[Statistics] [Candidate] [Hatchling] [Weyrling] [Adult]

The air crackled with the dry, static sort of electricity that always accompanied a storm of this magnitude. In the Harper Hall, the apprentices huddled together and the masters attempted to keep order in the large Dining Hall turned sanctuary as the rain pelted against the windows and roof with fierce determination. The rhythm sounded in their ears, at the same time lulling into a strange false sense of security and arousing fear and raising heart-rate with each succeeding earthquake of thunder.

Keebryn, a Junior Journeyman at the Hall, sat against an outside wall - away from the huddled mass in the centre of the room - and took slow, deep gulps of breath. Trying rather unsuccessfully to calm his raw nerves. He'd never liked storms. Never cried out in glee and twinkling eye with his childhood friends. His heart pounded out a rhythm on his ribcage to match the downpour and fists clenched and unclenched unconsciously.

Those hands were his profession. His far from innate talent for the gitar relied upon them, and Faranth be damned if he'd let a stupid rain storm take those turns of hard work away from him. Despite the cold fear he felt in his heart, Keebryn forced slate-coloured eyes open and looked down where his arms were crossed across his knees. He looked at his hands. Everything. He had everything to lose.

...Glimpses of grandeur now faced with defeat...

A line from a song his father used to sing to him as a child. He could not recall the other words at the time, but those remembered resounded in his mind as a vivid flash lit the Hall in an eerie two-dimensional light.

What was he doing still at the Hall? His glimpse had come, but he had pushed it away. Why had he pushed so hard? And now darkness had fallen, and Keebryn found that however hard he turned his head, however tight he closed his eyes, the darkness would not recede.

The darkness of which he thought was not, however, an emotional blackness or bitterness or some soul-rending poverty. It mocked him, pure and simple.

Keebryn, Junior Journeyman Harper, had been given the opportunity of a lifetime. He had been Searched. But he had refused, afraid. And so the darkness mocked.

But unlike the words of the song, Keebryn refused to be faced with defeat.

Another flash of the eerie grey light and another distortion of the Pern he knew. And loved. Something clicked within Keebryn's thoughts and he found himself staring blankly ahead at nothing in particular, amazed at the stupidly of the realisation. He loved Pern. And he loved his life.

He loved his little brother and his mostly drunken father; he loved his craft and his gitar and his friends at the Hall; he loved what he had become. But, Bryn thought as a smile played across his lips, of all of this, one thing stood out. He loved his dreams.

As a young boy growing up in a household of men, Keebryn had dreamt of being a dragonrider. Perhaps his brothers would follow his pursuit, perhaps they would look up to him as more than tutor and friend and biggest brother. And his parents would be so proud... His mother would be so proud. She'd died some ten turns past - he found he could hardly remember her now, let alone grieve for her loss - but despite this, Keebryn still found he wanted to impress her. Wanted to make her so proud.

The first time he'd been Searched - four? five turns ago? - it was that thought that had spurned him to stand for that clutch. The thought that somehow Bryany would see him and tears would glisten in bright, sky-blue eyes. Her eyes, he remembered. So beautiful. But he had failed, then.

And so Harpering had become his life. And he was good. His voice was envied by some and awe-inspiring to others. His skill on the gitar was not as widely-appreciated, though to him was the bigger accomplishment. He had been born with his voice, but his instrument was something he had learned for a long time before his fingers had hardened with calluses and his hands become so familiar with the strings that he could - and did, or so he was told - play in his sleep.

Now, he had a second chance. For that gift he was truly grateful - not many received that underrated second chance - and now, for the first time, Keebryn thought about it with the seriousness it deserved.

A chance to be a dragonrider. He had failed before - there was the chance he would fail once more. Many Searched did not Impress at all - but most dragonriders had failed at at least once hatching before meeting their soulmates.

That thought was strange, alien to him. Soulmate. That he could have another half somewhere out there. Not yet born, not yet seen the world... that he could be the one to show him - or her, he forced himself to add - the wonders of sight, smell, touch, taste. Love, feeling, truth.

A smile had fallen unbidden on his lips and when he returned his eyes to the vision before him, he felt just a little guilty. The storm still raged, the inhabitants of Dragon Sands Hold still cried and winced and huddled together at each crack of thunder or flash of light.

But he was no longer afraid. The rain had softened from an intense, driven buffeting to a heavy downpour. One much more suited to last than to damage. It would be a while before the sun came out across the Hold once more, but they were safe enough for now.

Within himself, Keebryn had made a decision. On the morrow he would send Gabriel, his mostly-trusted blue firelizard, with a missive to Talor Cliff Weyr. To the Searchrider. And then, he would accept that second chance. And, as his father often said, he would let Faranth have her way.