She stood before the Headwoman and tried to stop crying, but it was no use. The Threadfall had taken not only the weyr's clever wingthird, bronze rider E'ka but half a squad worth of blues and greens - her mother Leea along with them. The dragons songs of anguish were coupled with echoes of human weeping in nearly every hall.

Most people had lost a sibling, parent or some relative during their lives. But few had lost both to the same incident - both riders - as Elaaki had. At the age of nine, too early to really stand for her own dragon, and too late to easily be placed with foster parents, Elaaki was brought into the lower caverns of her home weyr, and put to work in the kitchens to keep her mind off things for a time.

It didn't really work, and everyone knew it. Elaaki was a rider's child, and as such she belonged with riders. But since there were already a dozen newly-empty wing weyrs and plenty of full families already, there was little more to do than shuffle her around.

But in that shuffling, Elaaki became aware that she could learn. She knew her status, she'd never forget: everything she'd been taught and many things she'd simply seen or heard was embedded upon her memory since youth. She'd heard tales of others with such a condition, and learned directly about one from the weyr's recordskeeper. He told her there was a place, Dragonhope by name, who had a gold-riding, master scribe with a perfect memory.

It became Elaaki's goal to meet this woman. The local records keeper was a stodgy old man but he enjoyed chatting, company was hard to come by here where many 'records' were kept verbally. He didn't have many scribes, and was pleased to have such a ready pupil in Elaaki. Her hand was steady, and she understood many things most girls her age didn't.

There came a time however when he moved her along - she went from the kitchens to the beast halls, the records chambers up to the fire heights. The drummers taught her a bit, but more learned to get her to write down what they were drumming while they passed messages along. One 'accidental' or faked message could mean disaster along the drum-line, and with her there they made certain that some Holds got the right message with a flitter sending it to them later, in case of any errors.

Quietly, one turn at a time, Elaaki learned all about her weyr. Learned that it lacked a good weyrling master, for one thing, and lacked a solid wing leader for half its squadrons. No wonder they'd lost so many when she was younger. They had continued to lose riders here and there, though none at once as that turn.

Elaaki was determined to ride, though she'd not been officially Searched even though she was a rider's child. She was determined as well, to produce results when she rode. To be a leader - would she aspire to ride a gold? Well, what girl didn't think she'd be a queen-rider? But she was sensible about it. It was her father's side that rode ranking dragons, though truth be told, all his relatives, though Impressed well, had also died in threadfall over the turns. Her mother's family had more luck, but it was only after digging through the records to locate half of them did she know that they existed at all.

She wished to prove herself worthy to any dragon, but curse it she hadn't had the chance! Even when their local queen - old and worn - was flown by a brown dragon (also old and worn, it seemed that even the younger more healthy dragons didn't feel like wasting their effort on such a delapidated old queen) and there were eggs upon their sands, she wasn't Searched and wasn't allowed to stand.

She watched hopelessly as three lovely dragonets - two greens and a brown - flopped around the sands creeling for their One, found none, and eventually pined away to die before the end of the hatching. It was pathetic, it was horrible. It reminded her of her own family's woes.

The other thing Elaaki wanted, perhaps more than anything, was to have a secure family. The feeling of being lost among the brats in the Weyr never left her. She knew there should be a better way.

Maybe at Dragonhope. So when she was, in her opinion anyway, old enough to stand properly anywhere, she sent a politely worded letter of request to the Weyrwoman at Dragonhope: I should like to learn among quality riders rather than the hopeless lot here.

Though she didn't harbor much hope that it would come to be, within two sevendays of her sending the scroll there was a clap at her once-more-temporary weyr's door. A tall, slender man stood there with a quirky grin on his face. "Search rider, at your service," he said, bowing with his ungainly stork-height making him almost clip the door arch.

Within a few hours, Elaaki was gone from her home weyr and off to a new one. Though she'd miss some of the folks there, she learned quickly that the atmosphere at Dragonhope was far stronger and closer than it was at her old home. The climate was colder than between, but she'd learn to live with that. Maybe they had intended her to stand at their sands, but the call had apparently gone out for another, rather bigger bunch of clutches. She'd do well at this other place, ****, they told her.

Elaaki knew there would be a good weyr waiting for her when she returned. What rank would she ride back on, now there was a question she could not answer!

Originally From: lightly forrested community
Location size: kind of large
Location climate: very hot
Searched: this morning