Janice, female, 5'10", 140, 16 turns old. Janice has very curly shoulder length caramel-blond hair, which she keeps loose. Her eyes are darkly green, and are usually slyly gazing at someone or something.

While she is a Lord and Lady's daughter, she is the fourteeth such child they have, and as such is not standing much of a chance to inherit anything from them, even a good dowry. For that reason, her parents always allowed her to play where she would, to learn from whom she could, and generally as long as she returned at the end of the day they were happy with her. She did not get into trouble until her 15th turn, when she attempted to dissuade a Holder Lord from beating a dimwitted drudge. She took the brunt of his rage, but still harbors remarkably little ill will for such people. She is as generous inside as her beautiful locks are outside. Her one indulgance is that she will wheedle nice clothing out of her mother for the local dances and gathers. She is one of the few women in the hold whose looks openly challenge pretty Aaryea's, and there seems little love lost between the two. Fortunately, they rarely habit the same places. Janice is likely to be overjoyed at the thought that she could impress a dragon, and would be sent immediately from the Hold if she is searched.

Her hands were used to working, by the evening. Janice wiped her brow with the back of her hand, and one of the local crafter girls laughed.

"You've just got clay all over your face now," she said. "You'd best wash up now - we're almost done."

"But..." Janice said, looking somewhat despondantly at the object she was playing with, "I'm not done yet?"

"Oh, all right," the crafter's apprentice said, "you can finish it. It's... pretty," she wasn't sure what this child was making, but it consisted of several looping rings and a big center area. Janice was very young, and the potters craft had taken on three of her elder sisters already. So, if Janice showed any more progress by the time she was ten or so, they'd probably petition her to join their craft.

It wasn't likely, but to a six year old Janice, the time she got to spend in the craft's hall was precious. She finished up her masterpiece, and presented it to the craft master. "I'm done," she announced.

"Ah -" he said, taking it and not hiding his risen eyebrow. "It's... pretty," he said.

"That's what she said too!" Janice giggled, her voice high and full of life and innocence. "I guess I'm pretty good!"

She went scampering off when the potter told her they would dry and fire her creation. He and his apprentices glanced at this ... object ... and hoped that whatever it was, she could take it with her when she went back to the Holder's nook.

***

There was a handsome young boy who postured near the group of annoying bullies, having forced himself through the crowd of kids and into the middle of the action. Janice was still sitting on her butt, but was not crying like the other girl that the bullies had accosted.

"That's not fair," Hendar said, he was already quite brave. "You guys are so much bigger than these girls! Why not fight me instead?" He growled and balled his hand into a fist, and since he had already gotten a reputation for finishing fights that other people had started, the trio of bullies instead wandered away. Hendar then held out his hand to the girls on the ground. The one weeping was still too full of sobs to even notice, but Janice put her hand into his, and let him help her up.

"Thank you," she said, quietly. "Aaryea, you've got to get up now, your folks are going to wonder where you've got to."

There was never any love lost between those two girls. Aaryea stood stiffly when she realized that Janice was there. She glared at the curly-haired girl and then turned her gaze on the boy Hendar. "Thank you, you saved me and I'll never forget that."

She strode away, suddenly her Lady airs getting the better of her. At least, that was how Janice saw it. Hendar shook his head, "well I 'saved' you," he said looking at Janice, "are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said. By age ten, she'd gotten over the pottery incident, moved on to music, sewing, and then finally recordskeeping. She fancied fashions, so she was never in anything less than a cute outfit - more often than not in something a bit more mature than her frame could handle at the time. But she'd grow into it soon enough...

***

"You shouldn't do that," Janice said, sharply and suddenly. Everyone looked up, then back at what they were doing. In this crowded gather, it was easy to get lost in the groups of people, easy to be distracted. Apparently the drudge that accompanied his Lord had done just that - and the boy looked no more witty than a caught wherry. His eyes bugged out a bit, and were slightly off-centered. The Lord though continued to strike the boy with a small riding crop, until Janice had had enough.

"I said that you should stop," Janice asserted, more angry than confident. When the man turned to her, he was livid.

"I'll beat my drudge if I wish to, little wench, you've no power over me and my posessions." He turned back to raise his arm once more, but Janice put her strong fingers around his thick wrist. "... You dare?"

The rest of the crowd stood stunned, as this foreign Lordling balled his fist and pounded Janice straight on the face. It took several moments for anyone to do something, it was strong Tzeado who tackled the big man and wrestled him off of the girl.

It took more than a month for Janice to be able to speak again, but her good looks had not been permanently marred by the man's viscious attack. Her mother though, was still angry that the girl had even done something as pointedly stupid as get in the way of a Lord.

"You should know better, I thought you would have learned that much here," she said sadly while preening at Janice's hair. "Why in the world would you do such a thing?"

"Because the boy was clearly dim witted, he had no idea why his master was beating him at all. It's hardly fair to punish a child because they aren't rushing to catch up - and he could hardly do that either, he walked with a limp."

"So you felt sorry for a drudge?" Her mother said, a bit distantly. They'd grown somewhat apart in the last few years, and Lady Janae was aging. "I know we've never resorted to beating our drudges, but Janice, you've got to understand that what he did was perfectly in order. And he could have killed you!"

"And he could have killed the boy too, he looked like he was going to," Janice said. "It just... isn't right. That's all. I ... won't do it again."

*** (NOTE that this info is slightly wrong, they are not from the Backwards, they're instead going to be part of the Alabaster/Blackstone 'giveaway' list because Shard absolutely screwed up and assigned these spare backward frenzy dragons to others without remembering that she'd already put them here. I am a dumbass.)***

Which was actually kind of a lie. For it was after she'd gone to another party shortly before the Protectorate moved from Pern to Alskyr, that she saw a similar incident. She only had to stand with her eyes cold and hard watching from close by, to stop the visiting woman from kicking her young attendant. "We don't tolerate that around here," Janice growled. The woman and her drudge crept away to their carriage without further incident.

Though it was only a few weeks after that, when ... the Group Search occurred. In the strange aftermath of moving to Alskyr, it seemed that a number of future-based dragons arrived in the 'past' to collect the riders who hadn't been there when they were hatching.

Janice was among those, with a surprise born by a larger adult dragon. Electranath had felt it necessary to move his precious gold offspring to a place where she would find the right bond, not have to live alone or die trying.

And there was something completely magical about this pair. Hendar watched as his beloved Janice caught the gold's eye just as she would have if they'd been standing on the sands. Though she was a bit older than merely a hatchling, it wasn't by much. Her wings were strong, her eyes clear. Meliosth's faceted eyes changed colors immediately from the orange-wary of having been brought not only between but through the Nexus as well, into a rich green teal.

I have found you! The dragonet bespoke. It was enough to bring Janice to her knees, tears running down her cheeks.

"You ... you did, you found me even though you were born so very far away!" She embraced the dragon, just as others watched a handful of those gathered around do the same to their own suddenly-found bonds.

Kacey, Electranath's rider, explained that **Eriol's 'backwards frenzy' was quite the success, but perhaps too much of a good thing: there were dragons who simply walked away without looking at the candidates, and those who demanded to be brought out to see other worlds. His dragon along with several others belonging to the Protectorate had done similar tasks: nosed their little newborns closer, and flew them around the Nexus.

Janice was lost in the passionate enjoyment that her bond shared with her - lost, found, nothing meant anything.

Except hunger! There was food, right? Of course there was food. Janice didn't hesitate to stand and walk with determination toward the kitchens, her little - not really tiny, surely - dragon hastily following. They made a bit of a scene, taking over a platter of already-cut wherry.

I would prefer it raw, my one. But this will do for now!

***

Janice trained with Kacey and Hendar to learn the basics of her dragon's needs. Janice was a bit put off by the 'don't get too hot and heavy with your partner' thing: Hendar was there, he was her love, her protector. But even he knew, perhaps all too intimately, how mistakes could cost lives.

Lives weren't at stake here at Caledrus, however. And as the weeks went by, Meli and Janice learned more and more - grew more solidly together as a team, and beyond that, discovered that the joy of pairing for humans could be an intriguing curiosity to their dragons.

The weyrling Meli would tilt her head, and Cometh would explain. She would get it much later. She would be a queen, of course. She might even be a bigger gold than those who had come back in the meantime from their own forays into the Pernese weyrs.

There was still little love lost among some of the catty Holders daughters, but Meli investigated each and every one of them as they passed by the canyon-side weyr. Since Caledrus had been relocated, they had to work over time to get the place situated for dragon use. Holders and Lowborn needed to cooperate here: there were equal numbers of dragons impressed to each. Janice had been given a spacious den near Cometh's and Hendar's, for the obvious reasons. Across the crevasse that formed Caledrus, she could see the others: a gold with rich black wings, a female bronze (imagine that!), a tiny green and gold. But Meli wanted to be among the others - the more colorful and strange dragons, the more colorful and strange people.

***

Life wasn't quite as idyllic as all that, when Meli had grown up and enjoyed a certain amount of attention from not just Cometh but other males around the place. At one point she simply decided that enough was enough, and even though she was quite proddy and ready to mate, she chose instead to take her rider through the Nexus ... randomly.

They returned within moments, at least to the others eyes. But they had been gone longer than minutes, hours, or even days, their time.

A few weeks later, Janice heard a knock at her den's door, opening it to find...

"H... Hollis, I think it is?" She was surprised, the white-haired Weyrleader rarely came into the Alabaster territories. But behind him was another white-haired man: Engell, the head of Alabaster himself. How rare was this? On the ledge, her good-sized gold made room for Engell's silvered Tehndarinth, there was nowhere near enough space for Hollis's massive bronze Synesth to land.

They were looking at the blond woman quite seriously, and she instinctively backed away a few steps. But to recover, as she always did, she said, "come in, I'll pour some coffee."

"So much better than klah, eh?" Engell said, making himself comfortable with the briefest of glares at his younger counterpart.

"It is," Janice said, masking her nerves with a ritual of heating water and pressing the grounds. "I can't believe anyone can live without it."

She offered the cups to her visitors, took one herself, and blocked her dragon's worried mind for the moment. Meli calmed, but it was likely because of Tehn's presence and Synesth outside to give her immediate information.

Hollis drew in a breath after sipping at the dark liquid. "We know where you've been, Janice."

They both saw the instant reaction: it was subtle, but present. Her eyes narrowed slightly, her jaw tightened. How would she play this? They knew from Hendar's communication that she was highly intelligent and quite witty, but she was also more or less casual and able to take things in stride.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean, Meli and I have traveled, it's true, but..."

"We know where you've been. What secrets you have," Engell said - his tone had the edge of a warning in it. He watched Janice gently press her lips together. "It is my job, my passion, to know things."

"Prying into people's personal lives isn't a passion, Lord Rider, it's invasive," Janice said, quite a lot more sharply than either she or her guests expected. "And they are not my secrets. If you know so much, you know that."

She glared back at the blue-eyed man, over her coffee cup.

"It's a fair point," Engell said. Hollis didn't seem to be so willing to accept that answer, however.

"Like many of us," he said, grey eyes looking deceptively softly at the woman, "you are more than you appear to be. You are more... numerous than you believe."

Janice allowed her breath to escape slowly, "and what of it? You both obviously know far more about all of this, whatever this is, than I do."

There were moments when Janice knew that the pair of men were communicating mentally - they were telepaths, not just able to talk to their dragons with their minds, but to other Humans. Janice did have secrets, but she knew they were nothing like the kind these men had. They looked so very similar, their hair and jawlines, but Engell's eyes were pale sky blue, while Hollis's were a grey shade, not just grey irised, but the whole visible portion seemed to be a suede-soft silver. She wondered whether they were related: they were, not just here, but on many other worlds.

Worlds which she'd been to, even if briefly, in that 'moment' she was gone with Meli. That was her secret, she'd managed to keep it from Hendar, but after this meeting she was sure to have to tell him. She didn't want to. She didn't want to burden him with it.

"Then tell me, Janice, fourteenth child of Janae and Ceilran, or is it fourteenth clone of Janice Prime, how has this knowledge affected you?" Engell spoke carefully, but she could also tell he was rooting around in her mind. Abruptly and angrily she felt Meliosth's mind snap at him: he flickered a nervous eye toward the queen glaring at him from her roost nearby, then smiled softly at Janice. "Please?"

"I..." how could she say this? "I have dreams, now. Terrible dreams." She looked at her coffee, her distorted reflection bright because of the daylight streaming in through the large den's ledge. "Dreams of her life."

"Then you know your role in that world, you know who you are, deep inside." Hollis pressed. But once more, Meli gave off a hissing sound, and Janice felt her hot, angry thoughts shoot through her mind at the white-haired man. Abruptly she echoed them.

"I know who I am. I know who she is. We are not the same, Weyrleader." Janice wasn't sure where this was going, but she knew she didn't care for it. "You can't possibly think that I'm like her?"

"You are her," Engell stated, calmly. "You know this to be true."

"I know who I am, yes," Janice replied, "but you're sadly mistaken if you think that I'm..." She felt it, it was Hollis's mind trying to urge her on. "An assassin, living among the stars? I mean, I am here and now," she threw her arm up, at the same time as placing the now-empty cup on the low table between their chairs. "I have dreams of her life, how hard it is for her to live like that. I have dreams about Hendar, yes I know he's one too." Janice allowed her tears to flow freely, why bother trying to seem as though this wasn't bothering her? She'd seen because she was in the same space as this 'clone' Janice - a universe filled with space ships and rivalries that would cause Holders to pale. She and Hendar, and in fact many of those people she knew at Caledrus, participated eagerly in those rivalries.

"Why have you come here," she finally asked, glancing between them. "Why did you come here? It's already hard enough with this inside me. I'm not going to act on it, I'm not going to be her." She suddenly realized: Engell and his Hold had always been associated with... "I won't become an assassin for you. Not for anyone."

"I would not ask that of you, clearly you're holding your own right here." Engell said, and gave a sidelong look at Hollis. "I think we're done here."

Janice was relieved to hear that, but they didn't get up. She pulled in a shaky breath, "all I can do is hope that... maybe... she has dreams of my life, here. Maybe that will bring her some peace."

Parents gold Kohlaurnth (Zanzibar) x bronze-brown Electranath (Kacey)