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Date Posted: 16:26:26 03/26/05 Sat
Author: Yima & Yimask; Oriana & Orisk; Mikhal & Misk
Subject: ((Let's continue over here, since we're heading off the screen on the current thread. I don't want to wait any longer for Clell.))
In reply to: Yima & Yimask; Mikhal 's message, "[Watchwher people]" on 00:38:59 02/19/05 Sat

((We'll assume he did the blood-bonding; he can include it in his reply to this if he likes. This one is going to be long, so brace yourselves. Additionally, while as much of the info as possible is pulled from Dragon's Kin, I've had to extrapolate a bit to fill in a few blanks - and the Craft stuff is completely off the top of my head, since in Dragon's Kin it seemed both informal and generally associated with the MinerCraft.))

Once all the children have formed their blood-bonds, Yima retrieves her knife, cleaning it with a scrap of bandage before sheathing it. Tucking the bandage away in her pack, she hefts the pack onto her back and shifts closer to Yimask, resting a hand on the golden wher's head as she considers what to do next. She ought to start the children's education tonight, but she also wants to move them further down the tunnel and see how far this cave system extends. Leaving them alone with the strange dragonrider, though, makes her nervous. Yima has long ago lost faith in the innate goodness of dragonriders, and she's more than a touch paranoid. If the children weren't wher-handlers now, albeit inexperienced and ignorant ones, she wouldn't mind so much, but she's essentially just made herself their Master, and now she has to watch their backs as well as her own. As she ponders this, she turns her head about, tracking the other people and watchwhers in the room entirely through sound; full night has fallen outside, and the tiny amount of light that had crept around the edges of the felt before is gone, making the room pitch-black except for the faintly glowing eyes of the whers and Manethenre's firelizards. The young whers are sleepy - Telomm's is asleep entirely, as is Telomm himself, and she'll have to rectify the latter - so she'll have to move them soon before they all drop off.

Outside, Oriana has been following the careful instructions given her by the brownrider who picked her and her blue watchwher up off their flimsy raft. She couldn't move until at least dusk, but now that it's full dark, Orisk is happy as a clam to be trotting through the dark forest. Anyone who thinks that just because whers are bulky, ugly, and thick-muscled, they're slow and clumsy, is wrong, and the blue is currently proving that. They're not quite as agile or quick as dragons, having to pack on more muscle per square inch, but they're fast and flexible enough, and stealthier than anyone would expect. For a moment, the dark shadow of her wher vanishes, and Oriana freezes, her heart in her throat. Surprisingly for a wher-handler, she's afraid of the dark, and Orisk's comforting presence is all that keeps her from panicking; now he seems to be gone. Then a small animal of some kind squeals nearby, and she relaxes, vaguely feeling the surge of blood-lust that accompanies his kill. A moment later Orisk bounds back to her, still gulping down his prey, and makes a quizzical noise. Then his head tilts, his entire body stilling as he focuses his eyes, nose, and ears on a nearby outcropping of rock. "What's wrong, Orisk?" she whispers. He blinks up at her, makes a soft chirping noise that's completely undecipherable to her inexperienced ears, and trots towards it, forcing her to follow. Rounding it, he ducks through the entrance, and she blindly follows, startled to feel soft fabric brushing her face and upraised arms. Inside, she bumps into Orisk, nearly running over his tail, as he sits on his haunches and rumbles deep in his throat - a combination of pleasure at having been so clever as to have found this place, and warning to the other whers and people in the cave that they are not to touch his human. "Oh!" Oriana exclaims, grabbing the edge of one of his small wings and clinging to it for assurance. There are multiple pairs of faintly glowing eyes fixed on her - like Orisk's, she realizes, except for the multiple sets of tiny ones that must be firelizards. "Are- are you the wher-handlers they sent me to find?"

"Since we're the only wher-handlers on the island that I know have, we must be," Yima replies evenly, relaxing slowly and removing her hand from her beltknife as she hears the girl's voice. Another wher-handler, then. "Who are you?"

"I- Oriana, and this is blue Orisk," Oriana stammers quickly, still nervous. That hadn't been the most friendly of greetings. "Are you Yima? With gold Yimask? And there were wher eggs, N'ris said something about wher eggs...."

"Hatchlings, now," Yima says, a little more gently. Yimask is rumbling softly beside her, carrying on something of a conversation with the equally vocal blue, but the gold is perfectly willing to lend her eyes for a moment. From their size alone, both watchwher and girl are adults, though the woman sounds rather uncertain. "Come further in, we don't bite," she adds, slightly snappish. "And stop shaking. You're welcome here. Let go of that poor creature's wing before you damage it, too. Don't you know anything about your beast?"

Snatching her hand away from Orisk's wing as if burned, Oriana skitters forward a little further to stand by his head, which he presses against her shoulder. "Actually, no, no I don't," she says, rather relieved to finally be able to admit this to someone who apparently does know something about whers. "His real handler died - he tried to protect me, and he was killed - and I kind of bribed him with meat and he came with me. And then... I just started calling him Orisk, because it felt right, and I can sort of feel what he's thinking, just a little, but I don't know anything about him. I don't know anything about being a wher-handler. I'm even afraid of the dark!"

That's interesting.... Yima's professional interest is piqued. "Without a blood-bond?" After a moment of puzzled silence, she tries again. "You bonded without letting him drink some of your blood?"

Blood-bond? Oriana frowns in thought. "I was hurt, and he kept licking the wound, and I started feeling him after that...."

"Oh." Well, that's certainly accidental, but not nearly as interesting. Yima shrugs it off. "Well, you can learn with the children." The woman's presence makes one thing simpler, at least. "Okay, everyone, don't let your watchwhers go to sleep just yet. We're going down that tunnel," she says loudly, her authoritative words directed to the whole group and not just Oriana now. "Dragonrider, you can help if you like. Come on, get your whers on your feet," she urges. /Stand up, Yimask. We're moving./ With a pleased rumble, Yimask stands, eager to do something active again. "Telomm, boy, you have to wake up," she continues, bending over him and shaking his shoulder brusquely. "And get your watchwher awake, too." Moving away, she helps the others chivvy their whers to their feet. "Go on, Oriana, get your wher down there."

Nodding, Oriana heads towards the tunnel, Orisk slipping around in front of her to go first. They work their way down the winding tunnel, Orisk confident in the dark, Oriana stumbling frequently and keeping one hand on the wall as a guide, emerging in the cave where the wild queen had first laid her eggs, though she doesn't know that. Moving to the side to let others through, she stands beside Orisk, scratching his eye-ridges nervously. "I hope there aren't tunnel-snakes down here," she murmurs to herself, terrified of the complete blindness she's experiencing. She'll have to overcome this fear of the dark if she wants to stay with Orisk - which she does want to do, for all that he'd scared her before. She's not used to feeling this kind of attachment to another being. Is this what dragonriders feel? she wonders. Orisk looks up at her, his oversized eyes glowing green and blue with reflected affection.

Urging his reluctant bronze to his feet, Mikhal follows, barking his shin on a rock as he locates the tunnel entrance. Biting back a yelp of pain, he steps forward, patting the watchwher in reassurance when the hatchling turns his eyes on the young man, eyes whirling yellow-green with concern. "It's all right," he promises in a loud whisper. "Come on. Come on, follow me...." Moving slowly and feeling his way along with a hand on the wall and his feet scuffing the ground, he leads his wher through the tunnel, knowing he's emerged when the wall falls away under his hand. "We're here. Let's move, boy," he urges, pushing the bronze to one side. "Let the others through." The wher jerks sideways abruptly, and he realizes why a moment later, as a loud chirp comes from nearby. He jumps, then relaxes. "Is that you, Miss Oriana?" His wher chirps back sleepily, sliding down into a sitting position with his body pressed against Mikhal's leg.

"Yes," Oriana replies, her voice startlingly loud in the relative silence of the cave. "What- what's your name, anyway?"

"Mikhal," he replies. "My bronze doesn't-" He breaks off, blinking. "I think his name is Misk." The wher hadn't told him, exactly, but it just seems to fit.

((To get on with the lessons, I'm going to assume Telomm, Manethenre, and Clell make it down safely and all. I hope you don't mind. El's said I can assume H'rrison went.))

While the children are getting their whers moving, Yima throws the furs H'rrison had brought them over Yimask's back. Once everyone else has gone down the tunnel - including the dragonrider, who has Yimask's eyes trained on him the entire time - Yima and Yimask follow, the woman preceding the wher with easy confidence. She's used to working in complete darkness, and Yimask's constant presence in the back of her mind gives her enough spacial orientation to keep from running into things even without seeing through the watchwher queen's eyes. Once she's inside, and verified through the sound of breathing and soft conversation that the children are all assembled, she strolls to the approximate center of the room, Yimask stalking regally beside her, and turns in their direction. Beside her, Yimask rears up, letting the furs fall into a pile behind her, then sits on her haunches and swings her head to survey all the students. "You can let your whers sleep now, if they like, and you can sit, but don't sleep yourselves," the woman warns sternly. "You'll have to get used to a night schedule. And it's high time I started teaching you about being wher-handlers. In an ideal world, you would have all come and started your education before the clutch was even laid, but the disasters have rather put a crimp in that." Her tone suggests that the disasters are a personal affront, existing solely to inconvenience Yima and her education of young wher-handlers. "And since I've started on that subject, I'll begin by explaining what wher-handling is like as a craft. A few hundred Turns ago, it was only considered one in a very loose sense, and usually in association with the MinerCraft; even just before the disasters, we didn't really have a Craftmaster or sit in Council with the other Crafts, but we're more of a true Craft now. Apprentices come to a Master to be trained, and hopefully to earn an egg from a Master with a gold or green wher. Once they've blood-bonded the wher and learned their name, which shows that the bond has taken root, they're Journeymen, which technically makes all of you Journeymen or a day or so away. Technically," she adds for emphasis. "But you know so little about your watchwhers that you're all Apprentices in everything but name, even Oriana. Masterhood is less defined, because wher-handling is something that's hard to do an actual Masterwork in, but it's generally defined as someone who knows everything the Craft knows about whers, and is something of an expert in whatever specific discipline they've chosen - working with the MinerHall, guarding a smallhold, doing search-and-rescue in rockslides and avalanches, or whatever else that whers can do for people. That last, search-and-rescue, is what Yimask and I earned our Mastery in," she adds as an aside. "Which makes me a Master, so you will all refer to me as Master Yima." There's no flexibility in that pronouncement. "I can't teach you properly if you don't respect me. Now, on to the watchwhers. They're distantly related to dragons, but as you've noticed, blood-bonds are a far cry from Impression, and the bond will not be like that between a dragon and a rider. They're not intelligent enough for it, though they're smarter than firelizards. You'll have to work hard to make and maintain a solid bond with your watchwher. They don't speak in your mind like dragons, but send emotions and images like firelizards, although they can give you a much firmer impression of just what they're going on about. Dragons say they can sometimes get what seem to be words from them, but that has to be taught, and I think it's not as much that they're using words and more that they and dragons 'speak' on the same plane. They also aren't tied to just one person. A wher can blood-bond more than one person, although the earlier one will always be the strongest, and they broadcast to most people, though only a handler who's honed the bond will be able to consistently communicate intelligently with their wher. They can also re-bond if their handler dies, as Oriana and Orisk have just demonstrated with their little story, and a handler can re-bond if their wher dies. Since you've just blood-bonded your whers, their names should come to you within a few days. Tell me when it happens, and what they are. Their names will always have part of your names in it and end with 'sk, and the amount of your name in theirs usually - usually - indicates the strength of the bond, though that also depends on the length of your own name. I have Yimask, for example, but that doesn't neccessarily mean that the bond is as strong as possible, because my name isn't very long. But as an example of names, we'll use Manethenre and her gold. The gold could call herself Mask, Mansk, Manesk, Manethesk, Manethensk - not much further than that, though, because they don't tend to go in for terribly long names." Pausing, Yima takes a deep, long breath. "Any questions so far?"

Hesitantly, Mikhal speaks up. "I can't think of any questions, but - I think mine is named Misk. It seems right, anyway."

"Hmmm. Noted." Taking a moment to affix it in her mind, Yima trains her attention on the other children. "Any other names pop up yet? And do you have questions? I promise not to bite your head off for a question right now, no matter how stupid," she adds dryly, knowing she does have a tendency to react snappishly to stupidity.

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