The second dragonet of the evening spills into the open just as the first Impressee and his new best friend are being guided off the sands by a shamelessly grinning assistant weyrlingmaster. As the new arrival clambers fully to clumsy paws, there's a definite pleased murmur through the crowd backed by at least one draconic trill of approval from the ledges, though it's hard to tell whose lifemate emitted it (if Eelie's fondly amused glance upward gives anything away, his marks may just be on their Weyrsecond's Nayleth appreciating two of his own hide color in a row), and at least one boy on the sands themselves starts making eager come-over-here gestures; this dragon is the brown of solid brickwork and packed clay woven with dried grass stems, scatter-swept ashes and rare wood-fueled fires flickering off close walls and, as his wings fan, the near-black smears of soot too honest to ever be crackdust.

It takes a long minute's inspection of first one group of mostly boys, then another composed entirely of very giggly girls, and then a few ill-matched members of the class standing together out of sheer necessity before the around the chimney brown stops in his tracks and when he does, he leaves an especially highborn Holder boy open-mouthed in unflattering disbelief because it's one of that mismatched handful, a short, scrawny, shaggy-haired lad found Holdless in Igen territory and Searched to Xanadu entirely by happy chance, who nearly pitches forward, struck speechless in astonished awe, as amethyst eyes meet his.