Disclaimer: I don't own anything/anyone from the Pern world books. I do own most of the characters in this story and anything else not from the original series.
Chapter Two: Pint-Sized Dragons
Earth
After breakfast, Star returned to her cabin, having told her little flitter friends to stay on the roof. They seemed delighted to lounge in the sun, broadcasting their contentment and happiness to her. She found most of the other girls already half-packed, the camp buses leaving in an hour and a half. Quickly, she piled her clothes in her large suitcase, stuffed her sleeping bag into the duffle she carried it in and put her current book, sketchbook and drawing materials in her handbag.
Just for a minute she looked at the bag in her hand, then opened it and withdrew a pen and her sketchbook. The little creatures would be fun to draw, if she could keep them still long enough. Star stacked her suitcase, sleeping bag and pillow on her bunk, then went outside. She looked up at the roof and was glad to see the little flitters lying quite still. She sat on a rock and looked up at them for a moment, then lowered her fine ballpoint pen to the paper and sketched the building's outline.
Next she added the rough outline of the rocks and the impression of sand, the path leading to the door and the tall tree leaning over the doorway like a shady blessing. After getting the main points she added more details, and finally drew the little creatures, every minute fold of the wing pinions, and the sparkles in their eyes. She could discern no expression on those faces, but she understood their contentment, the love of the sun and added the slightest curving line to each face to show the smug smiles she imagined for them.
Her cabin mates must have been talking inside, for now they came out, not at all quietly, disturbing the peaceful solitude she had created around herself. Star jumped, then settled, but her little friends were not so easily calmed. The green gave an incredibly high-pitched cry, the bronze echoing her on a lower note, the blue voicing a startled hiss. Luckily the girls took that moment to laugh at some joke, and if they heard probably thought it was someone screeching at some game or other at some other part of the camping grounds.
Star kept very still, hardly breathing as the little creatures disappeared faster than physically possible, and the girls moved away. She sent thoughts of inquiry as to location, reassurance at their fright and a gentle compulsion to return to her. They immediately reappeared, chirping complacently just over her head. With a gasp, she froze solid.
'Teleportation?'
Was that even possible? What were they anyway?
For the time they had been with her, she had managed to put off the inevitable thoughts. Now she could no longer, seeing them in a new light. They were mysterious, and not of this world. She looked up at them, and the bronze and green settled on her shoulders, the blue landing on her sketchbook, scratching the paper and the sheet below it irreparably. "Hey," she frowned at the blue, who startled into the air and gave a mournful cheep.
With a sigh, she picked up the book and tore off the ruined drawing. It was mangled, but she could still recognize the forms of-
She stopped and looked harder, then looked up at her friends and compared them.
'No. It's impossible,' she thought. 'That's not real.'
But it was. What she had drawn and what she had sitting on her shoulders and arms right now were three miniature dragons. She had somehow never truly believed in dragons even when she had seen on television the appearance, near on a year back, of a shining, golden dragon with three riders in the middle of New York City. And later, eight had appeared and rescued so many wounded victims from an explosion of an as-yet unknown cause in the same American city.
And now she had three of them, albeit in pint-sized versions, sitting on her.
000
Being the only person in the cabin, Star summoned the little dragons to her, with the door closed, testing her theory. Come! She called mentally to them. There was a little gust of incredibly cold air, raising goose bumps on her skin, and she shivered. But they were there, chattering excitedly, and she stroked them absently, marveling over her good luck to find their eggs. These three settled on her lap again.
Randomly she wondered if they had names at all, and sent a querying thought to them. They looked up at her, eyes sparkling and dancing. Giggling, for they looked so comic with their heads all tipped to the left, she decided they didn't. Did they need some, for however long they would be with her? Of course they did. But not stupid names, nice ones, not like 'Fluffy' or 'Mr. Snickers', but decent names.
She looked at the one on her right first. It was a green dragon, though a very small one. Green… 'Verdi?' No, that wasn't right. Sasha? Closer, but still not perfect; Star found rolling names lovely, such as those in elvish, as in the Lord of the Rings.
Some elven words were quite pretty. She tried a few from the movies as names. Names such as Namarie, meaning farewell… no, or Elanor, meaning star, perhaps…
She had once had a friend some years back who spoke if not fluent Elvish some phrases. "Vanya sulie" was a farewell, meaning fair winds. 'Vanya', she thought, 'would probably mean fair, then', and she looked into the little green dragon's eyes. Vanya.
With a whirl of her eyes, the newly named Vanya chirped in gratitude and excitement over her name. 'Her? A she?' The teenager didn't even try to understand how she knew the green was female.
Turning to the others, Star searched her meager elvish vocabulary for a good name for the blue and the one whose hide resembled dark, smoothly solid-colored bronze. Elanor was what Samwise Gamgee had named his daughter in the Lord of the Rings books. It was certainly too feminine. Both the bronze and blue dragons were very masculine. Perhaps a male form of Elanor? El…zan… ir? Elzanir? No… neither was an Elzanir-sounding kind of dragon. Elzon… Elzin.
Elzin for the blue, her bronzy friend was not right for that.
'Okay. Something not elvish now, something… realistic and masculine.' She could just go with Tom, or John. But that was a little too here-and-now. She needed a good, solid but soft, elegant but not femininely pretty, enigmatic but pronounceable name. Star snorted.
The bronze looked up at her, waiting patently. Nirvana. Or Nivi; that was a little less… less girly. Nivi was perfect.
Elzin, Vanya and Nivi.
Star smiled happily.
Then she sighed and grimaced. "Now all I have to do is get you all home somehow… and figure out how to keep you hidden."
000
At last Star decided she would have to have them follow the bus. And if they couldn't follow, then she'd be no worse off than she had been before finding their eggs.
The campers helped each other load their luggage onto trucks for the ride back to Seattle, and then said their good-byes. Star had no one she was particularly eager to see again. All the others wanted to talk about was fashion and boys and hairstyles and other things she saw as unnecessary in her life. If she didn't like something she made no bones about showing it. True, there were some nice kids, other than the preppy cheerleaders, but none of them were interested in much the same things as Star was. She grinned evilly. As some of her friends had said, she was unique. But that was a good thing. She didn't really want to spend hours a day hanging out with people; she liked drawing and reading better.
Instead, as the others got E-mail and I-M addresses and phone numbers she surreptitiously stepped away from them and contacted the little dragons through the new mental telepathy she seemed to have acquired. She impressed on them that they must not be seen. They were to follow the bus, just above it or even on it, and not be seen.
Vanya, Elzin and Nivi paid careful attention from wherever they were and she just barely saw three colored streaks zip up and settled on top of one of the buses. Moments later they began loading and she hastened to find a seat on that bus, setting her bag on the chair next to her so it looked like she was saving a seat for a friend, and took the window seat to look out the window.
The dragons brushed her thoughts when she queried them on their orders, and assured her they would be flying just above the bus. She took a shaky breath and let it out slowly. 'We might just pull this off,' she thought.
