." Why would nobody else see? Why did they hide from what was to come? Fear, perhaps, or perhaps really too simple to see. "Mayhap the Weyr shall cave in and crush us all." A swifter end. A tragic one. All Benden lost, and the new Weyrs with many Queens to step in? Humm. Still the same problems, no solution. "The north shall fade," Brumath predicated, "as our lives wane, rider mine, so too shall this place. The twilight of our days, and of Benden's."

Really cheerful. "The Weyr won't fall on us, and we shall not fade quietly," F'itz told his dragon firmly, ignoring his earlier thought that it was better to let th brown brood. Usually he let it be because his own realism let him keep his lifemate's murmurs from affecting him but... Uncertainty. He hated it. He simply didn't know what was going to come next. Even knowing there was nothing that could be done would be better than this agony of waiting for some results from the desperate trawl through the records, and attempts at transplanting the precious mystweed. "There will be a bright dawn beyond our lives," he said, fixing his eyes on happy little blue dragonet, and trying to believe himself. This could not be the end of their ways. It could not.

Canoake sighed as one of the two greens on the Sands Impressed to a silly boy. Certainly not someone she had known or would have cared to know. And lo, a blue now. So that made four greens, three Impressed and a blue with three more eggs to hatch. She tried to recall if the little prideful egg had hatched yet but her mind was too scattered for such activities.

Instead, the anxiety and tension of standing on the Stands hoping and watching ate away at her stomach.

Yes! A brown! Had he not been so adept at acting (thanks to a lifetime of practice, a dose of natural talent, and then all of that wonderful Harper training in how to behave diplomatically), Antigonos would probably have physically lent forward. As it was, the harper hardly even tensed up as he ran his dark eyes over the new arrival.

It wasn't totally perfect, but in a clutch this small there might well not be a bronze at all. This one had calculated him, weighed him up. He had willed it to know him. It must remember him. It would see his potential. It would. This could well be His. Lifemates. Not bronze, but good enough. If they played the emotions of a Weyrwoman and her dragon well enough to influence a mating flight, they could even be weyrleaders one day. Potential. He had it, the brown had it, they could work together!...

Yet...

It had been so far away from the other eggs.

Not sociable.

He could compensate for that though, he could compensate easily. His dragon could be the strong, silent, aloof one while he remained the arbitrator, the charmer. Yes. Between them they could do great things. It just needed to look to him, that was all.

The noise made by the Reef Tigerfish brown was enough to make Winderick jump. Shards, that one was huge! Even bigger than the blue! Still, for Winderick, this dragon was a disappointment. It was a brown and would not come to him. Even though he knew it was neither his fault nor the dragon's - no brown ever Impressed to a homosexual male, that was simply the way of things - he felt discriminated against. A knot suddenly formed in his throat. Only four eggs remained, two of them large enough to be browns or bronzes, and his chances of Impressing were growing slimmer by the minute.

It did not help his confidence when the Nembrotha Kubaryana egg suddenly went silent. A dud egg now seemed like an ill omen.

Winderick swallowed and stood up straight. Whatever happened, he would keep his emotions under control until after the hatching. He needed to remind himself that he still had a chance today. Maybe it was only a slim chance, but the odds of him even being here had been slim to begin with. If his parents had not sent him to apprentice to his uncle in Benden, if he had not stayed behind to watch the shop on the day K'la and Yvoth came Searching, if that guard had not given him a second chance, he would not be Standing here today. He could only hope that luck would remain on his side.

If there was one thing Winderick hated to rely on it was luck.



Lukah held his breathe as the Nembrotha Kubaryana turned silent. This could certainly be a dud. He knew Benden's stance on atypicals was, frankly, prejudiced but doubted that they would allow a dud to remain in its shell with such a small clutch on the Sands.

Having traveled many turns and seen many things Lukah was quite open minded to atypicals. Given his own stumbling beginnings (he nearly died as an infant) his heart went out to the atypicals as well. If he could start life in such a weakened state, certainly much weaker than the atypicals, then any oddly colored dragon should be given a chance as well. Zhac advised him to keep his opinions to himself. Still, he hoped this would be a chance for at least one Benden rider to get beyond the weyr's closed-minded prejudice.

The newly hatched brown also concerned him. The young dragon's anti-social nature almost made him worry that it would go Between, but he dared not think such thoughts, lest it give the little one a bad idea. He bit his lip.

So many lovely greens out on the sands. The blue and brown are quite nice as well.

Not nearly as nice as I, Taith huffed with a sense of indignation. They may be a bit flashier, perhaps, but there is far more to a dragon than their hide.

Of course, Taith-love. I would never suggest otherwise. Keela couldn't help but be amused at how even something such as a Hatching invoked her fiery green's competitive nature. Just pointing out that they're cute. Surely you agree?

Well, yes, they are, the green admitted, lowering her head to peer closer at the hatchlings down below. But only because they are little. We'll see what becomes of them when they grow. We'll still be the best.

No question there. Honey colored eyes continued to watch the proceedings below, and the greenrider took on a thoughtful appearance. Not yet a single bronze had hatched, and one of the eggs had fallen still from its hatching attempts. Definitely not good signs. Oh, certainly, there was a good chance that one or more of the remaining eggs might hold some larger colors, but there was no denying that the drop in fertility over the years was highly affecting this clutch. That or the new Weyrleader's bronze really did that poor of a job flying the queen. Likely both. Let us see what becomes of this Hatching.