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Post by Lynn on Sept 1, 2014 1:00:38 GMT
Fire.... Fire and weakness.... Screams... THE LITTLES!
Emerald eyes opened abruptly, and their owner sat up fast, then almost screamed as fire ripped down her back. "No, no! Lie down, lie still! You'll break your stitches!" Years of ingrained obedience warred with a strong desire to make sure the children were okay, and she eventually caved to the pain and laid back down, wincing. "Roll over. Slowly now." The voice was soft, gentle, and sounded no older than she was, and she carefully did as she was told, rolling onto her stomach to allow the stitches mentioned to be checked.
"The children?" she asked, irritated at how weak and scratchy her voice was, but unable currently to do anything about it. The voice reassured her they were okay, that she'd saved them, but also let her know she'd almost perished in so doing. "Doesn't matter. Would have been the best thing I ever did," she muttered, then winced as a stitch was replaced. The voice chided her for thinking that way, and she muttered a curse under her breath that earned her a soft chuckle from her caretaker. Sighing, she tried to relax and just remain still as the rest were checked and either replaced or found to be sound.
"Now. Just relax and lie still, huh? I'll be back in a few hours to check on you."
Aura murmured an agreement, then listened as she walked away and rested her cheek on her arm, watching what was going on through the door. She began to see some ODD things, and she blinked several times, trying to decide if she was dreaming or not. The pain in her back made her decide she WASN'T, and she examined the small creature seated on the side table watching her, it's pale blue hide gleaming softly in the light coming in. It looked faintly draconic in nature, like a lizard with wings. Huh.... "What are you little one?"
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Post by summerrain on Sept 1, 2014 18:04:59 GMT
Eternity was sitting on one of the beds, injured leg out in front of her. "Jeez, I am so ready to get rid of these stitches," she muttered. She jumped when a sudden sound broke through her thoughts, and she looked over to see one of the other girls finally waking up. She stood, skirt falling down to her ankles, and went over to her.
"You're finally awake!" she said with a sigh. "Everyone's going to be so relieved." She put a hand gently on her shoulder. "Aura, you're not going to believe this, but we're on a different world." She reached to pick up the pale blue flit, who was surprisingly compliant. "I bet you belong to one of the healers," she said to it. She let it settle on her shoulder. "You're probably going to freak when I tell you this, but there are dragons here. And this one's called a fire-lizard, or flit, they're like mini-dragons. I know its a lot to take in." She wasn't quite smiling, but there was a surprising happiness in her eyes despite everything that had gone on.
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Post by Lynn on Sept 2, 2014 0:06:24 GMT
She turned her head ever so slightly as she heard the voice, causing her vision to be half-obscured by the curtain of black that was her hair. Name, name. Eternity Lakari. Sister to Serenity Lakari. Aura prided herself on being able to gather information without others truly being aware of it, but for now, she just listened. But what she was hearing made her eyes go wide with shock. "Dragons?!" she squeaked. It wasn't a fearful sound by any means, much more excited than anything. That they were on another planet seemed to have gone over her head, but she actually filed it away, joy filling her heart at the thought that she was FREE. She'd never have to go back to those CREATURES that called themselves her family!
Fire-Lizards huh? "Is it possible for us to... I don't know. OBTAIN, one of those little ones?" she asked curiously, eager and excited for this unexpected and much longed for chance at a new beginning.
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Post by summerrain on Sept 2, 2014 21:36:59 GMT
"Well, I got an egg from a nice old man who was listening to me practice a few songs, and I performed a monologue for him..." She had made sure to leave the basket in a place where Lucy couldn't get to it.
"Well, there's one big problem with everything," she finally admitted. "Aura, we... We're never going to be able to get back to Earth." She put her hand on the blue flit's head. "And... Not everyone made it..." She closed her eyes. "Miss Kaira's still here, but she was the only instructor to survive. And... Fifteen kids died too." It was still painful to talk about, even though she was now taking care of a little creature who couldn't really survive on her own, she was still having issues when she thought about her sister...
"Hey, you need to sit down so I can look at that leg of yours!" called one of the healers.
"Oh, right, sorry!" Eternity called back. She walked back over to the bed that she'd been sitting on. "You'd best get back to whoever you belong to," she said to the blue flit. It chirped and flew off her shoulder, vanishing between with a pop about ten feet away from her head. The healer came over, a young man, and Eternity pulled her skirt up enough to reveal the stitches in her leg.
"You're healing pretty quick," he told her off-handedly. "I think as long as you don't break the scabs open you should be fine. But if you do break the scabs you'll end up having to get stitched again." He vanished in the back for a moment to talk with the Master healer, then came back out. "Well, you'll have to come back in a sevenday and get it looked at again. I'm not going to take them out yet, but if you're lucky they might come out next time." She nodded.
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Post by Lynn on Sept 3, 2014 14:47:17 GMT
Aura longed to tell her she was GLAD of this, but held her tongue. She knew better, could see the pain in the other girl's eyes, especially when she spoke of the deceased. Oh God... Had one of them been her sister? She inwardly winced, not sure if she should say something or not. The choice was taken from her when the Healer called Eternity over, and Aura watched and listened, her head cocked ever so faintly so she could hear better. It strained the muscles in her shoulders to do so, but it kept her from threatening her stitches while still allowing her to gather information.
Fire-Lizards and dragons... And a new world where she was unknown and could start over. The prospect appealed powerfully to the young runaway, who had only ever known chaos, pain and strife in her sixteen years, and as she laid there and shifted her head back to the doorway, she began to make sense of some of the oddities she was seeing and hearing. Those low-throaty noises must be the aforementioned dragons, she thought. Were they communicating with one another, their riders? How DID they communicate? And what did they look like?
Now she had something to focus her mind on other than the pain in her back, she wanted to KNOW, which made it all the more difficult to lie still as she'd been instructed. She wanted to SEE this new world, these dragons. She wanted to know if just maybe, she might have a shot at making it here...
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Post by summerrain on Sept 4, 2014 18:46:51 GMT
Eternity stood up and walked back over to Aura's side. "Most of us are adjusting pretty quickly," she said. "And once your back heals, you'll be able to go out and see what this place is like." She smiled softly. "I know there are a few others who have to get checked up every few days, same as me, so you might get to see some of the others even before you can get up. I'm going to go tell Miss Kaira that you're awake." She put her hand lightly on the older girl's head.
"And... You don't need to worry. We're going to be okay," she assured her, taking Aura's silence for nervousness or even fear, rather than the suppressed joy that it was. "Most of us are still alive, after all. We've got each other, and the people who're from here all seem to be really nice. Once you get better, you may even be able to Stand for a Hatching. Even us off-worlders might be able to get dragons of our own!" She was excited at the thought.
"Oh, right, I need to go tell Miss Kaira that you're awake," she remembered. She started walking toward the door. "See you later Aura."
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Post by Lynn on Sept 4, 2014 22:19:29 GMT
"Eternity, wait please?" she called, shifting ever so slightly and hiding her wince as it strained her stitches slightly. "There's so much information I wanna know now," she added, smiling briefly. "Information such as-"
She was cut off abruptly by a man's hard-edged voice outside, and she visibly cringed away from the noise, reminded sharply of her past. Even worse, she caught her last name in his words.
"She's a TELGAR, Joana! I want to see her NOW!"
"Now, my Lord, she's in no condition-"
"I don't CARE, damnit!" These words were accompanied by a LARGE man stalking into the room, the Healer Joana scurrying behind him, sliding around him swiftly before he could move too far into the room. "Move woman!"
"I will not. You will not disturb the peace of this sick ward with your boistrousness. Now, my Lord. You can see her in a couple of days. Right now she is in NO condition to receive you." The words were accompanied by the brunette folding her arms across her chest and glaring down the man, who hissed at her, but turned and left, causing her to roll her eyes. "I swear, that man has no patience," she muttered, loud enough for Aura and Eternity to hear. She then turned and looked to them. "That, ladies, was Davian Telgar, Lord of Telgar Hold." She looked to Aura and smiled. "He seems to believe you might be related to him, your last name being his and all."
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Post by summerrain on Sept 5, 2014 3:07:17 GMT
"Oh, sure. I don't-"
Telgar? Lord...? She was tempted to say something to the man, but the healer Joana chased him off before she could open her mouth. "Rather impatient man, isn't he?" she muttered, shaking her head. But then, a thought struck her. "You know... It might actually be possible..." she said thoughtfully. "In our world, there are books about a world like this, but it's set millennia in Earth's future, to the point where colonization of other worlds is possible. If you think about it that way, you might actually be a distant relative of the Telgar establishing family." She blinked.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to go all philosophical on you," she said with a laugh. "I'm just a big fan of McAffrey's works. So, what was it you wanted to know?"
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Post by Lynn on Sept 5, 2014 3:48:59 GMT
Aura and Joana listened to her, and the Healer raised a brow but shrugged, seemingly dismissing it as irrelevant to her job at the moment and padding off. Aura, on the other hand, blinked several times. "Well, I DO have 6 brothers," she said hesitantly, unsure if revealing this was a good thing or not. "I was the only girl, so they would have passed on the name, assuming they had boys. Given their upbringing..." She ended on a distinctly bitter note, making it clear there was a wide rift between herself and her brothers.
She then shook her head slightly and looked to Eternity. "What kind of colors do they come in?" she asked, going back to the previous topic and motioning to the table where the fire-lizard had been to indicate what she meant.
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Post by summerrain on Sept 5, 2014 5:18:59 GMT
"I wonder what Lord Telgar would think if you told him that you might be his distant ancestor?" Eternity asked with a laugh. "I'll bet that it'll take a while before the people here realize that we're from a different time, just like we're from a different place." She didn't comment on the rift between this girl and her brothers; Eternity'd had the same problem with her older twin sisters too. For different reasons though, most likely.
"Well, I've been having trouble keeping them all straight, but there's only one that's even remotely like the ones from the book," she told Aura. "Let me think... Well, the Pearls are the Queens, and they come in so many different colors, I'm pretty sure that blue flit was a Pearl. The Onyx are the Kings... Then Topaz, and those have a bit of color variety too. Sapphires are next, then there's Amethyst, Quartz, and Emerald. The Emeralds are just like the Greens from the books of McAffrey's. Flirtatious and a bit spastic. I've been doing a little reading and I found three other hues... Diamond, another Queen color, and Aquamarine that rank like a Topaz. Both of those are really rare. But then there's the Lapis. It's so rare as to even be a myth. Only four of them have Hatched in all of recorded Pern history, and of those four, only one of them was a male." She sighed and shook her head. "It's all kind of crazy."
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Post by Lynn on Sept 5, 2014 5:53:39 GMT
She just shrugged for the girl's comments about Lord Davian, but listened intently as she was told about the hues. "Queens?" she inquired. "As in, they're in charge?" The idea was foreign to this girl, raised under mens' thumbs as she was. "There's no King color that tries to control them?" That second question was a massive clue to the girl's upbringing and thought process, and she frowned, trying to picture males who answered to the whims of a female, rather than forcing the female to answer to their's. She shook it off after a few moments, deciding she would do some further research into that, then looked back to Eternity.
"Do the dragons come in the same hues? Or do they have different ones?" she inquired. "And are all but the Pearls and Diamonds male?" She flushed faintly. "I've never read the McCaffrey books, though i heard about them in school," she admitted. "If I had tried checking ANYTHING out from the library and bringing it home, well..."
She realized she was revealing more than she'd intended to this girl, but then decided this was okay. New beginning.
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Post by summerrain on Sept 6, 2014 2:59:43 GMT
"Think of it like a beehive. The Queens are in charge because they're the only females that can reproduce," Eternity explained. "Those ARE the dragon colors. And... Um... the Pearls, Diamonds, and Emeralds for sure are always female... I think Amethyst are too... I don't know about the rest. Well, Lapis can be either male or female, but female are more common. I don't think the King colors CAN disobey a direct order from a Queen, unless it puts their rider at unnecessary risk... But I'm not entirely sure how it works here."
She thought for a moment. "Oh, I've also heard of this pet called a sea serpent, or something like that... I haven't seen any myself, I think they're pretty rare too." She smiled down at the girl. "You don't have to worry about that here. The worst we get is being chased out of a room for being in the way. Mainly the kitchens, the undercooks like to flirt with any girl that walks in. And they don't like it when you bring dogs in there. I found a stray puppy out on the beach and took her in," she explained quickly.
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Post by Lynn on Sept 6, 2014 23:00:37 GMT
As she listened, she tried to picture these creatures that were being spoken of, frowning faintly. The colors were likely named for their appearance, meaning that these Diamonds were likely white, while the Emeralds were Green. She'd already stated the Pearls seemed to come in a myriad of hues, and when she spoke of the Lapis, Aura could only vaguely recall the stone, her memory telling her it was deep blue flecked or sometimes streaked with golden veins. There male hues, obviously, but Eternity hadn't told her what they were, so she couldn't try and figure that one out. She'd have to wait.
"Wait, Sea Serpents? Like the big, massive monsters of sailor legend?" she said, her mind abruptly catching up with what Eternity was saying. "How can those be just PETS? I would think they'd be a menace...." She shuddered at the thought of these things, of the pictures she'd seen in some of her history books in school that had been drawn by sailors and reproduced and recopied over the centuries. Just PETS? When she explained they were only ever chased away when they were IN the way, a smile ghosted over Aura's lips, relief filling her at hearing that. They were safe here, she thought. They-specifically SHE-could start over without fear...
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Post by summerrain on Sept 9, 2014 14:26:13 GMT
Eternity laughed when Aura compared the sea serpent pets to the ones of legends. "No, no!" she said, still laughing. Why did she find that so funny? Maybe just because there hadn't been enough funny in a while. There hadn't been much to laugh at since the crash, after all. "They're like this big," she clarified when she stopped laughing, putting her hands about two feet apart. "About the same size as the firelizards, actually. But they can't fly. They're pretty rare too, I've actually only seen one or two since the crash, and there's flits everywhere you turn."
She reached for the window behind Aura's bed and pulled the curtain open. "Here, see this new world with your own eyes," she said as she tied the curtain back. Out the window, a Quartz flit jumped and chittered angrily. They'd disturbed his sunny spot, and it wasn't as good anymore. After a moment, he vanished between to find a new spot. An Emerald dragon was sunning herself a ways off, and a Sapphire was nearby. It looked like their riders were sitting with them, but it was hard to tell at this distance. "See? This place is incredible. We're going to be fine here." Eternity smiled slightly. She knew that they were going to be okay. These people would be able to protect them. To teach them.
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Post by Lynn on Sept 10, 2014 23:35:22 GMT
Wow, that was small, Aura thought, blinking as she tried to figure out the difference. When Eternity opened the curtain, revealing this world to her for the first time since she'd been here, she blinked again, several times, trying to adjust to both the light, the rather abrupt departure of the little critter on the windowsill, and the sight of the green and blue toned dragons. One had to be an Emerald, but the other one?
"What is that hue?" she asked, shifting slightly to motion towards the blue one, seeing the shadows at their feet that had to be their riders, dwarfed by the sheer SIZE of their beasts. They were exquisite, she thought, watching them, the Emerald curled up on herself, while the other one was just slumped down in its spot, as if it had landed and just dropped right there to enjoy the light.
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