Vindanea's Anxious Butter-Gold Vyath
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Revival Tent Egg
No permanent structure, the shell's taut curve shapes instead a
travelling huckster's gaudy dream: blood and gold, ichor and gold,
its fresh-painted stripes widen and narrow like the rise and fall of
shouted chants, only to garble forked tongues at its not so steepled
tip. It invites; it beckons; it harangues, it's that bright, that
big, with an admission price to match.
Revival Tent Egg releases long sheets of striped-gold shards — its
day in this town is done, and this tent's coming down! — that
crumple even as they fall, as if scuttling into the crowd of sand and
shells already released. When that show's over, one still-wet
neophyte is left behind, wobbling her muzzle free from where it'd
curled behind her wing.
Anxious Butter-Gold Dragonet
A dragonet of softness, of sedentary richness, her gently curved
limbs are laved in the sweet, creamy gold of new-churned butter. No
salt prickles at the pastoral rise and fall of her neckridges, no
vinegar hisses along the mellow curve of her tail, but anxiety
mingles with the intelligence in those wide-set eyes, and a blush of
orange blurs the trailing edges of even those vast,
vein-fingerprinted wings.
The sands are the same, burning-hot beneath you, and the smell of
sweat — it's as if you were back, back /then/ all over again,
strained back in time, under the growing headache of all their
stares. And then there's just another of the very many, however
worried, as this one sees you — until then, seeing /only/ you, that
mind finds your own and melts, the anxious red eyes soothing the burn
into a vista of eternal blue. Those wings, like fingerprints,
everyone may have them; but hers, /hers/ — » You waited for me, «
she says; and then gaily, in utter relief,
» My name is Vyath! «
What do we want to take with us into the new millennium?
For one thing, we'd like to still be able to take with us
those things that maybe aren't so good for us, but taste awfully good
nevertheless (and maybe they /are/ better than all that invert this
and faux that). Would there be so much fuss over replicating
cafeteria-cooked spinach? Thought not.
—
Your Vyath is a sweet-ish, biddable-ish dragon with not a
whole lot of her own force or will or strong judgment — or, at
least, it doesn't come to the surface much. She's certainly not an
airhead, this gold, but … well … you know how we see, from time
to time, riders getting swallowed up by their dragons? This is a
dragon who stands a very good chance of being swallowed up by her
rider. She would become, in the wrong hands, a doormat. We don't
think Vinnie would let this happen, but we also think she might not
be above using this dragon as a total tool from time to time — and
that's just interesting. Different. Something we think you could pull
off very well.
See, Vyath is fairly intelligent, and has more of a sense of
cause and effect than some other dragons do, … which is what can
get her into trouble. It's not that she's a leader, far from it —
Vinnie's her leader — but she's more, well, a nice geek. Wants to
help. Wants to be liked. But we'll get to that.
Physically, Vyath's characteristics are very average:
medium-sized for a queen, medium in her classical proportions, a
medium shade of gold (it's amazing how much butter can get tinted
during particular seasons when the cows are eating different plants)
with only an orangey blush to the trailing edges of her wings.
She has a magnificent constitution: healthy as a horse. Her
talons even grow extra-fast, to the point where they need sanding
down or self-sharpening — Vyath might have a favorite rock that will
be marked over time with the scrape of her claws, and then another,
and then another. She's also a late bloomer for a lot of things:
late to kill her own food, late to fly, late to rise. The anxiety
won't kick in so much when she's young, when she's more /doing/
instead of thinking; however, watch for it to arise increasingly as
she learns her limbs and has time to think more about what she's
doing.
If Vyath's beautiful, she's beautiful because of her
simplicity. Pastoral. Clean. She's an early hour of morning right
after a rain, not in the full bloom of spring but more like the
middle of March, when everything's still sorta pokey and slow and
plain and little too cold for frolicking — but not so chilly that
she needs to burrow down in the security blankets and ask for a hand
to hold. She just wants to be near Vinnie, that's all. Near-ish.
Doesn't have to be right on top of her.
Thing is, Vyath is ever so intrigued by Vinnie. There's so
much to sift through in Vinnie, and Vinnie has so many sharp insights
and likely so much to /say/. Vyath /enjoys/ her to the point of
being overwhelmed at times, possibly barely getting a thought in
edgewise. She is only too happy to concur, to trust, to follow her
leader, to listen, to take direction, and if it got too quiet for
whatever reason, /then/ she'd start to ask questions: » What do you
think about this? What do you think about that? Where do you want
to go today? What should I do now? Am I doing this right? Are you
happy? Is this okay? I don't know, Vinnie, you tell me: you're the
boss. What do we do next? I don't have anything to do. I could
just sit here and watch you. No, don't get up, I'm all right. Do
you like that dragon over there? He's talking to me. I don't know
what to say… « Still, even if she doesn't always know what to
say, she's intrigued by other dragons as well — drawn like a moth to
the flame.
We also remember that Vinnie likes, on some levels, to
protect the innocent. It's one of her kinder points as a character,
and since one of the main PC innocents Vinnie's been protecting is
losing her innocence, this is kinda like giving back, recycling.
Vyath may need to be mucked, but she doesn't wear diapers,
and she isn't a ball and chain. Vindanea gets the most loving of
escape pods: a sounding board to discuss things with, a means of
eventual travel, stability, deep-down reassurance that She is Cool,
…and with Vyath's relationships with other dragons comes a sort of
network of her own.
Along with Vinnie, Vyath likes a panoramic view, and she
likes to roam at times even as does her dam — if perhaps to more of
a purpose. She likes to look at down at a worldful of very small
things. She isn't so much into intricacies or details or anything —
it's not *tiny* things that she likes — but the top of a cothold
could take on the beauty and the wonder some humans have in, say,
looking at a wildflower. There could be a whole bouquet of cotholds.
A patchwork sampler of farms. Cluttery scenes, they're comforting.
Lots of things to focus on. Wide expanses of just nothing, or the
same things over and over again, will make her uncomfortable if they
don't simply bore her. She's used to Vinnie having a full (read:
neurotic) mind. She wants her world to be full, too. That way she
doesn't have to spin ideas from whole cloth so much. Give her lots
and lots to chew on. Spam is Good! She sorta has an MTV mind, come
to think of it.
With that MTV mind comes reading over Vinnie's shoulder, in
a manner of speaking. She may occasionally interrupt. With other
dragons, certainly, she can converse. As for talking to people,
people other than Vinnie — she'd ask Vinnie what she thought, first,
and if it was an okay thing to do, and only /then/ would she tiptoe
in and say whatever it was.
That said, Vyath's unlikely to ever argue with Vinnie when
not 'under the influence'. That is, /argue/, now. Questioning is
okay. Speaking up for herself where she actually has an opinion (»
No, I don't want herdbeast, I'm more in the mood for wherry «) is
okay. And the » No, don't trouble yourself, I can get it, I can
wait, « that's okay too. There might even be some boots-chewing if
she's unhappy but can't quite express it otherwise. But she'll
rarely argue for argument's sake, and she may never really put her
foot down where Vinnie is concerned. Perhaps she's afraid to.
Even when she gets sexually mature and figures out The
Difference, Vyath won't be inclined to flirt. She'll try to be
gracious when others flirt with her, but it'll probably always be
awkward. She may resort to talking about the weather to get them off
her tail. She would love to have things to occupy herself with
(like hair to wash, a sock drawer to rearrange), and she'll envy how
very busy Vinnie is, and wish that she had actual work to do. Office
work. She'd like office work. Filing. Type that up for you?
While proddy, she may turn out to be worried and anxious for
most of her flights. She'll have performance anxiety. It's not
that she'll get irascible, she's not likely to become unreasonable,
but she'll lose a bit of her capacity to reason and be calm and
steady. She's likely to actually concern herself — greatly — with
whether her suitors actually like her or whether they just want sex.
The harder they try, the more she'll distrust them and question
their motives, subconsciously if not consciously. Imagine what she'd
do with the bad poetry that tends to come out in gold flights…
Speaking of which, she can fly just great, but her mating
flights don't tend to be wild and free and liberating and
chase-me-chase-me-chase-me-catch-me. With that intelligence of hers,
and with what reason's left to her, they're straight, long, full of
exhausting questions. Oh, those questions aren't entirely conscious,
they're welling up from that deep subconscious level of anxiety, and
some but not necessarily all of the questions pop explicitly free,
even while she's wracked by these strange urges to do stranger things
and isn't that disturbing if you stop to think about it? but you
can't and Vinnie, Vinnie, get me out of here! Examples, if they were
conscious, might include: » Will the dragon who catches me be
around tomorrow? Will I *want* him around tomorrow? What if the
dragon is honorable and he sits by me all the way till it's time for
the eggs to hatch, and we don't get along? What if he has bad
breath? What if he's as cheesey then as he is now? What if he
expects more from me? What if Vinnie doesn't like his rider? What if
Vinnie doesn't like him? Vinnie, who should I pick? I don't know.
«
It's possible that, more than once, she'll just get *taken*,
and while that can be romantic in a sweep-you-off-your-feet,
bodice-ripper kind of way, what does that say about her — especially
considering her rider's usual strength, independence, and integrity?
Capitulating would just get to be so embarrassing after awhile.
There's likely to be quite a bit of post-flight depression,
and the sands may make her miserable — stuck in the same place for
months, *ugh* *Ugh* *UGH*. To combat this, she'll tend to start
getting really, really chatty with anyone still at home. Maybe Vyath
makes up soap opera plots to amuse herself and other dragons. She
comes up with storylines, looking at people. » That guy over there.
You see him? I bet he's got holes in his socks. « If she asks Vinnie
to ask him to take his shoes off, it's not for goofiness, and she's
unlikely to push: it's because she's an armchair anthropologist. »
Ruathans have strange customs. They are drawn to me. I think
Ruathans think golds are their province. «
At least there'll be no postpartum depression, so to speak,
when her children hatch and impress. She may even goad them on.
Encourage candidates. Encourage other dragons to babysit her eggs
for a while. Egg touchings are greeeeeat. She's unlikely to hover
and brood, not even over a gold egg. She'll want to get rid of all
of them, really, and give 'em a wide berth when the shells start
cracking. Can she get away with removing herself to the ledge where
the other dragons hang out? Is there enough room?
As soon as she's able to get off the sands again, *zip* she
goes, and hallelujah, and, hey, Vinnie, I got this idea: it's called
firestone, you chew it, and I bet nobody would suspect… you think?
No? Okay. Are you sure? Okay.
Physically, her voice is a clear alto even now, and will
deepen into baritone as she matures; by comparison, her thoughts are
cluttered, often leaking bits of this and that, subliminal worries
and concerns and little joys, occasionally even revealing some of
Vinnie's own thoughts to the other dragons despite herself. No one
color defines her mental signature, though the softest of greens is
common, occasionally drifting into lavender — and there's a scent to
her, that morning just after a rain, when all the world is new
again. Maybe it'll mess itself up again. But maybe it won't.
You and Vyath, you can do more than just wait and see.
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Parentage: Arien's Katrineth + M'gael's bronze Theronth
Egg: Arien
Dragonet: Minnea, M'gael, Fiona, Arien
