The sun is bright over Aden Weyr. The skies are clear of Thread and all is right with the world. Rissa and Celinath are showing the weyrlings how to refill the firestone sacks that had been emptied in yesterday’s Fall. Rissa stands back and admires the young ones’ hard work.

Celinath is perched overhead on a ledge. She looks more brilliant than Rissa has ever seen her. Rissa thinks to herself that she must have oiled Celinath’s white hide really well the last time she had done it. How long ago had that been?

Just as Rissa realizes what is going on, Celinath bugles. Celinath is rising! Rissa looks up just in time to see her beautiful white dragon glide down to the herdbeast-packed hunting grounds.

Rissa runs as fast as her legs can carry her over to her dragon. She reaches the grounds just as Celinath pounces on her first buck. Rissa feels the overwhelming urge to tear into the animal’s soft flesh. She quickly remembers what Weyrwoman Carah had told her about flights and quickly regained control of Celinath forcing her to blood the buck. Rissa is in total harmony with her dragon. She can even feel the warm blood running down her throat.

Celinath flies up again preparing to make another kill, a herdbeast goes down. Celinath flips him over with expertise and prepares once again to eat from the belly. Rissa enforces her will on the blood thirsty Celinath. Celinath sinks her teeth in to the throat and drinks greedily. Rissa watches in awe as Celinath prepares to pounce on a third animal then suddenly veers off of the grounds shrieking defiantly.

Rissa is pulled out her body and into the air with passion driven Celinath. They are now one more than they have ever been before. Celinath/Rissa looks behind her to see five shapes behind her. Two are definitely blue, and one is brown. The fourth and fifth are too far away to tell. She calls back to the males in her sweetest voice egging them on, daring them to try to catch her, and taunting them for their weakness. Celinath/Rissa flies up into the clouds far above the weyr. She is relishing her new strength and flies up into the sunlight blinding her would be captors.

Thinking it’s time to have some fun with her pursuers, Celinath slides down beneath the small group of leaders turns on her back and flicks them with her long tail, and then drops out of their reach again. She toys with Blue Solath, Brown Grath, and Blue Adath. Turning her head back to laugh at them. Celinath does an aerial dance flying far ahead then diving down and flying behind her suitors thoroughly confusing them. Blue Adath can’t take the games anymore and decides to gracefully bow out. With him gone, the fifth dragon in the back takes his chance to move up. It’s Brown Etatoth.

With a powerful stroke of her wings, Celinath leaves the males behind. She soars upward until the clouds look like little wisps of smoke below. Reveling in her newfound strength, Celinath swoops back down to the ground. At the last minute a powerful downstroke of her wings sends her careening into the sky again. Circling faster and faster in the sky, Celinath’s white hide gleams in the sun. Suddenly tiring of amusing herself, she circles around to come up behind her pursuers. Realizing that there are only one blue and two browns left in the chase, Celinath bugles a challenge.

The males respond with new vigor. Celinath leads them in a sharp zigzag pattern across the sky. Circling back on herself, the males are forced to careen off their paths to avoid a collision. Celinath shrieks as a blue shape crosses her line of sight. Suddenly stopping mid-air and changing her direction, Celinath watches smugly as the males strain to get back in line. Leading them higher and higher into the chilly air, Celinath is prepared to wear them all out. Only the best is worthy of her.

Diving back toward the ground, she watches over her shoulder as the males follow. Suddenly changing direction, she darts straight between blue Solath and brown Grath. The two males knock into each other and are thrown off balance. Losing interest in the plunging males, Celinath spots brown Etatoth above her. Rising quickly, she tauntingly runs a wingtip along the soft hide of the brown’s belly. Before she can sneak away, the brown’s wings close and he plummets straight on top of her. His strong talons wrap around her hindlegs and his tail twines tightly to hers. He spreads his wings open wide to check their descent and the white and brown float slowly back to the earth.

Rissa is jolted back into her own body. The room spins when she opens her eyes and she quickly closes them again. Suddenly she feels gentle arms supporting her. Opening her eyes, she finds herself face to face with the most beautiful man she’s ever seen. His eyes are crystal blue and his pale face is flushed. His black hair is tousled and unable to restrain herself, she reaches up and pushes a strand out of his eyes. Rissa feels a smile caress her lips as she whispers the man’s name. “D’zren..” D’zren’s face breaks into a tender smile as he realizes that she is finally his. Rissa clutches his arms tightly as D’zren lifts her up and carries her up a short flight of stairs to his weyr. They both sink onto the soft bed rushes and within minutes have given in completely to the dragon-induced passion.