Disclaimer: I don't own Pern. I do, however own many of the characters in this story.
Chapter Nine: Missing
Had Virika stayed up to watch the moons rise she might have heard the quiet conversation between Darrinel and Sofreteh that took place on the rock near the dip in the sand that she called the Hatching Hollow. Her brother was the first to arrive, and then his friend.
"I didn't manage to Impress him. He wouldn't let me." The contained, cool anger in Darrinel's voice was startling to Sofreteh.
"They perhaps need to learn that you won't accept that kind of disregard. They perhaps should be taught that they are mere animals when compared to our technology," suggested the girl quietly. Then she laughed to herself. Had anyone been watching and listening they would have shuddered to hear it. "The stupid beasts," she said scornfully. "They didn't even realize I didn't know hat stupid green's name. I never Impressed her at all." Her voice took on an apologetic note. "I should have let you know what to do. I should have told you to pretend you had Impressed that bronze even if you didn't. I'm sorry."
"It's all right." He remained silent for a time. "Though…" he said at last, "perhaps it is not too late to have one of the older ones either."
"What do you mean? They are too old to Impress," Sofreteh protested breathlessly.
"Who ever said anything about Impressing?" asked Darrinel. "I said have. Like Eleneir has his runnerbeasts. You do not need to Impress a runnerbeast to own it, do you? You dominate it. And it is yours."
"I think I would like to have one of these- these beasts," she said slowly. "Of course, there are some wild runnerbeasts that you must break the spirit of before you can ride them."
"And they are yours forever after," replied Darrinel.
They grinned out at the beach and the ocean; a watcher would have shuddered at that grin. In the moonlight the ocean looked like a silver mirror, and the sand like grains of silver. Their beauty was lost on Darrinel and Sofreteh's cold hearts.
000
Virika's night was full of disturbing dreams.
She lay on the ground, and the world was huge and frightening around her. Her green wings covered her. The human beside her sat up and left. She cringed from the human; it was the scary possessive girl who had grabbed her and taken her away from her people with thoughts of owning her. Owning. Like a piece of jewelry for a human.
Virika's dream changed.
Now she roosted in the tree closest to the Hatching Hollow rock. There were two people there, talking quietly and disturbing her rest. They laughed eerily, frighteningly. She couldn't understand what they were saying, but it was not friendly. She shifted her wings to a more comfortable position on her back and waited until they left. Below her she could hear the thoughts of the lovely small dragons.
They were nice, but these new people, the ones who had been talking beneath her tree were human and not nice. Only one human she knew of was nice; the girl who was a friend of the queen who slept in the opening above the cavern with meat in it.
Vaguely she drifted, not awake yet not quite asleep and touched another dream-vision.
Something was wrong. It was not blaring as the scream of the felines before they attacked, but subtle, like the silent hiss of anticipation in a snake before it struck. When she checked there was nothing near the cave-hole she lay in to be of any threat, but she felt it.
Plots were being born tonight. Somewhere, somehow, something as deadly as a feline, as silent as a tunnelsnake and as hidden as the sea in the fog was out there. And gloated over the chance for fulfilled greed it felt.
000
When she awoke Virika recalled only that she had slept badly. Hayatch told her that she had spent some hours tossing and turning and nearly rolling them both out of the little cave-room, and muttering. The young queen reported feeling something wicked and full of malice and greed somewhere, though she could not say where or what it was.
Later in the day, feeling restless, Virika wandered down the beach, in the opposite direction from the camp, and sat by a stream she had discovered several months earlier. Taking off the new boots her family had given her when she visited she settled her feet in the cool water and leaned back against a boulder. When she opened her eyes to the sound of someone calling her name, shielding them from the sun, she found Hayatch sitting on the rock above her, looking down at her. Next to the queen were Vyrania and the young queen she had Impressed, Urtiatch. All three looked as though they had been racing to find her; Vyrania was sweating and all three were breathing hard.
"I can't find them or their horses- none of us can remember seeing them since the early morning," gasped Vyrania. Virika looked up at her, still feeling tired and lazy from the warm day.
"Find who?" she asked, and yawned.
"Sofreteh and Darrinel. And Sofreteh's green friend is gone also. Where are they? Can you tell us where to look? You know all the good places around here; maybe they found one of them. It's at least worth a try."
Vyrania coughed as she finished, and her older sister reached up to pat her on the back. When her spasm ended Virika stood and stretched. "Honestly I wouldn't worry about it; I think they liked each other. Give them time." At the look on the younger girl's face she added slightly irritably, "Oh, all right. If it means so much to you I'll help you look."
000
After a long search proving only that two horses with riders had gone in the general direction of the ships Virika and the others abandoned the search. "I still say they just wanted to be alone," she told her queen, her sister and her sister's queen.
"But why take her green- and that's another thing. She never said the green's name." Exhausted, Virika glared at her sister.
"Darrinel and Sofreteh'll come back. You'll see- I'd bet you fifty marks. Well," she amended with a laughing snort, "if I had any I would."
She would have lost. In the morning there was no sign of the two wayward humans of their runnerbeasts. Trying to keep Vyrania from fretting over their brother and friend she distracted the younger girl with various games, sometimes with dragon-folk, sometimes without.
It was when the second day dawned she began to feel worried for the missing pair. Even more so because she knew they had one of the dragon-folk with them, and had gone in the direction of the others.
Later, when they had been gone for two nights and nearing three days, Kilatch, Satch, Virika and Hayatch agreed to arrange a search party. Besides Hayatch and Satch themselves two other dragon-folk, Mreeatch, the green's father, and blue Fuperatch volunteered. After bidding fare well to whomever, a golden queen, two bronzes and a blue took off.
Virika remained in contact with Hayatch for a while, but it was harder than she had expected to keep their minds together without speaking. She supposed that it would have been the equivalent of locking eyes with her queen and only mouthing the word she wished to say as Hayatch stretched farther away.
The pair eventually let it drop, and Virika had to trust in the wingsped queen to find her brother and bring him and Sofreteh back. And the young green. Oh, most especially the little green.
