"And I'd rather eat tunnelsnake turds than have my brown chase another shardling glowing green."
A PICTURE! Another Ursa in fiction. (Yes, she's the one with the braid.) :)
Ursa grew up in a small agricultural hold in the Igen region. The youngest of five, she attended to all the duties of home and rivergrain farming while growing up. However, her restless soul irked her parents. Ursa's fascination with runners was unladylike, they thought, and when Ursa disappeared for an entire day on her favourite runner, arriving home late at night, her parents decided to send Ursa away from home for a time. Ursa's father Than had been StarSmith Apprentice when he was young, though he had not had the priveledge of completing his apprenticeship, but had rather returned home when it was apparent his family needed his help with the daily routine of farm life. So Than and his wife, Sayi, decided for Ursa that she would become a StarSmith Apprentice, and packed her off the short distance to the Craft Hall with a note for the CraftMaster.
Ursa flunked the entrance requirements spectacularily. Not only did she have an utter lack of enthusiasm for the subject, but also an utter lack of aptitude and training. The math she was expected to understand for acceptance was beyond any in her experience. Ursa lingered a few days, reluctant to return home in defeat. She quickly found her way to the Craft Hall's stables, and made herself helpful enough that the Stable Master arranged for her to remain at the Star Hall as a stablehand. Ursa neglected to tell her parents that she wasn't an apprentice, seeing as they would have never let her remain there just to be a stable hand, a position that she rather enjoyed. She spent much of her time in the stables or exercising the runners on Thread-free days, so she was slow to make friends at the hall. Her sarcastic comments about the usefullness of the StarSmiths' work kept her apart from most of the apprentices, but she did finally make friends with a few of the more tolerant apprentices, and even began to learn a little about the skies from them. Ursa would sometimes solicit the help of these apprentices to write letters home filled with names of constellations and stars and chatter about far-viewers.
Ursa's simple life as a stable-hand ended the day Benden GreenRider Flannery showed up at the local tavern because Tyrrath had told her they needed to "get something." Ursa was sent to fetch the Rider a far-viewer. As she was delivering it, Tyrrath became quite agitated and started making an enourmous fuss. When headwoman Senta cried, "What is it, Tyrrath, Thread?" Ursa panicked and bolted to go get all the runners in from the pasture. Tyrrath quickly prevented Ursa's departure, knocking her over, peering at her with her enourmous dragon eyes. It was apparent to all present except Ursa that Tyrrath had found Ursa appropriate for Search. Ursa later reported that she had never actually believed those folk tales of dragons eating humans, but with Tyrrath's great head looming over her, whuffling and slobbering, she came awfully close to believing.
Used to hard work, first at home and then as a stable hand, Ursa fell into the life of a candidate rather easily. Unlike other Candidates who were more used to giving orders, Ursa had always taken orders, so the only thing that really changed for her was the location and the nature of her work. The life of a candidate became so routine, that she almost forgot why she was there sometimes. Not completely, though. The presence of dragons served as an effective reminder. In her free time, Ursa would sit in the living-cavern, listening to the conversations of the Riders, learning by observation more about the life of a Rider than she would ever learn in lectures.
In times of monotony, Ursa doubted those eggs would ever really hatch, but of course they eventually did. Clad in only the traditional white robe, barefoot on the hot sands, Ursa watched in amazement as one by one, the dragonets hatched, searched, and impressed. Time a blur, the heat of the sands only vaguely nagging at her, Ursa had no more thoughts, no more hopes, no more expectations, but was just an observer of this incredible event. Until a brown dragonet, the most beautiful shade of deep midnight brown, filled her head with thoughts of hunger, itching and a name: Spineth.
Ursa, former stable hand, former agricultural worker, was now a Brown Rider at Benden Weyr.
