To this end, one of their earlier members, Ilyana Mason Sanger, has assisted in developing a device which allows them to move through the fabric of space and time. With a device quite like this, she freed herself and her father Istvan from a desolate series of worlds that he could not get out of himself.
Descendants of Ilyana run largely to the Fey and Japanese portions of the world. Istvan has many other children, both human and feline, so his bloodline is strong all around the world, and coincides directly with the Sengihr line of Pern and Zekira.
Bear that in mind. They are different, yet they are remarkably similar to one another, in any world...
The recordskeeper of Ryslen Weyr nodded, his eyes wide and round. The pair of people in this peculiar weyr made him very nervous. He felt like he was an intruder, even though they were visiting the Weyr from ... 'somewhere else'. They lay claim and seemed to have marked their territory somehow.
Whether it was by scent, telepathic urges, or some other stranger means, the Journeyman Harper wasn't sure, but he wanted to get their information and get out while he still had his skin.
Their skin bothered the young man too. For the boy Ivo (hardly a boy, he had to be in his late teen turns, at least) had extremely dark brown skin with pale markings over his eyebrows, they might be birthmarks or scars, but something told the Harper they were perfectly natural and there were more of them on Ivo than he could see. The attractive girl, Shezumi, with much lighter skin, had a beautiful golden dragon tattooed on her right arm -- but this dragon had no wings, and it was scaled rather than normal with hide.
The pair claimed to be related. With an unsure nod, the Harper wrote that down. How this pair could possibly be related was beyond him.
"No really," Shezumi said, with a polite smile. Her small lips went into a slight smirk, and her perfect golden eyebrows flickered into a gloating arc. "My father is Toro, son of Moira, who is Ilyana's daughter, who is Istvan and Nadine's child." She turned and gently indicated her 'relative' Ivo. "Ivo is the son of Sable, son of Zoan, son of Simon, who is Istvan and Cynthia's child."
"One of them," muttered Ivo.
"Yes." Shezumi grinned. She was absolutely the most beautiful girl ever born, her eyes a jade color that bordered between gold and slate, with her moods. Her hair spun sunlight the shade of a Queen rising to mate, long and straight, with a slight widows peak upon the forehead. Ah! The Harper realized that was their one similarity: Ivo's strangely cut black and yellow hair also did the same thing over the markings on his forehead.
Ivo was attractive in a way, yet strangely frightening at the same time. The Journeyman thought that perhaps if he were a woman, he'd be falling head over heels for him, but he didn't swing that way, so his opinion rested at 'oddly handsome'. Ivo's nose was too strong, the lines in his face too deep, for him to be soft in any way, the pale tips of his hair drooped over his forehead while the rich black swept back fairly short except for a thin tail down to his back.
Both of them carried themselves with a style that the Harper hardly saw in even the most high-born Holder. With grace, they moved around the smallish weyr, and with a power behind every step, Shezumi examined their surroundings.
"We have not been here very long," she commented, almost reading the Harper's mind. "And we wish to stay to see the dragons hatching. As you can see, I am ... Quite the fan of dragon kind."
Ivo let off a sinister laugh, stifling it when the Harper looked at him. Suddenly Shezumi giggled.
"Um..." Said the Harper.
"Sorry," Ivo said, "that was very rude. Shezumi, behave yourself."
"Me?" She said, half insulted and half joking. Her eyes had turned a vibrant golden shade. Ivo hissed at her, very ... catlike. In fact, it seemed that his teeth (brilliant, white teeth) had points to the canines. The spots over his eyebrows darkened into a sort of brassy shade, while he did so, and soon the Harper was standing between ...
Well, he was standing between a pair of animals. Ivo stood with his hair bristling over a muzzle and a lashing tail, while Shezumi -- the girl was impossible to describe. She had a long muzzle, golden, with glittering eyes and scales along her long sinuous body.
The Harper fainted.
"He's coming round," Ivo said. Both of them had exotic accents, though of course the Harper had no way of knowing that Shezumi's was Chinese, and Ivo's was Hindic. But he also had no way of explaining why he was on the floor and being 'tended' to by the pair.
Ah. That 'animal' thing. He blinked, and his heart raced. "I've got to be going now--" he said, panicked.
"Now now, relax..." Ivo said, soothingly sinister. "No one will hurt you. We just sometimes ... argue."
"But you turned into a feline!" The Harper shouted. "And she -- I don't know WHAT that was!"
"Silly," Shezumi purred, "a dragon, of course."
Biting his lip, hard, the Harper maintained and remained awake. It was VERY difficult. He could focus on the pain. Not the information.
"That's no dragon," the Harper said, simply. "Dragons aren't like that. That was ... more like a tunnel snake or ... something."
"How insulting," Shezumi said, turning and obviously not wanting to continue speaking with the man. "Ivo, now what was it you were saying about the cheetahs?"
Shaking his head a bit, Ivo looked at his distant kin and smiled. His fangs were still present. "Yeah. This record here says," he pointed at an old book, something that the Harper thought he'd possibly seen or heard of having come from ... Landing?! It was a bound book, and those were extraordinarily rare these days, what with Thread destroying the trees and all. Ivo continued when he found the right page, with a picture on it. "That the cheetahs were treated with Metasynth and let loose, because they became uncontrollably violent. But, you know and I know that cheetahs aren't violent. They're..."
"Chickenshit?" Said Shezumi, with a grin.
"That's the word," Ivo agreed, laughing. "No cheetah could work up enough gall to attack anyone, they'd rather run. Like Istvan, you know?"
"He survived long enough to sire 'how' many children?" Shezumi pointed out, and they continued to speak as if the Harper wasn't there. When he started creeping out of the weyr, both Shezumi and Ivo lept bodily to the doorway and prevented him from exiting.
"Ah ah!" Shezumi said, waving her long finger in the air, "that isn't nice. You haven't asked any proper questions yet."
Standing and swaying with more doubt than ever as to the sanity of his company, the Harper looked at his notebook. "Well... Um, you're how old?"
"Fourteen," said Shezumi, and the Harper did a double take. She was more mature in body than most adult women, and would be more shapely than all of the ones he'd ever seen.
"Eighteen," replied Ivo, when it looked like the Harper could write and concentrate again. "But we've both been through time, too, so --"
"Don't complicate things," Shezumi spat.
"Oh, please--" Ivo said, growling.
"Stop, please don't do that -- that thing again!" Cried the Harper. "I don't think I can take that again..."
Ivo laughed. He slowly sat upon the floor, but while he did so, he lost his 'human' appearance, and gained fur and a tail... Spotted all over, darkly so. Long 'tear' marks along where the lines on his face would be marked him as a cheetah. His dark skin made the spots hard to see. White tipped tail wrapped around his big paws, waving gently.
Shezumi scratched Ivo-cat's head, and he purred with delight. His blue eyes had slitted pupils, the Harper noticed. They might have been that way all along.
"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Shezumi said, "I shall spare you the effort of watching me. Most people run away screaming, you know. Fainting isn't much of a survival trait."
With a distinctly furry voice, oddly inhuman, Ivo said, "it usually gets you eaten." He licked his chops. Shezumi smacked him on the back of his head, and Ivo began purring even harder.
"Oh, Ivo, you are SO like Istvan..." She said. "Now be nice. I want to see the rest of the Weyr now. If I may? Please?" Shezumi blinked and her pale lashes complimented her golden-green eyes. Something charged the air between she and the Harper. And suddenly he had no choice whatsoever but to obey the dragon-magic she was throwing at him.
"Play nice," Ivo said, lounging on the cot in the dark room, "and bring him back to me. I think I want to see what makes him work."
"You've got all you need to study there, Ivo," Shezumi said, "their medical records are sadly incomplete though."
"Think I didn't notice that?" Ivo said, and went back to reading.
