Wed May 22, 2024 6:19 pm
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"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.