it's not fanfic because it's modified

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

I know Beth wrote a followup but she never posted it.

To say that chaos reigned would be to severely understate.

It was a Hatching. Chaos reigned as that was what Hatchings were like and how things were done; everything was made of chaos, of a million singular events going at once. It had been going for about an hour, and had really gotten going – eggs hatching left and right, Impressions here and there and Martine had only gotten to glance toward the galleries to smile at her family, who she could see better than she'd expected to be able to (she'd ended up standing quite close, which hadn't been expected at all) once or twice. She was too busy watching her friends.

Maybe losing her friends. These people had, in six months, become family to her just as much as the others had – there were two or three family members on the sands, and one, her half-brother M'tye, stood quite near her, one of the Weyrlingmasters whose cautious eye on a couple of candidates in particular was obvious. One of them was her; the other his lover, who she stood very close to indeed.

That is, until she Impressed, and they were doomed to further celibacy and awkwardness in the ranks, and M'tye saw her off and returned to hover over his sister. He got to shoot more glances toward their biological family than she did.

Their biological family and Kelemen Sweeney, who M'tye didn't even claim to begin to understand. It didn't bother him that the man was sitting in the front row with the rest of them, though, despite the fact he was distant from them, not exactly trying to make friends with the siblings. He wasn't musing on his sister's lover, though, but on the state of his sister's newest family. Soon his charges.

And Martine was certainly having fun, hopping from foot to foot and dancing about to avoid the heat, same as everyone else; keeping one hand twined in Alarynden's, the young man careful and cautious in regard to her and everyone. He was somewhat afraid of people, yet in a very different way than Kelemen was. It didn't stop Martine from trying to comfort, and Alarynden had been glad to accept that. Her other hand was in Dairene's and Lyrin was standing on Ryn's other end –Alarynden and his girls, they'd gotten teased. It was the four of them and Jayarte, after all – Jaye, who'd Impressed already.

She was supposed to be a goldrider, Jayarte.

She seemed perfectly happy with a blue.

The real funny thing was that Alarynden was actually tolerating being surrounded by all these girls. Tolerating and happy with it – he'd been afraid of women when they'd all met him. Martine had already known Lyrin and everyone else essentially bonded fast.

During this brief reflection on Jaye was when the diaster struck.

Really, it was quite a minor disaster. Also a miner disaster, seeing as how Daire was involved a little bit. The four of them had been shoving each other around a bit, M'tye pretending to chide them and shooting glances up at the Cromites (and his baby sister's offworld "friend") with rolled eyes, when attention turned their way.

The gold, the hatchling queen, had come in their direction, bringing with her a blue sibling, and a bronze was barreling that way from the other side of the Sands. Every eye in the Galleries, just about, focused on the gold –

"I wonder if she's looking at you, Ryn," Dairene teased, because Dairene was the mean one despite having been Assistant Headwoman. She was strict and harsh and sarcastic and everyone loved her anyway – or at least they did. At that comment, Martine's laugh probably carried to her family. Had she really been thinking about it, she would have felt bad for being quite so happy surrounded by others with Kelemen looking on, but she wasn't really focused on anything but the adrenaline of the Hatching.

And nobody saw the bronze coming.

"It'd about suit him, don't you think?" Lyrin asked, and Martine started to fluff Alarynden's hair up. And still nobody saw the bronze coming.

And then everybody saw the bronze, when he crashed into the blue and the gold, all three of them colliding and slipping about, a tangle of legs.

"Shit," whispered M'ral up in the galleries, trying not to glance at Kelemen, who was probably terrifed as the ball of dragons rolled toward the group of candidates, trying to unwrap.

"Whoah, whoah, slow it down there!" M'tye jumped.

Lyrin, Martine, Alarynden and Dairene all backed up – and crashed into the support beam of the galleries' stands, along with the dragons. M'tye's eyes widened. A healer appeared from somewhere and ran over. What felt like slowly and was actually a lot faster than that, everyone, dragons and humans alike, straightened and backed out onto the visible sands.

They had all of Pern's attention at that moment. Rumor had spread fast and weyrlings had told adults that the young dragons might have been killed, the much-needed clutching gold included. But they hadn't been killed. They were mostly fine – scratched up and messy and sandy, and all four of the Candidates had cuts from draconic claws trying to get out of the mess, but largely unhurt.

They had all of Pern's attention, but three of them were caught up somewhere else. Lyrin let the healer help her up right away and she, too, stopped to catch the eyes of her friends. Huh. Well. How about that.

"Okay, I can't see," M'ral muttered, even if he could, and leaned over the edge. The Lord Holder pulled him back by the jacket. "Da someone could be hurt –"

"Nobody's hurt."

"M'tye might've gotten squished –"

"He didn't!" another sister shrieked. "He's fine and Martine is fine and so's everyone else, stop blocking the view!"

"It's not my fault I'm short!"

Oblivious to her siblings' patter, Martine had gained somewhat of an odd feeling in the back of her head – her leg was what had actually been scratched, somewhat, but she was sure for a second she had a concussion.

Until she was equally sure it was something else.

« I'm sorry! » said a voice unlike any other she'd ever heard – it was like hearing her own voice only not, and she knew what that was and what it meant. It sounded different and felt different and even had a scent of a sort to it, and yet it still felt like her voice. « We didn't mean the scratches. Nei's sorry and so's Mani and so you need to be okay. You're okay, right, you're sure of it. Because it was an accident and I don't think I can do without you now, even if you are really more confusing than I was expecting! » A pause, and then, « ... I'm Caillanth and I think you should get that looked at. »

Martine started to cry, which surprised exactly no one. At about the same time, the others managed to separate further, enough that they could be seen as individual units and people could discern which dragon went to whom. The talk was quiet, though, and so it was up to M'tye –

"What's that, then?" he asked, helping all the new weyrlings up. "We got names? Who's with whom now?"

At the same time, M'ral had spotted Martine with the gold and started muttering "no, no, no anything but that."

As they sorted out, M'tye took down names. Took down names and yelled them out to the galleries as this particular group were a bit shaken – Alarynden and his bronze Oneiroth, Dairene and her blue Manishath, Martine and her gold Caillanth, all of whom would settle on proper names for themselves at a later point – and helped them over to feed their dragons. Martine was using Caillanth's head as a cane; Alarynden was helping Oneiroth walk; Manishath was offering commentary as Dairene applied pressure to her arm so as not to keep bleeding.

Lyrin rolled her eyes at them. "No big finish?"

They exchanged brief eye contact, and Martine whirled around to face the galleries first, yelling, "In my line of work I've had a lot worse! You're going to have to try harder, Telgar!"

"Stop gawking! We didn't sell you tickets!" Dairene added loftily – Alarynden couldn't speak from the laughter.

Everyone ate, with a side of bandages, less for eating.