Sunguw knew it was a bit ironic that she was paying for her own creation. Her parents had managed to get themselves in too much debt to the Breeder, overestimating how much her father was going to be making at that job in Telva. And then of course he didn't quite get the job in Telva...

The Breeder took her in trade, but when they learned just how long it would be for them to get out of the full amount of debt, they went nuts in the Breeding clinic. Destroyed so much machinery it wasn't even funny. The Breeder would have to start over, essentially - and Sunguw's mother was now imprisoned because some of the delicate vials she gleefully broke contained other people's genetic materials. Stuff that would have to be collected and worked on over again, that was thousands more Creds.

Last count, Sunguw's father was busy tending the Breeder's cactus in a desert plot somewhere in Kiran. That wouldn't even put a dent in this debt, of course. And the Area council had to make sure that her mother was never seen outside a prison again, though they squeezed a bit of work from her there too. Again, nothing to make a dent in the debt they'd caused.

So Sunguw was sold off, well, bartered really. After those laws were enacted generations ago to make sure that she - who had incurred no debt herself personally - was able to work her way out of debt eventually, and become Freed.

It was a good thing, therefore, that Sunguw was immortal by nature. An accident, perhaps, it wasn't planned by the Breeder and wasn't something that he even knew was possible. But when High Master Nyoien found out he was rather pleased. He was young, barely a decade older than Sunguw. She would be in his employ for a good long while.

She was only eight years old when Nyoien took her debt on. She had a gift, certainly. She also had a kind of ridgy skin condition on her back and down her long tail. That came with the territory. The High Master paid off the debt to the Breeder, in exchange for what appeared to be an ideal Dragon Mistress.

And besides, she was Dragon Tuned! That in itself made her very special. Even at an early age, Sunguw was quiet, sedate, careful and deliberate. Working with the huge Swamp dragons would be enough to make anyone a bit twitchy around swampy water, but not her. She would walk with absolute confidence to the dragonry area, work her powers and help instruct the younger dragonets, and then come home at night happy.

When her stronger powers started surfacing, she could single out one of the hatchlings and command it utterly. By the time she was sixteen she'd seen three Alien attacks and helped defeat them all with that one Swamp dragon. He didn't make it through the fourth, a year later. It was clear that Sunguw would be able to repeat this success with another, but for the moment she was to rest up and enjoy her first vacation.

When Sunguw came into her first Hyperfertility 'event' Nyoien wondered why his other highly Bred Slave Yiten was getting so aggressive. The Dragon Tuned youth wasn't even twenty but suddenly Nyoien had a second generation Tuned Slave on the way.

He decided to monitor Sunguw, because that sort of thing would either be extremely handy or terribly detrimental to her work. She never brought up that he could sell the child and use the money to pay a bit more for her freedom - it seemed actually that she was content to continue working. After all she was young and vital, and enjoyed working with the dragons.

Nyoien owned and bonded some thirty Dragon Tuned individuals around the world, he wasn't interested in specializing in breeding only one type - instead he was more pleased to be able to say he had fighters able to work round the world, around the clock, with every different kind of Dragon there was to be had.

Sunguw in her quiet way was happy to lend a hand. She knew that she wasn't the most attractive of women, that the stigma of being Bayaran would be with her for a long time. So she was content when her Master would introduce her to a male Slave - if they hit it off, there could be another baby in her future.

She was a reasonably attentive mother, but Sunguw's heart was really in raising the dragons. She had such a great time getting out there and playing with them. Healing their wounds - though she could not have healed the one which killed her first true love. Minor cuts and bruises, a broken bone perhaps, but nothing more serious than that. She was better able to keep them away from danger in the first place, appearing to listen in to the animals around her for signs of invasion.

Sunguw's whole point in her life, was to raise and train these dragons. Everything she really wanted to do, everything she was engineered to do from before birth, in fact.

She was rather stunned therefore, when her HighMaster informed her of something interesting - something about dragons, but not like these. Zekiran dragons, he explained to her in a private meeting without the other Slaves or Bayaran to listen in, were rather animal like, and not all that bright. She would beg to differ but he insisted there was something more to be had elsewhere.

At first she didn't understand. But then he introduced her to a horn-headed man that rode a dragon. It looked like a Sky dragon at first, but then... no, it had four legs and wings! That was a very rare mutation among Sky's she said, but the man chuckled and said no - they weren't Sky dragons from here at all.

He and his brother had gone to another planet, another dimension (whatever that was, Sunguw was a bit lost at this part of his story), and impressed their dragons. They were partners, they were intelligent and big, they breathed fire and could speak with their minds to their partners. And they could teleport. Move from one place to the next (they demonstrated in fact) just by thinking about it.

"Do you think you could work with those? Or something like them?" Asked Nyoien.

All but dumbfounded, Sunguw nodded mutely and began to smile broadly. "May I? It would be an honor!"

So she was sent off to a world - not the same one that Haesh and Osh bonded at - called Iolana. There she waited, there were many young dragonets that were special and needed guidance. If there was one thing she was good at, was guiding young dragons!