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All references to worlds and characters based on Anne McCaffrey's fiction are copyright© Anne McCaffrey 1967, 2000, all rights reserved, and used by permission of the author. The Dragonriders of Pern® is registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, by Anne McCaffrey. Use or reproduction without a license is strictly prohibited.  The following is information recorded for the interest of members of Star Stones MOO (starstones.net: 9999).  Any violation of copyright by me is entirely unintended; please contact me about it.

Dallaney's Story

D'ney was born Dallaney in Igen Hold after a revealing fight and a fierce debate over whether the child of a brownrider and a smallholder's daughter should be named Laney or Dallan--the latter being a boy's name, her mother argued. It ended with another of the young holder girl's infamous break-ups, already common enough that the ignorant amongst the holders were wondering if she weren't rider material. Thus was Dallaney's rocky childhood established, and she was soon sent to her 'father' at the weyr to be bred and to live as she wished. The brownrider being uncertain that she was truly his and in denial of the fact that Dallaney was female, left her to the weyr fosterers and that was that. And for the little girl, Dallan was born.

The next few years of Dallan's life were like those of other weyrbrats who were similarly left alone and forced into independence: she found her place in the hierachy and often had to fight tooth and nail to keep it.  She built up a sizeable gang of her own, admittedly of the outcasts and young boys of the weyr, but still had to endure the rough-and-tumble of the bigger boys, and later, the gentler teasings of the weyr's girls as they neared maturity and she didn't.  Much of her stubborn character was forged into stone then, along with her resentment of most everything she considered frivolous.

In the meantime, Dallan had her oases of joy too, in the form of reconciliation with her father (an NPC named D'aad).  The resultant stable, if not always amicable relationship between father and daughter allowed Dallan her minor conveniences: the odd dragon ride on Raplath, an occasional stay in his weyr, trips to the 'Reaches when Igen got too hot.  But the newfound familial happiness came with its price.  Dallan was subject to the whims of the perverse brownrider, who once had her real name stitched into her collar just to spite the self-conscious child.  That particular gesture also hurt whatever status Dallan might have had among the kidlets, for not a few of them started calling her 'Dallaney'.   That persisted for a few agonising turns, till the Weyr minds were able to forget.

Dallan's education continued with or without her consent.  Eventually the Ballads which other children had to learn found their way into her head, by dint of her caretakers' persistence.  She also developed an active interest in music around then, but never put down her pride enough to be instructed in more than the rudiments of gitaring.  Instead, she spent her time fetching and carrying for the weyrfolk and riders, both because of her preference of the warm Igen sands and for the freedom the work gave her.  Errands were definitely more attractive than the knitting and herb-gathering her female peers were engaging in at around 10 turns of age.

So it was that when her twelfth turnday came around, Dallan was left without a craft, nor any skill to speak of.  D'aad naturally lost his temper over that, and enjoined Dallan to a promise: that she would Impress a dragon like he did.  All that came out of the episode was estrangement, and a chilly determination on the weyrbrat's part to carve out a niche of her own somehow.   Her resolution was soon spurred by D'aad's half-hearted attempt to leave her with her mother, whom Dallan irrevocably despised.  Yet her loyalty to Igen was such that she could not run away, not without an excuse.  Another turn came and went, leaving Dallan older and creeping steadily towards maturity, being the late bloomer she was.   Hence, when a distasteful errand of hers was interrupted by a Telgarian rider one day - and B'unz wasn't even on Search - she left Igen for Telgar, to delay the inevitable submission to the crafts she could not accept.

It came as quite a blow to her when the hatching day came and went, leaving Dallan and some of her friends forlorn on the sands.  She took to her heels soon enough, hitching a ride back to Igen Weyr on her father's Raplath.  Going back to the old routine didn't sit well on her, however, and the restless child soon sought apprenticeship with the Weyr messenger, Tendrik.  She found fulfillment in the constant exploration of the Igen Ranges, and a new friend in Heida, a hardy if giggly fellow messenger, though the writing and drum lessons wore on her patience.  Her assignment under the bossy Raghin didn't help in the least: he placed her under probation for an indefinite period and hence confined her to the lower caverns most of the time.  Between chafing at her bounds and tramping through the lands, Dallan eventually squirrelled riding lessons out of the weyrherder, but those hadn't progressed far when Igen's young queen, Sayurith, deposited a sizeable number of eggs on the hatching ground, and Dallan was Searched yet again, this time by Lah'i's Isavroth.

Candidacy added the tedium of chores to the pain of being without knot and rank. She could only accept the process as necessary, but the perilous nature of her position did not escape the growing adolescent. These mixed feelings bubbled to a boil when the great day actually came: D'aad up in the galleries betting on her future, Raghin hiding somewhere waiting for her to come reclaim her apprentice's knot, and eggs right in front of her cracking dreams and birthing hopes. Just when she thought she was lost, a large-eyed dragonet claimed her in his own bumbling manner. Her Nhaeth, D'ney shouted, and that was that.

The turns of weyrlinghood were full of the struggles associated with bonding, and theirs was a bond destined to be fraught with troubles. Never a day passed without Nhaeth getting into some scrape.  But they managed to even out the relationship over time, D'ney submitting to the inevitable daydreams and what-if's her lifemate preferred to indulge in, while he learnt to modulate his rich emotions into a format she understood.  Their improvement gave D'ney a wingsecond's knot in the weyrling wing, which pleased them immensely. Then their training came to an end, and the weyrlings were all placed into fighting wings to face the very real danger of Thread. The placement in DuneRaider with D'aad caused a short period of estrangement between parent and child. It was soon dissolved, however, when the first Threadfall came along and all minor quarrels were forgotten.

D'ney and Nhaeth fought bravely in the next turns, gaining their scars and scores along with the more experienced riders. They worked hard, but neither of them expected to be promoted one day to help DuneRaider's new Wingleader, Eilish.  The result was a flurry of paperwork that D'ney could never have worked out without Nhaeth's assistance.  The brown proved adept at picking out letters from his (limited) memory or hers, and they made a good team in this one instance, filling out the gaps in each other's knowledge.

At present, they still live in their weyr, tucked into safe rock in good view of the Star Stones, carrying on their busy lives.

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