Blake padded on barefeet  into the flagstone floored kitchen, following the
scent of breakfast as she did every morning.  By habit and nature she was a
early riser, so it was no surprise to find only her mother in the kitchens
yet.  On silent feet she moved around the heavy pine table towards the stove
where Emaline Greystone was making breakfast.

In a swift move, Blake dropped a light kiss on her mother's soft, rosy
cheek, even as her nimble fingers snagged a warm griddlecake just off the
stack.  Emaline's soft sigh was as regular as the rest of the routine.  So
was the question she posed to her only daughter.

"So what plans have ye cooked up for today, minx?"  Emaline's soft voice
reached Blake as the girl flounced into the chair closest to the stove.
Blake never failed to find pleasure in the gentle calm voice of her mother.
In all her sixteen years, she'd never heard her mother speak loudly, and,
growing up in a house of seven loud males, soft sounds were to be appreciated.

Emaline waited patiently for her daughter to finish chewing.  She'd raised
all seven of her children not to talk with their mouths full.

"I thought I'd take a lunch and hike up towards the mountain.  I want to
start charting that new rock face that Gable found last week."  Today was a
free day for her.  Her father was taking a load of quarrystone  into the
city today.  Her brothers, all except Nickie, were going with him.  Nickie
was sick with a spring cold, and hated with his whole six year old heart
every minite he had to stay in bed.

"Ye might want to check with yer father before ye go up that way.  Damen and
Gable said there's been a lot of geiser activity areound that area lately."

Black got no chance to reply as the rest of her family chose that moment to
start filing in to the kitchen.  Gable, 19, and Pader,18, made getting to
the table a shoving match as tey argued at the top of their big male lungs.

"You're a liar!  She did not say that!"

"Ask Damen if you don't believe.  He heard her say it!"  

Damen, the eldest at twenty-one, followed them in, a big strapping young man
with his father's chesnut hair and his mother's green eyes.  Damen had
inherited his mother's soft voice, but manhood had deepened it and given it
it's own sound.  He could, when provoked, bellow everyone into submission
almost as well as their father did.  From the look of tried patience on his
strong face, it was clear he'd heard the majority of the arguement, and
wasn't happy about that fact.

"Leave me out of this one, Gable.  You two have to settle this one on your
own.  Just do it before Dad gets in here."

The debators shut up quickly, saving the conclusion of the arguement for
later.  Just in time too as the two younger brothers filed in with similar
shoving.  This however was only good natured teasing.  Newel, 14, ruffled
Haden's black thatch of hair as he called him a little 'maggot'.

At ten, Haden bore the brunt of the other's teasing, but it was never as
harsh as it got with the other Greystone boys.  Haden showed no sign of
filling out anywhere near as big as his brothers.  Still, what he lacked in
the promise of size, he made up for in brains and talent.  Haden could sing.
His sweet clear voice held the promised that it would stay even after
manhood deepened it.  Sometimes Blake could get him to sing when they were
out in the quarry and his voice would ring out and echo like the song of one
of the gem-eyed celestial ladies who stand at the entrance to Paradise.

Blake, sitting at the table still, froze for a moment, realizing how
different things would be when Haden left them next year to take the barding
apprenticeship.  The idea that her family might break up was a hard one to
deal with, and rather than dwell on it, she pushed the thought aside.
Perfectly on time as her father came in and the usual chaos of morning
breakfast got started.

There was a lot of planning to do for the trip to the city.  Blake ignored
most of it.  At age of fourteen, her father had started banning her from
taking the stone to the city, claiming that it was hard enough protecting
his stone without having to keep an eye on his daughter as well.  His sons
had laughed, knowing that Blake Greystone could hold her own in any fight,
but they had backed their father to be on the safe side.  Blake had conceded
to keep the family peace on the condition that trip days were free days for
her.  The compromise held.

She actually managed not to speak until three fourths way through the meal
when Damen mentioned that Lord Ryder's son had stopped by yesterday to look
about and talk.  Pader grinned at her.

"Yeah right.  He came to look Blake over, and talk her out of her britches."

His mother shot him a look and spoke his name softly.  Instantly contrite,
Pader, ducked his head, but the comment already hung out there.  Blake
disobeyed her body's need to cringe and hide from everybody's stare.

"Blake, has young Ryder been making any...improper...advances towards you?"
Her father, booming voice hushed as he confronted his only daughter on this
delicate subject.  It was an area he felt totally out of place with.  

Blake shot a look that promised a severe wrath at Damen and Pader, who both
looked away.  All of them had been involved in a conspiracy for the past
couple of years in hiding Arik Ryder's more amorous intentions from their
father.  

"Why don't the two of you discuss this in the office?"  Her mother's
suggestion ended the tense silence as Blake stood up, her chair scooting
back noisily on the floor.  Her father did likewise, and the two of them
filed out of the kitchen.  When they were gone, Gable promply popped Damen
and Pader on their chestnut heads.  The table resumed eating in silence.

In the office, Blake faced her big stern father squarely, took a deep
breath, and waded in.  

"I didn't want you to know."

"Has he...do you...I want to know what the hell has been going on around here!"

"You are making a much bigger deal out of this than it deserves."  Blake was
no gentle flower like her mother.  She could give as good as she got, and
when her anger got involved, she could yell as loud as the rest of them.
She was almost to that point.

"I want to know if Ryder's son has been at you, girl!"  Orran Greystone drew
himself up to his full six foot three height, fully prepared to do battle
with the willful little baggage that was his daughter.

"He hasn't touched me, if that's what you mean!"  She thought it best not to
mention the time he'd grabbed her and tried to kiss her.  She broken the
young man's nose for that stunt.  He had't touched her since.  "Dad, Arik's
just infatuated right now.  He'll get over it, and we can go back to being
friends again."

Blake couldn't keep the wistful note out of her voice.  She'd known Arik
Ryder since she was four and he was six.  He'd learned to ride or walk out
to the quarry where he could play with the Greystone boys, go swimming, and
generally get away from life as the son of a lord.  He and Blake had run
wild as children, growing up together.  It was only in the past couple of
years that they'd drifted apart.  He was required to be at his father's Hold
more often, and she was working in the quarry a lot more.  And when he did
come, all he did was try to get her to go swimming, and try to read her
poetry, or pick flowers for her. All that silly stuff the men at his
father's Hold were doing to 'court' the girls.  She had no patience for that.  

Her father was busy looking at his naive daughter, seeing the truly pretty
young woman she was turning into.  The black hair, braided up in a coronet
on her head was the same silky stuff he'd loved in her mother.  Her skin was
still soft and creamy despite all the time she spent outdoors, and her grey
eyes, his grey eyes looked out of face even prettier than her mother's had
been.  She wore her usual tunic and britches, light grey for the day spent
out in the warm spring air.  It didn't do a whole lot to hide her young
woman's curves.  He sighed heavily, seeing in this pretty young woman the
darling tomboy who'd run wild across his quarry and worshipped him as a god.

"If he comes by again, send him to me.  I'm not gonna have him badgering you
since it's clear you don't feel that way about him.  And if you, little
girl, do change your mind about Lord Ryder's son, you better make sure he
makes a formal offer for you, before anything comes of it."  Blake blinked
solomnly at his warning, and wondered exactly what he meant, but nodded her
acceptance of his judgement.  "Now come here and give me a hug, girl, and
promise me you'll stay out of trouble today."  Blake complied, made her
promise, and left the office wondering why her father looked so tired now.
But she was young, and soon forgot about the whole thing.

********
*midday*

Rough-edged stone bit into her palm as she used the handholds to haul
herself higher up the hard granite cliff.  The sun was warm, heating the
stone.  She was thankful for the small backpack that blocked the sun from
directly hitting her back.  As it was, she was soaked with sweat by the time
she pulled herself up to the ledgelike step in the mountain foothill.  

She was in a big area, large enough for three or four people to sit easily.
Littered with small and large rocks from the last tremor that had shaken the
area, she nudged herself a free space and sat down to rest and relax.  Here
was a place that the cool breeze would reach her as she took her midday
break for lunch.  Her face, red and damp with her exertion, dried in the
breeze and lost its hectic color.  She pulled the waterskin out of her pack
and sipped from it gingerly.  Her grey eyes searched the area, for dangers,
for treasures, and settled on a puzzle.

It rested in a low place, half buried in smaller stones.  It was a huge
water-polished rock, cloudy grey-white, oblong in shape and larger towards
the bottom.  It looked like marble, but there wasn't a decent marble deposit
anywhere near here.  She moved foreward, touching the stone, feeling the
smoothness in it's lines.  Definitely not man-carved.  It was very warm,
picking up the sun's heat and holding it.  

Without knowing why, she wanted the rock.  Wanted to take it home and keep it.  

It wouldn't be an easy task.  She sat back down, a couple of paces away from
the thing.  Her mind tumbled over the problem of how to get the thing down
the near verticle climb she'd just made.  Absently, she reached for her
pack, pulled out the lunch her mother had prepared for her and started eating.

She ended up making a swing of sorts out of the climbing rope from her pack.
It would put the weight on her waist and hips and swing down below her legs
so as not to hamper her as she climbed down.  Rolling the rock out of the
small depression in the ledge and into the swing wasn't that bad compared to
bracing herself as she lowered the stone over the edge of the ledge.  She
didn't want its weight pulling her over before she was ready.  When she did
start down, she had to defy her instinct to hurry, knowing that if she moved
quickly, she risked banging the rock against the granite cliff and marring
its shape.

She set it down slowly at the base of the foothill's cliff, following it
down the last bit.  Every inch of her was drenched again, and now her whole
body was trembling with over-exertion.  She knew better than to lay down and
rest here among the pinetrees, not wanting to let her body stiffen up.  She
did pause for a sip of water and untied the swing from her bruised hips.
She still had to get the thing across the five miles to home, but it was
going to be so much easier on the ground.  

She used a big chuck of granite to knock down a couple of young saplings and
twisted off some branches.  Using the rope and the sapling trunks she she
set up a sling sort of affair that she could drag behind her with the trunks
set to run close together and parallel to each other.  Held together with
the ropes, she braced the narrowly spaced sapling trunks with horizonal
cross pieces out of some of the pine branches.  Pretty much in place, the
contraption only waited for her to roll the stone onto it.  

Heavy at it was, tired as she was, the five miles stretched out.  It was
sunset when she got back to the stone house with its steep slate roof.  Her
brothers were out in the yard, storing away the supplies and tending to the
beasts.  Haden saw her first and dropped his bucket of well water at the
sight of his dirty, sweaty sister looking ready to drop with the weight of
her strange burden.

The clatter of the bucket hitting the ground got the rest of their
attentions.  But not nearly so much as when he called out.

"What in the name of the Stone are you doing with a dragon egg?!?"

Blake looked up with tired grey eyes, blinked once, half turned to look at
her burden, blinked again and turned back around.  Her hands, blistered,
bleeding, and covered in sap, jerked once, and dropped the sapling poles.
"It's mine.  I found it."

The arguing started.  "We've got to get rid of it."  "How?"  "Why can't we
keep it?"  "It's a dragon egg, you ninny.  We can't keep a dragon egg."
"Where would Blake get a dragon egg from?"

Damen took charge.  "We'll take it to the Dragonriders.  They'll know what
to do with it.  Pader, go hitch the mare to the cart.  Gable, you can take
it.  We'll tell Dad you took the cart to see Gweneth.  Haden, get the
cinnamon and marigold salve from the barn for her hands.  Newel, help me
throw Blake in the water trough.  I don't want Mom to see her like this.
She'll wonder what happened."  The boys flew to his orders, and Damen closed
in on Blake.  

Blake looked at him in a haze of exhaustion.  She only half understood what
was going on.  She wanted to sleep so badly.  But she wasn't giving up
without a fight.  "It's mine, Damen."  

"Sh-h-h.  I know, Blake.  Just be quiet.  We're going to give you a bath and
put you to bed.  You want to go to bed, don't you?"

The sound of bed was so appealing that she actually let him lead her to the
trough.  It wasn't the first time she'd bathed in the trough.  She stripped
off her shirt, unmindful of the audience, even when they gasped at the sight
of her bruises.  She had trouble unfastening her britches with her hands so
blistered and Damen had to help her out of them.  He dumped her in the
chilly water and started scrubbing her clean as Haden got back with the
salve.  Newel snuck in the house and brought back a change of clothes,
similar in color to the ones she'd worn.  Between the three of them they got
her dried, clothed, and medicined.  The salve numbed her hands, and the
fading pain brought a little more awareness.

"I still say it's mine, Damen.  I found it.  It's mine by finder's rights."

"You can't keep it, Blake.  Gable's going to take it up to Geode."

"Then I'm going with it."

"No."

"Yes."

"No.  Now shut up."

"Yes, or I tell Dad about..."

Damen didn't let her finish, clapping his hand over her mouth.  He half
turned as Gable lead the mare and the cart towards them.  The other's were
busy moving the marble egg into the back of the cart.  One of them had
thought to grab a couple of extra blankets from the barn, and they covered
the egg up with one of them.  

"Gable.  Blake's gonna to go with you.  We'll just lay her out in the back
of the cart."  Standing in the cart, Gable took one look at Damen's serious
face and nodded.  Smiling sleepily with victory, Blake was tossed down on a
spare blanket that smelled of barn, and half curled around the prize she'd
worked so hard for.  The second eldest boy took the seat at the front of the
cart and reached for the reins.  "Hurry, Gable.  Get that thing dropped off
at the Warren and get back here.  And bring her home in one piece, please."
Damen nodded to Blake, but kept his eyes on his brother.

"Understood."  

They all stood quietly to watch as the cart pulled out of the yard.

******
Blake woke with a start late the next morning feeling stiff and aching and
decidedly damp.  She blinked twice at the sight of the sun rising in the sky
above her and the feel of the moving cart below her.  And the feel of
something wet and gooey yet solid under her hand.

She patted the thing carefully, feeling it's slight curvature, and sharp
edges. She sat up abruptly, felt a faint headrush, and ignored it to look
down at what her hand was on.  She recoiled from the sticky pink goo, half
covered by a brown barn blanket.  She yanked the blanket off, and found her
stone, her prize, broken in pieces and a sticky whitish thing doing it's
best to climb out.

"UUGH!!"  She backed away, scrabbling to get away, only to be stopped by the
sides of the cart.  The cart jerked to a stop, almost spilling her out and
tipping the egg over, spilling the sticky whitish thing right into her lap.  
It shifted, and a goo covered head looked up at her with eyes like polished
jet.  
[MINE!!] A small voice piped up out of nowhere and echoed in her head,
sending waves of joyous completeness, ending a loneliness she hadn't known
that she felt until that moment.

"Get away from it, Blake!"  Gable's deep voice jolted her out of her bliss.  

"No!  Don't touch her, Gable."

"Get away from it, Blake!  It's a dragon!  It's gonna eat you!"

Jennipher stiffened at the threat, confused by the shouting and wanting to
defend her mate.  She flapped tiny wings, sending goblets of sticky goo
flying from the webbing, and screamed a challenge at the two-legged male.

Deafened by the roar so close to her ears, Blake clapped her hands to cover
them, and felt the sear of pain as her wounded, blistered hands, the salve
having long since worn off, smacked the hard surface.  Jennipher reacted to
the pain she felt from her mate and tried to lunge at the tall two-legger on
the ground beside the cart.

In pure fear, Blake yanked her back, knowing that a fall would break the
newly hatched baby.  She hunched over the baby in a protective huddle of
newly awakened maternal instinct, covered in newly hatched dragonet goo.
Jennipher, reacting to the emotions of her mate, calmed and started nuzzling
Blake.

Gable blinked in confusion, wanting to defend his sister, protect her, and
seeing her protecting the thing he feared.  

Blake was still in a meld of emotions, and she sensed the raving hunger in
the tiny dragonet.  She turned to Gable, still keeping her close hold on the
little one.  "We need to get to the warren, Gabe.  She's hungry and we need
to feed her."  She spoke like a mother with a child.  

Still confused, Gable moved, obeying the authority in her voice.  He jumped
back in the driver's seat of the cart and grabbed the reins.  He had a lot
of reasons to move fast.  There was only one road up the mountain that
actually lead into Geode and they were on it.  He pushed the tired horse as
far as he dared and it was less than an hour later when they pulled into the
warren 'green'

Up here, snow still patched the ground in places.  People moved around like
ants, busy with their own affairs.  Dragons littered the ground, peeped down
from ledges, and hung on the chilly breeze.  It was exotic and beautiful,
and yet so much of it was ordinary stuff.

Gable pulled the cart to a halt and glanced over his shoulder at Blake who
shrugged.  He jumped down, looking around, and settled on a tall fellow in
leather clothes.

"Sir, could you help us please?"  The man approached, looking a little
uncertain at the tall young man, eighteen or so, with the pale green eyes.
"My sister found something, and I think it may belong to someone here at the
warren.

The man's uncertainty didn't go away, but he moved around to have a look in
the back of the cart, and saw a young girl, covered in dried goo, huddled
around a newly hatched grey-white dragonet with big black eyes.

The girl looked up with big grey eyes and a trembling lost look.  "I don't
want to give her up, sir, but she's hungry and I don't know what to do."

--Blake and Jennipher

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes, it is outrageously long.  I'm sorry.  I just wanted to get all that out
in the beginning.  I tried to leave it open who she talks to, because I'm
still not sure who's where right now.  I'd be thrilled if someone wanted to
take it from here.  I'm looking forward to writing with you all.
               





 .........................................................
 }<>Glory Brittain<>{}<>http://www.linux.sfasu.edu/~glory{
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
They called to her in her dream and she woke with a deep 
ache.. a longing that could not be denied.  She wanted
her chocolate chip cookies.           --Glory Brittain
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~