Difference between revisions of "Logs:AU - Fossilised"

Gordie Hallen tugged again at the end of the shoulder strap, coaxing out the first knot she'd tried. The bag began to shift, and she snatched at it with her free hand, and re-balanced it on her knee. What she should have done was grabbed one of the old cloak brooches from her father's things, and pinned the strap in place. They'd been walking since dawn along the old riverbed. The blazing sun had already moved on past its midpoint in the sky, and still, nothing. Gordie was beginning to suspect that the Hall hadn't believed the reports that had been floating around the Hold. This was a fool's errand, and she'd been selected top fool. She had to wonder if the runner cart would even be there to pick them up at the end of the day, or if they'd just have to walk back. Should've grabbed that brooch.

She stood, knot re-tied, and adjusted the bag of tools against her hip. The descent of the sun meant that, soon, she'd have to pull the heavy overshirt out of the bag, and then it would only be the abraded padding - which was to say, none at all - that would protect her hipbones from the hit of borrowed Smith tools. They might have given her a carrying case for them -- but then, it seemed, resources for fool's errands were scarce as it was.

The others were beginning to catch up, looking as miserable as she was beginning to feel. Sometimes, company helped, but she doubted it would today. She hurried on. At least the rise and fall of the riverbed was good. 'Happiness starts in the feet', her grandfather used to say. He'd been much more adventurous (much more like her, she thought). They'd had an understanding. She missed him, but her chest warmed when his words still made her smile.

It was a good hour's trek and another re-tying of the knot before they came upon it. Gordie hadn't even been certain she'd seen it correctly; in her mind's eye, she'd pictured it at the top of a hill, silhouetted against a sunrise, found much earlier in the morning, with much more spring left in everyone's step, and beautiful, and complete. But no, it was in a crevice that the unusually heavy springtime rains had dug into the soft earth, and she'd nearly missed it, missed them, the row of points sticking out of the ground at a low angle. At least she was far enough ahead that no one had seen her nearly trip on them. She'd halfway uncovered the frontmost of the premaxillary teeth before she thought to don gloves. By the time the rest of them caught up (they must have taken a longer rest, without her supervision), she'd uncovered the jawbone, and it was all coming pouring back.

Dragons. Great beasts, so many of them, flying through the air, searing an ancient foe from the sky, their riders, strong and sexual and fearless on their necks. Her grandfather had told her those stories too, and she'd dreamt, how often, of flying one as she'd drifted off to sleep? Dragons, and not like those little, stunted remnant drakes and their caregivers, all slowly dying off in the Southern continent. If this jawbone was anything to go by, then the drakes weren't even half the size of their predecessors - and that meant that the tales of dragonriders and Thread and the constant struggle for Pern weren't so exaggerated as people claimed. Maybe.

"We have to set up a camp," Gordie Hallen told the others when they arrived. "We have to see what else the earth is hiding." She dispatched most of them for supplies, and kept Rugaren with her for the night. She barely slept, and when she did, it was a sleep filled with dreams of flight.

It had taken turns to unearth him, her Lord of Fire and Blood, and still longer to organise him into a proper skeleton. It had been much easier with the human remains they'd found. Humans had not changed so much, but to have grown bigger, it seemed. Gordie paced in front of him in the dim lamplight, keeping her eyes on his huge frame, all thirty-five feet of its length, as she moved. The Smiths had been anxious to help her find ways of wiring and supporting him once they'd seen what she'd dug up, and even Gordie had to admit that they'd done an excellent job of it.

The Lord was stood up on his hind legs (they'd yet to find all of the front ones), with his great tail out for balance. His massive mouth was open to show off those awesome teeth, his head tilted down so those pronounced eyeridges could be appreciated from dead on. Gordie felt a twinge of adrenaline looking at them even now. She wondered what the prey animals he ate used to feel. She wondered if so powerful a creature gave them much time to feel at all, before crushing them in those great jaws of his, with those teeth so much larger, sharper than the drakes'. There weren't enough of his wings left to even try to mount them on his back, though Gordie had seen them carefully arranged on a table in front the Lord, overtop a sketch of how much bigger they must have been. She reached out and ran her fingers over his vicious talons, imagining how sharp they might have once been. And then she stepped back over the rope, and up to the podium they'd set.

She ran through her notes in her head, the questions she would answer about why he was preserved, what must have happened, obvious links between dragons and drakes, all the things she would tell all the Holders and Lords and Ladies and Craftmasters and men of industry. Even the Lord of the Southern Drake Hold had come, bothering to take his creature by boat up to Igen. That drake was not doing so well - none of them were, if rumours were to be believed - but Gordie had a new respect for the pale thing anyway, now she had some ideas of his ancestry. It was this man who had insisted that the human remains be kept near the dragon's, though the Craftmasters had used their influence to ensure that the man they'd found with the dragon was kept instead in a box to the side, under the pretence of being less gruesome.

It was this man who was suddenly standing before her, smelling of leather and that strange, but now distinct smell of drake hide.

Gordie started, and gripped the podium. Lord Drake had a distant, haunted look to his eyes as he moved toward her, examining the skeleton, barely seeing Gordie herself, it seemed. "How-"

"Asleep." Drake's dismissed Rugaren with a wave of his hand toward the door. Gordie didn't ask after the other guards and craftsmen he'd had to get by. She didn't relax her grip on the podium, either.

Drake circled, but kept a respectful distance. As he reached Fire and Blood's tail, he was shaking his head. "So much bigger than Cenozith."

Gordie nodded, the image of that creature not far from her mind.

"I hope this one was a bronze. That at least would be easier on our egos."

"For the size of him, he must have been. It's hard to imagine the drakes getting so small so quickly if he were blue."

Lord Drake made a face, and Gordie immediately regretted her words. She watched him circle back, her grip on the podium easing.

He came to that box, pointed. "This was the man you found with him, hm."

She nodded.

"Lucky, to have died together."

He was somber, suddenly, and she felt a great sympathy for him. His drake was old, older than most lived to be. The man was counting the days until he was alone. "The dragons would have had much longer lifespans." It didn't come out as comforting as she'd meant it. "Not this one," she added, quickly. "This one must have died suddenly, with no chance to disappear. My guess is something happened to him in one of the ancient comet storms. With all the flash-flooding, he'd've been covered promptly. Both of them would have been."

Drake was resting his hands on the lid of the rider's box. He pulled them away, and waved it at her, waved her off. "It's all right. We know, down at the Weyr," and he smiled when her nose wrinkled at the archaic - and inaccurate - word, "what's coming for us. We've known a while."

All Gordie could do was nod her head, almost dumbly.

"You've done a wonderful job with him." He was looking to the Lord of Fire and Blood again. Gordie allowed herself to look back at him also, and felt a parental sort of pride swelling in her breast.

"A wonderful job," he repeated, fingers stretching toward Fire and Blood, though he was well out of reach, behind the ropes. "It's important, to remember."