You Too Can Volunteer For Certain Death!

From: shewhoguards@ntlworld.com (Laura Walker)

Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 14:19:28 +0000

Boys and girls, leave your Crafts and your Holds. In these times of
Threadfall, who has the patience to work for years in order to reach
a rank? Why at a Weyr, you could Impress a dragon in a day and within
eighteen months be a rider with all the rights and privileges that
brings!

Of course, staying in your Craft and Hold is also somewhat safer..

First there's the Standing, and all the disappointment and shame that
can bring when a dragonet *doesn't* wander your way. Some Candidates
Stand for many Hatchings before they Impress. Some never Impress at
all. Perhaps you'll be judged unworthy by the young dragons, and left
ashamed on the Sands. Or worse, you could get in a dragonets way, and
risk the gory disembowelling as it tries to run through you to get to
its *real* lifemate.

Then there's the Weyrling training. Perhaps you'll learn everything
perfectly. Perhaps you won't. Perhaps you'll plummet out of the skies
to your death when your young lifemates wings suddenly tire, or maybe
you just won't visualize properly and be lost forever in the cold of
*between*.

Once you graduate, the rest of your life belongs to the Weyr.
Everytime Thread rains down onto Pern, you'll rise to fight it, until
one day your reactions aren't fast enough, your instincts let you
down. By the time you've realised you've made a mistake, it will be
too late. The Thread will already be eating its way through your
body, worming through your skin, feasting on your flesh. And you'll
scream, and scream, and scream.. and then your dragon will take pity
and take you *between* and you'll both die together in that endless
cold.

Or maybe you won't. Maybe it'll just be your dragon that dies, taking
your heart with it. You'll be left forever as a half-person,
prevented from suiciding by the Healers, wandering Pern to
desperately seek that which you've lost.

But you know, they say it's worth it because you DO get a pretty
dragon of your very own. For a little while anyway..

The risks are high, and the rewards may not be what you've been
promised. And once you've Impressed, there is no going back... Dare
you be a Candidate?

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