The rain slapped Choron in the face as he and Hope pelted down the muddy trail. It was growing increasingly slippery, he felt the gelding's feet slide more that once underneath him. The prospect of loosing his one legitamate means of support is what prompted Choron to stop for the evening. Hope's Run Out may not have been the best runner on the circut, or the prettiest, but he'd won his fair share of backalley races to leave his jockey with a few spare marks here and there.

They found a cavern large enough for man and beast to room in until the storm past, probably longer as Choron had heard of an impending Threadfall over the area sometime the next day. "Well, we'll see what it's like in the morning, eh boy?" The fleabitten gelding whuffled as Choron rubbed him off with a thread-bare cloth and brushed him down.

A few moments excursion out into the storm and Choron returned with an armload of wild sweetgrass to supplement his runner's ration of stolen oats. He himself had no supper, but he'd eaten well before the last hold had noticed their stores slowly dwindling and rooted him out. This was why they had been running, hellbent for leather down a dangerously slick slope in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Needless to say, he wasn't welcome back that direction any more. Hope whinnied and tugged at his tether, leaning toward Choron. "It's alright, boy. Lightning won't hurt you, see? It's kind of pretty when you watch it." The runner was terrified of thunder and lightning and still kept straining toward it's jockey, as if pleading for release. "No, no...we're staying put for the evening. Thread might fall tomorrow, and the last thing I need is to loose you to some nasty skyborne threat."

He tightened the rope that restrained the runner before banking the fire, unrolling his blankets and settling down for the night. Hope too settled down once the worst of the thunder stopped. The rain continued to patter down throughout the night, muddying the trails even more and flooding a few of the low-lying ones. Choron woke once, early in the morning to find the front half of their cavern was flooded. He untied Hope and retreated further back where it was colder but drier.

A beastly scream of fear awoke him the next morning. Choron leapt up and saw Hope cowering at the back of the cavern, his tether long since broken. "Whoa, easy there Hope..." He held up his hands and approached the frightened runner slowly, seeing the whites of the beast's eyes. Outside came a dragonish trumpet, followed by the bass thunder of many more. "Fardling dragons..." Choron muttered under his breath, but felt his heart suddenly leapt with uncharacteristic joy.

Something from his childhood sparked the life-long longing in his soul, to be a dragonrider and fly through the sky on the back of one of those mightly winged beasts. He remembered his father saying, in one of the moments he was not beating the young boy into the dirt, "Pern's finest, boy. Great beasts they are...'course you'll never be one of 'em. You're nothing, boy, you'll never be nothing more'n a stablehand..." The voice faded off as a burning resentment rose up to smother the longing. "Stupid old man, I'll show him...we'll go to the weyr once the Thread stops..." He'd managed to soothe Hope long enough to loop the blinders he carried around for the runner, preventing him from seeing the Thread falling and the dragons rising to meet it.

True to his word, the moment Thread moved on and ground crews dissappeared, Choron saddled up Hope and pelted off for the closest weyr, Tiynarea. He found his welcome less than warm. On the way in, Choron noticed a small side room with a hearth covered in sand and no doubt warming eggs. He approached eagerly and dug around for two. They promptly began to tremble once he touched them and hatched simultaneously, yeilding an small green and a somewhat bigger bronze. The green bared her fangs in what was undoubtable a sneer, while the bronze flapped his drying wings in a command for food. "You will be Sneer, milady," Choron said to the green, and to the bronze, "you can be Scald."

Quickly feeding and pocketing the flits, Choron stepped out the door, looked right and left and took off toward what he thought was the sands. On the way, he noticed a large and unsettlingly familiar man eyeing him from the entrance. He quickened his pace but was soon aprehended.

"I know this lad, he was busy raiding my hold las' I saw him!" a portly man known as Pantoc and steward of a hold Choron had lived off of for several sevendays. He had grabbed him by the arm as soon as he recognized who he was and attempted to haul him off. A pair of dragonriders had stopped him. "Are you sure this is the boy?" one said, a man who had introduced himself as J'ril. His black dragon watched Choron curiously. This boy interests me, J'ril. I think he may be good for the clutch on the sands...

"We'll be lucky if we get him from this man, Delduwath" J'ril responded. "Yes, I'm bloody well sure! Saw his ruddy face duckin' round corners runnin' from me or someone else!" The steward still did no release his vicelike grip from Choron's arm. "No! I'll not be caught by this fool." As if in response to his anguished thought, Sneer and Scald popped from his pocket and flapped their sharp little wings in the man's face. He promptly let go to fend them off, giving the smaller Choron time to dart under his flailing arms and take off.

He didn't know how long he ran for, he stopped when he came upon a barren and chilly hallway that ended in two large, heavy doors. Through them he ducked with Sneer and Scald hot on his heels. Heaving all of his weight against them, he forced them shut and slumped to the floor. After regaining his breath, he started to notice the clammy cold that filled his lungs, the raw and open hurt that filled the room to the brim. It broke through to even his empty heart, a familiar feeling of what could only be abandonment.

Vaguely, he sensed three inhabitants at the back of the room. Rising cautiously, Choron stepped closer. From the dark glowed three sets of pale grey eyes which belonged to three dragons, all hunkered together. Two greens and a blue eyed him suspiciously before one spoke.

What do you want?

The voice was cold, and filled with many layers of hate, madness and a deep, never-ending sadness. It made Choron want to weep at the sound of it. "I...I was...why are you here, all alone?" he asked. The green growled softly and lifted her heavy head to look him in the eye. I am here because someone I thought loved me, left me. Abandoned me to the lonely, empty world. Why are you here? It occured to Choron, that was also why he was there.

"For the same reason." he replied quietly.