Hita - Male, age 13 (Youngest of the 12)
Partner/Offspring: Plavia (Zekiran), daughter Lavita

A strong young lad, practicing with large weaponry like axes and scythes, getting training from Qodara and other tribe Kin. His muscles will be well used to any hard work long before he is an adult - and he revels in it. While he does have a good throwing arm, he lacks expert aim and prefers to hunt closely. Usually, alone, or with others who use ranged weapons because he does need some room to swing his weapons.

An energy projector of some degree, Hita has a unique combination of electric control and fine healing - he is not as good at empathy as some though, so his healing powers need outside direction. His electric attack is strong and bold, but also largely untrained because he doesn't have much of a teacher for such things. If anything, he will benefit from the strict training that a dragon bonding den can provide.

Before Baeris really got started - she'd explained that the Healing Den was not "in" a universe as such, and could always be reached by remembering the appearance of the entranceway's numbering system - Hita became well and truly agitated.

He listened. He was a good listener. But he was quite young and rather undisciplined. Now was no time for a cute quip or a snide remark. He didn't know how to act. He fidgeted and played with the frayed end of his vest's ties.

He hadn't noticed that Baeris had gone past each Kin and asked their name and such things as age or what they could do as far as skills were concerned. She stood before him, cleared her throat and startled the young cheetah.

If he stood up tall enough, he could match her height, but he surely couldn't match the strength in those eyes of hers. "And you are... Hita?"

He gulped and nodded, "... yes, I am."

"And you're rather young aren't you." Baeris said. Hita had no idea that the little wrinkly skin lines around her eyes meant that she was incredibly amused by his reaction. He thought she was just scary and Humans were all scary already.

The one who'd given him a ride to the Den was a very very strange human girl indeed, though. She wore fur, though it was green and black and looked rather well-worn, and she smelled of ...

"Where did she go?" Hita asked, instead of answering any of her questions.

"... Who?" Baeris asked, blinking.

"The girl on the dragon who brought me here? I don't even know her name."

"Well, she's gone inside with the other riders. There will be time to play with them later. Right now, could you tell me a bit about yourself?"

Hita squirmed under her gaze, unable to meet her eyes. "I... I'm a healer, miss, but I like playing with my other powers too."

"And..." Baeris looked intrigued, another expression that was sadly lost on the young Kin. "Those would be?"

He briefly explained that he had a lightning bug - and Baeris realized why he'd been so keen on knowing who had flown him in. Baeris' dragon informed her that it had been Disruptor, who in fact also could shoot lightning out of her fingers.

"We'll get you inside, now." Baeris announced. She turned around and obviously expected everyone to follow her. Most of the dragons had flown around the side entrance and into their temporary roosts. Some still lounged around on the landing pad/parking lot, while their riders spoke to the people in the spaceships.

***

"And no one even asked me if I wanted to go or anything!" Hita whined, "I mean, yeah, I'm the youngest but I'm smarter than half the tribe put together and I'm gonna be stronger than most of them too!"

"Ah - I know what you mean," Disruptor said, lounging in her quarters. Though she would be returning to her homeworld again, she was still just a teenager herself, and was often not taken particularly seriously by anyone 'adult' enough to be in charge. "You'd like my school," she commented. "There are tons of furs there. And lots of powers. I'm in a class to use mine."

Hita blinked. "There are classes in school for that kind of thing?"

"Where I'm from, yeah," Disruptor said. "Maybe you could register or something."

"But ... you've got a dragon." Hita said.

"Yeah, so do like three of my professors. There's one now," She said of an older black-haired man, who looked remarkably like Cynonix. He prowled past the room, but stopped almost wincing when Disruptor called out to him in her squeaky voice. "Crazy Doc! I finished that paper on lungs! They're fun!"

He paused, leaned into the room slightly, with a faint grin on his thin lips. "Yes, they are. Especially when they're controlled properly. Take good care of this one, the Mistress Healer decided she wants to see him later."

Sanger ducked out before Disruptor could do any more damage to his delicate hearing. Hita tugged on the black-green fur of her outfit's elbow.

"What does he mean? Who is he talking about?"

"Baeris, the Master Healer. She runs the place - this is called the Healing Den for a reason, you know. If you're a healer you might want to learn stuff from her too. But I can show you how to aim better with that zapper of yours." She winked.

"... Okay!" Hita laughed. Now, he felt at home.

And abruptly, he would have to leave...

Hita wasn't at the Ring of Fire very long. His brief stay with the Healing Den people made him aware that Humans weren't all that bad - and there were lots of human and mostly-human people there.

There were some pretty odd mostly-humans. But he didn't even have time to concentrate on those. Hita was brought with the others into the hatching sands area where the eggs were literally glowing!

"Wow, that's really neat," he whispered. He was quite excited, this was going to be a good day, if the eggs hatched.

"Now remember, these dragons may not bond. It really depends on what happens," the Firelancer, Lani, announced. Hita wasn't too happy about hearing this. Lani continued, seeing his frown. "Now don't look at me like that. If this doesn't work, we'll put you into the first Fira clutch we have on the sands."

There was a phoenix, Sunrise, who said something deep and meaningful, but all Hita could think of was 'what if I don't bond? I was sent here to bond...' The tribe would be disappointed if he didn't go back to the Plateau riding a dragon!

Lani went on, though, "and now, the moment you've been waiting for. Follow me please. Spread out in a semi-circle in front of the nests." Lani showed the two nests off, one was packed with grasses, feathers and all sorts of fluff, while the other was slightly more sandy.

As Lani went away from the nests to watch with the other onlookers (they hadn't mentioned that lots of people wanted to see this too! Hita was very self-conscious right now!) the first of the eggs broke open quietly. The hatchling was beautiful, rainbow wings and mane shining. She paired off with the phoenix, who seemed rather pleased with herself.

Two more, twin blue-whites of opposite coloration, came out next, and did not pair off with the other candidates. They were announced by their mother, and apparently made the choice not to pair off even though they could have.

Then, a somewhat bumbling male emerged, mostly white-shining, but with markings of copper danced across his hide. He had lovely pale yellow-gold wing sails, and silver mane. His horns told Hita that he was male, he'd learned that much at least.

He came out, lurching around until he rolled into Hita directly. That was apparently where he wanted to be, as he chirped and looked up.

"Hi!" he said, giving off another squeaky chirp. "I'm Zalmaji!" He nodded to make sure that Hita knew his name, and folks (including Hita) laughed.

"I'm Hita," the cheetah kin announced with a broad grin on his muzzle. He helped the dragon up, he was still rather unsure of where to put which foot when, and they watched the rest of the slow hatching.

***

Hita was still young - younger than most candidates in fact - when Zalmaji and he had completed their year-long training at the Ring of Fire. They were adept at flight and landing (not for lack of trying, Zalmaji almost broke his own neck the first time he landed!) and swooping about, but they were quite good at soaring high above everything.

Hita enjoyed looking at the Ring of Fire from above, but knew that it was now time to leave. "The Plateau will be the same as when I left it," he kept muttering to himself. "So now, we should find Lani and say good bye."

"Do you want to leave?" Zalmaji asked, "I like it here."

"But you'll have a great time at the Plateau. We could become traveling healers, too."

"Your memory told me you should be with someone at this Den place." Zalmaji said, "who is Baeris?"

"Oh!" Hita yelped, "That's right! She wanted to see me about my healing skills."

"You've been practicing too," Zalmaji said proudly. His rider was going to be a good healer, some day.

"I have. We need to go back there, then. First, I think. I don't want to head back to Planet Twenty without being the best I can!"

And, he thought, maybe he'd get to see that human girl Disruptor again... What if ... what if she could get him into that school she'd talked about? Hita's mind was washed with possibilities!