Chiris' weyr (NOTE that in many records he will be called Chris and any links might be broken just add an I in there...)
Impressed at Dawn Sisters Weyr
Re-bonded after becoming a dragon morph himself, long, long years later. The story below is preserved for posterity but is now considered non-canon for he and Alhann. The record of that clutch at Dawn Sisters is nonexistent and as such the pair of dragons, even though they did mate and produce a clutch for the Alabaster/Blackstone giveaway (QV)
Chiris is a golden gryphon morph, in reality! (also not as mild-mannered and sweetie he's a touch of a showoff these days) His new dragon, brass male Drocheaph, is definitely compatible with him, a deserving successor for a bronze-rider's new friend
Chiris was just under ten turns old. He would turn ten ... well, his birthing day was the same as his mother's, and that suddenly made him very sad.
It was not really a whim that led his father to drag him away from his brooding into the gather, it was supposed to be a day when he met this girl his father the lord holder had found for him.
Her mother had something to do with it. And her brother, a holder among the Paveh folk. Nice. Well, that would be fine. But why not later?
Dressed in his fine whites, the kind of clothing that Chiris hated just about the moment he set eyes on them, he was led by the hand outside to the loud gather grounds. So many things to do! And... suddenly, he found himself tripping over a turned stone, landing right on his knees.
No one laughed, certainly not his father. Instead, the burly man gave him a glare, but then helped him tidy up a bit. "Your hands, son," he said, holding a cloth he'd gotten from a nearby gather goer. "Don't you dare rub them on your sorry butt. It will be sore enough as it is."
"Yes sir," Chiris glowered. Then... He met Her.
***
'How lucky do you think you can get, boy?' Chiris asked himself, late in the evening. 'He picks someone you actually might LIKE to marry?'
The idea didn't seem so awful, at least, not when he thought about Alhann and her bright smile. Well, the smile had been wiped off her face when her mother saw what he'd done to her dress, but...The gather had gone well, for most of those people who attended it. Races were won or lost, marks bet, and items sold. When Alhann's mother and Chiris' father had gone away somewhere, to be in private, the pair were left to their own devices. So Chiris showed Alhann the gather the way he knew best.
By taking her to the stalls, and seeing what he could barter out of the men and women selling their wares. True, he was but a child, but he was as sharp as his father when it came to making a deal or even a bet. He was known in the hold, and the only time he really got the chance to play with his knowledge of bartering was with people who didn't know him.
The rest scattered when they saw him coming!
"Alhann has been searched," snarled Lord Holder Richel. "Searched! Now, what will be done? That land was supposed to be mine!"
Chiris listened in on his father's conversation carefully, from above the room. It was a secret alcove in the Hold, drudges showed it to him when he was younger. There they listened in on the holder's plans.
The feeling of betrayal in Chiris' gut was twofold. First, that... well, that Alhann had been searched and without him. But more importantly, that his father was angry that - it was all over their land! All about that little cothold to the east of their Hold. What could possibly be there that he needed?
With anger dwelling in his chest, Chiris left the alcove and went to his chambers. There, he paced. What could he do? He hadn't been searched, and he was nearly eighteen turns now. Weren't most lads his age turned away?
'I must find her', Chiris thought to himself. 'If she won't have me with her, ... I don't know what I will do.' But he shook his head and smiled. She loved him, he was certain. He savored the moments with her, in many ways. They would ride runners along the fields, explore the nearby canyon, and even share secrets meant only for one another.
He loved her dearly. And she was very much a proper Lady. But... In so many ways, neither of them were ever 'properly' anything. He had to learn to fight when he kept winning at dragon poker. It wasn't cheating, it was good playing. He had to get himself educated by a Harper in private, since his father had only the time to teach him snippets of math and some writing for the Hold's work.
Neither of these things, Chiris thought, were things that befitted a Lord Holder. He ought to have been educated properly from the start! Resentment clouded his eyes, when he thought of it. He'd learned ballad after ballad, but he couldn't sing worth a mark. But he learned about history, about who traveled and who sank and who backstabbed someone else. And about dragons.
And Thread. It had only been falling, he learned, since shortly before his father was born. It had fallen all his own life, and would continue perhaps until he died. But then it would stop. And everything would start growing again.
Everything... Ah. Chiris bolted down to the rooms most private to his father. Richel had left the small office with his attendant, probably to go drinking with him and the other holders. Through the dark hallway, Chiris crept until he wound up in the room where all the maps and scrolls were stored.
He hesitantly opened a glow basket, hoping that the light wouldn't be seen under the door. (Which had been locked, he managed to learn how to pick them somewhere around his 12th turning day.) Then he set about looking for a map. It didn't take him long to find it.
A large map, hand marked with certain numbers and letters, drawn up like a quartering instruction for a butcher. His home Hold lay near the center of the map, but then several smaller ones were listed, along with hills, quarries, and woodlands.
A wood land near Alhann's property was circled in red ink. Woodlands... Chiris put out the glows, leaving nothing moved. He went to the lowest portion of the Hold, into a large, locked room.
When he cast a few glows upon it, he discovered something bizarre. He couldn't explain what it was, only that it looked vaguely like a device he'd seen in Alhann's father's shop. Something for cutting wood, he learned. There was the scent of old, old wood shavings, and some detritus around the edges of the machine which proved it.
A mill? Here? So that was why his father wanted that land. Because in prosperous times, that little stretch of property held by Tainala and her husband bless his heart, was a center of activity and much money.
***
No one saw Chiris when he escaped out of the Hold. He took his runner, Patan, and put several well-packed sacks on his saddle. The runner wouldn't be able to sprint the way he would in races, but he could carry the weight well enough.
The first place he went was to Alhann's home. It was a low, stone and metal building with a large quarry near it, and over the hillside to the east... That woodland that his father wanted so dearly. In the dim light of morning, Chiris looked at it and wondered. Who would have it next?
He stirred one of the drudges, a very dimwitted boy who had been born with only half a hand as well. "Where has Alhann gone?" He whispered, and the boy looked at him dumbfounded. "Where? Dragon, flew off with her, to where?"
"A dragon came!" The boy announced, still rather quietly. "Dragon... came... from..." he searched his memory... Chiris was patient with him. He'd seen enough drudges beaten harshly by his father, and had long before vowed he'd do nothing of the sort himself.
"To where? Whose dragon?" Chiris prodded when the boy looked like he'd forgotten what he was thinking about.
"Dawn... dawn... something."
"Dawnlight? Dawnlight isn't a weyr, it's a Hold."
"No, not there... Dawn.... sisters?"
"Dawn Sisters weyr... Yes. I know that name. Alhann mentioned it when their harper lessons got to it. Thank you Nen, thank you very much."
The drudge nodded and by the time Chiris had gone over the hill, Nen had almost no recollection of the event at all.
Chiris rode his runner hard until he reached the coast of Southern. There, he made his way to the boat docks and paid for passage North.
It didn't take much for anyone to realize that this young man was on a mission. His stare at the skies, the set of his jaw, made everyone well aware that he had something at stake here. And time was of the essence.
But time, fortunately, was what it turned out he had. Not in abundance, but he thought all was lost when he reached Dawn Sisters weyr (not a little worse for wear as well). For the call had gone up already that the gold's clutch which his beloved Alhann would be standing at was hatching!
He gasped and threw his arms around himself, standing in the corridor of the hatching grounds. But ... people looked not just disappointed, but rather peeved as well. He heard words to the effect that this had happened no fewer than twice before this, and the gold just didn't have the sense in her head to know exactly when her eggs were going to hatch!
Chiris gulped back a cry of joy. He'd found Alhann -- standing with a disappointed look on her face on the sands, then... She turned. Their embrace marked a strange passage for Chiris. He knew that she was the only woman he could ever love. She'd been so afraid to leave the sands lest she not impress, but -- she also had to be told about his father's plot to gain her family's land.
"But that's all mostly irrelevant now," Alhann pointed out, walking Chiris to Alora, the weyrwoman of Dawn Sisters. "Because if I impress I won't be going back there... Possibly ever." She looked at Alora and glanced softly back at Chiris. "Here he is," she said, "I guess you couldn't find him because he was on a boat."
"You might have missed the hatching entirely," Alora warned. "You could have stayed put, young man. You've caused your lovely girl a lot of excitement and undue stress worrying about where you were."
Chiris tried to speak, but nothing came out.
"What, um," he started, "what do you mean by that? Worried... but why?"
"Because you wherry, when I told Alora about you, she sent a search rider out for you. But you weren't at the Hold."
Chiris rolled his eyes, but then he looked at Alora. "Does this mean... That I'm to stand as well?"
"It does," she replied with a smile.
***
It was only two nights later when the hatching actually DID happen. The joy and the tears and laughter and the hungry, hungry hatchlings -- everything was so amazing.
But most amazing of all, was that the first egg to hatch, the very first egg that Chiris had ever even seen hatch, was a bronze.
And that bronze impressed him! Nabendith was a fine, sturdy and eager bronze. Eager especially for the meat and the oils and the scratching!
And the sleep!
Alhann laughed quietly as their dragonets snoozed, and the pride in both their eyes could be seen from across the weyr.
You do not compare me to them, do you? Would you rather I be a blue?
"No, Nab, it's nothing like that. You're so much more than I ever expected to have in my life. If it weren't for you, I don't know if Alhann and Nilayith would --"
Of course she would love you! Even if you were scrubbing the floors of the weyr, or cooking meals, or fishing -- say, I like fish. Could we go fish in the lake now?
Such a short memory, even for a bronze... Ch'ris laughed to himself. "Of course, you can fish. I would like to get down and take a bath, though. All this riding has gotten me smelly. And you wouldn't want me to smell around my lady love, now would you?"
I think you smell great. You smell like me!
Ch'ris said nothing, and laughed all the way to the bathing chambers.
Then we're up, Ch'ris bespoke. The others in the wing got the message just a moment later, as the bronze relayed the information. They knew where to go, it was just a matter of moments before the whole wing was up and flying.
Alhann and her green came into the weyr, tired already. They had clearly been out on their sweep riding winging over the hard winds of the mountains, and would be in no condition to fight thread. That suited Ch'ris fine. He wanted his love, and her beautiful dragon, to remain as safe as they could be.
Given that they were dragon and rider, that went only so far. But he could hope that their new wing, the offer from the Protectorate, would be the best option for both pairs. With Alhann in the Valley wing, and Ch'ris in the Stone Fury, they would make the perfect pair... When Nilayith flew her first mating flight, Nabendith was planning on being there.
They concentrated on their work, as they went through the air and then between, to the high peaks where the Thread already fell in wave upon wave of silvery death...
(from Alhann's page)
MUCH TIME PASSES, so much so that the beloved Nilayith and her bronze partner Nabendith pass away from old age. But the pair of riders, oddly, do not. Eventually they gather a few of their strange friends, found wandering the halls of the Protectorate, and at some point, they revert to their true forms. Furred, scaled, grand creatures of both humanoid configuration and wildly different from the humans that they posed as for so long.
Chiris has become known as a bit of a showy type, particularly since he is a dramatic gryphon morph. For that and his natural leadership abilities, he eventually rebonds in his current natural form, to a magnificent Danachian. He took easily to flight for himself, and the size of his new dragon, while perhaps intimidating to some, is just perfect for this new life.
Colour: Brass male
Size: 21' / 83'
Personality: Brave, honest, strong-willed, demanding