Author's Note

I do not own the Dragonriders of Pern. All rights belong to their rightful owners.

"I have found a perfect one!" Tarleth announced triumphantly to his rider, K'renen, as Lord Varosh introduced yet another irrelevant minor relative. Across the hall, his Search partner, P'nes, was still flirting with the Lord's only daughter, a tall, beautiful young woman with a mass of golden blonde curls. At least she had power aplenty. Of all the other teenagers, nearly teenagers, and young adults Lord Varosh had paraded in front of them, only one was a semi-suitable candidate, a small, thin boy with pale hair and paler eyes who Varosh had crossly dismissed to prepare.

"You have? Is it one of Lord Varosh's children?"

"No. She just came out into the courtyard."

K'renen smiled, excused himself to the Lord, and hurried out to meet with his dragon. He was laid happily in the sunlight by the fountain with Usleth, P'nes's blue dragon. Both were crooning happily, and K'renen felt the joy and love wash over him.

With them was a petite girl who could have been anything between eleven and eighteen wearing a plain, threadbare dress that only really covered the necessary parts of her. She had no boots on her feet, even in the High Reaches cold. Her hair was a dirty brown and cut raggedly at her chin, yet still long enough to be twisted into a pretty design around her head. From a dirt smudged face peeped large, almost luminious purple eyes. In one hand she held a a brush, with the other she scrashed Tarleth's eyeridge.

"Her?" asked P'nes from behind him. "But she's just a drudge!"

"My mother was a drudge," K'renen replied. "What's your name girl?"

"Azizelia," replied the girl with a voice like music.

Azizelia was a girl who had a Dark and Troubled Past. Her parents were cruel and wicked people, haunted by their own Dark and Troubled Pasts. Many nights would young Azizelia weep herself to sleep on her thin blanket under the black sky, comforted only by a flock of wild firelizards who also helpfully kept her warm and stopped her from wandering off into the Deep Dark Woods as four year olds left alone in the middle of the night are apt to do. Luckily for Azizelia, her terrible parents would die in an unnamed but undoubtedly tragic accident when she was but seven, and she was taken in by her mother's mother, an even crueller and wickeder woman jealous of Azizelia's youth and beauty who would beat the young girl daily, make her do all the work around the croft, force her to sleep with in the shed with the bovines (which was actually a step up) and make her eat all of her cold, salty broth on a lunchtime. Luckily for Azizelia, her grandmother would tire of child abuse when the child was but ten, and sell her to Lord Varosh's Head Steward as a drudge, where she had been ever since, encountering hardships such as scarcity of food, yet more beatings (which she was pretty used to tbh), and hard, back-breaking work sometimes for twenty hours a day.

Of course, none of this was known to our hero K'renen, or to the story, and will almost certainly never be mentioned again unless Azizelia needs sympathy or pity for her Dark and Troubled Past or as an excuse for her to do something cruel, inconsiderate, injurious, hurtful, edgy, or dangerously cool.

"It's nice to meet you Azizelia."

She blushed. "It's nice to meet you too sir." She glanced cutely down at the brush in her delicate hand. "I need to get back to work." Quickly, she hurried across the courtyard. K'renen held a hand out to her. "Wait- Azizelia!"

She turned back to him with a puzzled look on her face.

"The dragons say you have power aplenty. Would you like to come away on Search?"

Her eyes widened at this statement. "M-me sir?"

"Impossible," said the Ranking girl still with P'nes. "She's a filthy drudge, nothing more."

"The dragons have chosen and the dragons are never wrong," K'renen said firmly. "Azizelia is my candidate."

The ranking girl sniffed crossly. "Ridulous."

Azizelia gazed up at him. "You want me? Truly?"

K'renen smiled. "Truly."

"But I am just a drudge. I'm worthless."

"Not to the dragons. The dragons are never wrong. It's your choice, but if you say yes, then when you're ready and you have all you want to bring, you will come away with us to SunSpyre Weyr. You will take lessons to learn how to care for a young dragon, and when the time comes, you will stand on the sands with the other candidates."

Azizelia's lilac hued eyes had misted over with tears at this imagery. She smiled sweetly. "I would love to come."

"That's wonderful! We leave in three hours, so you have time to gather all you need. Meet us back here."

"Can- Can I just stay here? I have nothing to bring with me."

"Nothing at all?"

Azizelia hung her head. "No sir."

"Then stay here with the dragons. They seem to enjoy your company."

"Thank you sir. Thank you so much."

"There's no need to thank me. You were chosen."

K'renen had to return to the party and socialising, but it all seemed very droll and boring after meeting Azizelia. P'nes, of course, chose the beautiful Ranking girl as a candidate, and they found another in the shape of her cousin, Zindyl. They gathered in the courtyard come the afternoon to load candidates and trunks onto the dragons. Azizelia gazed none too fondly back at the Hold. "What if I don't impress?"

"You can stand for clutches until you age out. And we're at the start of a Fall, so there will likely be plenty of clutches."

"Can I stay at the Weyr? Even if I don't ever impress?"

"Of course. The Weyr only runs because of its staff. Hold on tight now, off we go!"

Azizelia clung to him as Tarleth leapt into the air, his great wings carrying him aloft. The ground grew small beneath them. And so it was that Azizelia set off to a new life at the Weyr, for once looking forward to the life ahead of her and leaving behind her Dark and Troubled Past once and for all.