Sire and Dam: Orlaith and Ikaroth
Hatching Date: May 18th, 2012
Egg theme: Supernatural things
Dragonet Theme: Supernatural beings
Egg: Underneath the Blazing Sky Egg
Everything is in flames, iridescent licks of blue and violet enveloping the smooth shell of this egg, each one burning bright and distinct, twisting and turning about each other, a neon nimbus coruscant from every angle. The pointier end bears lightning scars in cobalt, the rounder dims to fuzzy mauve, and luminous particles shimmer across the whole in flamed amazement.
Hatch Message:
Underneath The Blazing Sky Egg crackles, crackles, and then quite suddenly burns up, all those flames writhing together and incinerating the shell, rocketing the dragonet inside free in a whirl of tangled wings and claws; an inauspicious beginning for an inauspicious-looking gold.
Hatchling Name: Noises In The Night Gold Dragonet
Dragon Description:
A regal poise belies a slender, compact body suffused in the watercolour glow of amber, brightest on her breastbone but washing out across her haunches until by the spade of her rudderlike tail nearly all shade has bleached away. That ethereal translucency is reflected in the faded golden quartz that shines through the skin of her broad, elongated wings, ragged crystalline sails and protruding spars; that tapering wedge of her head, prominent headknobs, and over-pronounced neckridges which lend her a gaunt, skeletal look; the glassiness of her powerful limbs offset by the starstruck granite of curvaceous claws.
Impression Pose:
Noises In The Night Gold Dragonet finally gets herself in order to go investigate, making enough noise for two dragons as she does so. Maybe it's that which draws her into a more silent space, intrigued by the possibilities there, the strange lack rather than the hushed whispers and exclamations. She winds up in front of Siyavri, candidate or no, uncaring about what /should/ happen and this is what occurs instead: she's come to haunt the healer for good.
Impression Message (what you see):
Something smells wrong - the sweat and the heat of the sands suddenly so sweet, the tincture of myrrh; how very strange. And that sound - at first it seems like a weird tinny little tune, an echo of the one your mother always sang on your turnday, but when it gets louder, it’s only water. Yet surely there’s never been water in the hatching caverns, never so much water; you can’t see it, and yet there’s roaring in your ears, engulfing you, telling you that any moment you’re about to drown, little pinpricks of candlelight all blue and green sticking into you, raising every hair on your body in celebratory insanity. «What is this?» Candlelight smothered by sand dashed in your face. «Siyavri, what are you?» And then, anticipating the question in a crack and a bang and the sand exploding into a shower of fireworks, «What am I? I am Zahravath!»
Personality:
Did you think it would be easy? Did you think it would be the mesh of seamless partnership, or that a dragon would be easily directed and in accord given the way a dragon's mind is attuned to its rider? What did you think this moment would be like? Maybe you did not think of it at all. Impression was, after all, always something for someone else. Certainly not for you. And you hadn’t got that far in your research yet — you never looked beyond the Candidate. Maybe now you’re wondering why that was. But here Zahravath is, unclassifiable even as much as she's now an intrinsic part of your being, present in a perpetual haunting, your double in strangely familiar ways while remaining utterly other. She'll reshape everything you thought you knew. Welcome to your afterlife, the radical change from the defined trajectory of your career as a Healer and abrupt metamorphosis without any period of transition.
Zahravath — so very present now, in your waking, your sleeping, and every moment of your life from henceforth — is, first and foremost, a conduit for emotion. That is to say: she lures feelings in, feeding off the emotional energy around her with the hunger of something perpetually baffled and curious, intrusive without the intentionality of a dragon that’s deliberately trouble-making. She's a dragon highly attuned to others, but perhaps in ways that make others — and maybe you most of all — wish she wasn't. She takes after both her parents in that she can be hard to understand; the emotions she picks up off others and which in turn influence her own behaviour don’t always align with the situation as you perceive it. Likewise, /she/ often doesn’t understand the world she’s a part of, although the desire to do so consumes her. Sometimes her incomprehension will make her seem perpetually youthful, and other times several steps out of touch with the world around her. Out of touch, maybe, but all too present; she can't help but affect everything she touches, be it mentally or physically.
Zahravath’s a fairly simple creature really. She gets hungry, thirsty, happy, relaxed, upset, and that’s about the entire range she has: one to go with each colour of eye. Each are distinct, one at a time, and there’s no mixing of the palette. /You/ however are a far more complex thing, and the moment she notices that - well, she noticed on the sands, really, that you weren’t feeling quite the same way as everyone else, why do you think she sought you out? - she’s going to spend her first couple of weeks broadcasting everything /you/ are feeling to /everyone/ within hearing distance and beyond, because ooh, Siyavri is /different/. They are interesting things, these feelings of yours. She doesn’t understand them, but she likes them and she wants them, the stronger the better; the more pronounced they are, the more excited she gets, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re positive or negative. Anything that provokes a strong reaction in you she’ll seize on gleefully (it will seem gleeful to you - she won’t know what to call it, nor quite which colour to shade it) — and then amplify it to the rest of the barracks. Of course, this may then provoke stronger reactions in you, and before you know it you’ll be in a vicious circle of emotion. Zahravath will be overjoyed. You may be otherwise!
But Zahravath is doing this for one reason only: she /wants/ to understand what these feelings and emotions are, that you have and she does not. She is dogged in this, much as you are; it’s a point of affinity amidst all the turmoil that you should be able to appreciate, and that shared desire is something that balances out the moments when she just wants to make you scream. The thing is, a lot of the time it makes her want to scream, too. Zahravath will keep flinging and flinging herself against mental brick walls, sometimes in a focused way, sometimes less so — so that sometimes it will feel like the two of you are pushing against the same wall, and sometimes it will be as if you’re on opposite sides battering it down — or just pushing it back and forth at each other.
Zahravath doesn’t understand how to separate out all these emotions, much less categorise which is which, and she will whirl near-constantly in a maelstrom of confusion and difficulty. Your healer line of ‘tell me how you are feeling’ has no meaning for her, ‘tell me how this makes you feel’ she understands even less and this frustrates her even more — because you’re part of her, and yet all these emotions prove that you are not; she wants to share them with you, but she can’t work out how to do it. She wants you to categorise not only your own feelings — which is all she’ll have to go on when very young, but then after a couple of months she’ll start picking on others in the barracks and trying to match them up to you, but all she’ll project to you is that they are mashed up altogether. It will make it difficult to sort out, and all the more so when it becomes difficult to define what you’re genuinely feeling from the host of mixed up, jumbled together emotions being broadcast your way — it’s bad enough when you can’t separate you from her in your head, but when you find you can’t tell yourself apart from R’sar…?
But she’s trying. She doesn’t want to give up, she wants to find out. She has difficulty understanding that emotions stop at people. «What is this?» It’s a barrel. «What is it feeling?» It doesn’t feel, it’s inanimate. «I don’t understand.» And then she’ll smash it. «Now what is it feeling?»
And this is how it starts, this desperation to possess emotions finding an outlet in possessiveness of things. She moves things. Everything. With very little finesse. For example, she’ll find a cat and put a paw on its tail. «What is this? What is it feeling? What does this yowling noise mean?» She has no concept that what she does affects the world. She’s the disinterested observer here. She doesn’t really get that you see her tantrums as something negative — to her, emotions are classified more on a minor to major scale: small to big, and by going bigger, surely that’s better, right?
Emotions not only govern her waking life, but her dreams as well. The jumble can become that much more incoherent, or clarify with a suddenly breathtaking force. Her mental realm is a strange, strange place, utterly surreal as if she sees a layer of reality different from your own. It can skew your own perception on waking, lingering on sometimes as insight, sometimes as second sight that twists the comprehensible into incomprehension. She sees differently, and at times, so will you. Just as dragon eyes show the limited emotion they have, these colours bleed into her mind — the only way she has of categorising. Is this a blue? An orange? A red?
And then there’s the in between stages, those foreign times between waking and sleeping when the boundaries are blurred, and she’s sure there’s something there, out there, lurking where only she can catch it, if only she could catch it! Likewise she’s fascinated by :between:, that state of simultaneously being and not-being, where all those dragons go to die. Past dragons, particularly past golds, Zahravath wants to commune with them all, become them all, be them all, and she’s convinced :between: is the best place to do it. Keep the visualisations strong in your head while she roots round in that black nothingness for any hint of dead spirits that may lurk there, for her fascination often threatens to throw the pair of you off-course, and your first few forays may be dicey indeed. Yet Zahravath will remain innately fascinated by that space. «I felt a feeling, I felt an aura, it was cold, so cold… what do you think that means? Who was it?» And then «You didn’t feel it? You must! I shall show you, we will go again!»
Others' possessions and private spaces are an utterly foreign concept. She rearranges the world to her liking, but won't be able to give voice to exactly what it is that prompts her to push and shove. « It feels better like this. » Your weyrlinghood cot just felt nicer over /there/, next to R'uhk's, prompting the shower of emotional energy that fascinates her so. And should you try to move it back — thus calming yourself down — she'll tantrum, lashing about the barracks while her mind flings out frustration — or at least that’s how you’ll think of it — at random, without direction. It's worse as a weyrling, of course, but she'll never settle into respecting boundaries. They simply do not exist for her, as a queen of Fort Weyr assuming her rightful place in the hierarchy. Not that she has much concept of hierarchy: it’s simply who she is and what she does, and everyone else should give her free rein (and reign).
When it comes time for her to rise in a mating flight, her affinity for emotion will turn into a prowess guaranteed to make you distinctly uncomfortable. She'll become an expert at manipulating the thoughts and feelings of the males who interest her, luring them in much as a siren would with promises not so much sung as felt, toying with them as if they were so many playthings for her own amusement. She has no conception of her own cruelty, though it may feel like this to the males on the receiving end of the amplification of their own emotions and the illusions of it being returned in mind. The flight itself will be as much an experiment as anything else as she plays with her own power, and it's anyone's guess what finally attracts her to a given bronze or brown. But it likely isn't affection. She might remain attached to the male who wins, but that particular haunting could go any which way: a flickering interest or something more prolonged? Who could say.
It probably comes as no surprise that with how she latches on to things, she’ll become so attached to a clutch on the Sands that she might never leave until all the eggs have hatched, requiring other dragons to bring her meals. It’s not so much maternal as possessive, with a constant, obsessive need to rearrange and rebury her eggs. What felt right one day is not going to feel right the next, and beware the dragon or human who gets in her way. She'll turn fiercely protective, hissing out warnings and puffing herself up to look threatening, then mentally bombarding whoever garners her displeasure if they don't get the message right away. And maybe even if they do. She has to be /sure./
Physical:
All look and likeness caught from earth,
All accident of kin and birth,
Had pass'd away. There was no trace
Of aught on that illuminated face,
Upraised beneath the rifted stone
But of one spirit all her own;—
She, she herself, and only she,
Shone through her body visibly.
Phantom - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
She looks more fragile than she is. There’s no mistaking her golden colour, on her body, but her wings, when she spreads them are eerily translucent, wide and raggedy all along the edges. That might matter to flight, were her wings not over-large, making her body seem disproportionately small, although she’s reasonably average as golds go, and in the air, she’ll have the widest wingspan in the weyr. She loves to swoop down from the sky whenever she detects some new and interesting emotion she is intent on discovering; this is a gold that could become known for ‘buzzing’ weyrhold and farmhold alike — particularly as her colouring makes her difficult to spot in the sky — those glassy wings giving the impression that’s she’s always halfway towards disappearing ::between::
The problem with such wings is folding them away — she doesn’t look neat and tidy, on the ground, and it’s easy to worry that her wings might tear should they catch on something — which they will, often, particularly in the midst of her sporadic turmoils of emotional confusion. Should they tear — and they well might, it will at least be a relief to find that she heals quickly and easily.
As for the rest of her body, over-pronounced neck and back ridges lend her a skeletal look, as does a long, thin wedge-shaped head, but there’s no mistaking the power in her limbs, and there’s a little sparkle on the granite of her claws — the most solid thing about her — that dazzles when the sunlight catches them.
Colourwise, she’ll begin life very much polished gold, but as she grows, the deep burnished gold does not expand with her. It will remain a bold marker on her breastbone, but wash out along her body to a more watery shade, like an overdiluted watercolour sunset, until the wingsails, her muzzle, and the spade of her rudderlike tail are almost colourless.
Voice:
Zahravath is never quiet in your mind, she’s always there, haunting you; constantly audible, although describing that noise is harder. She’s somewhere between the constant bubbling of an underground stream and the untuned crackly static caused by being too close to an electrical current. It will seem so loud in those first few days or weeks, before your brain becomes used to it and settles it into the back of your head, always nagging slightly at the edge of your consciousness but not a huge distraction, not when she’s quiet. Over time, you may become so used to it you’ll barely remember it’s there at all. Eventually, you may even find that quiet whispering sound reassuring.
The more intensely she feels, however, be it happy or sad, the less reassuring she gets, making your skin prickle and the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck stand on end, until that burbling water becomes a mighty cataract, or until that buzzing current blows a fuse and explodes in a shower of sparks. It’s the colour of the sparks, those little tiny pinprickly sparkles or the bubbles on the water that will clue you in to her actual mood: a synaesthesia, an echo of the colours of her eyes, subtle enough that it may take you awhile to work them out, particularly as any panic or confusion you may initially feel will be reflected and amplified by her, obscuring her own emotions, doubling or tripling the intensity of yours, and muddying the waters, so to speak. To complicate matters further, throw in an amplification of the olfactory senses: whatever happens to be around her at the time, from oil to new leather to firestone to the perfume that someone’s wearing, yet never quite pure, instead tinged with those scents that seem particular to her: myrrh and ambergris and musk, and sometimes the too-sweet attar of roses. The confusion of her senses is all rather disorientating, particularly when they don’t mesh with yours.
PHANTOM : Myrrh, dark musk, attar of rose and ylang ylang.
http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/diabolus.html
Out loud, she speaks in whistles and deep-throated rolling hisses, first high-pitched then low, that seem to emanate from somewhere beyond her throat, whether just beside her or echoing from across the bowl, but somehow she throws her voice so it scarcely seems to be her. She is quite capable of emitting an eerie kind of screeching when particularly over-emotional, the buzzing of her mind inflecting her bugles and other calls.
Weyr Relationships:
She’s exploitative. Any and all dragons are seen as fair game for her emotional by-play, and as weyrlings, particularly very young weyrlings, she’ll be thoroughly unappreciated by her clutchmates (not to mention the weyrlingmasters) for her lack of respect of both emotional and physical boundaries. Fortunately, draconic memories are swift to fade, and as she grows and becomes more refined, she’ll begin to develop better relationships, even if she tends to regard any dragon at her Weyr with inordinate possessiveness. She will take the injury, even death of any dragon as both a personal affront and an opportunity to drink in the emotions of the Weyr. An attempt to suck the emotions out of an injured dragon could make her an asset to the dragonhealers — if she can learn to calm herself in the process.
Orlaith is another dragon who speaks in static, and happily so; there’ll be little sense of mother-daughter from either of them, but their inquisitive natures, varied as they are, will serve as enough of a common ground — though Orlaith, with her interest in the new and unfamiliar, will likely incite Zahravath to more than one emotional trauma. Luckily for both of them there’s Hestiath, whose soothing over-protectiveness might serve as a balm to some of Zahravath’s worst tantrums.
As for the rest of her clutchmates, Zahravath will be fascinated and repelled in varying and unequal measures. She will loathe Vedoriath’s steadfastness; glorify in Imaarith’s pushing of boundaries (unless it’s her boundaries he’s pushing — but sometimes even then); throw herself repeatedly against the unbreakable brick wall that is Ungeheuerth; and utterly fail to understand how Zingath’s investigations have no emotional basis.
Inspirations
Egg Inspiration:
St Elmo's Fire (We can explain it now, but it was seen as a supernatural occurrence for hundreds of years.) I mashed together several historical descriptions of it (Darwin, Shakespeare…) and seasoned it with the song from the movie - which is how the egg got its name.. (And oh dear me, I was singing it for days…)
Egg by Iona!
Dragon Name Inspiration:
Two words serve as the inspiration for Zahravath: zaesha, one of the root words for ghost/geist meaning “horrible” or “frightful” in Avestan (an extinct East Iranian language in the Indo-European family), and sihr, Arabic for magic.
Dragon Inspiration:
A poltergeist! A noisy ghost that is unnervingly no longer human, haunting people more than places, identified with people suffering from emotional stress and transforming hysterical symptoms into visible manifestations. Other theories for poltergeist activity that might cause objects to move and houses to vibrate include underground waterways, seismic activity, and unusual air currents.
The idea was Fievel's fault, and he and Iona tossed things back and forth with some valuable input from Merci until we wound up with Zahravath. We hope we've taken your requests into account; as always, feel free to play her according to how you like!
Clutchmates:
J'ek and bronze Zingath
R'uhk and bronze Ungeheuerth
R'sar and brown Imaarith
Cili and brown Vedoriath
