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The Life & Times of Morallen:

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The eldest child of brownrider M'ral and the weyrfolk woman Eidwyn of Benden Weyr, Morallen's  become a big brother several times over, during the course of his life.  Try seventeen other siblings and half-siblings, to be precise.  This, naturally, has had a rather large influence on his outlook on life. 

But, back to our tale.  While M'ral and Eidwyn eventually  ended up weyrmating, this event didn't occur until the birth of Morallen's twin sisters Morwyn and Eidelle when he was sixteen.  So, with a father out fighting Thread, and a mother that wasn't overly maternal, Morallen spent most of his growing-up running with the rest of the Benden weyrbrats, generally being your average rough-and-tumble young lad: cheerfully getting into and out of trouble, scuffling behind the weyling barracks, stealing bubbly pies from the kitchens,  terrorizing Candidates, and all in all having a ball.

As he grew older, however, Morallen started to become a typical overprotective older brother.  His lone other full sibling (As the twins had yet to arrive) was his three-turns-younger sister Miralwyn, and the two children were almost inseparable from  the ages of ten and seven onwards.  Teasing her in Rallen's hearing was a good way to get a punch in the nose, even if Miralwyn herself protested at such activities.  Wyn, small, petite, and gifted with innocent-looking wide grey eyes, was a talented prankster in her own right, and the pair's secret weapon when it came to talking themselves out of hot water that Morallen had schemed them into.

As previously stated, the on-and-off relationship of Morallen's parents suddenly switched firmly and permanently to 'on', the summer of his sixteenth turn.  Eidwyn, carrying twin girls of M'ral's getting, finally consented to the brownrider's pursuit of her, and promptly moved into his weyr.  In a surge of parental pride, they set about collecting Morallen and Miralwyn, and convincing them to move in too.  Just a nice little family group, right?

Wrong.  M'ral had always gotten along just fine with his children.  He adored all twelve that he'd sired by this point, and if a trifle absent, always managed to turn up when needed.  So the siblings certainly weren't averse to spending more time with Dad.  Eidwyn, on the other hand, while a lovely person in her own right, just wasn't cut out to be a mother, despite her apparent gift for fertility.  Morallen, being male, didn't really spend too much time around her, and that suited them both just fine.  Miralwyn however, really really wanted a mother.  And combine that with sharp tempers on both sides and a boatload of teenage-girl hormones on one, and the fur will fly.

Miralwyn began to turn even more to Morallen as a friend and confidante, and as a result, he grew even more protective of his favourite kid sister.  Particularly as Wyn started to grow up into a rather pretty girl, sharp-witted, lively and laughing.   Appointing himself as some sort of quality-control panel on any males looking her way, he had quite a lot of fun scaring off 'undesirable' ones, much to Miralwyn's chagrin, no doubt.

But this amusing protectiveness got him into trouble, one day in his eighteenth turn.  Coming upon a Miralwyn crying quietly in a cobwebb'd  corner of the Weyr, he learned that, despite his vigilance, someone had succeeded in breaking his little sister's heart.  The bronzeriding son of the current Weyrleader, no less.  And ten years her senior, to boot!  Smarting from the actions of an unfaithful weyrmate, the handsome man had taken advantage of the naive young girl for a bit of sexual revenge, and then cast her aside when he was done.  Morallen saw red.  Satisfaction must be had.  So he proceeded to corner the 'rider, and beat some sense into his thick skull, breaking his nose and sending him to the Infirmary for a sevenday in the process.

The uproar was loud and immediate.  Striking a dragonrider is bad enough.  Beating the weyrleader's son within an inch of his life is worse still.  Gossiped threats of punishments ranged from time in the Crom mines to being declared Holdless, as the drudges seized gleefully on such a fascinating tale.

M'ral at last approached his son with a decision. It would be better if he left the weyr for a time.  M'ral having been a Healer himself before Impressing, he'd been able to secure a place at the Fort Healer Hall for Morallen.  It was only for a turn or so, at the very most, he assured him, until the clamour died down.  And after all, some Healer training would no doubt be a useful skill.    So, packing his bags, the lad climbed aboard brown Bneth, and was ferried off to a new life.

At first, Morallen was a rather sulky apprentice.  He missed his home, he missed his family, and he wondered how Miralwyn was doing.  He cut class, skipped chores, and much preferred going swimming to studying.  Quite a frequent sight in the Masters' offices, he was, being reamed out repeatedly about how he was there as a privilege, and they could quite easily send him home again, Apprentice!

But then something changed.  Oh, not overnight, or in the middle of some traumatic Healing session, that would just be too much of a plot device, even for me.  But slowly, Morallen began to realize that Healing could be interesting.  And not only that, but he actually liked it.  Perhaps it was the first time that he caught himself defending the Craft to a cranky patient, or perhaps it was when he found himself pulling an all-nighter in the records room, just to research more on some obscure condition, but he decided that He Was Going To Stay.    A letter in his horrible handwriting was dashed off and sent triumphantly homewards with this declaration.  M'ral's reply was a just slightly smug comment along the lines of he figured on that happening all along.

Of course, Morallen hardly became a model pupil because of his new decision.  He still skipped chore sections to go swimming, flirted outrageously with Holder girls who considered his weyrbred background something of a forbidden attractant (You know what they say about weyrbred morals!!), and generally behaved as if advancing through the ranks was a mass hallucination, but he was now a permanent fixture in classes, sprawling comfortably in his seat and amusing himself by appearing to goof off, and then springing the correct answer to an irately posed question by his teachers.  Like his sister, Rall was possessed of a sharp mind and a hunger for knowledge, he just preferred to keep it under wraps.  It was on one of his covert sessions in the records room that he discovered his fascination with physical therapy, an obscure area of Healing that he proceeded to take as his specialty.

Life continued pretty much along these lines until he was 23 turns of age.   And still an apprentice, although moreso because of his apparent aversion to rank then out of incompetence.   Yes, at the age of 23, a Journeyman Healer returned to the main Hall after a posting to Benden Weyr.  It was a rather unfortunate set of circumstances that Morallen happened to resemble a taller, younger version of his father, and that his father had happened to lead this journeyman's former wife astray, several turns in the past.  With tensions at a palpable level between the two, the Masters of the Healercraft decided that it would serve both of them better if Morallen were to transfer to the Istan Healer Hall.  And after all, his sister Miralwyn and half-sister Xelsey were there, apparently carrying on the famility tradition of Healing.

And so Morallen has come to Ista.  Miralwyn, now Wyn, has exchanged two syllables of her name and her Healer's knot for a blue dragon named Vorkoroth, and Xelsey has likewise left the Istan Hall,  but he's settled in quite nicely.  Friends, colleagues, visiting family members and the glorious Istan beaches have all combined to convince him to stay, and, wonder of wonders, he's now a senior apprentice working on a Journeyman's Project.  And to think, all they had to do was tell him there were no physical therapy specialists in Ista...

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