Because she was the first to open her eyes, the first to bloom and rise up... Amanita is considered the leader of the plant-born eight. She is as lovely as her name sounds - fair skinned but with snowy white hair and glimmering eyes. She chooses an elegant mode of dress, almost out of place in their dragon-housed dens.

At times, she would walk the halls of the semi-abandoned hospital. There were still patients there, and she looked at them with pity and comfort in her eyes. "Here," she said, "I brought you some soup. You'll like it. It's mushroomy."

Of course... half a day later no one could tell the symptoms of the already-hospitalized from her own special disaster-mix. A concoction of her own flesh - well, something like that anyway. Any part of her was toxic, so naturally a hair or a small shred of skin was nothing to scoff at. Perhaps the afflicted would recover.

Most did not. A day later, of course, anyone with already existing liver or kidney damage would be dead within days. Healthier members of the population, a few days longer their pain would last...

And she relished it with the same glowing passion that her father did. Virus was as proud of this daughter as any of his first born, and they too greeted her with ease and as one of them. She looked upon her youngest brothers with a bit of disdain... Their activities are so rarely fatal.

How boring.

Amanita strolled through the forested area past the dragon dens, looking for places to spore. Having claimed an area nearby her mother's garden, each of the children would have space - but she wanted something special. It would take a nice amount of forest litter to bring her own little children to life. When she found a dark and cool area, Amanita waved her hand and left a falling trail of barely-visible spores. A powder to take root and grow upon the moist soil.

She smiled peacefully, and turned back to the dens, waiting for more news of illness from the hospital.

***

The search riders didn't much care for the way that Amanita looked at them. Normally of course, the men would be adrift in love or at least lust - but she had such a dangerous look in her deep green eyes that they stayed well clear of her.

At first, when she was accepted to the sands at Tripaldi's hidden area, Amanita seemed eager to help.

Shortly, help was the last thing that most of the normal folk wanted from her. The whole of the SCZ was going to be hip deep in mushrooms and toadstools, if she wasn't kept busy elsewhere. First the kitchens - they discovered that their meats were just packed with polyps of some kind. Then the laundry - you don't even want to know where she felt it necessary to put mold.

Everywhere in almost any weyr, was perfect conditions for her little spore children.

So instead of asking her to be inside all the time, the leaders and candidate masters decided perhaps Amanita should be doing other things - things that occupied her mind. Keeping her away from the books and scrolls (oi! what a mess that would be! with paper being so rare!) they could afford to put her outside with the animals - who knew better than to eat any of the spores she planted. They moved her around and kept her busy enough, drilling her with the same energy as all the other candidates got on the life cycle of dragons, their structure, their care and feeding.

She learned at a fantastic rate, though. So it was vital that every day someone be assigned to keep the young white-haired plant-girl busy.

Until the day that she'd be having to take care of a dragon, if she bonded, she challenged everyone's patience. Virus had warned her that in fact, people would get a bit testy about it.

So eventually, long before any hatching, she calmed herself down into a more normal human seeming routine.

There would always be a trail of toadstools and mushrooms wherever she remained, though...

Amanita is standing at the Special Clutch Zone at Tripaldi

***

The first batch of eggs hatched, one after another. And not one of the beautiful and stunning hatchlings went to her side.

Not. One.

So in her anger, Amanita lashed out. There were stores of grain - all of them spoiled. The salted meats? Moldy. The dragonry had to call in an entire fleet of riders to get the food they would need to replace it all. Of course, she did this unconsciously on the sly.

It had been a moist, warm summer. Not everything spoiled at once. Things in the back started first - they'd been there the longest, right? Maybe the food was contaminated when it got into the pantry.

Sure they suspected her. But the whole of the weyr was also very busy tending to the young dragons. And their food came straight off the hoof or out of the lake, so they were safe. Amanita had nothing against the dragons. She would not harm them. They'd never done anything to anyone.

But ... well, yeah, they had. They hadn't bonded to her.

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