#one of the fascinating things that Todd entirely skipped over was the implications of abnormally low dragon populations

[silverstoryteller]

Drabbles, pt. 8

So I have a bunch of, more or less random, 100-word snippets from various works that I figured I’d go ahead and post rather than letting them sit on my hard drive, No, they don’t necessarily all work as independent drabbles, but if you’re interested in me expanding on some of them, drop me an ask.

Dragonriders of Pern 3rd Pass AU-- basically fixing some of the parts I had issues with in the original books and exploring missed opportunities

One day, Kindan had asked his father where he and Dask were going, and Danil had answered, “A mating run.” 

“What’s that?” he had asked, and Danil’s response had been to ruffle his hair affectionately. 

When pressed, he said, “You’ll understand when you’re older.” These trips were uncommon, but not unheard of to Kindan, and as he did get older, he did gain a better understanding of them. Dask had even won one of those runs, something which Kindan would realize much later was an unusual occurrence—a brown outrunning the bronzes for a queen. Something to be proud of.

Sometimes, Kindan had been told, a dragonet would hatch and be unable to find a suitable bond. Nobody was quite sure why—whether it was a flaw in the dragonet or the presented candidates. It was a sad, if rare, occurrence. But ‘sometimes’ was rapidly becoming an eventuality. 

As the Pass crept closer, dragon clutches grew larger while candidate classes withered. There were simply too few children of the right age; their generation had been hit hardest by the plague fourteen turns ago, and expanding acceptable candidate age ranges could only do so much. Keens sounded at every other Hatching.

Of course she was only hours away from leaving the Weyr when the clutch began to hatch. Lorana was caught between exasperation and excitement. Did she truly want a dragon? Was she willing to miss the chance to watch a Hatching?

 …Would she be putting the hatchlings in danger if she stayed? 

Salina found her before she could make a decision, and the Weyrwoman would brook no argument. Bemused, she found herself ushered off to stand with several other girls around Breth’s queen egg. The other girls were ignored, for Lorana discovered something much more interesting. 

The eggs were talking!

There was no fixing this. Everyone said it was bad when a person lost their dragon, but nothing Lorana had ever heard conveyed the sheer horror of the gaping wound in her soul. She wasn’t sure it was possible to describe it to someone who hadn’t lived through it. 

She couldn’t help resenting her friends for the way they blithely assumed she could Impress another dragon. As if it was that easy to get over the grief of losing Arith. She wasn’t ready to be so close to another dragon; she didn’t think she ever would. The others didn’t understand.