The following is a log of roleplay on Star Stones MOO, logged by Dallaney.
All references to the world and characters of Pern™ based on Anne McCaffrey's fiction are copyright© 1967 by Anne McCaffrey, all rights reserved. The Dragonriders of Pern® is registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, by Anne McCaffrey and used here with permission.

Weyr Lake Shore

Sand stretches from bowl's floor to water smoothly, leaving a mere lapping of
slight waves to slap against the shoreline. The sand is left less packed here
than it is in the bowl, the soft sand underfoot opening onto the Weyr's
oasis. Mirror-like water can reflect merciless sun into the eyes of the
unwary, but the bold colors of a sunset casting colors against the lake makes
this a much-favored spot. Far to the northwest, the hurry of the living
cavern area is left behind and the warmth that penetrates through a weary
body on the unshaded shore rivals that of the hatching grounds to the
northeast.
Perched somewhere up high, you see Crazy, Fredo, Prior, Serendipity, and
Artur.
You see Small Camp Fire, T'gor's Backpack, Oil-Painted Sunset Egg, Harsh Light
of Day Egg, Up Past Midnight Egg, Crack of Dawn Egg, Week of Saturdays Egg,
Snowblind Winter Morning Egg, and Sultry Midsummer Twilight Egg here.
Aida is here.
The following dragons are here: Vhenoth, Urith, Xweth, Chaddyth, Nevanth,
Ankhoth, and Eratoth
From here you can go:
Center Bowl               Shallows
Weyrling Grounds          Feeding Grounds

Aida has arrived.

Dallaney sits on a drier spot of sand by the lake's edge, while a group of
weyrchildren splash around in the water just below and around her. Her stance
is taut, attentive to the goings-on, and she stands occasionally to shout
reprimand to a small boy playing in the shallows.

Dallaney
Gaunt, Dallan is, grown into a gawky adolescent stockiness. A mess of mahogany
curls crisps defiantly from behind her ears, huddles to straggle over sharp
eyebrows that cap equally hazel eyes in a thin face. Her nose is sharp, her
chin well-defined; dark brown cheeks and lips naturally pursed make her no
pleasure to look upon. Uncertain growth has given the slender limbs wiry
strength, with a simple agility of motion, but she remains shorter than most
others her age.
A pair of leather pants, patched at the knees, hang on by the bare grip of a
hide belt winding around her waist. Too long by design, multiple folds serve
to hitch the pair up, echoed by the tucked in, tucked up shirt the boyish
girl wears. A jacket attempts to cover it all: its adult standard issue and
proudly bears the pips of a thrice-corded medal. As dusky as she is, her
garments attempt to outdo that by their solid umber shades; even the loose
sandals are intensely russet.
Reluctant Igen Weyr colours twine on her shoulder, threatening to spill over
to the browned neck.
She is awake and looks alert.
[13 Turns, 2 Months, and 9 Days]

Aida just looked at you.

Aida and a local rider drift by, engrossed in conversation. But then the rider
has to go, and the Telgarian is left standing there, arms folded, a determined
frown on her face. The children's noise distracts her, prompting a muttered,
"Not that much to be happy about."

Aida
Riderhood has its own legacy: Aida's titian tresses have been reduced to a
ruddy flame, anointing her like a pixie illuminated by sunset's fire. Her
proportions, too, have been pared down to a taut frame, sans hint of
adolescent superfluity. Her facial features betoken anonymity -- dark eyes,
small mouth, sun-drenched complexion -- and while she's not comely, there's
something disingenuous latent in that calculated stride and confident eye.
Olive green and black leathers cast a somber, if simple, silhouette over
Aida's sturdy form. The jacket has been dyed the former hue and graces her
torso with a complimentary fit. Its details are wrought in black -- the
threads trimming sleeves' wrist-edge and the clasps that fasten the jacket
together -- to match her burnished, if somewhat worn leather pants. The latter
are a little too long and broad for her, tapering abruptly into stout black
leather boots.
The stark contrast of Telgar's white and black is warmed by earth-brown, her
lifemate's hue assuaging the single loop of Weyr's colors.
Although her appearance is nebulously adolescent, Aida's mannerisms and
bearing connote a worldliness that few hold-bound adults could match.
She is awake, but has been staring off into space for a minute.
Better, brisker, bitter-er.

Dallaney probably hears the mutter, but not much else; she glances back just
once anyway. Splayed fingers releasing their hold on the folds of her pants,
she leans over now to pry sand from those russet sandals. The child in the
shallows takes that rare chance to duck his sandy head into the pool, spraying
happy droplets up at the adolescent -- and Aida, if she's close enough.
"--Hey!" Dallan starts, and stands.

Aida shuffles back quickly, though the sand offers susurrant obstruction. Her
"Hey!" echoes Dallaney's, though it doesn't graduate to a full-blown
expectoration. Weyrbrats are the same everywhere, it seems, as are nannies.
"You ought to keep a closer eye on them," she tells Dallaney instead.

Dallaney bounces her glare, meant for the 'brat, off the Telgarian. "I was,"
says she emphatically, reaching out to tug the boy's collar, then to pick him
up with rough ease. The six-turn-old readily babbles some incoherent words,
mixed with muffled laughter as he fingers a line of sand into Dallan's
mahogany curls. "Did he get you too? I'm used to this sort of thing."

Fortunately, Aida's leathers protected her from harm, though why she's wearing
leathers in this begs inquiry into her current state of mind. "No -- I'm okay.
We've got our share of kids running wild along the lake shore too." Just not
this late in the turn, northern climates being what they are.

"I've met you-- before, haven't I?" Dallan asks the leather-clad one bluntly,
the exact date being uncertain. The boy's weight is starting to wear on her
arms anyway, and this she releases, a steady eye still goggling on him. "He
just makes a mess. I never did."

Dallaney adds, despite herself, "What's the lake like down north?"

Aida made messes, but perhaps of a different nature. "Maybe -- didn't I give
you a ride once?" She doesn't ferry that many people around. "Aida, of
Telgar," she adds, wilfully redundant. " -- It's colder, too cold for swimming
by now. Even the wind that comes off is enough to chill your bones."

Dallaney's eyes widen, brow clearing from it's habitual gloom. "Huh," she
grunts acknowledgement, then elbows the kid sharply along with a muttered
reprimand to keep sitting on that rock Dallan vacated. "Stay there, all
right-- yeah, you did," and that last is for Aida, "Was stuck without a ride
that day, and it wasn't the first time either. I thought you didn't come here
often--" voice lifts, to make it a question.

Arms still folded, Aida aimlessly kicks a booted foot into the sand. "I
didn't, then I found out a couple of months ago that an old friend impressed
here." She tosses her titian-haired head in the direction her companion left.
"R'naz, rides blue Geluth. So I come here sometimes to see him." When
telepathic dragon chatter just isn't enough.

"R'naz," Dallan repeats, and again, for emphasis. "Don't know that one.
There're too many riders around Igen." Absent hands hook into her pants
pockets, and elbows hitch into gaunt sharpness. She looks back; then nods
rather exaggeratedly to Aida. "Wish I could get away as easily as you riders
do. You're lucky."

"Lucky?" Aida could deliver a lengthy lecture on the fallacy of that term,
particularly given her incomplete conversation with R'naz, but she settles
for: "We have certain advantages, I'll agree, but we get the work too. Today's
first day all month I haven't had morning sweeps." They don't call them
Dawnrunners for nothing.

And that draws a grin from Dallan, jaw angling to heighten its apex, though
she doesn't move otherwise. "Oh. I thought you had breaks from those sweeps."
Well, D'aad takes them anyway. "Work's tiring, I think. You should get someone
to swap sometime."

Eratoth disappears suddenly for parts unknown.

Aida's grin is lopsided and reluctant. "Why would another rider swap with me?
Works out to be the same." She unfolds her arms, dropping them to her sides
and inhaling deeply. Maybe fresh Igen air will do the trick. "I can only take
so many breaks before my wingleader gets on my case. Not sure about D'aad,"
whom she recalls vaguely, "but that's how we work." Pride speckles her tone
oh-so-faintly.

You say, "Oh, /no/, that's what he does, I don't know anything about it."
Which appears to absolve Dallan from any blame. "Nor can I do anything about
it--" she grumbles more softly, but her volume strengthens on the next sally.
"You like what you do. Don't you?"

'Like' is such a strong word. "I impressed Helicyth; it's what I do." Aida's
answer is bluntly vague.

Dallaney tries to pin it down. "You mean, you don't have a choice?"

Aida eyes the girl -- isn't she the weyrbrat, not Aida? "Sure you do -- your
choice is whether you want to stand on the sands or not. If you don't, you
definitely won't impress," she explains, as to a much younger child.

Dallaney takes it in her stride. "Oh," she says again, then pauses for
thought. She begins another thread, skirting the edges of contemplation. "But
Rider, you chose what you do. So you ought to like it." She's uncertain for
once, and it shows in the sudden twitch of fuzzed eyebrows.

"Uh-uh," Aida disagrees. "Just because I signed up for it," in a manner of
speaking, "doesn't mean I have to like it. The important thing is that I do
it. Do you like this?" She indicates the children.

Dallaney wavers slightly, "I don't. But it was forced on me." Now she's
sounding reasonable, at any rate. "That is, until I find a new craft, or some
kind of work that doesn't have five-turn-olds in it." Arms cross in vague
imitation of Aida's position as she just -looks-.

Aida can sympathize with that. "Get a dragon, then, next time search comes
round here." As if it were that easy. "Then at least you've got someone you
can trust, even if the work gets you down," is that her compromise? "and no
one except your wingleader or Weyrleaders can tell you what to do."

As if it were that easy, indeed. Dallaney shrugs her shoulders up, then
relaxes into the scant embrace of that hidebound jacket. "I have to be
Searched, D'aad says," since it would effectively get this daughter out of his
hands, "But that's for next time Eggs are clutched. I don't care much for
dragons anyway. Still stuck with /those/ last time I looked." And she does,
briefly. The boy's still there, pouting.

Aida tires of standing around and stoops instead, though she projects her
voice sufficiently upwards to be heard. "Dragons are a lot of work," she
agrees. "I'm sure you see enough of that. I mean, they're worth it -- for the
companionship -- but I don't think it means that if you don't have one, your
life isn't complete." No matter what the soppier ballads imply. "You can't be
unhappy with one, but you can be happy without one too." Aida logic -- closely
approximating everyone else's for a change.

Dallaney nods over that. "And if you have one, is your life complete?" she
pursues, tilting her dark head down to look on Aida. "I don't think D'aad's
life is complete, even though he's got Raplath. Dragons help, he said," and
who knows what that means? She blinks, slowly.

"Complete," Aida repeats, as if tasting the word. "Well, I wouldn't trade him
for anything," and perhaps the mirth that colors her tone is partly Helicyth's
doing, "but I still gotta live with people." Oy -- people.

Dallaney drops to a squat, squirreling herself beside that damp boulder.
"People -- like him," she indicates the kid, then spares a smile, crinkling up
already wrinkled lips. "I suppose no one has a choice about people," she
ponders, fitful with the sheer effort of such thought.

Aida tags on promptly, "No choice at all -- unless you want to be a hermit.
But with a dragon, with impression, we're committed to the Weyr." Funny how
that rolls right off her tongue now, a fact of life. "Better to have to mind a
dragon than to mind kids, though. Dragons listen."

Dallaney jerks her head upwards, then sideways in a brief nod. She's heard
these lectures before. "Yeah you're right," she agrees, "And where's your
dragon today? I haven't seen him around-- suppose I would have noticed a
strange one." Hand shields her eyes as she scans the lake.

Aida points back at the bowl as she pushes herself to stand up. "Over there,
enjoying the sun without too much sand being blown in his face. He says that
R'naz wants me to look over something in his weyr while he's out at sweeps."
So she could go.

Dallaney doesn't waste words, and that's what she doesn't do now, simply
shuffling back in that same crouch to give Aida space to stand. She bobs
glances in Helicyth's direction, too, before raising a hand in a thin wave.
"Then you should go," she voices after, matter-of-fact.

"I suppose." It would be too maudlin for Aida to take a lonely walk along a
lake shore of a Weyr that isn't even her own. "See you around." Finally
loosening her flying jacket a trifle, the brownrider turns and goes.

Aida strides toward Center Bowl Area.

Yet the lakeshore isn't all that lonely, even as Dallan decides to drag her
little charge off back to the lower caverns. There are still those 'brats in
the water, and those other, and larger 'brats -- or are those dragons? --
along the way. Both Igenites scamper off, back to the weyr.

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