Never Fear {Bre}

[Reky]

Earlier today, he'd passed by the numerous eggs belonging to gold Sereldeth. He hadn't spent too terribly long looking at them, but the time he did spend peering was time spend entranced. He couldn't stop looking, though mainly he was looking at the larger ones. There sure were a lot of tiny, insignificant eggs there, weren't there? You could fit twenty of the smallest inside some of the bigger ones. It was ridiculous. How would a dragon from such a small egg amount to anything? He wasn't even sure that eggs were supposed to be that small. Maybe something was wrong with the stupid gold.

However, after his brief look-see, he'd moved on. Sereldeth didn't like people looking for too long, after all, and as much as he'd like to be able to say she didn't scare him, she did. She was huge and eerie. Her rider wasn't nearly as imposing, though. Avine just stayed shut up in her room ever since Sereldeth clutched. She only let that greenrider, K'nan, in to see her. Probably for stress release via sex, though why a goldrider would associate that way with a greenrider was beyond him. If he was a goldrider, he'd stick to the very best.

He found himself wandering along the shore of the lake, turning his knife over in his hands. It flashed in the setting sun, a lovely orange glint off the polished metal. He felt like a terribly typical candidate with the way his thoughts were going. Dragons. Dragons, dragons, and more dragons. So what would his be? Bronze? Brown? He supposed he could settle for blue. Maybe. He wanted something big, imposing - something to scare the living daylights out of everyone. Something to confide in. Something he could relate to. How would the hatching go, he wondered, apart from him Impressing? Would there be injuries? Oh, that would be delightful.

And... shards. This long walk on the beach really required a playmate.

[/blockquote]

[bre]

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A young man wandered high on the bank of the lake's shore. From a distance, few qualities of obvious masculinity would have been apparent. Up close, he was identifiable male, obviously in his late teens and lacking of any chest. However, the stern features and scars upon his soft flesh began to blur together at a distance of three paces. His eyes stuck out, his skin not quite tanned enough to hide the dark wells of soul and falsified emotion. His dark hair curled about his face, roughly cut but still endlessly capable of softening his face. His body, designed to be light and slight, looked curvy rather than powerful. Dressed in a tight shirt of black cotton, mended breeches, and black boots made of wherhide, the footwear old and viciously defended, he passed as a male, but the lines of gender were ambiguous at a distance. Any line can be made indistinct and gray.

Far from an idiot, Faolan noticed Xaleni's presence when the other boy came into sight. It was the flash of a knife catching Rukbat's light that got his attention, drawing his eyes to the slight male farther down the beach. He squinted for a moment, trying to make out the other boy's features. Something about the curve of Xaleni's lips reminded him of his sister. It wasn't a kind comparison. In all honesty, his lovely sister and twin had been a little off her rocker when she'd been alive. She liked power and she felt little sympathy for other human beings. Despite the horribleness of her, he missed her terribly. Gazing across the sands at this strange boy, his thoughts briefly returned to her memory. He could almost smell her blood in the air again, the sick scent mixed with the disgusting odor of burning flesh. After briefly dwelling upon it, he pushed that from his mind.

Though he daringly drew nearer to the other candidate without pause, Faolan stiffened as he drew close to Xaleni. The sight of the blade, exposed and out in the open, set him on edge, causing him to move with greater poise. Fully dressed as he was, he looked almost graceful, like an elegant lady. He wouldn't have appreciated the comparison, but it was fitting. He was pretty. Eyes darting swiftly over the other boy, lips sat somewhere closer to a pout than a smile, he looked more beautiful than handsome. Such was life. Despite his worries about the knife in broad daylight, he forced himself to relax and paused near Xaleni. It wasn't as if he didn't carry weapons himself. He sized up the other boy and settled his weight back. A bit of polite conversation couldn't really hurt. He had to be aware. He had to act like he was civil and sane. "Hello;" he greeted simply.

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[Reky]

He continued to fiddle with the knife in his hands, watching the brightest point of the reflected sunset roll up and down it like a bead of liquid gold. At one point, he caught a glimpse of himself in it, and gave himself a dashing smile before tilting it away again. He saw the whole world in it; the lake, the sky, Rukbat, the Weyr... Luckily, though, the Weyr was small and faint from where he was. The unconventional layout of the Weyr had the lake farther from it and closer to the Weyrhold. Xaleni didn't mind. This meant that Sereldeth's eerie, prying eyes couldn't get at him here.

A different pair of eyes was watching him, though, and it took an accidental flick of his knife to realize that. He clipped his finger, just barely, and a droplet of ruby swelled out of it. Wincing, he lifted it to his mouth and sucked on it soothingly. His attention away from the knife, finally, he could look around and see the person coming towards him. It was a very beautiful person. Something in the androgyny had Xaleni hooked from the very start. He wanted this person. More specifically, he wanted to hear this person beg for forgiveness. His sadism needed satiating. He'd been a good boy a little too long.

This was exactly the sort of company he needed. Excitement tingled in his fingertips.

He took his injured hand from his mouth and shook it out, feeling the welcome sting of open air on the wound. At Faolan's greeting, he deduced that the newcomer was male, and gave a kindly smile.

"Hello, beautiful," he said, giving a split-second wink for good measure.

[/blockquote]

[bre]

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The smell of blood unnerved Faolan, making him want to tense, but he controlled the impulse as he assessed the situation in front of him with dark eyes. The idiot with the knife had simply managed to cut himself. It was nothing more than a drop, but it was a stupid drop at that. Anyway, Faolan had an excellent nose, especially for things like. The scent of blood made memories swell up. More than anything, it made him nervous. His nerves didn't show, but a faint tinge of anxiety fluttered in his chest. It didn't have to do with inexperience to violence. He could draw blood quite easily. Part of him wanted to reach for one of his own knives, but he stayed the urge. The anxiety came from the shock of possible danger. If there was a threat, it needed to be eliminated. Right then, he was trying to decide whether Xaleni was a threat or merely dangerously stupid. He'd soon make a choice.

So far, the other boy was doing nothing to get on Faolan's good side. He did not like being called beautiful. He did not like being winked at by boys. It wasn't that he had anything against boys. He was aware that he was bisexual. He simply wasn't much of a flirt or a romantic and he certainly wasn't beautiful. He was a boy. He had boy parts. That meant he was handsome, not pretty or anything like that. "Don't call me beautiful;" Faolan grumbled sullenly, narrowing his eyes at the annoying boy in front of him. It was then that he remembered he was trying to be friendly, so he let his lips twitch up into a depressing, momentary smile and tried to make himself seem sane with a few words. He didn't feel very sane right then. The different parts of his brain were squabbling about possibly stabbing this boy and how the other boy was a bit pretty himself, but he tried. "I'm Faolan."

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[Reky]

"I call everyone 'beautiful,' Beautiful," Xaleni smiled. He loved sappy nicknames. Dearie, honey, beautiful, gorgeous. From his experience, they tended to get on peoples' nerves, which was exactly why he abused them. Staying in the favour of others made life fairly boring. The only way to have some real fun, he found, was to piss people off and play with them. His mother had always told him not to play with his food, but... people weren't really food. They were toys, and those were made to be played with. "But, you know, I'll call you Faolan if you really want, Gorgeous. It's a decent name, after all."

The forced smile the other boy gave amused him. Xaleni decided to return the attempt at friendliness and held out his hand. "I'm Xaleni," he said, waiting for Faolan to shake or deny. "But you can call me whatever you want. I really don't mind." He gave out nicknames like they fell from the sky. He'd definitely be able to tolerate a few. Chances are, they'd be amusing. "You a candidate, Hon?" he asked, trying to start up idle chit-chat. See how Faolan reacted.

[/blockquote]

[bre]

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The nicknames definitely did piss Faolan off. They flared his often mute temper and soured his expression down to something that looked like that of a particularly pouty girl. When a hand was offered to him, he just stared at it as if it was a bomb. His attempts to be friendly had evaporated into thin air. It was all he could do to keep acting like a normal, sane person right then. Part of him itched to pull out a knife and be done with the fool in front of him, but he couldn't. That was wrong. Xaleni didn't deserve that. Those thoughts fluttered back and forth, bickering with each other. He made no polite response when he learned the boy's name. He just nodded and left it at that. His eyes drifted down for a moment as he surveyed the boy's physique again, looking for anything that might be off. Then he was asked a question and his eyes darted back up to the boy's smirking face.

"Yeah, I'm a candidate;" Faolan answered. There were bare traces of pride in his voice, but most were fake. Being a candidate made him little more than sad when he really thought about it. He missed his sister, his twin. Even though he tried to cut out such emotions to honor her memory, he couldn't. However, he wasn't about to let Xaleni know that. He was going to pretend like he was proud and thought himself better than the other boy, simply because even just pretending that he looked down at the creature in front of him made him feel better right then. "And what about you;" Faolan started. Then he scrambled to think of some insulting name for Xaleni. However, none came to mind, so he just said what came out. "Xal." It wasn't much of an insult, but it was a nickname. They weren't even, but it made things a little better in his mind and briefly soothed his temper.

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