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A long, catlike stretch and yawn put her in slightly better spirits. She was still insanely aroused, and knew better than to think that she could go outside and talk to some of the stragglers at the party.
She stood at the square window of this small 'crash room' she'd found, looking outside at the deep velvet black of the sky. It was paired with a haze from Reant in the distance, but the party lights had all been dimmed down to mere firefly-lights. Bulbs hung cold and dark along lines which several hours before had been bright with color, loud with people yammering and drinking and dancing to the badly performed but fun music.
"My brother really needs to learn how to play an instrument properly," she muttered to herself. It was true, her half-brother Juvon had found himself taken up with a small band, but they allowed him to play WITH them. Instead of just letting him dance and watch. He well and truly stank at performance of any other sort. With a tiny grin, she thought, 'well, not 'every' kind of performance...' and with an evil giggle -- Amaranth tried to rouse herself from the depths of this unusually sharp sexual morass she was in.
It wasn't working very well. She kept thinking about H'sh, his lovely little pointed horns and the way they joined his skull, skin bunched up around their bases. She thought about his embarrassment, at having been accosted at a party he'd barely been invited to, and sighed deeply.
Perhaps she was in on it anyway. Morgontain knew that she had hyperfertility. Perhaps the older woman was jealous of it? "Hah!" Amaranth laughed out loud, "she's been used by all the breeders alive today for genetic stock, how could she possibly be jealous of me and my stupid condition?"
She slumped against the wall, looking out still. The dragons were still up there, though she couldn't see their colors. Merely their gigantic outlines. Their high crests were a mark of Ryslen, even Amaranth knew that much. Two fine dragons -- apparently had come from but one egg. That was an odd occurance indeed! See, she DID pay attention to his words when H'sh was attempting to stop her from mounting him...
She snickered. Amaranth realized that she was not tired, and there weren't enough people outside to really cause her trouble. She glanced at the locked door behind her, wondered if there really was someone guarding it as Vanya insisted. She felt out a little with her mind powers, found no one. She slid the window open enough to pass through, there was no screen thankfully. Her hooved feet found the solid but dusty ground below the window, and her tail escaped last.
Amaranth walked alone for half an hour, just gliding along the trail up to the dragons mesa. The landing spot was convienent, but it was usually treated as a party locale moreso than the lowlying area around the house. That much was obvious from the lanterns and string lights that decorated the area. The dragons had outright crushed a number of them, and slid others out of their way so they could sleep properly.
"Aren't you cold out here?" She asked one, she didn't know whose it was. The greyish-yellow hide of the dragon shimmered in the star light, as the dragon breathed, but it did not answer her.
Since the aliens had come back, and dragons had been created to fight them, Amaranth knew that some of her favorite people might be riding dragons and never coming back. Some were sent off-world, to other places only reachable BY dragon, where they bonded and returned. Some just didn't return.
Amaranth stood up at the edge of the mesa and looked into the darkness. Earlier in the day she had seen the lay of the land here. It was solidly packed clay-dirt, but dry and covered with only the poorest of plant life. There were many nooks and gullies, washes which obviously had been dry for more than a century before anyone had even seen them.
"If I had a dragon, I might bring them here. It's nice and warm. They don't need hardly any cover, except if a sandstorm came..." She said to herself. "Ohh, I wish this damnable urge to procreate would do me a favor and disappear..."
"I would want to spend even one moment of my life that way," Said a woman's voice, behind Amaranth, making her jump and squeal. It was Lady Breeder Jherita, the owner of the land and the hostess of the party. She was apparently still up and tending to those who were about in the house. Amaranth calmed herself, and tilted her head.
"Why, Lady? I mean, you're a breeder."
"But I'm infertile, I'm afraid. I've never born my own child. And I've too much of a disability running through my genes to make a good subject for even the best Genetic engineer." The pale blue-skinned woman had a gently sad look upon her face. She must have been about the same age as Morgontain, only she wore it with more grace and fewer scars. Her orangey-pink hair was piled high around her head in complex braids, and bobbed low toward her waist as she walked closer to Amaranth. "But you, my dear, you have so much potential. You've not had your first born yet?"
Amaranth shook her head. "Morgontain says I'm still too young to really bear properly."
Jherita looked the younger woman over and clicked her tongue, "and you're so slender too... You might have difficult births when you do bear, young Breeder."
Amaranth took in a breath, and examined her narrow hips. "Do you think so? I don't know what I'd do then... What ... Hmn..." Jherita successfully distracted Amaranth from thinking too hard about her condition, until the light of dawn began to brighten the sky.
Jherita finally yawned and laughed, "It will be time for me to send my guests home. You may stay and sleep, if you wish. Did you bring that frightening breeder with you?"
"Vanya?" Amaranth smirked, "no, he apparently got dragged here by my brother Juvon and his friends. He's still here?"
"Though he came and went all night, he's there now guarding your door, sound asleep." Jherita smiled and hooked her arm through Amaranth's. They stepped down from the mesa and gently woke some of the guests. Most members of this party did not have what one could call "full time jobs", they worked when they needed to, or when the opportunity arose, such as breeders and Animal masters, and the rare Dragon Masters who had begun to grace parties now.
When they got to the slumbering Chanay brothers, both of them propped up against a couch cushion and pillows between them, Amaranth looked at H'sh and purred to herself. She whispered to Jherita, "he's on my to-do list," and giggled as the older breeder blushed with a laugh held-in.
Amaranth woke O'sh first, though. The bolder and louder, and slightly less desirable brother shook his head and his large horns tossed in the air. He was obviously careful not to hit things with them. His dragon on the mesa woke with him. Then, H'sh started to groggily rise.
"I'm so very sorry about last night," Amaranth stated, carefully avoiding the rider's eyes. She knew if she looked into them she would fall right back into heat. "But I do still think that you and I might get together at some ... future date. I --" Amaranth realized that she hadn't taken any of her business cards, "I will be working with Morgontain, until I have my own practice."
"She's a very respectable breeder," H'sh said, as he brushed the tangles out of his short hair, smoothing it down with his hooved fingers. "And I expect that you are as well... Just a bit... um, aggressive?"
Amaranth laughed, and obviously that had an effect on the rider. He smiled broadly, and added, "I accept your apology, my Lady Breeder, and ... I can't refuse your contract. I ... hardly refused your requests. It certainly isn't that I didn't WANT to --"
"Brother, come bring the girl out and see what my Wim has to say..." O'sh announced from the glass wall near the patio. The dragons had come down from the mesa and were delicately striding through the flats toward the house.
"Oh so now I'm 'the girl'..." Amaranth mock-glared at O'sh. "I happen to be a High Holder, you know... AND a Breeder."
O'sh took it in stride, "Apparently so," he smirked at them, and while his brother blushed and glared at him, Amaranth laughed again.
"Why do they need to see me? I was up there with them last night, and they said nothing." Amaranth watched the rusty-red dragons approach. Then, the bigger of the pair, apparently belonging to O'sh, began snuffling at Amaranth. His slightly smaller twin did the same and they conferred.
"Because they believe that you ought to become a rider." O'sh announced. "And Ryslen has a clutch which apparently is a strong one. We could take you there, if you want to go."
Amaranth's thin black eyebrows shot up, and her head swam a bit. ".... Really? Me? I joked about it last night, but ... Do they really think I would?"
"I think so," H'sh said, quietly. His honest statement, and his gaze of pure adoration told Amaranth more than his loudmouthed brother ever could.
"Then I'd like that. But I will need to continue my Breeding work." She huffed. "How could I do that?"
"You can come back here no later than you'd have gone, these dragons aren't found on Zekira you know." O'sh said, patting the wide dark muzzle of his dragon. "We travel back and forth and through time as well as space. It's not hard to learn, and well, frankly if you're half the breeder that you seem to be you're far smarter than either my brother or myself, so it won't be so hard to learn."
"Thank you," Amaranth said, almost letting a laugh out. She was more intelligent than they, perhaps because of her parentage, but more likely because she'd been altered in the womb by Morgontain. "And I accept. I wonder... Everyone is getting rides home the normal way, by Steed or carriage..."
While it was normally O'sh's domain to transport and know where everything is, H'sh bowed deeply and said, "I would be honored if you would allow Wavkokith and I to escort you home."
"I shall. But hold on for just a bit, and I'll come back out. I need to thank our hostess properly." She darted back into the house, and caught up with Jherita. Morgontain had left hours before, apparently in the company of another old friend, and since Amaranth had been going so nicely along with her own interests she decided that the girl could handle getting home on her own. How sweet, Amaranth thought. Jherita turned at the gentle, "ahem."
"Yes, my dear?" Jherita asked, and one of her servants helped yet another party goer to their carriage.
"I'd like to know something, do you know if this land nearby is Held by anyone?" Amaranth waved her arm at the vastness of the scrub plain.
"Oh, dear, no. My homestead is the last for hundreds of miles until you reach T'dal. It's in the middle of nowhere, of course." She nodded to puncutate this. "Why?"
"Wellllll then." Amaranth indicated that she might want to buy some of that land, Jherita told her it was 'less than dirt cheap', because there was next to no dirt ON the land. "So much the better!" Amaranth cheerfully clapped, and then gave Jherita a kiss on each cheek before leaving.
The riders had harnessed up their dragons, and waited for Amaranth's return. H'sh held out his hand, gloved again, and then turned to put his warmly lined jacket around Amaranth's shoulders. "You'll be needing this. It's going to be chilly flying about. So... Where are we going?"
"First to my home in Keri," Amaranth said, "and then to Ryslen!"
Grinning, Amaranth tucked that information away. She'd become rich, of course. But then again, she was able to do that anyway. What she wasn't really sure of, was whether she was going to bond at this wonderful hatching. Her family insisted it was proper for her to expect a good result - Morgontain had not been in the slightest surprised when she discovered her prize student had skipped out with a note to the effect that she'd be back 'sooner than you think' with a dragon.
The confidence that Amaranth brought with her to the red sands of Ryslen might have made some people think she was rather egocentric, but she wasn't anything of the sort. She merely worked as hard as she could, to make herself able enough to ride and work with a dragon.
And as the eggs were shaking on the sands, and the candidates were finally allowed to get close enough to them to touch them, she felt all the wonder and joy of the first bonding go on beside her. She barely had time to think about it, when others started. And what a surprise, Alchemy bonded a strong large bronze. She knew that a bronze was the finest male that might come from these sands, though someone said something about the sire being different enough... She wasn't sure if that meant a night-bronze was better, or equal to, or just what?
But all of those thoughts evaporated when the big golden queen Arosambyth got up and exposed her chosen 'queen' egg. Was it really a golden dragonet within? Amaranth had been told that gold eggs hatched gold queens, not pale creamy eggs. But this one shook and opened up, showing off a gold nose and head that people cheered at. Then, as her wings and rear end were exposed, the dark color made everyone (except perhaps one cranky hidebound search rider) cheer with glee -- she was a Night gold!
Amaranth found herself clapping right along with the others. But then she became silent, as the dragoness stepped right across the warm sands with her black tipped wings behind her. She looked like she was perpetually stepping from shadow into sunlight. What a beautiful dragoness!
From you and I will come wonderful things, If you will have me, Amaranth.
As if there was any sort of question? "Of course, Racynioth," Amaranth stated. She regained her poise and the dragoness emulated her, stepping proudly away with her to the feeding areas. Their brothers waited, happily full and full of themselves.
But you and I are special, we are queens. I ... cannot spit fire like the other dragons, you know that. That is what the weyrling master said.
"I know, but you'll be able to scare the sweat right out of those aliens... And we can make weapons that you could carry, or I could, on your back..."
Don't be thinking that you will go into battle without my permission! The dragoness said abruptly. I will protect you and your people from the threats, but you remember that I will also be providing your world with new life! Other dragons who will bond, and breathe their own fire...
Amaranth grinned widely. The dragon bonded to her knew that her value was far greater than merely a weapon. Hers was a weapon of time and quality. More dragons, more security.
But she was still rather irked about having to be taught separately from the others. She was enjoying the lessons, but then when it looked like Racynioth was growing mature, they were pulled out and given specific instructors to show them how to 'behave'.
"Behave... All I ever do is behave..." Amaranth looked around, and tossed her long hair around. "I mean, all I did on Zekira was behave myself, I had to because I was still a student... And I'll STILL be a student when I get back too..." She sighed, and thew herself into a chair, while Racy purred in her den.
You will be the best student ever...
