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Weyrlinghood: Month 8
Mating Flights - August 4-12
With those final lessons on between out of the way, life is becoming more and more about practicing the skills you've learned during regular drills and sweeps are slowly be introduced here and there. There's just one more milestone before you can graduate to being a senior weyrling and living just like all the other riders of the weyr: mating flights. Some of the male dragons may even start to notice when the greens go up and while their interest is likely transitory at best, it does point to another milestone in your dragon's development: sexual maturity.
Early in the month, lectures for all weyrlings on reproductive health and a visit to the healer's for a physical and private discussion about birth control options will take place, followed by individual or small-group conversations with the weyrlingmasters about flights to present the basics and answer any questions a weyrling might have about the ins and outs and expectations for flights.
Later on in the month, riders of male dragons will be taught some techniques for inhibiting their dragons from chasing and the riders of bronze dragons in particular will be instructed in the proper etiquette regarding the chasing of golds in foreign Weyrs, since not all flights are thrown open to visiting riders. Additionally, ways of handling a lost flight will be discussed with different option presented for dealing with the strong emotions that flights usually entail.
By the end of the month, all weyrlings should have a good grasp of what to expect from a flight, from blooding, through the flight itself, the location of the guest weyr, common etiquette and how to handle any unintended consequences such as an accidental pregnancy.
WLM/AWLM
Well, this is a time for more personal talks, isn't it. While some portions of all this flight information may be delivered to the group as a whole, it's also a time when the WLM team may pull weyrlings aside one at a time and see if they have any questions that they didn't want to ask in front of everyone.
Meanwhile, training is getting much easier. It's just drills drills drills and a little bit of sweeps, with a WLM taking small groups of weyrling out to demonstrate what it means fly over an area, what to look for and where the boundaries are. The weyrlings are starting to look like their own wing, which is exactly what they'll be come next month.
Rules
All rules are lifted - weyrlings are on their own cognizance not to do anything colossally stupid. IC consequences should be expected for IC actions.
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