(This is still a little bit rough—there is a good deal of backstory which I was not able to include in it—this is a teaser for a full-length piece detailing the misadventures of L'nark—a weyrling in a renegade weyr. For an advanced/intermediate roleplaying CANON weyr with excellent people and a kicking story email me for a link to Yung Weyr. Bold indicates dragon-to-rider communication)
It was sometime in the dusky: when the night grew close around the weyr and the lights dimmed when the first cry was sounded. Staring into middle space the weyrling enjoyed a handful of breaths which were accompanied with nothing but the dull warm ache of his bonded's mind nestled in his. It was rare for L'nark to permit himself such passing pleasures; after all there was a social hierarchy to be beaten and his own personal goals to approach. Yet the sunset was right and for that fleeting moment everything was as it should be. The lanky boy saw nothing more befitting to do than let his brain in decompress in the feigned privacy of the weyrling barracks.
However, in the crash of his day-worn heart the world decided to come to a neat end. At least that was what L'nark had thought as his Ruonath took a break from the arduous task of growing (and lounging languidly on his stone bed) to utter the most unearthly sound the weyrling had ever heard. The bronze, although little more than a month out of shell was massive: although the difference between magnificently large and the stuff of legends…and spectacularly fat was merely in the observers personal feelings towards the brute. He was the sort of creature, which looking upon him, pictured his voice in bass. In truth—although few but L'nark and his clutchmates knew, the sound of his mind-touch was serpentine, soft, and heard much to frequently. The shriek which burst from what seemed to be the pit of his stomach and through his clenched teeth was eerily falsetto.
L'nark's time around dragons, and around the weyr had been limited to his brief time (although waiting was never brief) during candidacy, and his more recent promotion into weyrlinghood. Many of his classmates had spent their lives inside some sort of weyr: and frankly, none of his lessons had ever enlightened him of the strange phenomena which had encircled not only his bronze—but the dragonets in the near vicinity. If the boy had lived in another time, he would've compared the vibrations shaking his bones and the stone upon which he stood to that electricity running through a high voltage wire. The closest thing he could compare it to was the echoing thrills of the hatching sound (which occurred if he remembered it correctly at far too early an hour). But there was no clutch hardening on the sands…and the cry was distinctively different.
Someone had died.
This fact clicked in the weyrling's brain like fat over a fire, as something in his primordial subconscious made the connection between the fall of a dragon and the piercing cries of their peers. Ruonath's keen waned and ebbed as the breath fled his lungs and turned with a hesitance to L'nark which the boy recognized as drastic. The bronze he knew was not hesitant: or was he silent. A tangible pain hung between the pair fresh as human eye met faceted and confusion was exchanged. Between is warm tonight.
L'nark knew his Ruonath. Ruonath spoke in crass, occasional insults, snide-smug remarks. He spoke softly, but the words of the bronze were anything but soft. Eyes grew wide and frightened, but the grip in his brain soothed, "Who…"
The Blue Jamaillith: I did not know him.
The weyrling filed through his brain, and a quick scan revealed no immediate relation. The name was as unfamiliar to his bronze as it was to him. Searching frantic panic turned into scornful (but undeniably relieved) banter. Perhaps it had been the suddenness of the sound, or the intensity of it, but L'nark had been sure that something important had fallen, "For Faranth's sake my bronze, you had me convinced that one of ours had fallen…why do you cry so for someone you've never met."
By "one of ours" of course, the boy had referred to a member of his weyrling group. Although he hated all but a handful of his classmates and half of those were merely neutral due to a lack of association. Swinging his legs over the edge of his cot L'nark stretched languidly and patiently waited his bonded's answer. The good mood which had momentarily left him as flooding back all warm and enveloping: cautious words from a tongue generally not cautious pulled him cold. They say he brought F'lont with him.
It took a few moments to pass this through an unwilling mind. The concept had to simmer in the weyrling's skull before it would pull itself out into a recognizable train of thought. Jamaillith had summoned no recollection from the pits of his memories, but F'lont certainly did. The blonde bluerider with a face like a horse and a quest to bed every mammal in the weyr had composed L'nark's welcoming committee, and managed to embrace everything the weyrling considered a cardinal sin. Synapses in his brain began to click.
F'lont had died.
Sharply the notion filled him. Horror was not born at the enigma surrounding the suicide of a (at least to his knowledge) healthy dragon and rider, but of the knowledge that someone he'd dealt with several times—someone he had actually talked to was gone with a sharp cry and a blinking eye. Vaguely he felt his Ruonath prod his head, You knew him?
In the cold which settled on his body and gripped him like the enveloping envelope he knew the man had felt before he vanished, a revelation was realized by the young boy. He inhaled sharply and something which might've been a sob escaped his chest. He couldn't realize why he would even be remotely upset with this fact. The man had been a nuisance—possibly evens a threat to the safety of the Weyr. "No, I didn't…I didn't know the man a lick… "