Sire and Dam: Eviyath & Ikaroth
Hatching Date: Saturday, March 29, 2008
Theme of Clutch: The Four Seasons
Theme of Dragonets: Weather / Elements / Elemental Things
Hatchling Name: River's Torrent Green Dragonet
Dragon Name: Jianth
Clutch Message:
Eviyath circles the sands with a low and seeking gaze, inspecting the ripples and waves of sand stirred in her wake and by Xanth and Sidijith before her. There's no discernible difference between the mound she chooses and the ones she passed over, but she grunts with satisfaction as she prepares a sandy cradle and delivers two eggs, one full of twilight purple, the other simply white.
Egg:
Secrets of Summers Past Egg
Arching branches and purple twilight, all filtered through the dark trunks of rough-barked trees to light upon a carpet of green that creeps towards the dark recess between two twisted roots. There's a cache of treasures hidden there: a rusted silver key, a mottled pebble worn smooth by time, forgotten fragments of brightly-hued firelizard eggs, and a frayed bracelet of braided twine; remnants, all, of a childhood long past.
Hatch Message:
Secrets of Summers Past Egg groans, for the dusky limbs of age-old trees cannot hold back time forever. Twilight gives way to the dawn of new life, the venerable guardians of this shell rent asunder by the force of its arrival. Childhood's prizes tumble every which way across the shifting sands, torn from their hidden home and flung carelessly in the path of inevitability: progress ushers in River's Torrent Green Dragonet, and leaves her likewise tossed upon the floor of the future.
Impression Pose (what the audience sees):
River's Torrent Green Dragonet is a force of nature, carving her own path through the sand and kicking up plenty in her wake. Her trail straightens, homing in: yes, her swiftness bears the suggestion of potential danger, injury. But hers is a fast knowledge of what she wants, whom she needs, and so when she comes to rest in front of Kyana and ignores the other two girls by her side, it is almost prescience. She settles at her chosen's feet, comes to rest, and subsides into the stillness of completion.
Impression Message (what you see):
Heat, light, noise - chaos. The essence of Hatching reaches cacophonous levels, threatening to overwhelm you mind and body. As the world reels around you, teetering on the brink of collapse, it seems inevitable that your own consciousness will be lost admit the madness - and then in the hissing rush of an oncoming flood you are truly swept away by a current no less crazy, but indescribably more comforting. A summery breeze carries the liquid echoes of children laughing, a whiff of rain, and the clever voice in your head that tells you, smiling, « I am Jianth, Kyana, and no power in the 'verse can stop us. »
Dragonet Description:
Singleminded intensity dictates her dimensions, insisting upon a pared-down precision that streamlines willowy contours to a bare minimum of feminine curves and swells delineated in palest jade. Unleashed, river green surges down the channel of her serpentine neck where arresting neckridges excite the fury and frustration of frothing ivory. Mint-kissed cream pirouettes and eddies, tracing opalescent arabesques that feyly feint from her throat's hollow before finally dissipating in the deceptive serenity of deeper turquoise, steadily rising from below to meet the oncoming flood. Silt swept onwards by the celadon tide deposits on the outer reaches of her wings, but the fragile sails are awash with brusque frenzy that disgorges foam, algae, and alluvium alike. The torrent of white-capped verdigris and the aerodynamic lines of her body make her a figure of motion, translated right down to the calligraphic flourish of her tail; however, the chimerical absinthe gently swirling over her dainty head to ring her large, limpid eyes suggests an internal movement wholly her own.
Personality:
"The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven." - John Milton
Flash floods occur practically without warning, which is what makes them so dangerous and, often, so underestimated. Jianth is likewise unpredictable, liable to shift moods without warning. And when shift she does, she'll explode in furious movement that echoes the tumult of her mind. For her, the body is an extension of the mind, which will bring both her greatest joys and her most terrible moments of destructive power.
She knows that she's dangerous, which is sure to cause distress during some of her more collected moments. She doesn't mean to cause damage, but she does. This is who she is. And from time to time, she'll express this knowledge to the few whom she trusts, the few to whom she'll confide. It distresses more than she likes to let on and in these vulnerable moments, her propensities for destruction will slide into desires for self-destruction. It's safer, and there are times when she truly feels like she can't live with herself. When this happens, it's up to you, Kyana, to provide the stability she so desperately needs. You are her anchor, what ties her to this life and what keeps her from giving in to those urges to simply blink between and fade away.
River: I don't belong.… dangerous, like you. Can't be controlled, can't be trusted. Everyone can just go on without me and not have to worry. People could be what they wanted to be… could be with the people they wanted.… could live simple, no secrets.
Simon: No.
River: I'll be fine. I'll be your bounty, Jubal Early, and I'll just fade away.
Kyana, you are the sun that eventually gains ascendancy over the flood waters, the saturated ground that, somehow, manages to find just a little more space to absorb, the sand barriers that will dam that unstoppable flow. It won't be easy. It'll be a learning experience for both of you, and will try you to the limits of your patience. But ultimately, Jianth trusts you, knows that you are capable. Otherwise, she wouldn't have chosen you.
For the most part, she bears her self-knowledge with wry humor. It's her defense mechanism, what allows her to cope with herself - and what she knows others can respond to. She hates how she discomforts others, so humor's her chosen weapon for dispelling unease and her means of communicating with those who largely won't understand her internal dynamics.
River: Permission to come aboard, captain?
Mal: You know, you're not quite right.
River: [smiles] That's the popular theory.
Mal: Go on, get in there. Give your brother a thrashin' for messin' up your plan.
River: (tiredly) He takes so much looking after.
Black humor, too, is her specialty. For a dragon so often on the verge of destruction, she has a finely tuned understanding of the darker underside of life. And in expressing this, she seeks to restore and maintain a balance. Only through this expression can the glorious moments of life and love and wonder be saved, cherished, and understood most fully.
[River peeks in on Book, who is reading his Bible.]
River: You're afraid we're going to run out of air. That we'll die gasping. But we won't. That's not going to happen.
[Book looks up at her, hopefully.]
River: We'll freeze to death first.
Humor is one facet of her mind, which is itself something extraordinary. It is the indivisibility of mind and body that makes the latter such a force to be reckoned with, so it stands to reason that her mind is something similar. She's not just smart - she's brilliant. It's what allows her to have such a finely crafted wit, what enables her to respond to other dragons on their own level. She'll be an excellent mimic, uncannily accurate. Her powers of observation will be so refined as to give her what appears as presentiment. She can predict the future in a way that seems unreal. To her, though, it's simple science. Action, reaction, and probability.
She'll seem distant from the world during the moments when, in fact she's most attuned to it. She'll listen to the inaudible rhythms of the world, perching precariously on the brink of the Star Stones to listen to the wind or planting herself in Imogen's garden to examine the minute life enacting its own tiny battles of life and death. She'll speak of such things with a solemn sort of wisdom, focusing on the imprecisions of language. « She understands. She doesn't comprehend. » With her held tilted slightly to one side and gaze distant, focused on something only she perceives, inscrutable but scrutinizing, Jianth will be both present and not.
But all of this comes with a price, which is what makes her unstable. She's so sensitive that she can pick up the subtle currents in the Weyr, hearing distress that others don't even realize that they articulate. And the grander design of Life and Death, the mindless menace of Thread, will reduce her to incomprehensible fear. Her sensitivity overwhelms her. It's what makes her snap and what causes her anguish when she comes back to herself. At times, she'll be helpless, taking to the refuge of a ground weyr to chant, « Stone stone dark deep dark make me stone… », willing herself to something immutable, untouchable. In such moments, gaining self-control is a challenge. Perhaps she'll have to be convinced of the need due to a particular or perceived threat to the ones she loves most deeply, you and her brother Hadamarth. Or perhaps it will be something more subtle. A reminder that life contains seasons. That the dead leaves of late autumn will give way to the new growth of spring. That even destruction clears the ground for fresh life.
Flight:
Proddy is going to be intense and excessively manic depressive. This time is a juncture of stress for your dear girl, for she sees those male dragons as River sees the men that are always trying to institutionalize her – they don’t want her for /her/, they want her for her body and she knows it, and /hates/ it. It might be hard for either one of you to be close to any male but Hadamarth at this time, which includes humans. When she is approached by stalking males, or even ones attempting to be kind, Jianth will become evasive, and if that doesn’t work, downright nasty.
River: I can kill you with my brain.
Once the actual flight comes it will purely be a chaotic unrelenting run for her life. Even if it’s all in her mind, you won’t be able to talk her down. She’ll run, and run fast, magically eluding every touch until the very end, and even then she won’t just /give herself over/ until she is firmly /caught/. At that point she will go completely blank and sag into a lifeless doll.
Threadfall:
One minute she is calm; serene as a winding summer’s brook meandering through the forest. In the next instant, she is transformed – triggered by the presence of the deadly threat - set off by the worming, squirming, hissing wall of thread before her.
Then she becomes the fighter with a dancer’s rhythm: calm, single-mindedly methodical, a seductively unstoppable whirlwind of compact power and agile speed. Jianth is purposefully systematic threadfighter, with a surreal acrobatic style that will be unstoppable until the very last tangle of that ancient menace has been taken down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4UG4VJhiqU&feature=related
Weyr relationships:
First and foremost, she bears a close relationship to Hadamarth, her precious, beloved big brother.
Her humor will draw her to Orlaith, whose own dry wit will bring out a similar response from Jianth.
Her enjoyment of minutae will be echoed in Hestiath.
Mind Voice:
Your Jianth has not one mind voice, but three - one for each of her unique facets. To the everyday world she turns the sound of water. Specifically, the brook that wends through the forest of her mind - it's calm and continuous, a background susurrus of fluid notes that glides serenely over the terrain placed before it. Sometimes she's bored, like a deep pool, sometimes she can mimic and mock her collocutors with splashes and burbles.
Under times of stress, however - Threadfall, Flights, when her loved ones are threatened, and sometimes even for no known reason at all - she turns eerily silent. She focuses, concentrates, and suddenly she is almost absent, leaving a foreboding void: the calm before the storm.
And then, deep in the secret heart of her, there's a voice that's kept solely for loved ones - namely, you, but also for Hadamarth- her brother, her Simon - and it kisses like a delicate wind. Summer escapes in childlike play, whipping through the grasses with echoes of laughter, to be dazzled by the fluttering of insect wings; their tiny voices adding to the warm languid atmosphere. Lazy breezes flutter forest vegetation at its peak, millions of tiny leaves softly caressing one another in mutual affection for the moment. A crisper rustle invades, riddled with tiny puffs of fiber as the broad cotton tree waves a welcoming to the sun. Love. Warmth. Comfort. Soothing. Security. Completeness. Serenity.
Mind Scent:
Jianth's mind doesn't carry any one specific scent, but rather a faint melange of whatever moisture the breeze carries with it. Perhaps the smell of first rain, where each splatter of a raindrop on the sunbaked soil elicits a scent so heady it can cause people to stop what they are doing and walk outdoors just inhale the fresh cleaning of the earth. Or the richness of a murky forest, damp and moist with life, or clean salt-swept marshes - if it's wet, if it suits, it's windbound to your senses.
Physical Voice:
Jianth has a draconically childish voice that translates into soft high pitched croon that can be occasionally short and flat. It’s when she’s in the dead pan frame of mind that her tone flattens out, and she’s straight-out silent when in ‘the zone’, such as fighting thread.
Growth:
Her growth is steady, slow, with only very brief hints of gangly in any fashion. Jianth being a very physical being, tones and shapes her body with dancers grace from very young, and that translates consistently on into adulthood. She’ll be apt to take her training on a more mentally stimulating level, utilizing her agile acrobatic abilities to shape her physical nature with isometric movements rather than brawny power muscle exercises.
Eating Habits:
Jianth isn't quite right in her head - it's something she senses, even if she can't articulate it. And oddly enough, it prompts her to choose the visibly imperfect for her meals. The wherry missing feathers on his chest, a herdbeast with a bumpy spine, or the one with a limp - they're not deformed. Just not up to the Herdercraft's standard of perfection. She feels a strange kinship with these outcast animals, as if they're part of her as well - and so, to protect them, she makes them literally a part of her.
Yes, it's a little weird. But at least she's neat about it.
Movement:
One moment stillness, the next a flurry of rapid motion: this is Jianth. She speaks with her body, which echoes her swiftly changing moods. She’s utterly attuned to the art of movement, which will translate the smallest action into physical poetry. When calm, she’ll lie recumbent, limbs sprawled with a casual grace. Even in her furies, she is elegant, with a dancer’s poise as she wrecks havoc, expressing the storm of her mind in material rage.
Inspirations…
Egg Inspiration:
Imogen. Originally, I was thinking about moss in a glenn in the woods on a summer evening, but the desc kind of grew of its own accord. It's still a glenn on a summer evening, just creeping on from twilight, in those days before summer turns into fall. A child has stashed things that she once considered treasure, but they lie forgotten, no longer important as she moves out of childhood and into the world of adults. It's posed on the brink: day to night, summer to fall, childhood to adulthood.
Name Inspiration:
Jianth comes from the Chinese name Jiang, which means river. We chose this as a means of giving your mentioned affinity for River from Firefly a Chinese twist, going with the series' theme of mingled Anglo-Chinese culture.
Dragon Inspiration:
You asked for River Tam, and we got you River Tam. She’s in large part exactly what you asked for, with the added sporadic use of the elemental theme of a summer flash flood on an otherwise calm forest brook that meanders gently through meadow and glen. We hope you enjoy! Can’t wait to see the both of you out there! Happy weyrlinghood, Kyana!
Cluthmates:
Imogen and gold Hestiath
Iona and gold Orlaith
Izara and brown Vsuviath
O'diah and blue Alysiuth
Taini and gold Birgith
T'jano and green Mrrth
Thera(Esther) and brown Hadamarth
W'ren and bronze Gnaedath
