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Eight, nine months were more than enough; Lestenna mulled over her thoughts in the same slow, rolling, back and forth pattern as that she dragged a small speared bite of meat through the dregs of gravy in her bowl at dinner. Scattered chatter of riders and candidates, hundreds strong, brished against her distracted mind like lumps of cooling root vegetables, providing the evening with flavor and texture, if not the type of substance she was looking for at the moment. She twisted the fork to force the meat into behaving almost like a spoon, scooping up a little puddle of gravy before down the hatch with it. A few quick stabs relieved her bowl of the last of dinner, roots and all; there was never call to waste, of course.

Sated for the moment she turned in her seat to regard a man sitting some feet down the long table. It was filled only with bronze and gold riders, and so she knew almost every name, and did know every face, along the way. A'dras she had met in person a sevenday ago, on a mutual rest day. He was as new as she was to the weyr, but she had felt in that brief encounter that they might be of similar minds. Not to mention that his slight age ought to gove him insight and wisdom beyond those bronzeriders of her own age.

She stood without preable, moving down the length of the table and back up the other side, where a wave of a hand bid one of the other bronzeriders sitting beside A'dras up and gone. She put little thought into the gesture, certain as she was that her whim would be catered to. When it indeed was, she slid into the vacated seat. All efficient, practical moves, no real grace, she made herself comfortable and nodeed slightly in the man's directon. "Bronzerider A'dras," Her tone was clipped, but not angry. Formal to say the least. "Tell me your thoughts on our current tactics for thread. It's too soon to happen yet, but soon enough we'll have the stuff falling daily..." There was no reason to let bad habits form and then try to tear them down later if they uncovered anything that could be improved upon.

Fortunately or not to A'dras, depending on his opinion, he'd find Lestenna nodding along, completely enthusiastic about her concurrence. "Exactly my thoughts. We're near capacity now, but Faranth help us when it gets worse. By the records, even during the ninth pass casualties were more than common. By the time thread falls every other day we could be down to half without replacements, and not to mention the added burden of our...unusually spread range." The rest of the weyrs had really gotten off to a bad start in her mind. Low attendance, lack of resources and training, not to mention the total breakdown of historical supply chains and tithing.

"I think if possible, we should be consolidating cotholds into larger minor holds. We've become spread too far out, and it makes our riders have to go longer, farther, putting themselves at risk of exhaustion and injury." Plus it was easier to coordinate efforts of their people if they were more grouped together. Her ever-present fear of future famine as well kept her well aware of just how much food was left in each of these riders' bowls. What would happen when holds were threaded, or weyrs failed? Telgar had been a brutal loss, and even without so much gone to thread, would they have been able to pull enough thin-spread resources to amass enough fighting wings anyway?

"The records say golds will often rise to mate more frequently during a pass, even as much as twice in a turn. I've hopes that Uridith begins to glow soon...we could use the numbers."

Lestenna nodded emphatically along with A'dras. "Exactly. Get them up and ready to take our place as thread thins our wings." It almost sounded cold, the way she put their potential and inevitable deaths, but it was simple truth, and no amount of sugar-coating or gentling could alter the nature of the beast. "I've read records of some weyrs having even riders share weyrs in times they were over-populated. Not as weyrmates, simply as...weyr-mates. Some of our larger ledges could certainly fit two greens, two blues, a green and a brown..." or more golds and bronzes of course, but who on Pern could force dragonets to hatch certain colors?

"I worry for those holds built or greatly expanded during this...long interval. Built quickly or cheaply, and nine tenths with wood. Some weyrs lack even stone weyrs for their riders, they've huts or wallows." She frowned sharply at the thought. "Thread is terrible, but some part of me doesn't wonder if it had a purpose. It certainly kept the world in check, balanced. Growing and dying at certain paces. It's no wonder this time that we're already losing so much." The woman clearly had no trouble in not shying from the slightly morbid. Still, she had the sense to let their talk turn lighter again a little.

"Having eggs on the sands would certainly keep their minds off other things. I think they get a bit rowdy when none are hardening, as if they think we only mind they follow the rules when hatchings are imminent." She chuckled then, perhaps thinking back on some antic of her own when she'd been in their shoes.

"I cannot imagine not having a sturdy cliff of stone or rock over my head come threadfall. I won't at all be surprised to see more refugee riders, nor will other weyrs, old weyrs from the first records of riders." Even now she could pick out a number of people in the dining halls that had transferred to High Reaches in the last month alone. "It's no different from mine and Uridith's situation, nor your own, I suspect." Riders moving out of weyrs that could not withstand the threat were some of them, and those riders who'd had no associated weyr, making a life in any number of other ways, were being driven back in droves by either danger or their dragons' urges.

"Life was here long before records of the first riders, so there must have been some way it all could survive thread. Grubs themselves, are...were...probably dependent on it. And what a loss to be without them now." How much had the ignorance of the Ninth Turn riders and AIVAS cost the people of today? By the time balance was found again, would it have cost more than it'd saved in the time between? The lady goldrider stuffed down the roiling anger that started to churn in her gut every time she thought about it.

And then the conversation shifted, and with it her mood.

Talk of hatchings always brought back memories of her own final one, and the joy of her first moment of knowing her dragon. It was the same with almost every rider, she assumed.

"Some eight turns ago now, for us." She couldn't help the smile that crept, awkward-looking as it was, over her lips. "In a weyr as different from High Reaches as they come." The memory was zipping through her mind's eye, and she motioned with a hand to A'dras. "And you and your bronze, Gareth, yes? A bit longer than we two I imagine." The statement was just that, not at all a jab or comment on his age, at least as far as could be told.

The goldrider was more than willing to let the conversation drift towards fonder memories and general chatter. Anger was fueling, was energizing, but also could be exhausting when aimless. She could no more berate or punish those of AIVAS that had causes the whole mess than she could scold her own great-granddam. The past had passed and now all there was was to try to make it to tomorrow as beat they could.

"Sea Wind Weyr," she answered, mind flicking back to that abandoned place for the first time in months. "It was small, barely worth a mark on a map. The far side of the southern continent from Monaco," she explained. "I left of my own choosing as well. We were...not a right fit there." Not once thread came at least, though her failure to put right the turmoil of the region still galled her. She would be saddened, but not particularly shocked to hear that the weyr no longer stood. It had been moments from collapse when she and her parents had flown from it all of a tenday after thread's return.

"Do you ever miss it? Monaco, I mean." Here felt so much righter to her than Sea Wind ever had, but it would be impolite to assume the same of A'dras.

((Sea Wind is made up lol. It was also an area with a lot of pirate/raider trouble, which contributed in her kind to the weyr's failure and her subsequent departure.))

As he shifted to regard those still scattered about the dining hall, her eyes followed. Beneath the lashes of lowered lids she watched, curious to see who, if anyone in particular, he was looking toward. No one, it seemed, but one was never certain. It was a bit of a relief to know he wasn't going begging with his eyes to be extracted from the conversation with her--nice to know she hadn't come off overly prodding or too firm in conviction. It was always important that she set an apropriate tone, especially with other metallic riders.

"Ha! Well I'd imagine so. Though to be honest, and speaking as one a bit younger...perhaps not a terribly large amount, but still...when I left Sea Wind I didn't have any urge to linger in the wilds. Oh, sure, there are lovely places out there, but a dragon's place is in the weyr, and a rider's is with their dragon. Uridith can't flame, but once thread came...and Sea Wind all but fell, well. She wanted to fight. If we'd stayed there it would have been the wrong sort of fighting though."

Being in a weyr just felt right. There was no other place that she and her gold fit so well. The weyrs and holds and fighting thread was how Pern had survived, had thrived, for ages. "It's nice that you were able to being along family. I couldn't leave mine either...of course not everyone was so lucky." It might sound cold-hearted, but it was the truth.

That was certainly aomething Leatenna would raise her glass to. If she had a glass on hand. The cant of her head in a nod was as close as she could cone sadly, for the moment. "The saviors of Pern," she hummed to herself at the thought, no pride or distaste in her voice. "I've no idea what will happen next. The closest I've found to anything like now in the records were the long intervals. People thinking thread was gone and done. The system began to break down then too, but not nearly to this degree. So many of our people have entirely scrapped all thought of dragons being weyr-bound, and holds tithing, and so many intricacies of weyr life...We would have lost more than lives without High Reaches. We would have lost our culture as well, and our means to go on."

She paused to nod at another passing rider, off to bed no doubt (or so she hopped, as she knew for a fact that that one had drills early in the morning). "Now they've all come clammoring for us to teach them, or as refugees like myself. If Pern survives this fall, and all the trouble I can only imagine is on the horizon, it'll be reborn in High Reaches' image, I've no doubt." If her tone hadn't remained so neutral and paced it would almost have sounded vaguely zealot-like in contents. It of course was not that she wished other weyrs to fail. Of course not. But they, High Reaches were the ones who were going to flourish if she had anything to say about it.

He was a nice enough sort, Lestenna decided. A bit...soft, perhaps, for what she felt the world had become and was becoming. Forgiving. On the right side, of course, though. "It very nearly did, when thread returned," She countered. "Dragons scattered to the winds, and cultural change aside. Without the system, some system, we won't last long enough to have to worry about culture. At least for a while I think, we need to find our balance and push forward. That sort of change is for intervals, not passes." It sounded harsh, but it was what she felt. Everyone here could be dead in a tenday, or in ten turns if the holds weren't brought to heel. Many, she was sure, would be.

"We never lost our purpose. People just grew bored of it," She bit back a scoff, mood definitely turned towards the sullen and darker half of her. "They wanted to go flitting about like candidates left standing the day after a hatching, like they'd no responsibilities. Our job was to stand ready, to be ready, at all."

Across the weyr her gold stirred from her doze, mentally probing to be sure her rider was alright. No doubt she'd felt the shift in her Lestenna's mood, and reached out to try to soothe. It worked, somewhat, and the rider sighed, a hand rising to card through her short-cropped hair. "Now they'll all come and have come seeking aid. Because they were not enough. Because they were not ready. Because they thought they knew what their lives were supposed to be. And because the weyrs let them." Them she blamed at least as much as the riders that had wanted to leave. They hadn't HAD to allow it.