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Eliza and Velath were on the way back from the feeding grounds, obviously Velath was still far to young to partake of the activities there but that had not been the reasons for their visit regardless. They'd just learned it was a great place to gather gossip - and the older riders never seemed to lack the time to give Velath attention and share a few juicy details with the pair.

Today's visit had been especially exciting - not only had they learned of the disappearance of that strange old Ancientcrafter, the one whom had become buddy buddy with Benden and spent so much time on the Mystweed..but they had also learned of Benden's clutch and its apparently mammoth size..both in number and in egg size. The queen egg was said to be especially large nd people were already speculating on the size of the queen which might hatch out of it.

Of course Eliza was sure that there was some.. exaggeration in the tales, there always was, but it was exciting none the less and she simply couldn't wait to run across someone else to share what she'd heard. "Shall we heard back to the weyrling barracks?" She asked Velath "I"m sure there's bound to be someone there we can tell.

'That is a good plan mine, perhaps one of my clutchmate's will have heard some more details' the little green responded eagerly and as a team the two angled off towards the Barracks across the weyrbowl.

Eliza was rather startled when she heard her name called out from behind her and turning about noticed that it was Narisa and her gold 'Velath!' She scolded her green mentally 'You should have told me the Jr. Weyrwomen and her queen were around!' It wouldn't do to slight someone so much higher ranking then herself, although Narisa had always seemed like a decent sort of person, at least so far as Eliza had heard anyways, having never actually spent much time with her other then perhaps a few candidate lessons here and there.

'I didn't know they were so close' Velath answered quickly turning about to croon a greeting at the gold 'I was paying to much attention to our own conversation' She continued on to Eliza before properly greeting Cepheith 'Good morning Cepheith, how are you and yours?'

"Hello!" Eliza greeted Narisa brightly, "Of course you can, we were just heading back that way from the feeding grounds"

Velath for her part was completely overjoyed at the Queens excited approach, who could possibly be better to gossip with then a gold? And perhaps there was a bit of vanity there as well, it wasn't every green that a gold decided to pay attention to right? Tipping her head slightly Velath tried to recall what she had heard on the feeding grounds - which thankfully was still fresh enough in her mind that she hadn't started to forget it yet. 'Our lifemate's are easily stressed I think, mine is saying I stress her out all the time and Halith's is always fussing at her for one thing or another' The green responded pleasantly to the gold 'But the older riders at the feeding grounds were saying that it's not just the gold egg that large but all of the eggs in general. They say there is a great number of them too, I do not understand all the excitement either - it is large yes, but gold eggs are always large. I doubt that it is as pretty as your egg was' She added on ad though suddenly aware that her gold hatchmate might be just a tad jealous of all this talk.

Eliza laughed slightly, sidestepping a bit to keep from being stepped on by the larger gold who went right into conversation with Velath. "It's fine" She assured Narissa "I'm sure the bronzes are equally perturbed at all the talk" She told the other rider "But really I don't think they need to worry, a dragon is a dragon and regardless of size this one won't be able to do anything more then your gold can" And anyways the Trine hatchlings would always have them in the experience department since they were older then this recent clutch would be.

"I've heard that there is a lot of tension between the Weyrs, but Benden has never really gotten along with either us or Malvren. Differing thought patterns I suppose and I'm not sure if you were here for the whole Mystweed thing..but its common knowledge that Benden has most of it and people say the weed has something to do with the clutch size and the egg size....though who knows if that's true or not."

'They seem to think we are easy to break' Velath agreed with an amused tone to her voice. Dragons were strong - stronger then the humans who cared for them for the most part - except perhaps for their atypical siblings but even they were more then capable of playing without injury for the most part, as long as they took time to rest when they needed to. 'I do not know, it is too bad that we do not know a Benden dragon to ask but many of the people we hear agree that all the eggs are large. It does not sound like any of them with be Atypicals and perhaps many will be bronze or brown, they also say that it has something to do with a plant' Though Velath wasn't really sure how a plant would affect eggs but she shrugged it off as something she simply didn't understand and while hers could likely explain it Velath simply wasn't interested enough in plants to bother pursuing it.

"I suppose stamina might be a factor" Eliza agreed after a few moments thought "But surely agility would suffer for it, it's probably a trade off in the long run" Nodding slightly Eliza tried to relay what she knew of the Mystweed "Well supposedly it's a plant that the herdbeasts eat and when the dragons eat the herdbeasts something in the plant affects dragon fertility, when it started to die off a while back then the clutches got smaller and there were less golds and bronzes being born. Once that was figured out they tried to get the farmers to grow it but it was hard to grow and harder to even find so some riders went back in time and brought back healthy samples from when the plant was doing well..and this old ancient crafter came around saying he knew how to make it grow..but he went to Benden and apparently he did in fact know how to make it grown and now they can grow it and we can't or something to that effect...of course he's disappeared now so really it's all just a big mess."

'Unless the other humans come up with more facts then I suppose we shall" Velath told the gold with a slight sigh - while she loved gossip more then most other things she did despair when those facts were incomplete or did not satisfy the question sufficiently. She brightened after a few moments however "But surely when they hatch we will know for sure and that won't be too far away"

Pondering the golds next question Velath shuffled her wings slightly and when the answer wasn't known to her she pinged the question to her's, of course the answer she got was not a pleasant one and the little green crooned slightly before Eliza reached out to rub her head slightly. "Mine says that they do not help them from their shells, perhaps if one was strong enough to hatch on it's own" She offered as a small silver lining. Thankfully Cepheith turned the conversation towards something far nicer and Velath was pleased to report on her fellow hatch mates "Halith is doing well..though her's is always telling her to slow down" She shared of her fellow green, Halith was the sibling she tended to see the most of given that their's were good friends.

"I'm not entirely sure" Eliza confided with a shrug "I imagine it had something to do with Weyr Politics though" Which was something that she supposed Narisa would know more about then she did, given her position as Jr Weyrwomen.