2024-06-26 - [4.4] Coat of Many Colours

Courth was so occupied with learning the maths behind the music that it had taken an age for him to realise the words were there to do more than just compliment the tempo.

Dragon*men* must fly – what did that mean? Did greens not flame, too? He had picked the identity he had for one very specific reason, the lack of expectation, and this now contradicted it entirely. Colour, colour, colour. Courth gnawed at the idea and meaning (and double meaning) behind the thoughts he had been privy to until he ran out of ways to consider it.

With a sudden spark of inspiration, he threw open his mind to those nearby he could reach. 'You – you over there. What does blue mean to you?' Courth knew that to him it meant one very specific ideal, but perhaps one of the other siblings would know something else...

There was something about the songs of the human-singer that stirred dislike in Tasted Fire. It disliked those songs as much as it disliked the idea of giving itself a gender or a name, something concrete that would be with it for its entire life. It wanted to live a long life despite the fact that fire, in and of itself, was fleeting. But it wanted to make the right decisions about who and what it was.

The separations of colors, both in song and in the mind’s eye of those around it, disgruntled it. There should be no separation when everyone flew against the same enemy! Why would it care if it was brown or bronze or green or blue or gold when Thread killed anyone? It had felt the tremor of loss or pain after Threadfall; it had eavesdropped on conversations probably not meant for tiny ears. Its fire had flared and its Heat had grown almost too hot for its shell.

It stewed.

Roiling, boiling mindscapes pulsed from Tasted Fire whenever the human-singer, the Harper, came around. But it knew better than to simply reach out, for sometimes those that it touched recoiled away.

Except one day. One day one of its siblings reached out, and, startled, it took a moment to try to rein in its Heat. It would apologize later, if its searing mind caused issues for its sibling.

’Blue?’ It asked, its mind-voice, once tempered, was less the heat of the sun and more the heat of roaring campfire at night, crackling, spitting, but portraying intense happiness and coziness. ’What does it matter the color of hide?’ It asked, pressured. ’Why does color have to separate? What makes Bronze better than Blue if they fight Thread all the same?’ Clear frustration crackled through the campfire like the spit of an unripe log.

‘What does blue mean to you?’

If Courth was supposed to find the heat bothersome, he didn't. Most of the minds he'd touched among the clutch had been uncomfortable to deal with – too emotional and jarring by half – what was one more? What was more annoying than the heat was the Others' complete avoidance of the question.

'Did I ask that?' he snapped back, all bristling sparks and cold heat of his own. 'What. Does. Blue. Mean to you?' A lecture on the morals of whether 'hide' colour mattered wasn't the point. Bah. Too emotional! No proper thinking! ...But he supposed it answered the question, anyway. To this hotter egg blue had connotations of 'lesser' more than simply colour. No mention of Pertemarth, so not Fatherhood either...The grouping with bronze suggested gender? No, the egg still thought of itself as it. Courth needed more data.

'Colour – item, place, hide. Rank – a position in the society out there,' he answered, frank. Without the body to shrug (a slightly stretch in the aimless, cramped space within the shell didn't count) he fizzled, instead. Information passed down lines and into the places it needed to go, with perfect, synchronous timing. 'Bronze, then. What is your idea of bronze.'

Tasted Fire did not care for the snappish nature of its sibling. However, it also simply didn't care. A mind that didn't shy away from its heat was a mind that it could spend time with without worry that it would hurt. And Courth was talking about something that Tasted Fire had thought about for a long while--or as long as an egg could think.

It was too happy to be upset about Courth's snappish response. It was unbothered by Courth's rage that it hadn't answered his question. In fact, it was so happy that it forgot to answer Courth's request about 'blue' again and almost missed Courth asking about bronze.

'Bronze?' It asked, Heat roiling around the word. It pulled images and things from what their mother had showed them. Flashes of bronze hide, of the burnished sky as the sun set, the heat of a campfire. 'Large.' It answered finally, but without the emotion and Fire it had replied with before. Courth wanted to know the facts, not the emotions, it reasoned. 'Second only to queen. Leader, fighter, vicious. Protector?'

If it was being honest, it didn't like 'bronze' as much as it didn't like 'blue' or 'green' or 'brown.' If figured that it would have to mind soon, especially once it hatched and its true hide was shown. 'I wonder if rank could be broken, if blue could be as special as bronze? Green as special as brown?'

Protector. It made Courth stop short, mind retreating into the dry shuttle of information as he mulled the concept over. Those were stereotypes he was familiar with, picked from the different minds around the sands, sure, but Yuakajth-father was not like that at all. He hovered. There were other bronze-shapes that had caused harm before, Gwillanth had been sharp with those. If they inherently protected, why did it not happen outside of the ballads? It confused him more than anything else.

'What is 'special'?' he replied, distracted by his own internal argument. 'Colour, size, or actions? Bronze mates with gold – but warm-mother loves blue. Blue takes more time to help. Brown, blue and green all fight.' As loathe as Courth was to admit it, Pertemarth was a more stable figure in their lives than any of the other colours the riders all thought of as 'he'. Was that Gwillanth's doing, however? Were her predilections influencing his opinions too much?

'What would you do? If you were green and wanted to be special?' That was a far more interesting idea to Courth. He would show how smart he was, how cunning. If the greens were be ignored, he would make the weyr not ignore him.

Courth’s question gave Tasted Fire pause.

Now Tasted Fire really thought. Like, long and hard thought. A thought that it didn’t quite know how to answer. It puzzled for a few moments, mulling the thought over and over in its mind.

‘I would be me.’ It replied after the longest of thought. ‘And since I am me, I am special.’

But that was a cop out and Tasted Fire knew it. It shifted uncomfortably underneath its shell. ‘I don’t know how to be special. But I would want to push myself to be the best soldier I could be, doing what I believe in. I believe in protecting my weyr. Perhaps I can be special by protecting what I love.’

It paused, thinking, then nodded appreciatively. This is exactly what it should do. Be special by doing what it wanted to do the most.

'Since I am me.'

Courth's immediate reaction was to scoff, a static cough in the connection to his sibling. Who thought they were special without evidence? They were still in the shell (whatever that meant versus whatever was out there), what were they likely to do that made them special? And yet...They had a point.

They were they, and he was he. That was irrefutable logic. They might hatch with the same coloured hide, and it would not change that they were different with different goals. The weyr thought of Gwillanth one way, and she was shown to be another. Pertemarth was a blue, and not a father, and yet was being a father to the eggs. Tasted Fire wanted to be a soldier, he wanted to be a scholar. Any colour was allowed to do those things, but only one would be rewarded as 'special' for it in the end.

'Any colour can be that,' he muttered. 'How are you supposed to predict what colour will make that the easiest?' Did it even mater?

'Predict?' Tasted Fire asked, and the question was evident on its tone. The dragon squirmed a bit, reaching into its mind as it thought. 'I suppose you can't. Unless you want to go by... what we have learned from what the dragons think of their own kind... the hatched ones, I mean.'

It gave pause. 'I suppose greens and blues are meant to be soldiers, aren't they? And bronzes leaders. Perhaps a brown can truly be special.'

It didn't like the implications that each color was its own rank, and for a moment, its heat expanded and crackled like a raging bonfire. If it knew what raising its hackles was, it would have done that. 'But I don't think it's supposed to be easy.' It countered. 'If special were easy, everything would be special! And I don't hear Gwillanth talking about special things all that often.'

It took a moment to soothe its fire. Then it shook itself out. 'Are you worried you won't be?'

Soldiers, leaders – bah. Courth added the information to his list of adjectives about 'colours' and 'rank' anyway. The ballads said it, the dragons said it, the humans said it, his siblings said it...and then the world kept ignoring it and it was never useful in preparing for things going forwards. '*Weyrman learn Something new in every Turn.' Perhaps one Turn 'colour' was something the weyrmen would care to learn more about.

The distraction of filing information was enough that Courth barely noticed the increase in heat, only drawing back out of instinct as he muttered his way through yet another ballad. He might have been interrogating Tasted Fire, but he didn't care about keeping up the conversation as anything more than data finding.

'Special?' Courth thought for a moment. 'No. I am worried I won't know enough, not whether I'm special. Special gets in the way of things, makes you have to do things you don't want. Gold and bronze are too busy . I don't want to be too busy to learn new things.'