2024-07-29 - [9.1] Beginnings

The moment Gwillanth relaxes her hold, Courth starts shaking. It's not like the earthquake, it's not. Getting OUT then was a challenge born of desperation, this is a need he feels in his bones and drives him to scratch and throw himself at the boundaries of shell.

'Speak up when you get out! Let us know what it looks like, out there!' he demands – yells, really – at the rest of his siblings stuck in their own battles to finally be free. It's a strange world out there, and he wants to be prepared.

The yell makes Courth pause in confusion. Was Kanyoth just...deaf? 'COURTH,' he belts back. 'YOU'RE KANYOTH?' He yells louder mostly to match the other egg's energy, but also because yelling makes him feel better about not managing to make a dent in the shell. He knows something is happening out there, though, Pertemarth is talking about she.

'Can anyone see the sky?!' Why does the sky matter so much all of a sudden? The gathered candidates are possibly more important, he's never cared...but the sky allows for orientation, and that does seem important.

Courth reaches so eagerly towards Xlyoth's description it hurts, static embracing as much as it sparks. 'Thank you! Thank you for telling us!' Now he had something to aim for, and he redoubled his efforts. Bright vs dark would make things easier once he was out. All he had to do was place the bright above, and the dark below...There's also solid ground, but every little helps. He needs the repetition of information, the closer he gets to finally being free from the shell. His heart is beating too fast, logic seems to elude him....

Blue, not blue – loved, not loved. Courth can feel some of the disappointment happening, but it's the descriptions he yearns for. Who cares about the things they can't change! It's the world they can interact with, and Courth wants to know more about the place he's been reaching for, for so long. More importantly, he wants to be prepared, so he doesn't embarrass himself.

'Well, if you're hanging about, give us a bit more than that!' he yells at Liorenth. 'Bright how? How!'

The blue shell cracks unevenly, thicker lines driving the crack off at odd angles, and as a result Courth is thrown onto the sands in a heap before he hears back from Liorenth. This is no purposeful burst from his confines, like he'd planned, no confident step and orientation that would mark him out as one of the best of his clutch. It is an ungracious flop, leaving him sand covered and poked by shell.

For a long moment he just…lays there. Dazed by the lights, shivering at the feeling of wind over his hide, legs twitching.

His hide feels static and it makes him close his eyes to get himself under control again and…Oh, right. Breathing. The weyrlingmasters must be getting nervous by the time Courth takes a long, wheezing breath – and that, too, is overwhelming. Lungs expand. He chokes, briefly, and panics that he has no frame of reference for what this means. It can't be good, can it? There's something...He heaves, finds no problems with the mouth portion of air intake, and blows it all out his nose. What flops out is disgustingly physical, but finally lets the smell of warm weyr and sweaty bodies fill his nose. The air has a taste that is as oddly familiar as it is alien.

The world feels brighter in ways that aren’t physical, too. It’s…louder. That, more than the hunger, more than the need to see what is happening elsewhere on the sands, drives Courth to drag himself to his feet. The weyr is watching. It’s as ungraceful a movement as his first break from the shell was. His legs tremble and shake. They don’t all seem to move at the right time, which is infuriating, and no amount of remembering how other people pictured walking helps. A wing is caught on a bit of shell. Spinning to snap at it, Courth catches sight of himself and has to add colour to the list of overwhelming stimulation.

’Green?!’

Courth shrieks. Colour does seem to matter now, to the hypocritical, solid creature that is finally sitting up.

'They expect things from Green,' Courth wails back at Kanyoth, struggling to get his feet under himself now he's walking. He doesn't want to leave the safety of being among the eggs at the speed he's currently moving at, but he can't help it. 'And it IS the sun, but it's also rock, I think...'

He falls over on the sands trying to squint up at the horde of dragons covering every surface.

'Yes,' Courth calls, discovering talking is possible with a mouthful of sand. 'But it's annoying!' Seth and Kanyoth get pelted by the little storm he makes of himself. 'You try being it, and see how it goes.' For all their words, for all the thoughts and talks he's had before, the colour still grates at him. His sibling's words of support grate at him. He wants to be allowed this annoyance, even if it pokes at the identities of others across the sands.

Green dragons are just as much working members of the weyr as everyone else, but he's heard the comments people make. Their reputations are not the one he wants. He wants to be free, to study and learn. A bronze won't teach him the best tricks for threadfall now. A brown might think he is something to chase, rather than student who wants to learn rotas and patterns. He'll be too small for the best manoeuvres and too weak to last a full fall. Something has been robbed from him before he could even claim it.

But lingering in the back of his mind is the thought that because greens aren't expected to become great, no one will mind if he decides to go off and do his own thing. No one will force him into a role or rank he does not want and that might – just – be worth the colour.

It's not just the siblings Courth knows best offering support, however. He remembers Diath's voice and opinion, had decided to order a response to her below those he had a relationship with to give himself some control over the situation. It's a choice that pays off, as she spills into the world and he can stare, jealous, at her hide.

'Well, that's easy for you to say, you're brown.' He glares at her while getting his feet under him. Between the shouting and the singing, he wants to get a move on, no matter how pleasant the latter is, and find some peaceful spot to think.

'Being' isn't going well for Courth at all. Out loud, a steady hiss starts up, like he's a small engine that needs to get going. It's not encouraging for the candidates who look like they're considering moving to help him up. At least someone else has fallen over, too, and he's no longer alone being covered in sand.

Kanyoth takes all of the attention away from Courth's shaky climb back to standing, but even he can't resist giving a (scratchy) bleat of hello to the only sibling he had some kind of rapport with. 'Alright, well done. Now you can try and figure out how the rock makes things lighter, instead of being smart.'

Kanyoth has fallen quiet – Kanyoth, quiet? Courth takes so long staring at the blue he feels his legs start to slide out from under him again in the sand. 'It's not their fault they're all stupid, the world is annoying.' Still, Kanyoth's attention is in the right place, and now the hunger and need is starting to get too much...

There's at least one other green on the sands that doesn't seem exactly pleased about it, so Courth takes plodding, trembling steps over to Xijemynth. 'It's confusing, isn't it?'

There's no support to be found on that front, however, and the green's distraction is a blessing in disguise. He doesn't really want to be told he's wrong, or to have a discussion right now.

'What? Oh, yes...' Courth turns from green to...green. 'I think your own name is probably a better start than them...' It's a glib reply to a question he isn't expecting, and Courth's little storm of thoughts turns sluggish. He did remember – how could he forget? – but it's not that simple now.

'I'm not going to be special, I'm going to be boring, and ignorable, and good at everything I do, whether the person I bond with wants me to or not.' They're right, though, in that getting a person is a good place to start. He peers past Solletonath at the waiting candidates with something like skepticism. They seem a lot less exciting now he can see them all. 'Are you sure? They all look boring.'

Solletonath is suggesting what? He recoils a little from them and the touch of a fail against them, not liking the sound and way it makes his skin twitch. 'That's against the rules!' At least, it's against the rules Courth remembers. He frantically looks through what he remembers, shuttling information around and coming up blank. They'd only been encouraged to choose from the ones at the touching, but...'Oh, fine.' He plods after the other green, teetering from side to side.

Courth would yell at the others he's spoken to, but in that moment he's too distracted and too focussed on the path in front of him. The full weight of a tiny storm focusses on the people in front of him. Which one feels...

There's so many people – and only so much space for them to fit in, when they're hungry to see the creatures that might pick them. The same open aired layout that had allowed the weyr to see the joy in full and the dragonets to see the sky has pushed all the candidates into clumps. Before Courth can get much further than the first ring of hopefuls his wing catches on his claws and he falls, once again smashing his chest into the sands. Fortunately, this time, his wings figure out how to flare to soften the fall...Unfortunately, for the candidates, he's close enough to hit some of them.

'Move! Can't you see we're figuring out limbs, here?' he hisses, snapping at the ankles that come close enough to risk helping him up. He doesn't care if he hurts with teeth or mind as he lashes out this time. There's empty spaces in his mental peripherals, and a sense of foreboding. He needs to find the right...person...

The little space he's made for himself is enough to get his front end back up, but before Courth can object someone is there to fold his wings back to his side where they won't cause any more damage. It doesn't hurt – it gets everything put away exactly where it needs to be, in fact – but Courth still flinches away hissing. 'Excuse me!'

It doesn't seem right, that they could touch him, actual him and not shell, without asking...Though he supposes he did touch first.

He takes a few stumbling steps and whirls to find the culprit, but there's too many people, and some of them don't look as pleased as he would like at finding a green in their way. 'Don't look so annoyed, I'm not enjoying this either...There's too much involved in this walking business.' Courth snaps and hisses, and finds no one is willing to offer a solution, if they even hear him. Fine. He's used to being ignored by people.

Courth moves on, past the ring, and stubbornly still going along with Solletonath's idea. If Ilrioth could have his apprentice, Courth can have someone from this lot. Perhaps it's a petty way of dealing with not being allowed to choose his own hide colour, but Courth will get one choice. The minds here are more organised anyway, and more knowledgeable – a stray thought grabs him.

'What does that mean? No, show me, I'm not going anywhere. I'm Courth, if you must know –' Someone squeaks as they fall out of their seat on the bench to get away from the clambering dragon, but Courth doesn't care. He doesn't care much about anything going on around him as he leaps into the mind and lap of the person thinking the most interesting thoughts. Machines and levers and pulleys – something about an automatic washing station for the dragonets is hidden in there, too, only it's not as interesting as the plans for new harnesses and flamethrowers this person has been designing for dragons up on the ledges.

The person grips at him, laughing in apparent delight, but Courth nips hard at the bit of skin he can find through a thrown open shirt. 'I don't care about all that, I want to know what those machines do...Oh alright, we can get food too.'