[OPEN] Special Kind of Dragon

[Arcane]

There was a lizard that lived near Igen which was always female and laid eggs that hatched only daughters. One of Athan's dad's friends had shown a clutch to him once, when they wintered in Igen, three days before said friend ran off with all their supplies. Lots of the monsters in Athan's dad's stories were always female too and Athan supposed new baby monsters had to come from somewhere.

Dragons were sort of a special kind of lizard or of monster, if you squinted at them. So Athan didn't find anything especially weird about the fact they didn't need a male to lay eggs. Why should they? They could create fire out of nothing and put thoughts in people's head and fight spotties...Dragons could do anything they do put their minds to, it seemed to him.

"A clutch of all girl dragons sounds interesting. I wonder if they'll lay clutches with other girls one day too," Athan said. Naxen said all the eggs were likely male, but Ajahth called them all her daughters. Athan liked Naxen and Naxen knew a lot of things, but he thought a dragon would know her own eggs better than anyone else, "Do you think dragons always have to mate before they lay eggs? What if a dragon wanted to lay a clutch but didn't have any other dragons around?"

[nineofswords]

This would be an interesting clutch, to be sure. Everyone knew that when a female sired a clutch, the dragonets inside were all male. Or...everyone but Athan, that was. Still, the mother knew best about what was inside of her eggs. This would most likely be the first clutch in history with all of the male dragons inside to have she/her pronouns. Or perhaps less likely, they'd be all female dragons by some quirk of genetics. This would be an exciting clutch!

"We've had clutches of all girl dragons before," Scara told Athan. "If I remember correctly, the sire of this clutch is from a clutch of all females. Since their clutches are smaller, it's more common for them to have all female clutches. And it's funny that you mention their clutches, because I was just thinking about that. Female sired clutches always have male dragons, so if their dam is calling them all daughter, that either means they're all she/her male dragons, or else this will be the first time a female sired clutch has all female dragons in it. It'll be rather exciting either way, but if they are male they unfortunately won't be laying any clutches." Surely Athan understood that much basic biology, right? She could never quite tell what that one knew or didn't. His education seemed...unique.

"Common wisdom says that the farther a dragon flies before laying her clutch, the healthier they'll be," Scara said, taking Athan's question seriously. "Being chased tends to help push the female farther. After all, don't you find that you run a little faster when you know you're being chased? But if there were absolutely no other dragons around and a dragon found herself needing to lay eggs, she could probably lay a clutch, yes. It would just be smaller and more sickly than it would've been otherwise. Which is why it's for the best that we don't let dragons end up in such an isolating situation, don't you think?" Sickly dragonets couldn't protect Pern, after all, though Scara supposed they could act as whers. Their job wasn't terribly taxing after all.

[Arcane]

"Oh," Athan said, as Scara explained. He hadn't known any of that, even though he'd seen Eraelth's hatching. It had been early in his time at the weyr, the night he'd first met Keitaro, and he hadn't thought very much about the dragons after, "Maybe all girls runs in Eraelth's family, like how I have my mom's brown eyes. Are there a lot of female sired clutches?"

Scara knew a lot about dragons and she was nicer about explaining it than some of the other candidates were.

"Male dragons never lay eggs? Ever?" Athan asked. He supposed that made sense, as he had never seen a male lay an egg. But some of the monsters in his father's stories were always male and they must have had babies somehow. Baby cyclops had to come from somewhere.

Athan nodded along, as Scara explained why dragon mating flights were important, "That makes sense. And flying with other people is probably more fun too, like how running is better if you're racing or playing tag." He paused, chewing over the one thing that didn't make sense to him, "But what if the dragon wants to be isolated? Some people prefer spending a lot of time alone."

Athan had met a few, during his travels, holdless hermits who liked wandering for months on their own and didn't care to spend more than a few days with him and his dad. If dragons had personalities, there had to be dragons like that too, didn't there?

[nineofswords]

"Maybe," Scara allowed at Athan's comparison to how he had his mom's eyes. "But I'm not sure if dragons pass things onto their babies in the same way that humans do. I mean, dragons come out looking wildly different from each other, and from their parents. Take Eraelth herself, for example. Her mother had pale and dark greens, with delicate and dainty patterns. Eraelth is vibrant green with lighter splotches. She looks nothing like her mother. And her sisters look nothing like either of them either, particularly not the one that came out in all sorts of jewel-like colors." She tried to remember what clutch Vranath had been a part of; Scara had tried to memorize as many of the dragons that had hatched at Semaca as possible based on their hatching records. "And Vranath...Vranath was in one of Nebulaeth's clutches, I believe, and she had brothers."

Realizing she'd gotten off topic a bit, she gave Athan an encouraging smile. "It was a good guess, to be sure, especially if you don't have much experience with hatchings. But I'm not sure you can compare human births to dragon ones." Wherries might be a closer comparison, what with the mutual flying and egg-laying, but Scara would never disrespect dragons by suggesting such a comparison.

"Male dragons don't lay eggs, no," she said. "Just as males of any species don't give birth. It's just not what they're built to do. Which is not to say that a female dragon can't be more comfortable with he/him pronouns, or that you can't have a genetic mutation that makes a typically male color a female inside or vice versa, but by and large, bronzes, browns, blues, and whites don't lay eggs. Whites typically don't engage in any mating behavior really." She cocked her head at him a little. "You've been here a while now, right? Naxen should've gone over this a few times by now, surely?" Scara tried to remember what exactly Naxen had covered in their lessons but the candidatemaster's lessons all just blurred together with every other candidatemaster's lessons she'd had over the turns. "Are you having trouble keeping up with the lessons at all? You can always come ask me if things are at all confusing for you." Athan was quite young, so it made sense he might not understand things as well. Having been Holdless probably hadn't helped, and he didn't have the arrogance or the funny ideas some holdborn candidates sometimes had, so she found him a lot more pleasant than some of their other classmates. "We wouldn't want you to fall behind without anyone noticing."

"I'm sure mating flights are much more fun with others around, yes," Scara agreed. Most people tended to agree that this was the case. She'd had the odd dalliance back at her old Weyr, and she depending on the partner, that could certainly be true.

At Athan's next question though, she stared at him blankly, blinking a few times in non-comprehension. Dragons? Wanting to be alone? Ridiculous! No one could fight thread alone! "Er...I suppose a less sociable dragon could go to their weyr if they didn't want to be disturbed by people," she finally allowed. She'd never met a shy dragon, so she couldn't quite wrap her head around that. She didn't quite realize that it would make sense that she hadn't met a shy dragon before because shy dragons would not go out of their way to interact with humans that they weren't comfortable with.

[Arcane]

Athan was never going to remember all of this. He hadn't even really looked at what Eraelth's mother looked like- let alone considered if it might be important. Shards, he barely remembered what Eraelth looked like and he had seen her hatch and she was the...sire? Second mom? Whatever the right term was.

He nodded, trying to seem like he understood and wasn't going to forget half of what Scara said by the next morning. Were riders supposed to know all this kind of thing? The other candidates got things wrong in class sometimes...But maybe the dragons only picked the ones who did remember? If they could read minds, they had to know who was napping in class or still needed to recite the Benden children rhyme Nivaya had taught them to remember what the colors were. ("Gold is best all told, bronze most glorious sight for boy to behold...")

"Vranath was the loud one, right?" Athan asked. He couldn't forget the green's voice, which had filled his head and dreams with her screaming, in his first days at the weyr, "I hope you're right and the hatchlings can't get that from her."

Most of the dragons Athan met seemed nice. And quieter. Like the kind of voices it wouldn't be so bad to carry with you all the time.

"I've been a candidate since a little before Xialath's clutch," Athan said, trying to figure out how long ago that was in his head. Growing up, they hadn't kept track of the turn or the day. He'd followed time by the season. It was always summer at Semaca, "I think that was...about a turn ago?" The number Naxen had wrote on the board for the turn every lesson had been one less back then so that was probably right.

"There's a lot to remember," Athan admitted, looking down, a bit embarrassed that he was making Scara worry about him, "There's dragons and history and geography and harper songs and rules and how to do all the different chores and reading and writing and math and knots and so many names that are all important..."

Athan had never worried he wasn't smart, before coming to the weyr. He remembered most of the things his father told him. He could retell Sannah's stories by heart. Him and Sannah had constantly been puzzling out together the things his dad didn't have enough time to teach them. But there was so much at Semaca that everyone else seemed to already know and just assume he knew too. And nobody ever asked him about the things he did know, like how to know if a fish was still fresh enough to eat or how to get away from the giant swamp birds (which were scared of the sound of whistling).

Athan tilted his head, "But the weyrs are still pretty close to everyone else. You can hear people and dragons, if you really listen, or if someone's really loud like Vranath. Do dragons ever go away for a while do you think, into the jungles or the mountains, where they can really be alone?"

Athan had never especially liked being alone. He had always stuck close to his dad and to Sannah. But he sometimes found the weyr overwhelming and wished he could go into the jungle for a little while without being eaten by monsters.

[nineofswords]

"I...believe so?" Scara said. "I wasn't actually here for that hatching," she admitted. "It was before my time. But I've made a point to learn who hatched when and from whom. Dragons can't remember after all, so it's our duty to try and remember as much as we can for them." Otherwise, why would dragons even need humans, after all?

"I don't believe personality is passed down any more than physical traits," she added. "Eraelth isn't loud, at any rate." She had heard stories from others, of course, that Vranath was extremely annoying. She hadn't encountered it herself, but she knew for a fact that this was simply exaggerated hearsay at best, and at worst anti-green bias the likes of which N'aya had no doubt been perpetuating.

Scara nodded as Athan reckoned how long he'd been at Semaca. "That feels right," she agreed. She'd been at Semaca around that long too. It had been winter in Fort when she'd left, and she did not miss the cold. Her expression softened a little when Athan started listing off all the information he was expected to know. "Yeah, that's a lot of stuff to try to remember when you lay it all out like that. I forget stuff too. If you ever want to do homework together, or if you have a question that you're too embarrassed to ask in front of the rest of the candidates, I'm happy to help out! We're stronger together, after all, that's the whole point of the Weyr, right? I just want you to be the best dragonrider you can."

"I've...never heard of dragons doing that," Scara said, a little slowly, trying to give Athan the serious consideration he deserved for his question but still grappling with it. "They need to be close by in case threadfall happens suddenly. That's less of a problem here at Semaca, of course...I suppose if a dragon really wants to get away from the Weyr down here, though, they could join Mazurka?" His questions really were unique and forced her to think a bit, she'd give him that. "You know, Athan, you're pretty creative, actually. You ask questions that I don't think anyone's ever thought of before. That can be a very valuable thing, especially in Weyrs, where some people can get a little bogged down in tradition and don't know how to change with the times."