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Tamtarell
Smoky brown eyes stare, aghast, from their settings, screened from their dismay at the world by unfairly long, thick black lashes. Everything about him is long and narrow: nose, jaw, mouth, cheekbones, hands, feet, limbs, torso, even eyebrows. His shoulder-length red hair is thick and unruly, the only extravagance of feature left to his plain face. Tamtarell’s skin is weathered to a klah-brown from days spent working in the sun and natural coloring. To match his homely looks, he moves with an awkward and apologetic air, an angular creature of half-stumbles and haphazard agenda.

Tamtarell knew he was no good at music. He also knew that Journeywoman Vaneri was running out of patience. Shanvo had sent him to his sister with a smiled reminder to ‘get it through your head, you silly wherry!’
Glumly, he fingered the chord again. Through his lashes, he saw the journeywoman wince. Fingers at the ready, the sharp-faced redhead brushed his overlong forelock from his eyes as Vaneri patiently placed his hand on the right strings.
I hate gitar. I really, really hate gitar. Tamtarell followed her instructions, and the sound that followed actually sounded good. He allowed himself a brief, worried smile.
But the next chord she asked him to duplicate rang out sour and flat when he put his hands on the string. It didn’t matter how painstakingly he matched his fingers with hers—or before, with Shanvo’s--, Tam’s chords sounded wrong.
He stared unhappily off into space as she firmly manipulated his fingers as they ought to have strummed. He tried—he really did. Faranth only knew that his poor Harper father had tried to coax, prod, or goad some music out of him. The journeyman he’d had before Shanvo had even tried beating it into him. Nothing worked.
Tam should have had music. He should have had golden melody spilling from his soul. His entire family lived music. Even Kelene, who had a voice like a new violinist practicing, could drum a dancer’s breath away. Tam could not keep a beat, though his voice was as pure as his mother’s.
Shanvo’s voice sounded outside the door, and his teacher excused herself. The door was half-open, and if Tam mangled his chord softly enough, he could hear them speak. “…needs a miracleworker, not a journeywoman,” Vaneri said with asperity.
“…came to rescue you,” Shanvo replied.
Tam had heard enough. Setting his face into a mask of concentration, he thumped up and down the chorded scale, drowning out the rest of the conversation.
I know I’m hopeless, but can’t they see that I’m trying, at least? the apprentice thought miserably to himself as he packed up his instrument. Vaneri had only stayed long enough to listen once and assign him homework.
The gitar twanged as its strings caught on his shirt. With a sigh, Tam slung the instrument across his back and set off across the courtyard to the Apprentice Dorms.
Like a thunderbolt, something huge and bat-winged stooped at him out of the sky. Only after Tam fell prone did he notice that it was blue.
A person half-fell from the clearly amused dragon’s back. “T’mael of Moire Weyrhold,” the rider offered, along with a hand up. “I’m dreadfully sorry. Alnath gets these ideas, and I can’t stop him for love nor money.”
The untalented apprentice scrambled to his feet, sliding his gitar strap over his shoulder. Mournfully, he fingered the broad new dent-and-crack in the soundboard. “It’s…quite all right,” he managed, brushing himself off, and appended, unenthusiastically, “Tamtarell, Harper apprentice.”
“Pleased to meet you,” T’mael said briskly. “Anyway, Tamtarell, the reason why Alnath was playing you tricks—one of the reasons—is that he thinks you’re Sand bait.” At Tam’s unenlightened look, he elaborated, “Searched. A candidate. Someone to Stand for the little baby dragons.”
The sharp-faced redhead blinked. “Oh. I’m to leave the Hall, then?” Somewhere in the wilds of his head, he cheered. But the more civilized portions cautioned, At least the Harper Hall is something you know you can be persistently bad at. Do you really want to start all over at being the bottom of the heap, and learning the rules?
The rider nodded. “But only if you agree to be Searched. We can’t snatch you up and carry you away unless you give us permission. Whatever Alnath thinks,” T’mael added sharply, and the blue snorted in disdain.
Tam, caught between two frames of mind, shook his head and said yes.

Sometimes, Tam wished he had stayed at Harper. He’d Stood for six clutches at Moire Weyrhold, and spent ten Turns in its bowls, er, bowels. Every time a clutch was lain, a Search dragon would snatch him up and pop him on the Sands, and, equally as certain, each time the dragonets would avoid him like the plague. He was getting rather weary of exchanging knots, taking the same classes about dragons, and peeling tubers.
At last, on a crisp fall day, Senior Weyrwoman Aurelle called him into her office. “Tamtarell,” she said without preamble, “you aren’t having any luck at all at Moire, are you?”
Tam shook his head. That was one way of putting it….
Aurelle drummed her fingers on her desk. “Considering that you’ve been here for about half your life, I think it’s getting obvious that your lifemate-to-be is not on Moire’s Sands.”
Tam nodded, a grim suspicion growing that the Weyrwoman was going to throw him out.
“However,” the Weyrwoman purred, “our Searchers keep insisting that you would be a perfect choice. In view of that fact, I’m sending you to Quinalt Weyr as a Candidate, before you grow too old to Impress.”
The ex-harper nodded and smiled and thanked her, because it was expected of him. Inwardly, Tam sighed. There went another home to his lack of talent…

Quinalt Weyr

Ramlanth was his world from day one. Tamtarell still couldn’t believe that he was good enough for a dragon, that he had a talent.
<<Believe it,>> The bronze said softly. <<My Tam, it is the world that is not good enough for you, not you who is not good enough for the world.>>
The new dragonrider gathered his lifemate close. “I’m glad you think me worthy, Ramlanth,” he murmured. “I don’t know how I managed without you.”
<<Poorly,>> the achingly pure treble suggested, deadpan.
T’arel laughed.

Ramlanth, he found, had not only an incredible voice (deepening to tenor) but an intense thirst for knowledge. He sent T’arel on Great Quests any time he found something he didn’t know. And then, because Ramlanth know dragons had notoriously bad memories, the bronze calmly moved the information into T’arel’s head.
But oddly enough, T’arel didn’t mind. He had discovered that he liked learned for learning’s sake. It was a powerful feeling to knowledgeable about strange things. All through weyrlinghood, he learned.
To his surprise, he and Ramlanth were not abysmal in their weyrling classes either. They were never top-of-the-class--they were both cautious and a little shy, and they made an effort not to stand out--but they stayed comfortably near that ideal.

T’arel had always intended to return to Moire Weyrhold. He felt he owed them a debt for those long Turns he had Stood without success. Quinalt would be loathe to lose a bronze and his rider, but T’arel resolved to turn in transfer papers as soon as he graduated.
At the graduation ceremony, he noticed a distinctly odd dragon. It was striped, white on black, and wore no leathers. But as he turned to investigate, Ramlanth murmured, like a benediction, <<T’arel?>>
<<Yes, Lan?>>
<<There is a woman here who would like to talk to you. She is asking the Weyrlingmaster where you are.>>
<<I’ll be right there.>> Hastily, he disengaged from yet another well-wisher—I wish I could have found Father in time, he would’ve loved this—and went over to his gleaming bronze.
“Where is she?” he said in an undertone, eyes flicking over the crowd.
<<There.>> Ramlanth indicated the direction with a toss of his head. <<Tall, pointy ears, striped brown-and-black hair, stripes on her face….see her?>>
T’arel blinked and nodded. Flashy woman…. With a feeling of unease, he walked over and waited for her to notice him.
Fifteen minutes later, he gave up. The young bronzerider tapped his pursuer gently on the shoulder. She whirled, and T’arel bit his lip. That’s not a human…”Excuse me, lady. You were looking for me?”
She gave him a sharp look. “Was I, rider? And who might you be?”
He ducked his head reflexively. “T’arel, rider of bronze Ramlanth, ma’am.”
She smiled, a smug feline expression that made T’arel even more uneasy. “Ah. I was, indeed. I am Efellai. I represent Moire. They’ve taken quite an interest in you, T’arel. There’s a wingleader position waiting for you in a new wing.”
He blinked. Moire Weyrhold had been tracking him? “Well, m’lady, I’d be glad to join the Moire ranks, but I don’t lead. I’d be happy to come back a wingrider, though.”
She drew back a little, eyes wide. For a second, he could have sworn that perplexion had flitted across her inhumanly lovely face. Then Efellai smiled again. “That can be arrange, Rider T’arel. Are you packed?”
“Yes, lady.” It was pleasant and a little startling to know that Moire had been thinking of him as he had been thinking of them. He had his bags ready and strapped on Ramlanth.
“Then let’s shake on it, and we’ll go.” She offered him a roguish smile and her hand.
<<T’arel, I don’t think she’s who you think she is,>> Ramlanth said nervously, but Tam was already clasping the woman’s hand.
T’arel frowned. “You didn’t say you were a rider, ma’am. How will you get back?”
“The same way I got here.” She grinned ferally. “I am not a rider as you know them. Alakamarth is not my bond. But Kam is my friend and he is willing to take me where I need to go.” She cupped her hands over her mouth and bellowed, “Kam! Alakamarth! Are you ready to go?”
<<Born ready,>> resounded through T’arel’s head, and he gaped. Another voice in his head? But he could only hear Ramlanth….
The bronzerider’s jaw dropped even further as a slender form winged leisurely toward them. Black and white stripes blurring on his wings, Alakamarth backwinged neatly in front of Efellai.
<<We go, O mighty grifter?>>
“Yes, O confused carnivorous zebra.” She sprang up her dragon’s side and onto his back with the grace of a dancer. “Coming, T’arel?”
He had a bad feeling about this. “Yes, m’lady. Can Alakamarth give Ramlanth the betweening-point?”
She grinned again, and his stomach sank. “In a heartbeat, lad.”

It wasn’t Moire Weyrhold. It was the Moire Protectorate. And T’arel, in his usual fashion, was now beholden to them. They stuck him immediately in Enedlammoth’s Hand, and there he stayed.

*******************************************************************************

Well, at least he stayed until Ramlanth began to get restless. He was beholden to the Moire Protectorate, but that didn't mean he couldn't travel now and then. T'arel was, after all, a man of his word.
And it was at Ryslen that shy Ramlanth was knocked for a loop by a particular proddy female.

<<She's...incredible, T'arel,>> the bronze sighed in his mellifluous mental tenor. <<My Tam, I don't know what to do!>>
<<Who is 'she', Lan?>> the young bronzerider asked gently. <<A love interest?>>
<<I am definitely very interested...I think,>> Ramlanth replied uneasily. <<Finish your meal, Tam, and I will show you the lady of my regard.>>
On edge, the long-boned boy took a few more bites, then left the rest of his dinner untouched. He pushed his chair away from the table and rose to leave, tripping a little over the chairleg as he went.

<<Look at her,>> Ramlanth said in tones of awe, motioning toward a pacing female. The object of his affections was somewhere in size between a very small queen and an enormous green. She was, T'arel thought, a very handsome dragon. Her hide glimmered somewhere between green and gold.
The rider smiled fondly up at his dragon. "She's beautiful, Ramlanth. Why are you worried? I can sign you up for her flight any time you like.."
The bronze fidgeted. <<She just so much dragon, Tam. She's...strong. And stubborn. I don't know if she'll trample me into the dust or not.>>
T'arel patted his lifemate's wrist. "We'll see, Lan. You're slim and wiry and long-legged, and certainly handsome enough to catch anyone's eye. What's her rider's name?"
<<Cereena.>> He turned one mournful eye to his rider. <<She's beautiful and strong, too. Some have said that she is a flirt and a tease.>>
The man sighed in one long expulsion of breath, shifting back and forth on booted feet. "Well, I could just keep my mouth closed and hope that she likes the lean brown look..."
<<You'd better start courting her now. She has a reputation of being a free spirit, and I don't think she entirely appreciates her dragon's ties to a fertility cycle,>> Ramlanth murmured, dropping his head to nuzzle T'arel's shoulder. Gratefully, the boy stroked the bronze muzzle.