The first memory that Tanith had was of being blinded and burned by the sun. She wasn't sure how long ago that had happened, it was while she was an infant though. Ever since that moment she has not trusted the daylight, has not been comfortable around bright things. There are even some lightbulbs that appear to give her trouble, those which display all the wavelengths instead of just a few.

Because her mother was a bit of a pothead and a lot of a freak, some of Tanith's other earliest memories are those of being read great fantasy novels. Moorcock, Tolkein, CS Lewis, dozens more. Books about fairies and elves surrounded her as she grew up. All the artistic endeavors or poetical works that Tanith might explore were soundly in the aether.

Never having met her father, and believing the stories of switched children from the green lands beyond dreams, Tanith occasionally entertained the idea that perhaps she really is the result of some bizarre elfin lord's meddling in human affairs. Her mother - bless her weird soul - actually encouraged this thought. Herself a product of the hippy love generation, Tanith's mother Abby couldn't ask for a more perfectly unusual child.

The unusual child had to have a lot of protective gear during the school year. Since night classes weren't available for elementary and middle school kids, Tanith had to get used to hooded jackets, stupid baseball hats, and big oversized sunglasses, gloves, and a good slick layer of sunscreen all over everything that was exposed otherwise.

And forbid Physical Ed!

That is, until her Sophomore year at Carramba High. "The poor thing hasn't hardly had any experience with exersize," claimed one councelor, "so she doesn't meet the requirements for the more advanced Physical Ed classes."

Thus Tanith was not allowed to take the Martial Arts class she really did want to sign up for. And thus, began Tanith's ditching. Before then, she'd been a good student. Attentive, with a decent average grade. While she'd never bother with some advanced classes, she was charismatic enough to become the Freshman class vice president. After then, with her hopes dashed for her real love of night-time crime stopping with some of the local heroes - if she didn't know martial arts how would she fight along side them? - the albino girl switched to the more intellectual pursuits and unusual studies.

"But you're not undead," said another well meaning councelor.

Her pink red eyes narrowed and focused down on the man. "I only come to school during the day because you don't offer it at night. Otherwise, what do I have to look forward to in the day time?" She quipped, "oh yes. Burning skin, blindness, possibly fatal vitamin D poisoning, blisters, that's not to mention the psychological problem I have with it." It was true, she always took nervous glances around her when she was indoors during the day - she'd prefer to be asleep. "If I'm not a vampire or some zombie thing like you want me to be, then what else can I be qualified as?"

Her persuasive voice and posture won that day.

Half the stories in her Celtic Studies classes had already been well below her belt as a child. She already knew lineages and gods and battles. She didn't play herself off as a smart ass though, because Mrs Hicks wasn't that kind of teacher. Instead, she frequently offered to bring in a book or two from her mother's library for further reference in class.

She'd actually started really enjoying the Practical Anatomy class too - mostly after The Ten formed. Because she could then share her notes and practice with the others who had it. But it was the Celtic class that always kept her coming back to school in the morning. Greeting the sun with a snarl and occasionally flipping it the bird, she traversed the seven block walk to her bus stop.

People stopped giving her shit about her weird appearance long before - only n00bs to the school looked at her white hair and plaster-colored skin and said anything about it. She would usually just point at one of the resident aliens - often a teacher - and grunt something about 'why not ask them why their skin's all green and puffy... oh, that's right, they were born that way. Asshole' and be on her way.

***

Life before and after meeting the Ten changed only a little. She hung out with them more often than not, picked up information and skills from them as she could, and shared what she knew. She told great ghost stories, apparently fueled by the old books and musty tales her mother gave her. She was a bit jealous of Tabitha's strange powers, though she swore that if she came across a radioactive mutant cabbage or something, she'd probably wind up with the power of squinting-and-peeling.

"Don't knock it," Tami said while crouching up under the overpass where they hid in the afternoon post-school rush. "If you could make someone peel and itch at a distance, you would do it. I know I would."

"Between the two of you," Tonja said pointing at Taylee and Tansie respectively, "I'd have thought you already could do that."

"I could make a powder," Tansie said, "if you collect samples to work with..." Taylee giggled madly, sounding like she'd learned that laugh from their favorite Sanger.

Tanith leaned back and shielded the corner of her eye from the glare coming from outside the overpass. "If I had a superpower I'd want to create darkness around me, so I could see. And others couldn't."

"Mistress of the shadows," Tonja said spookily.

"That'd be me," Tanith agreed. She wasn't sullen, but she wasn't in the mood to concentrate on what she couldn't do with everyone. She'd rather have been playing around in the arcade or one of the labs, but it was a long weekend. Everyone else was glad to be away from school - Tanith suddenly realized she wanted to be hidden in the safety of one of the darker nooks there, just so she wouldn't have to face the constant attention of her overly-concerned mother.

"Come to the Tansie cave with me," Tansie said, after the others had split up. "You look like you could use some cheerful bats and stalactites."

"Do you really have a Tansie-cave?"

"Of course I really have a Tansie Cave. Where do you think I make all my stuff? Not up in the attic - it's too heavy. Come on." The normally sedate and sour Tansie led the pale skinned girl off to...

"That's a sewer grill," Tanith said with a bit of distaste.

"I have a network of locations I can get to from here," Tansie assured her. "It's all dry, it's not a sewer, it's a runoff tunnel. And it hasn't been raining for weeks, so there'll be less than a foot of water anyway. Come on."

Down into a pleasantly cool, very dark area they went. Tansie asked, "do you need me to light my-"

"No, no, this is fine," Tanith said, "I can see everything. Even the grafitti on the walls, did you need a light?"

"Not me," Tansie said and Tanith laughed when she saw the mini-goggles that she'd applied. They must be the light-enhancing type.

They made their way back to Tansie's home, coming out just at late afternoon while the sun was blocked by the huge house where she lived. Not that they went into the house for another couple hours...

***

Then the dragons came. Tanith could hardly say no to a dragon. She could never resist the allure - the thought that maybe, she could actually go out and find her father, if he were still alive? Maybe he wasn't an elf, maybe he was a dragon rider?

That was absurd, but... She allowed herself to entertain it because she always had. While Abby hadn't shacked up with anyone recently she had flirted with darn near any kind of man - alien, fur, hero - that took her fancy.

Why she didn't have any siblings was a mystery to Tanith, as well, but then again maybe that was a blessing. Little brothers and sisters were pests, according to the Ten who had them, and big brothers and sisters were annoying as heck at times. But she did want ... something.

And a dragon perhaps would be the right thing to have. Not a brother or sister, not an auntie or nephew. A bond, a twin, a companion.

The day they left of course, her mother fawned all over her. But since the dragon rider guys had already scouted out where they were to go, splitting everyone up, Tanith knew that she'd be safe wherever they were taking her.

With or without sunscreen.

Cy Dragonstake was that place, a lovely if deviously large locale. They'd had a big flight earlier in the year, scary flight she was told, dragons and hydra and whatnot all in a big muddle of mating. There were still stories floating around about it, and she caught as many of them as she could. They were intriguing. She knew from their brief classes that the dragons - or most breeds anyway - were highly telepathic and would relate their emotional and physical state to their rider.

That meant... Yup. Horny riders.

Well that would be fun, wouldn't it?

When she got to Cy, there was a porter with her things, and ... "What is that?" She asked, for behind the young man was a largish cage. In the cage was a bird.

"It's for you, miss," he said, "someone, one of those riders bringing you here, said you would like it. He said it was from Lantessama."

"It's an owl," Tanith said, and the bird shuffled in the cage. "He's uncomfortable in there. Come on out," she said, and as the porter brought her things to the dorm, she lifted the snowy colored bird onto her arm. "You're a big one," she said. "But you're bringing good days ahead. Remind me to study," she said, and the owl hooted. "Halcyon," she replied, "that's your name. Halcyon. Good days..."

With a little smile playing on her pale chalky lips, Tanith found her dorm and lay awaiting the evening. Many of the people coming to a clutch like this were such night-dwellers. They were the undead, the zombies, that kind of thing. Well maybe not zombies... They didn't have minds of their own did they? Could they even bond a dragon?

Halcyon fluttered around the room and finally Tanith let him out to hunt the halls of the Dragonstake. Though others said he was completely silent, Tanith's ears were sensitive like her eyes - she could hear the faint rustling of his wings. She heard also some of the nearby room mates. Some had no heartbeat.

Tanith started writing in the dead of night - a thesis on who bonded to what, living or dead or otherwise. It would probably surprise her teachers and get her some kind of perk for grades...

Tanith enjoyed interviewing people and even some dragons, before the hatching. She even got stubborn old G*non to say a few short words about how he thought this clutch would turn out. To the order of him grumbling this and that about Tenken not being here, and there's always some problem that winds up in the infirmary, and darkity-dark-dark clutches belong somewhere darker than here, and then some mysterious comment about not being able to properly count the eggs half the time.

Snickering, she let him ramble - he'd claimed that only a little of his time could be spent talking to her, because as the head knight he was busy-busy-busy. And then to spend 20 odd minutes rambling about his duties, the eggs, the dangers of hydra on the sands, etc etc etc... Tanith just jotted down that he would probably be doddering in his old age, and might wind up scrunched below the foot of a hydragon if he wasn't careful.

Hey, she wasn't going to stay, she had things to do back at home! Who'd know?

When the eggs did finally start to shake and crack, Tanith enjoyed deeply the fact that they did so around midnight one night. That would give everyone time to bond, eat up, and relax for their first day - sleeping through the hot light part of it. That'd be great, they all had an excuse to be nocturnal at least one more day.

Perhaps a dozen eggs hatched, and most of those bonded off, some fought each other and a couple tried to eat the people attending, before Tanith's eye was caught by any of the hatchlings. A threesome of eggs from one nest, which differed from the rest because most were randomly hatching all across the sands.

***
The final xeno had turned towards one of the human candidates, a girl named Tanith. She seemed a bit  taken aback by the blood dripping off of her potential bond, but it didn't stop her from bending down to accept it.

“We are going to have to get you cleaned off, Peleides.”

Why? asked the xeno smugly. I like the blood. It smells good.

"Well it is going to stain my clothes...”

Not my problem. ***

Eventually it would strike Tanith that she'd need to learn a bit of magic to get used to this bond. She was pretty insistant that every time she eat, it was bloody and 'satisfying' to all her urges.

"Hey, you know they sell stuff at that one kiosk on campus," Tanith said, almost to herself since Peleides had no idea what a kiosk or a campus was, "they sell warm furry things. It's outside the magic campus building, for their rituals."

And this means I care, just why? Asked the two headed butterfly-marked bipedra.

"Because that means that you don't even have to leave campus to get your snacks! I'll have to set up a credit account..." She muttered to herself the rest of the way back to the dorms. When she arrived back on campus with this beautiful dark and dangerous dragon, she wondered what Hollis and them would do... And she hoped it involved running away and letting her take night courses...

Tanith and her friends had bonded dragons, befriended lots of other people along their adventures, and never really split up in their adult lives. They did things on other planets and even other dimensions! They always had great stories to tell one another when they got together every weekend. Often enough they took their brunch at the Caffetorium on Carramba's campus, and being alumni as well as dragon riders they were always welcome there.

She and many others had noticed, while they were still Juniors in fact, that there were bunches of very colorful folks coming in from some alternate Earth. Didn't pay them much mind until they all graduated. Taylee had visited Zekira at some point and ... came back with kids. And she wasn't the only one interested in some of that.

Tanith would hang out at some of the newer magic campus events, still with that lingering thought that she might not be 'merely' human. Her dragon was always pleased with her, Peleides knew she'd learned actual spell magic over time, and was adept enough that she could assist with the classes that weren't very-very advanced. She wasn't a natural at it, but she was diligent and skilled. That caught the eye of a particular mage's 'son', one of those self-same Color Guard, now an adult fresh out of school and working as a part-time hero on several worlds.

Gypsum was his name, and he'd noticed how she dedicated herself to her tasks even if they weren't going to be as strong effect as natural mages. She knocked on a door that he'd enchanted that one time, and basically didn't leave until they were... well aquainted.

It wasn't until "Rookery Year 6" (whatever that was, she wasn't sure) that they realized they weren't going to be splitting up like a lot of his kin in the Guard. So his 'family' of Akarist the mage and Rita the Retail Retal8r, as well as a good number of his brothers and sisters, and the Ten and Tanith's super-proud mom, attended their simple ceremony. Far fewer of those people were on hand when she gave birth to their twins a year later, but thankfully she wasn't struggling too much. They were preemies, but not by much.

Gidget and Thaddeus would be stronger mages than either of their parents, and would be unlikely to work on the Rookery with their dad. But they would be easily accepted up at Wonder as well as Paragon City!