(Takes place shortly after the touching for Uridith’s clutch)


Hours after the touching had ended, Karone was still aflame with energy. A lot of the other candidates were gathered in other rooms chattering about their experiences with the eggs, so he’d had space to run through most of his dance routines in between tidying up some unoccupied rooms in the men’s barracks – in fact, the broom he’d been sweeping with had doubled as a dance partner for most of the afternoon. Lenix’s back had more than once been a convenient surface to brace upon or vault over while the younger boy busied himself bending to change the bed linens.

In stark contrast to Karone, Lenix seemed morose. He was silent and his eyes were distantly focused, even though his task was right in front of him. He was removing a pillow slip to replace it with a clean one when Karone, laughing, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. Then Kar found himself sitting on his arse, the disrobed pillow in his lap. Barely aware of what he’d done, Lenix was already yanking the bedsheet up and folding it.

“You’re in a mood,” the copper-haired Karone teased, still sitting on the floor. “Rebuffed by your favorite egg, perhaps?” Lenix turned just enough to glare sideways at the other boy with one dark eye, but didn’t answer. Karone shrugged, then got to his feet and went back to sweeping, talking as he worked. “I had a few that I couldn’t wait to touch, but after meeting all of them, I don’t have a favorite anymore. If I am to Impress, I’m glad it’s the dragon who will choose.”

They worked quietly for a while, then Lenix broke the silence with, “Why did you decide to come here?”

“To the weyr? Because it was the right thing to do, for starters.” He rested his chin atop the broom pole and looked at his friend. “What about you?”

Lenix dropped his eyes to the floor, reluctant to answer. “...You heard what Dusiph was planning for us.”

“You fled to escape being married to a woman twice your age. That’s understandable. But now we’re here. What now, Len?”

The younger boy was much larger and much stronger than Karone, but he seemed to shrink at the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “The eggs… I can’t stop thinking about what they ‘said’ to me.” He sighed. “Some of them inspired me, but some made me feel... pretty bad.”

“I think I understand what you mean.” Karone flipped the broom upside down to dust away some cobwebs on the ceiling. “Some of them asked difficult questions, and they seemed to hold us responsible for every little thought and action while we were with them. It’s not hard to feel like they were judging us. But I don’t think they meant to do that. I think they were trying to find out who was the most suited to be their bondmate.”

“I guess that makes sense.” The two boys moved into the next room and began cleaning up in there. This time, they swapped jobs, Lenix taking the broom and Karone manning the stack of fresh linens. Once they had settled into their tasks, Lenix continued his earlier thought with, “I talked to a dragonet that said it already had dreams. How can it have dreams when it hasn’t even experienced the outside world yet?”

“They have experiences.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s something they learn from listening to their mother, and maybe even from us when we touch their shells.”

“What’s your dream?”

Karone stopped in the middle of shaking out a folded sheet, letting it slowly drift down onto the bed. He didn’t turn, and it was several long seconds before he answered. “I just wanted to be better than my brothers,” he said quietly. “I’m the only one left now, so I guess I win by default.” The other youth stared in something close to horror as Karone spoke, his voice breaking quite suddenly on the last few words. He didn’t cry, but he gathered the sheet into a bundle and hid his face in it. “That shaffing Thread,” he growled weakly, his voice muffled by the fabric. “Shard it. Shard it all.”

It wasn’t the first time Lenix had ever seen his friend break down, but it had been a long, long time since the last incident. They were just children then. He was at a loss as to what to do now. Tentatively, he went up behind Karone and put a hand on his shoulder, just to show that he was there.

Karone tensed, as if he were about to lash out, but he kept control of himself and walked away, keeping his back to Lenix. “The truth is, I don’t have a dream anymore. I just want to get back at the Thread for what it took from me.”

“Is that why you want to Impress? To kill Thread?”

When Karone turned around, his eyes were hard. It was all the answer that was needed. They stared at each other for a few moments longer, then, quite suddenly, those golden eyes began to stream tears. He made it back into the privacy of the crumpled sheet just in time to contain several heaving sobs. “I’m sorry, Len,” he choked out the words. “Here I was... trying to help you... but I can’t even help myself right now.”

Len realized then that his friend had been suppressing his feelings all along since they had come to High Reaches. He hadn’t properly mourned for his siblings or anything else he had lost, now that Len thought about it. He’d focused entirely on his goal of attending the coming hatch, acting brave and cheerful just like always. At times, Lenix himself was swept up in the other’s enthusiasm, and was even looking forward to Impressing his own dragon now. But the truth was…

“...I don’t have a dream, either.” There, he’d admitted it. It had been eating him since he touched that first egg, the one who asked him what he would do and what he would become. “Not a real one. I have a lot of daydreams, but none of them are even possible in the real world. I never had a reason to have dreams before, Dusiph was the one who got to decide my future. And now that I’m free to decide for myself what I want… I don’t know what I want.”

“It looks like both of us will have to find a new dream,” Karone said. His voice was weak and still very wet, but he was already beginning to sound more like himself. He looked at the sheet bunched up in his hands and sighed deeply. “And here I thought I had it all together. It’s like the eggs cracked this dam inside of me, and it burst when you brought up the right subject.”

Suddenly breathless, Lenix could only nod. The dragonet in the green egg was right! A dam is a wall, too… The walls are already being broken down! Maybe his own dream would be on the other side of one of those walls. But where to start looking? A dream was meant to fulfill a desire, or answer a question. He thought about that for a while. What was he missing from his life?

“...My parents!”

Karone, who had gone back to work, was startled by the sudden outburst. “Pardon?”

“My parents. I’m going to look for them!”

Maybe it wasn’t the most... heroic of goals, but it was a start.