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Weyrlinghood: Month 7
Between
Betweening is a difficult business. While your lifemates are designed to do it and understand innately how to make it work, no human is meant to withstand the sudden jolt of presence, or the frozen void of between. To make matters worse, there is no small history of weyrling pairs lost in their first or later attempts, pairs who succeeded at disappearing from the known world - but never reappeared. Other mishaps vary from the fatal (pairs that reappeared inside solid objects) to the trivial (those that stayed between too long and gave everyone a good scare). Everyone, weyrlings and trainers and even the rest of the Weyr, is aware of the risks. The pressure is immense and the stress can be hard to handle.
You won't be taken out for your first real effort until the Weyrlingmaster deems the group ready. As often as not, it's a spur of the moment decision. A day's drills seem to be going exceptionally well; perhaps the weyrlings are working together as a team better than yesterday. Whatever it is that signifies readiness, the weyrlings won't know what the exercise entails until they're doing it. That's fine: everything you've done until now, flying and focusing and visualizations and memory exercises - it all leads up to this day. You're ready.
Anyone who seems less than perfectly ready, perhaps feeling unwell or looking tired, will be excused from the day's exercise before its nature is revealed. After the instructions are given, anyone who wants to back out will have the option - the first time. But within a sevenday or so, every one of the weyrling pairs will have made their first trip between. It is not an optional lesson.
You'll fly into the sky above the bowl and pick a vantage from which to observe the Star Stones. You'll fix that image in your head, then in your dragon's. He or she will share it with the Weyrlingmaster's dragon, who will make corrections as needed. Then you'll fly to the other end of the bowl. From there, you'll between back to the place where you memorized the Star Stones from.
After this first exercise, it's not uncommon for weyrling pairs to be given a half-day off to celebrate and relax. After that, there's more work awaiting you. You'll between to other parts of the Weyr, familiar locations around the island, and eventually between somewhere you haven't yourself seen, using the image provided by the Weyrlingmaster's dragon as your target. In this manner you'll between to the Weyr's beholden areas, then beyond to other Weyrs, Holds and Halls.
Once you've got the basic knack of perfecting a target image and betweening to it without mishap, this new skill set will be incorporated into formation drills and other lessons.
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