Name: Autumn Woods-Hill
Nickname: Tommy
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Eyes: green
Hair: brown, short ponytail/pigtails
Build: Athletic/Slender
Fashion: Jeans and a t-shirt
Personality: Rough & tumble, playful, secretive, a little geeky.
Pet: Imp (Impossible), a blue Pernese firelizard, 4 years old. (Image from Falas Weyr)
Family: Parents (Dad 55, Mom 54, Small-town High School Sweethearts), Three much older brothers (37, 35, 32). Numerous nieces and nephews (four boys, seven girls) between the ages of 16 and 8.

A Candidate for the All-Earth Clutch II at The FGPC Weyrhall

      She jogged down the road, an easy, practiced lope, her flannel shirt fluttering behind her and her brown ponytail bouncing in time with her gait. The autumn day was bright, and a touch on the cool side, and the breeze sent the first of the fallen leaves skittering across the road like shy rodents. Racing along beside her on jewel-bright wings was a blue firelizard. It cheeped cheerily at her, then vanished /between/ as the neighbor’s tractor became visible just over the crest of the hill.
      A few moments later, she and the tractor came to the same point in the road, the man brought the big green John Deere to a stop and it rattled and rumbled as it idled, the wagonload behind it trembling in response.
      “Hey Mac!” The girl said cheerfully, shielding her eyes from the late afternoon sun as she looked up at the farmer.
      “Hay!” The farmer chuckled. “What’re you up to, Miss Tommy?”
      “On my way home, I’ve got a wagonload of homework tonight.” Tommy replied, not adding the everyday farm-chores to her list. Out here, everybody had those, and it wasn’t news.
      “I saw the bus half an hour ago.” Mac said, implying that she’d been up to no good.
      “Aww Mac, It’s a beautiful day. I’ll ride the bus
      “You and every other kid in this county.” The farmer chuckled. “’Cept they’re all home already, getting the chores done.”
      “No point rushing the cows, Mac. They can’t read clocks, and sunset’s more than an hour off.”
      “Well then, Tommy, you get along and get that schoolwork done. And try to stay out of trouble.” Mac grinned at her.
      “I always try,” she said with a return grin, “but I don’t always succeed.” She waved at him and then started off down the road again. Behind her, the tractor rumbled back to life and continued on.
      Tommy and Mac were old friends – he was fifteen or so years her senior, but had been her brothers’ friend from school, and thus always part of her family. His name was Donald Johnson, he’d been “Don” since he was 17, but when Tommy came around… well, everybody knows that “Old Mac Donald has a Farm” and to a bright toddler, if he was Donald, and was a farmer, his name surely was Mac. Naturally, this innocently funny nickname stuck like superglue.
      Her nickname was his fault in a way; she was a tomboy, and while that in itself wouldn’t get her labeled as such (there would be a lot more girls called Tommy if that were the case), her parents had named her Autumn. A beautiful, classic woman’s name… which did not exactly suit the child once she grew out of pretty dresses and into workboots and jeans. What happened is that he and the youngest of her brothers were tickling her, and as things do, her shirt crept up to expose her belly. ‘Tha’s my tummy!’ she’d squeaked, and the boys had laughed. ‘I’m ticklin’ Autumn’s tummy!’ said her brother, and Mac half-echoed ‘Au-tummy!’ – Except with his transplanted accent, it sounded like “Aw, Tommy.” And just that fast, it stuck.
      When the tractor was out of sight, the blue firelizard reappeared. He hadn’t gone far, just a few meters up where the unobservant would mistake him/her for a bird, and the observant would shrug his being a miniature dragon off as impossible.
      “What have you been up to, Imp?” Tommy asked as she loped along. The usual assorted image and emotion set started it’s replay – thermals above hot rooftops, fishing with the seagulls at the lake, a nap in one of the various sun-drenched nooks in the gorge … that’s when it started to change. There was no doubt in her mind that Imp was showing her dragons landing in the impact crater at the heart of the gorge. It /was/ a secluded spot, and if you wanted to hide a beast in this area, it would probably be the best place… but dragons? Imp couldn’t lie to her – other than himself, neither he nor Tommy had never seen another real dragon. Imp himself proved that dragons were real, and that Pern was real, because he was and did everything that the firelizards in the novels did.
      All of those thoughts passed through her mind in but a few strides. “Go check if they’re still in the crater.” She instructed the flit, and with a cheep, it was gone… and back in a matter of heartbeats. A negative emotion and a visual of the very empty bowl was the response.
      “Oh well.” She said mostly to herself. “Don’t have time to go there anyway, with this paper to write on top of chores.” Imp chirped agreement, and then showed her images of sunrise, and of fish as they finished the trek home.

      Tommy entered the farmhouse to find the livingroom filled with nieces and nephews less than half her age watching the more noxious of the modern popular afternoon cartoons. The older ones were out back with the horses.
      “Aunt Tommy!” they cried, jumping up and rushing her for a hug. She beamed at them, half in delight to see them, half in amusement at how weird that still sounded. Like calling someone “Uncle Susan!” She’d forgotten that her brothers were coming in tonight to help Dad with the stock – it did mean that the chores would be done before she got out there, but that was ok; with cousins that were entitled to a measure of play time, she’d need that freed time to get the homework done.
      “Tommy,” her mother called from the kitchen. “go wash up, and then come set the table.”
      “Yes Ma!” She replied, gave her youngest niece one more crushing bear-hug then went off to do as she’d been bid.

      Imp was curled up at the foot of her bed, almost like one would expect a city kid’s pet dog to be. When she came in, he looked up at her with sleepy blue eyes and showed her the dragons again.
      “I believe you Imp. They’re just as impossible as you, after all.” She said, slinging her bookbag onto the back of her desk chair.

      Life happened, and school, and chores, and consequently, Tommy would have forgotten about the dragons, if it weren’t for Imp’s recurring dreams of them. (She had discovered long since that the whole ‘firelizard dreams’ thing was just as real as the firelizard who slept curled up next to her)

      OOC again. This is where I ran out of brain/time, and the story has stalled. Tommy will encounter M'len and Tayenden in small-farm-town USA, and catch a glimpse of one of the miniaturized dragons. She'll assume they're firelizards, and chat with the riders. They'll be incredulous to find out about it, but Imp will definitely earn this nobody nothing special girl an interview, y'know? She'll also win points with Jesioth because her firelizard is (like him) "a fairytale come to life."       Anyway, HER firelizard (since I haven't yet explained how an Earth girl already has one) arrived from a sub-plot I never actually wrote for the Earth College Hockey team that Quachir and I dreamed up to fill space in the Flurry one year. One of the players, Emily, brought several clutches of firelizard eggs back to Earth, and her parents sold them via E-bay to pay off her (and her teammates') student loans, since they weren't going back to dragonless Earth. It was shipped in a foam cooler, packed with towels and instant-heat hand-warmer things, to keep the egg warm. Her parents laughed it off, saying that it was to keep the idea that they'd bought a real egg, not a porcelain thing with a cute gimick... but Tommy believed it, and kept the egg warm, and voila. I mean, she's practically got the Pern novels memorized... Likes nothing better than to curl up in the hayloft on a rainy afternoon and read. The impossible happened, and she has a real firelizard. Imp hides from others, so getting him to hang around when they get to Pern will be an adventure, but really, I did think this bit through. Anyway, since she has a flit, and believes, and is willing, they'll spirit her away to Falas for the clutch, and the rest is in your hands.
      I did offer "I got the flit egg off of E-bay" as a suggestion for the f'lizard blizzard Flurry clutch... nobody took it. I haven't decided whether the E-bay eggs have a magic treatment to keep them good until they're kept in hatching conditions long enough, or if Tommy just got lucky.

Name: Browned Gold Takalath Name Meaning: takala - "corn tassle" (Hopi) Adult Length: 31'7" Adult Height to Shoulder: 8'10" Color Size: brown Parents: pale gold Phalinth (Falas FGPC, AEC I) & night blue Faroth (Ryslen, Clutch 5)