At the age of 24, she is one of Zekira's quickest-to-advance Healers. Born into quite a lot of money, Amaranth has always been rather pampered, however she has never taken her family wealth for granted.
Her mother Mirage takes great pride in her daughter, and has given her the chance to study medicine with as many different healers and breeders as possible. Amaranth's basic training in medicine has come from Lady Morgontain, one of the most venerated of House Paveh's inhabitants.
Devoted to her work, yet enjoying her time away from study, Amaranth has often been seen traipsing around at parties with Morgontain or her mother. She is learning the "Breeder's Eye" from Morgontain, that allows her to judge the genetics of those nearby for how well they might work with a chosen partner.
From her earliest years, Amaranth has had an ability which both her parents share, that of mind stunning. She can use it but rarely does so -- only in dire circumstances would she even think about it. More often than not, however, she finds herself daydreaming -- not realizing that this too is a power she has, of Out-of-Body vision. She will learn to control these, and other powers, when she has the time.
"You must be patient, Am. It will do what you want it to. Coax it out. Gently."
Amaranth used one hand on a tool which had been made for surgery, the other held a sample of tissue steady. The tool impacted the skin cells, and injected its dyed contents.
"Ah! There! I did it!" Amaranth said gleefully. She watched under the lens as the cells adopted the color of the dye, and showed where a certain imperfection lay. "And now I can see the damage. It's so obvious now." She stuck her tongue into the corner of her mouth, and made a tiny motion with her tool-holding hand. A little plume of smoke, and the cells were cauterized together.
"You have it now," Morgontain assured her student. One of her youngest little prodigies, and one of her best friends, Amaranth looked up from the microscope and beamed with pride. Her mother's beautiful features showed so well in this dear child. Her wild hair and her fringed tail -- well, and her hooved feet, too -- were the only indications that Mirage hadn't just turned lavender. "Let us take a break, my dear. My old eyes are tired."
Amaranth helped Morgontain to a soft chair in the next room, while the servants and other students cleaned up the lab. "So... Now that you know how to recognize and cauterize a wound, what would you say about celebrating? You've earned it." Morgontain suggested. Though she was old, the woman was fairly spry. Of course, she also hid a secret addiction to pain killing medicine from her prized student, from everyone... She merely seemed much too young to be so old.
"I'd love to. Do you have a place in mind?" Amaranth said, her tail curled around her elegantly hooved feet. "Or should I find one of my mother's wines and sneak it in here?"
"Oh, no, no," Morgontain laughed, waving her orange-skinned hand in the air. "I've an invitation to a party we simply must attend."
"You were going anyway!" Amaranth exclaimed with a laugh. "You were just looking for an excuse?"
"To take you along? Any time. You should work for your rewards, my sweet child. You earn them and the reward tastes much better."
The rest of the afternoon was spent collecting clothing and the right accessories to apply, for the party.
***
Amaranth swept her eyes around the patio.This was a borderland party, someone's little Hold out in the middle of nowhere. But it was owned by someone important (at least according to Morgontain, it was a woman by the name of Jherita), and she insisted that they also be on the look out for good breeding stock. So many Zekiran women were infertile nowadays, and an increasing number of the men as well, and the Breeders were always welcome to provide hints for the next generation. If one couple couldn't bear, it was always hoped that one member of that couple might... Amaranth gazed at the rocky desert, and the people around her with a bit of boredom.
"Morgontain, are you sure this party is really a Party?" Amaranth quietly moaned. She swished her wine around in its glass, and glanced back up at the older woman.
"It's what you make it, my dearest," Morgontain suggested. "Ah, look. didn't we know those boys over there? The riders?"
Amaranth turned her violet-green eyes up to the mesa where two brown dragons rested. They were not from this world, they were ... "Pretty," she said. Morgontain chuckled, and Amaranth huffed, "I mean their dragons!"
She stomped away, in the direction of the dragons. But before getting there, she ran into one of their riders. H'sh and O'sh Chanay were sons of a very famous and important woman. Though Amaranth had never met her, Iolen Chanay was well known. Her sons, not so much.
They were handsome, both of them seemed somewhat exotic. It looked as though they had been in disguise -- for O'sh's tall horns seemed to 'reappear' when he left the side of his dragon. His brother H'sh had littler horns, small attractive ones, Amaranth thought.
She wondered absently if this was the Breeder's Eye speaking up? It would be a fine thing to see how he and her could get together. As the meeker H'sh removed his riding gloves Amaranth noticed that he had hooved hands, like her hooved feet. Intrigued, she placed herself near them and offered both a mug to drink. H'sh attempted to deny it, using a muttering "I can't hold this properly..."
So Amaranth merely held it FOR him. The blush on the dark-skinned brother was apparent, even though the charcoal-shade of his face. It seemed that he was a bit taken aback by the healer's closeness. She was oblivious to it, herself.
Of course, Amaranth's attraction to H'sh was more... Shall we say "biological?" She leaned in to the poor rider and whispered, "I like your hooves. They're strong and hard..."
Suddenly, Amaranth looked into H'sh's pale -- and very embarrassed -- eyes. "I'm so sorry -- Um," she stammered. From across the open scrub-desert party plain, Morgontain watched her young companion get all flustered. To his credit, the brown rider held his ground. Even though it was obvious that Amaranth was coming on to him far more strongly than even a weyr-born companion might. Surely he'd been among baudy women at Ryslen?
But this was something new. Morgontain saw one of her peers among those present, Vanya who looked both miserable and utterly appropriate here. She sauntered toward him, and he greeted her with a wide, bold grin. "Morgontain, she's going to mount him if you don't do something." Vanya said, looking over the tall orange-skinned healer's shoulder. "I can smell her pheremones from here."
"Can you." Morgontain said, looking up at the dark Breeder. "I'm ever so impressed. I am surprised that you haven't begun fighting him for her attentions."
Vanya sighed and handed Morgontain his drink. "I will take care of her," he said. Morgontain quickly followed the mildly insane healer.
"I do think you ought to leave her be," Morgontain suggested, tugging on the tall man's robe. He pulled up short, that robe brushing the sand by his feet. "She will get over her impulse soon enough."
"Yes, my dear Morgontain, but only after she's pulled that poor boy down with her and conceives..."
With a bit of shock, Morgontain watched Amaranth apologize to H'sh and again get just-too-close to him. She was posturing in ways that said she was ... well, horny. Too horny. "I repeat, I'm surprised you haven't started fighting for her..."
With a dramatic smile, Vanya turned and escorted himself over to the pair. H'sh gave him a pleading look, weakly raising his thick stubby fingers in a greeting. Amaranth didn't even notice the man's arrival. Vanya gently took Amaranth's drink out of her pale hands, startling her.
"I think it would be best if you slept this off," Vanya said, "Alone."
Suddenly, just as suddenly as the minute before, Amaranth took in a sharp breath and turned her attention from H'sh to Vanya. And again, her amazed apology (a squeaky "I've done it again, haven't I?") came just slightly before a hasty retreat into the brightly lit party house nearby.
Vanya smirked at H'sh, "She'll want to arrange something more formal, later... In fact I would second that, breeder-bait." He swished away, and H'sh's brown dragon communicated something about Vanya's blue dragon, Ruarth, snickering fiercely in the background of the dragon-minds.
***
Amaranth paced about the wood-paneled room, fiercely punctuating the air with her sharp fingers as she angrily spoke to herself. "Stupid, arrogant, ignorant, idiotic, self-centered genetic mistake!" She pounded on her own abdomen, snarling, "why can't you be normal like other women? Why do you have to send me into idiotic fits of lust every year?! Why!" She fumed and then plopped with a huff into one of the soft chairs in the room. It was the same color as her skin, with little nubs of grey-black texturing it. She felt every one of the little bips because her skin was overreacting to everything. The wine she'd been drinking didn't help her state any. And if Vanya came walking in, she wasn't sure she'd be able to control herself.
He'd been the one to explain her "condition", her mother had it and many in both their lines had a generous number of children because of it.
"But why ME?!" She wailed, grimacing. Curled into a ball, Amaranth's black hair slid down around her shoulders and her tail twitched around her neck. She sensed Vanya long before she heard him open the door to the room and slip inside. "Go away." She muttered, muffled. Instead of obeying her, her elder healer instructor knelt beside the anguished girl and almost -- almost touched her hair. Instead, she felt his hand hesitate and then saw his dark fingers wrap around the arm of the chair.
"Amaranth, it will pass. So you should sleep. There are rooms here. This one will do fine. If you want to have a guard I will do it."
Right about then, his scent -- the overwhelming scent of a fully-compatable and very fertile male -- came to Amaranth, and her poor conscious mind lost its contact with reality again. Three days a year, her moment of fertility -- her heat, as Vanya would tactlessly call it -- would appear. And for three days she would stalk a mate. So far, she had only had five such heats. But her mother promised her they would get more entertaining as she grew older.
In all five of those cases, she wore out her partner long before she realized they were almost completely infertile. Poor saps never knew what hit them. But then again, she got lucky. She had no time for a child, not even with her family wealth. She was a healer in training, a young Breeder. She would have to prove herself on those grounds before she herself could become a parent.
But when she looked at the vibrant blue of her teacher's eyes, she simply purred out, "why don't you stay with me?"
Vanya's smile took Amaranth off guard. "Because my sweet young breeder, I already have one tactical error because of this condition, I'm not supposed to have another. Later perhaps, when you're older we might arrange something..." He ran his fingers through her hair, stood, and locked the door on the way out.
With a sigh of relief, and a wish that he'd have stayed, Amaranth cried herself to sleep.
***
What happens next?