Disclaimer: I don't own the world of Pern. I do, however own many of the characters in this story.
Enjoy!
PS: Each of the poems at the beginning of the chapters are mine, so please don't steal them from me. I worked hard on them!
Golden there rises the dragon-queen true
To see hatchlings, and not just bronze to blue;
From a strange, new white runnerbeast
Come changes- in ways we expect them least:
Dragons of all colors, and lovely to the sight,
And fierce, though they awake only at night!
Chapter One: Changes in the Weyr
Tilardith, the senior queen of the new Weyr, Nais Weyr, had risen in a mating flight, and been flown by Ligolenath again, to no ones' surprise. It was common knowledge that Aeo and Th'nayoin were as devoted to each other, as were Tilardith and Ligolenath, as Lessa and F'lar of Benden were. Nothing was unusual about the flight, but it was the effects of a strange runnerbeast that was the talk of Pern for Turns to come.
No one knew how the strange runnerbeast had gotten into the heard when Aeontellai's Tilardith had blooded. It was an odd specimen, and perhaps if not for it, many a candidate would have been without a dragon.
The runnerbeast had been an odd one, white-silver with a drop-shaped patch of rust-colored fur on its nose. When the Nais queen rose, she had scooped this one up first to blood.
After the clutching, the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman counted a full sixty-eight eggs hardening on the Hatching Grounds. It was one of the largest clutches any person on Pern had ever heard of. There were about seventy-five hopefuls to be presented to the hatchlings, a mixture of both boys and girls.
Aeo and Th'nayoin had agreed to let girls try to Impress greens, since they had found, in a very tucked-away niche in Fort Weyr, Records that the girls were quite useful on green dragons, and that the tradition of presenting female candidates to the female eggs had faded over many, many Turns.
Surprisingly, and not quite as a good omen some believed, a large blue was the first to hatch after the dragons had ceased the throbbing humming that announced the arrival of baby dragons. However, the fifth or sixth to hatch was the first to Impress. New bronze rider Q'mai, formerly Qaimai, and his ravenous little bronze Demath walked off the Hatching Grounds proudly.
More dragons hatched, Impressed, and left to receive their first meals. About five of the aproximatly twenty green dragons hatched that day chose female riders, and were escorted to a separate Weyrling barracks from the male riders and their dragons.
To those spectators who had seen previous hatching ceremonies, including the Weyrfolk, it seemed odd that there were not only a very small number of greens and blues, but also there seemed to be almost two different stages- there were still a little over twenty eggs left when the queen and her rider finally left, following the young bronze, green, blue and brown dragons, leaving the remaining about twenty-five lads and lasses desperate to Impress.
But it was only when Olyira Impressed that each person in Benden Weyr went pale.
Because young Olyira from the Weyr itself had Impressed Vuith, a red dragon.
000
Olyira's Vuith was not a single freak, alone in her kind, as Ruth the white dragon had been. The scarlet-hided dragon was but one in a total of twenty-two strangely nocturnal dragons. They were hatchlings whose colors came in anything from a pale pink to a deep orange, from silver to a deep burgundy, and also in yellows, purples, black and any other color, it seemed to the people of Pern.
This sudden change in dragon's colors seemed to originate from the strange runnerbeast Tilardith had blooded before her mating flight. Aeontellai and Th'nayoin had the task, as Weyrleader and Weyrwoman of Nais Weyr, to tell the guests their suspicions. Many of the Holders were skeptical, and some even thought that perhaps the senior queen had been timing it too much, though in reality she and her rider had tried to avoid that as much as possible.
The new dragons did not appear aware in any way that they were "Defective! A disgrace to Nais, and to all of Pern!" as one half-sober, hide-bound old blue rider put it as he was dragged from the Impression Feast for his loud, unceasing disruptions.
000
Olyira settled herself beside strange new friend on her own bed. It was most unusual, she thought, but Vuith almost seemed to have a luminescence about her hide. Though not visible fully, it seemed that a faint ruby glow lit the platform she was curled up asleep on.
Her new Weyrmate smiled, and turned away as her thoughts strayed into sleep, in which glowing dragons rose into the indigo night sky to flame Thread while she and Vuith watched and did some flaming of their own in their wings
Though no one know it then, the Nightdragons, as they were called when a distinct tendency to awaken at night was discovered, were to prove vital to the survival of Pern.
