I suddenly felt like fleshing out some old Pern OC ideas I had a while back. In particular, a pair of siblings (older brother, younger sister) who grew up in the weyr and both Impressed at different times.

M'rek (born Merric) is the rider of the slender blue dragon Jeth. He was quite proud when his tomboyish sister, Arkady was presented as a candidate for the next young queen, only for the entire Weyr to be baffled when a bronze hatchling (Roth) stumbled over to her instead, making it one of the most scandalous Hatchings in recent memory. Sure, girls on fighting green dragons was slowly becoming a common sight. But a woman riding a bronze? Unheard of!

Arkady was unperturbed, however, and trains with the other weyrlings, stubbornly wanting to prove herself an asset to the weyr, bringing out her fierce competitive streak. There has been talk of banning her from any queen dragon mating flights, but she and Roth are still far from fully grown, and such things seem too distant for her to concern herself over for now. M'rek just hopes she'll prove herself, be happy, and not drag their family's reputation through the dirt in the process. While any proposals to ban her from flying altogether have been thankfully shot down, as every fighting dragon is sorely needed, she would have let nothing stop her from flying.

The queen, Temereth, was Impressed by Nadia instead. M'rek's partner is A'ram, rider of green Luith. The brown dragon Tuath is just in the picture for the sake of completeness, showing the scale of each color of dragon. Mind you, these are the sizes of these specific characters, not a generic chart. Luith and Jeth are generally as close and affectionate as their respective humans. I'm fairly certain that Roth will be the one to eventually fly Temereth, putting Arkady and Nadia into an interesting relationship.

For those not familiar with Dragonriders of Pern, the dragons are wholly sentient, intelligent, (mind)speaking beings in their own right, and thus are characters in their own right every bit as much as their human riders. Honestly, with some pairs, I liked the dragon better than the rider. Ruth was much more likeable than his rider Jaxom for a long while, in my opinion.

I dunno, if you guys find the idea interesting, I may continue to flesh the characters out.

Dragonriders of Pern © Anne McCaffrey