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Menolly hopped from foot to foot on the hot Sands, wondering how anyone had ever talked her into this.
"It'll be fun!" Mirrim had said. "You'll be a natural," Mirrim had reassured her. "See how the fire lizards love you," she'd said. "They're just like tiny dragons, right? So why not try for a proper one?"
So now she was here, waiting for hungry dog-sized toothy clawbeasts to tear their way out of their eggshells on the offchance that one wanted to pledge its eternal love to her.
The gold egg, which was the only reason she'd let Mirrim talk her into this in the first place - it was true, she had to admit, all of the other candidates were awful - was stubbornly not even rocking, so she looked over to the other section to pass the time.
First out was a tiny blue hatchling that could barely work out what its feet were for. Not an excellent sign. The twelve year old boy that collided with it at great speed seemed to be happy about it, though.
Then there were a couple of greens, and...
"What kind of colour do you call that?"
She was sure she wasn't meant to be able to hear Mirrim's voice from the Stands.
Then the screaming started.
Path appeared suddenly out of /between/, scattering candidates and hatchlings alike. The gold dragon supposedly in charge of this clutch bellowed a challenge, but the feisty little green wasn't paying attention.
Instead, she swooped down and grabbed the bizarre hatchling - it wasn't quite green, it wasn't quite brown, it was sort of - mottled? - and it didn't have wings - and pulled it away from the injured Candidate, who the Healers waiting anxiously in the tunnel swiftly dived onto the Sands to retrieve.
The wild creature twisted and thrashed in Path's claws as she struggled to gain altitude, to get far enough off the ground to disappear again and get out of the face of the increasingly incensed golden dragon who had bestirred herself from her guard over the gold egg and was beginning to spread her own wings.
And in the commotion, the thing jerked just so and dropped from the air right next to Menolly.
In an instant, her entire fair of fire-lizards had manifested around her, despite their strict orders to stay away. Hissing at the oncoming predator, they bought a few seconds while the raptor paused and re-evaluated its situation.
There was another commotion in the tunnel entrance, and a gentleman with a most peculiar manner of dress - mostly beige, trousers and a rather elaborate shirt, with a brownish waistcoat and the strangest hat Menolly had ever seen - burst out of the tunnel away from his pursuers.
"Don't hurt her!" cried Muldoon, passionately. It wasn't clear whether the order was to the fire-lizards surrounding the raptor, or the raptor herself, but in any case both sets of attackers turned to look at the new entrant.
Menolly quickly told her fire-lizards to calm down, and backed away a few steps. No point in causing a fight if one could be avoided, and the agitated gold dragon was looking like she might dart forwards and intervene messily at any moment.
"I've been looking for you everywhere," he said, definitely to the raptor this time. "How did you get in here, anyway?"
The raptor lead him back through the chaos of discarded shells and nudged one in particular with her delicate foreclaws. Before having been broken open by her triumphant emergence, it had been clawed open at the bottom, with just enough space for a raptor to fit inside and stand it back upright on the Sands.
"Clever girl," he said, with wonder in his voice.
The weyrlingmaster, who had managed to advance on the situation by this point, cleared his throat.
"I don't suppose you two would like to come with me?" he said.