Difference between revisions of "Clutch:118"

Candidates: Casseny, Dee, Eadgyd, Isidro, Jemizen, Kaelige

Dragon Writers: Hattie, Lilah, C'stian, N'rov

Dragon Editors: N'rov, Hattie

NPC Emits: Lilah

Dragon Puppeteers: Hattie, Lilah, C'stian

Search Committee: Hattie, Lilah, C'stian, N'muir, N'rov

Don't Eat the Egg

This egg is as delicate in composition as it is striking in size, with its swathes of luminescent pink set 'just so,' each edged with touches of darker pink and lined with subtle lilac striations. Each outline draws crisply up and stretches outward in every direction save the one from which it all stems. Such symmetry and elegance lend it the look of something that was constructed with a goal of a timeless perfection, something so complexly compiled as to seem effortless in its simplicity.

Inspiration: The Lotus Hotel and Casino ( here ) in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the lotus flower ( here ) where Percy Jackson and his compatriots got very lucky and found an item for their first quest into Hades, but unluckily ate the magic lotus flowers and lost valuable time for their quest in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan.

Credit: Dee

Picking a Path Egg

Gnarled shadows slither sickly across an egg that might otherwise be beautiful to behold. Where that darkness has taken root, or else dappled it in leafy swatches, the shell's smooth ash-silver has dulled to drab charcoal. Untainted sections are dotted by blossoms of white, but under the dreadful darkness there is only the corrupted promise of magnificence, purity and possibility gone to rot.

Inspiration: The heart-trees in Naomi Novik's new book, Uprooted. The book is steered by luck, chance and fate throughout and the heart-trees are one of the most strikingly described aspects of the book, both lucky and unlucky in of themselves.

Credit: Dee

Carved in Luck Egg

This egg is a shade of green so pale as to look almost colorless when seen in shadow. When in light that brings out the soft green hue, however, a texture emerges; smokey white lines wander across the surface, like the last clouds before a storm settles in, tracing their way in meandering loops and curls across the curved shell. Scattered throughout the paler bits, tiny glimmers suggest flecks of gold or copper, as if a whispered promise of fortune enclosed within.

Inspiration: a jade luck charm.

Credit: C'stian

Forgotten Markings Egg

The color of this egg is of aged hides, yellowing starting to show especially at its edges which appear almost jagged there, at the top and bottom. It is almost as if pieces have crumbled away with age, even before it has hardened enough to crack. And along its width, scrawled, ancient markings have started to fade from dark ink, still dark enough that their color stand out against the creamed color of the rest of the egg. It isn't a large egg, but it is not a small egg, either.

Inspiration: It was a combination of luck and chance that led to the discovery of ancient scrolls by a group of shepherds in caves near the Dead Sea. I thought it apropos that they should lend themselves to an egg!

Credit: Lilah

Captain's Lucky Egg

The fact that this egg is the largest of the clutch only makes the strange warping of the egg more noticeable. It is enough alone to worry anyone, but more worrisome perhaps because this egg is covered in a pure, only somewhat blemished gold. Faint spots shadow the egg against the burnished, cast gold, while the colors weave to form the impression of a woman's profile when the light casts on one side of the egg. When the light shifts, on the other, one can make out what seems to be a bird clutching a fistful of arrows.

Inspiration: Inspired by the story of Lt. George Dixon's 'lucky' coin that was discovered on the Hunley and detailed in this article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/05/0524_hunleycoin.html.

Credit: Lilah

Luck Be An Egg

Sensuous are the ample curves-for-days of this medium-sized egg. The roundness of the top slopes pleasingly into its slender sides, giving way to a plump rump. The texture of the egg is smooth as skin, and even a creamy flesh-tone, dotted by heart-shaped marks, like so many rouge kisses. No matter how its rotated or where it lies in the sand, it always seems to be giving its best angle; pleasing, teasing, and an all 'round good lookin' egg.

Inspiration: Lady Luck, the personification of good luck in the form of a (usually) buxom, attractive, young woman.

Credit: Farideh

Writing On The Wall Egg

This petite egg is a riot of bright colors and intersecting lines, from the vivid spot of garnet on its apex to each perfect ring of color that follows, like a flowers petals blooming back upon itself. Vibrant grass green comes second, then pink, sky blue, orange, and the sapphire of a deepening night sky. Each section is delineated in stark, chalky white, setting apart rounded patterns that twist and wind into each other to create a network of intricate, unnatural silhouettes.

Inspiration: During Indian festivals, such as Diwali, rangoli art is drawn on floors, walls, and other settings, using powders, rice, and flower petals. It is thought to bring good fortune.

Credit: Farideh

Luck in Pretty Patterns Egg

Bright near-geometric patterns expand outwards about the shell of this solid, mid-sized egg, greens and blues interlaced with off-white from pointed tip to rounded end. A few swirls of red mark out more complicated patterns, weaving this way and that towards the egg's crest; joyous and enthusiastic, there's a vibrance to this egg that promises hope and light.

Inspiration: This egg was inspired by Rangoli (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoli), a type of folk art in India that is thought to bring good luck.

Credit: K'del

New Year's Blessings Egg

Pure green from top to tail, this egg is smaller than most and somehow rounder, too, almost spherical rather than ovoid. The pale patterns that bedeck the shell itself are suggestive of layers, each slightly darker than the next, and arranged like ripples-- like scalloped edges, or a fan of fabric-- limned in gentle variations of white and green. At its palest, it gleams luminscently white; at its darkest, it remains a near-transparent green.

Inspiration: Cabbage is considered to be a good luck vegetable, and is eaten on New Year's day by some to ensure a good year to come.

Credit: K'del

Tangled Web Egg

Of middling size, this egg is rather thick at its middle, all the better for the tendrils of grey and black threads to splay and stretch, web-like, across its otherwise pale surface, anchored at the curves of both crown and base. They're ragged things, those dark lines, yet they seem oddly precise at the same time, tiny fragments of colour that glisten like gems strung at delicate intervals. Summer-sky here, and purple-dusk there, and one fragment blacker than black.

Inspiration: The tangled webs woven by Black Widow Queens and witches in the 'Black Jewels' trilogy of novels by Anne Bishop. The webs are used to predict the future and grant glimpses of fate.

Credit: Hattie

Oracle Egg

One of the larger of the clutch, the smooth surface of this tall egg is first washed with a foggy mixture of cool, sky-blue that deepens only fractionally to become pale sandstone towards its base. Blunted, earthy peaks rise from its middle, reaching towards smudges of white and grey that form cloud-like impressions, but never quite make contact. Among those peaks are dotted shapes in clean cut marble; tall columns and many a small, rectangular structure trying to outdo their neighbour. Away from these, a lonely, singular grey circle sits precisely at the shell's widest point.

Inspiration: Delphi, the Sanctuary the Ancient World flocked to, to learn of their future and fate.

Credit: Hattie

One Pair, Many Months Egg

This egg surely must have been white at some point in time, anything but that faded purplish-gray color of too many washings and just way too much love. There's a muddy base where the larger part of the ovoid sinks beneath the surface of the sands, as if unwashable dirt might be clinging to the egg's surface. Odd hatch markings, akin to the tight knit found in some socks, decorate the shell, though it's hard to tell from a distance. And is that a smell? Can eggs smell at all? If so, this one might be emanating some sort of odor.

Inspiration: From the superstition of sports fans everywhere, lucky socks, lucky underwear, lucky something or other that needs to be worn all season long.

Credit: Irianke

Wrapping of Risk Egg

A rumpling of white, this mid-sized egg has no particular rhyme nor reason; it only grows darker where illusory creases sink and brighter where they rise. When seen close up, even that whiteness is only an accumulation of whites: some finer-grained and some rougher, some subtly yellower as though with age, others with the ghosts of brownish blotches. None of the lines are so sharp as to have been ironed in, though perhaps slept on; this is no tidy arrangement.

Inspiration: Candidate outfits!

Credit: N'rov

Broken Mirror Egg

Whites vie with light peaches, yellows, and purples over this beautifully smooth shell, suggestive of iridescence that might as well shimmer in an on-looker's reflection. The smoothness continues around the large egg until it is suddenly grotesquely interrupted on one side by a spider-webbing of thick and thin blackened lines. The egg itself may even be a hint lopsided, with the tiny shard-like shapes progressing to larger uneven ones that makes the shell appear as if it's already been fractured, splintered into a thousand tiny pieces. Dark lines follow jagged paths from the shell's dented side until they eventually dissolve into the marred perfection of the rest of it.

Inspiration: Inspired by the superstition of seven years of bad luck to follow smashing a mirror.

Credit: Kaelige

Sailor's Hope Egg

Deep navy blues and jaded greens swirl with liquid grace across this large egg, running up against each other and clashing with foamy greys as if angry waves being churned by stormy winds. A small splash of brown is angular, a vessel so diminutive against the vast ominous sea around it that it could be naught but lost. Azures and aegean blues deepen, forbidding and unrelenting as if there is simply no end in sight to the ocean's immensity. A hint of white touching near the crown of the egg boldly contrasts the oceanic hues around it, winged with pinions many times the length of its small body and even smaller hint of a tail. The bird-like mark may just be evident to the vessel below as it braves the storm from above.

Inspiration: Inspired by sailors considering the albatross as a symbol of luck of land being somewhere nearby.

Credit: Kaelige

NPC Brown and Holdbred Boy

A second egg hatches without as much violence or fanfare as its brother. Instead, the Don't Eat the Egg blossoms quietly as petals of its shell part to reveal a brown sitting within, an almost mauve undertone to his goo covered body. He seems as if he's already done this all before, because it is with a quiet capability that he picks his way out of his shell and over to a Hold-bred boy, Impression made as quickly and without fuss as his hatching, while his bronze brother still stalks the Candidates.

Blue Tiescth and Nasci (NPC)

Luck In Pretty Pattern Egg is finally wiped away as its shell crumbles and falls apart to reveal a softly colored blue dragonet. He creels with despair to find himself so introduced to the world and outside of his egg, but Eliyaveith crooned reassurance seems to give him the courage to pick himself up and forge his own destiny, now. It is an older girl that he finds, Nasci from Lux's Ledge, who immediately breaks down in tears and answers him, "Natlie. You'll meet her. But first, let's get you fed."

Bronze Vedoath and Y'tob

The Forgotten Markings Egg gives away to the touch of the dragonet inside, turning to dust as the cracks expand quickly over the egg. It is a large bronze, who must have been cramped in that egg, that is revealed. He doesn't wait for either his dam or his sire's encouragement, starting with Kaelige as he moves to investigate the Candidates. Unfortunately, he gets too eager as he tries to rise up on his hindquarters to look the young man over; he trips, his claws catching against Kaelige's chest as he does so. It is the Night's Observant Shadows Bronze that rushes forward, barreling into his bronze brother's side to push him away from the Candidate. After, he turns back to examine the Candidate himself, choosing him despite the injury.

The large bronze drags himself quickly away from Ka'ge and his dragon, practically huffing up at his dam as if expecting Eliyaveith to intervene. She only rumbles a soft noise, at once forgiving and encouraging, though the hatchling doesn't seem impressed with that. Perhaps the young man that he turns to next will help, because in an instant there is the tell-tale signs of Impression as Y'tob throws a glare in the other bronze pair's direction before being led off the Sands.

NPC Brown and Smithcraft Boy

A brown dragon is revealed as he strips himself out of the Luck Be An Egg slowly, his shell falling to the sands around him. That brown takes a moment to lift his paw to delicately lick off egg pieces and goo, then the next. He starts on his back paws before Eliyaveith interrupts with a soft rumble towards her son, which is met with a huff before he deigns to go explore the Candidates. For as much time as he was willing to take on himself, he quickly chooses a boy from Smithcraft.

NPC Blue and Boy

The sea-colored shell of Sailor's Hope Egg parts swiftly in two to reveal a blue dragonet, the hatchling holding the same vast ocean in the tones of his hide. Impression is made even as he tumbles out of the egg, a boy standing close surprised by the sudden appearance of the blue and then overwhelmed by the dragonet's choice.

NPC Brown and Weyrbred Girl

It is finally time to throw out the One Pair, Many Months Egg, as no amount of washing could ever truly recover it from the cracks that have spread across its shell. As the shell breaks away, it reveals a light brown who skitters away from the broken remains of his egg as quickly as possible, as if it has developed a stink. It takes him some searching before he finally finds a Weyr-bred girl who is too busy watching the dangerous green to see him coming.

NPC Blue and Healer apprentice

Cracks appear along the delineated lines of the last egg, as The Writing On The Wall Egg decides that it is finally time to be wiped away as well. A softly colored blue, echoing the coloring of one of his brothers, tears his way out of what remains of his shell before making his way over to what remains of the Candidates after most of his brothers and sisters have had their pick. From them, he chooses a young Healer apprentice.