View source for Dragon:Torayth

{{NorConDragon
|weyr=FTW
|impressee=I'ke
|name=Push Comes to Shove Brown Torayth
|date=2013.06.22
|size=33.75
|color=brown
|egg=Sentenced to Servitude Egg
|dam=Spirited Brilliance Gold Isyath
|sire=Molten Glass Bronze Vhaeryth
|clutch=29
|egg credit=N'muir
|dragon credit=Ali, N'rov
|puppeteer=N'rov
|body=
== Sentenced to Servitude Egg ==
As a consequence of being clutched, this ovoid is sentenced to suffer the duration of this stage of life in the ugly confines of an obnoxiously orange shell. Not sharp enough to be stunning nor pink enough to be pretty, this particular shade of orange is just matter-of-fact, in-your-face orange, wrapped around the smooth surface of the egg. But the egg wears it with obstinate pride, the slant of its perfectly upright position on the sand giving it a stubborn, bold posture to suit its equally abrasive colouring.

''There’s no steady, constant rhythm that breaks open the Sentenced to Servitude Egg at last. Rather, it’s a push to one side, a shove to the other, a wedging of paw against paw against paw inside that slippery shell. Does it matter which force breaks it open? What matters is /that/ it opens, and that out tumbles an earthy brown dragonet upon momentum of his own making.''

== Push Comes to Shove Brown Hatchling ==
The dragonet’s edges, from ridges to wingspars to talons, might have been chipped from stone instead of anything so fragile as glass. A dark grayed brown, it hasn’t the ruddy nature of his blockier, boulder-like flanks and shoulders; it shadows speculative eyes and then stairsteps down his lean neck, all the way to the blunter tip of his tail. Along his wingspan, shadowed ferns seem to unfurl between those spars, paler but not pale, greener but not green. His paws are large and even darker than his talons, his very footsteps weighty.

== Temperament ==
Do you trust your gut? What about when your gut starts sending you signals that you don’t actually realize /mean/ something… and then when you do, you don’t know what? Torayth is the lurch in your belly, the tingling awareness between your shoulderblades… and the touch against your forehead that’s just taken your temperature. /This/ or /That/? At first, it doesn’t matter which you choose, only /that/ you not only decide but act. It isn’t something that Torayth can necessarily explain in words, so much as feelings, a shove in the gut. Words may come as he gets to understand you, if you explain to him, but if you don’t, they won’t. He starts out with dualities (X or Y?) and moves into a series of dualities (X or Y? Y or Z?) and eventually handles three or more at once (X or Y or Z?). At least being right isn’t so important to him in any particular instance, although it is as a trend: if things didn’t turn out the way you two (or your clutchmates, or weyrlingmaster, or even wingleader) wanted this time, well, you’ll learn for next time. This may not have worked well in Fall, but it’s Interval now, and you’ll survive to make the next decision… probably.

As a weyrling, you’ll find that Torayth likes to eat. A lot. His satisfaction likes to flood the mindlink, reaching past satiation. Of course, he also likes to explore, so you may also find that he packs on considerable muscle in the process. Isyath’s slender, and Vhaeryth was bulky at first, but will Torayth grow out of it like his sire? Hard to say. He’s easygoing unless unless something catches his particular interest, with a dry sense of humor that somehow isn’t cynical; he stays positive except for the few times when he’s all down in the deep, dark dumps. (Such as when he has thicktail and needs to be medicated.) He isn’t fussy, at least, and finds smells to be especially natural and desirable. This extends to you: he likes it when you and your things get sweat-smelly and smell like /you/. It smells good to him, like home. He doesn’t at least object to taking baths, at least, but afterward he’s apt to rush back to your couch and roll in your sheets until he thinks he’s smelling right again. Sorry!

As an adult, Torayth will be happiest with a wingleader that allows even small choices. He’ll jump when the wingleader says to, but how high? He’d like to decide that on his own, and so too should you. He’s house-proud (even if you do like to change your sheets more often than he’d prefer) and enjoys company visiting him on his ledge, though he won’t mind visiting others as well, and often bring you along with him. Torayth is sure of his welcome but doesn’t have to boast his strengths, for all that he’s also not afraid to push his weight around if he feels the need. You’re not the only one he’ll try to push, either; he’ll ‘push’ his luck with his wingmates, foreigners, and even queens if he decides it’s worth the attempt. After all, it’s not whether he succeeds or not, so much as whether he can improve the outcome… or at least learn something for next time.

In flights, Torayth enjoys the chase, and while he might not angrily target other males unless they get in his way, he’s not afraid to try and shove them out, either. It’s all about the leverage, and anything you can do to help, he’ll think you should. However, though he’ll chase frequently, he won’t always do so predictably. There will be occasions when he may ignore one green for Turns and then avidly chase her the next time she rises as though he’d always been enthralled, just as he might enjoy spending time with another only to be pleasantly napping when it’s her time to fly. If he’s lucky enough to sire a clutch, he’s likely to take his cue from the queen. And always, when he wins and has her scent on him, he won’t want to wash (and won’t want you to, so let’s hope you’ve learned to get around him by then) for several days.

In summary, he’s a /force/, neither good nor evil, angel nor devil. He is, instead, the instinct by which you’ll learn to /do/, and while this will undoubtedly lean to some falling down (and falling over, and probably falling /in/), Torayth will be the constant that will be there for you, I’ke.

== Public Impression Message ==
The Push Comes to Shove dragonet leaves massive footprints in his wake, already beginning to fill in even where they aren’t disrupted by his trailing tail. He moves with deliberation, staring right at the tall blond teenager he’s begun to head for, until at last he’s /there/ and snuffling his chosen all over.

== Private Impression Message ==
Pressure. You’re being pushed, someone’s pushing you, it’s hard to stand tall. But you can’t see anyone who’s doing that, no human and not even what dragonets are still knocking about, though that brown is making his way in your and your neighbors’ direction. Your gut churns. Did you eat too much? Not enough? Maybe you’re going to be sick, a back of beyond boy unable to even stand on the sands without making a fool of himself. That’s all you were expected to do, can’t you even do that? Your hands are so clammy all of a sudden and you’re sweating up a storm and you’re going to /heave/… onto one knee, unless you can manage after all to keep your feet. That brown’s gotten to you, you know that now, he’s sniffing you over like he smells something in you that he really, really likes. Isn’t it supposed to be different than that? Aren’t you supposed to know? Except then you do, it’s not as though you’re knocked over so much as your /head/ is, a boulder uprighted to show everything you’d hidden beneath it, the rich soil equal to the things that crawl away from the light. He sees. He lets the boulder fall again with a crash that sets your head pounding, but he knows. You know it. << Choose. >> What? What does that even mean? What does that even… << I'ke. Choose. >> And then Torayth knows your answer before you even know it yourself, just like you now know his name.

== Mindvoice ==
This shadowed soil is not that of Boll. It’s foreign, dark and rich, veined with living roots, flavored with chips of stone and shreds of slowly rotting vegetation that it unhurriedly brings back to itself. It isn’t sandy; it may never have been tilled. His is an alien voice, if one that’s increasingly familiar, an earthy baritone that bears the imprint of your passage like footprints… that gradually sink into his soil and are overcome. He can be patient as earth, pushy as a boulder pressing into you from uphill, complex as his forest-floor ecosystem and simple as… well, no, Torayth never really is that, is he. He can, however, be muddy when unhappy (and track that muddiness all over you), he can be sticky like clay, and then he can be resilient and springy in pleasure: your path, now, to walk on through the world.

== Dragon Inspirations ==
Wyriker may have been a backwoods boy, but Boll’s jungly lands are nothing like Fort’s disarmingly temperate forests. You asked for a pushy dragon, which led to ‘when push comes to shove,’ which in turn led to thinking about how pushiness can show up in different ways. So often, pushiness manifests as ‘Do what I tell you.’ Here, it’s ‘/Decide/.’ Live consciously and /act/.

'''Egg Inspiration:''' Nathan from Misfits. Misfits is a British tv series which revolves around a group of young offenders sentenced to community service. Things get interesting when a storm rolls through town and gives very ordinary people a whole host of unique superpowers. A lot of probationary workers die. One could argue which character has the leading role in the show but since Nathan was my favourite right from the start, he gets the small honour of being made into an egg desc. This egg desc is the orange coveralls that the ‘misfits’ are forced to wear as their community service uniform.

== Name Meaning ==
‘Torayth’ comes from ‘foray,’ an irregular incursion in border warfare with a particular purpose in mind, whether scouting or spoils. going off into some challenging, unknown woods. From there, we made the ‘F’ into a ‘T’… and added the ‘yth’ you seemed to like, making him sound that little bit more like ‘forest.’}}