Grahamth was sleeping peacefully, listening to music in his head. He didn't know the music, but there it was, drumming around in his head. He felt almost like dancing. He yawned, the music fading to be replaced by immense hunger – again. K'rry was awake already, cutting meat into strips for rapidly growing blue. Grahamth was larger now than K'rry.

He had still not forgotten the dreams of harpering and finding a place for blues, but they were hazy, indistinct dreams of his egg-days, and he really had to concentrate to hold them in his thoughts for long. The music in his dreams was forgotten almost as soon as he awoke. K'rry never heard it.

For some reason, however, the music in last night's dream stayed with Grahamth. He hummed to himself as he snarfed down his meal. "Hmm... In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind; we've gone too far..."

K'rry was staring at Grahamth when the blue looked up, finished with his meal and ready for a good scrub and oiling.

What was that? K'rry asked, in reference to the humming emanating from the dragon's mind.

Grahamth thought for a moment and then replied, wittily, I believe it was music.

It wasn't a Pernese song; I've never heard anything like it.

I didn't write it, I don't think.

K'rry frowned and glanced at the cluster of gleaming bronzes on their way to the lake. They haven't been on you, have they? If you should like to be a harper, I don't see what's stopping you!

Oh! No, Lithiuth was really cool about it. But I didn't write that song... I dreamed about it. Grahamth was a little sheepish about the whole thing. He should never have hummed that song! He didn't know where it was from, but it certainly wasn't anything he was capable of writing.

We should talk to the wyerharper. He would know what to do with you. I know they say you can't be a harper, but why? You tell such vivid stories, and you make us feel and see them like no harper can. And now the music....

K'rry, I would not like to be a harper. I think, I would like to be like your father. Keep Pern safe. There is no Thread, but dragons are meant to protect, are we not?

K'rry nodded pensively, and looked up into Grahamth's eyes. "Yes," K'rry said aloud. "Dragons are alive to keep Pern safe."

K'rry strapped the riding harness around Grahamth as Grahamth crouched down on the sand by the lake. His eyes whirled with a hint of red alarm as he watched the older dragons on the ledge. A group of blues and browns and a single bronze had gathered around a brightly shining green and their eyes whirled orange. Grahamth reached out to the ledge and felt a rush of emotions – hope, an air of intense competition, and something else that was slightly frightening. He drew his mind back and touched K'rry's.

Why are they all on that ledge?

K'rry looked up at the ledge where the dragons had gathered and alarm coursed through him. Grahamth opened his eyes wide, tensing his muscles for takeoff as fear demanded. K'rry reassured his dragon quickly, calming himself and suppressing whatever made him so anxious. He lead off with long strides to where the wyerlingmaster beckoned his students.

"We are going a little farther away, today," the old man told the assembled riders while his green sat high, avidly watching the wyerlings. "Mount up, and let your dragons take the visual from Mollitainth."

K'rry mounted, and Grahamth leaped into the air with a few broad strokes of his big wings. He felt K'rry's scrutiny of the other growing dragons and the feeling of immense satisfaction as he noted that Soloth, the smaller of the two browns, was only a few inches bigger than Grahamth, a lowly blue.

Grahamth felt the familiar touches of Mollitainth and Wraith in his mind, Mollitainth with a picture of high, cold mountains, and Wraith with curiosity.

Grahamth felt the picture take hold in his mind, made himself think the strange two-place way, went between, and ended up over high mountains with one of his own missing.

He wailed in despair, a keening that was joined by all the dragons of Pern as they lost one of their own. Sesquath is gone! He is lost between with his rider!

K'rry whispered in Grahamth's mind, full of pain and loss. It was the first of that clutch to be lost, and D'ren had been his friend. The oldest of the new riders, D'ren had half-wanted to stay with the rising green, and so had not been fully engaged with the transference of himself and his dragon between.

As if to echo the general mood, the dark sky began to drench them with rain that turned to slick ice as it fell onto dragons and riders.

I thought dragons did not feel the cold, K'rry queried bitterly as he recalled the image of their own starstones filled his mind.

Why do you think we sun ourselves? Grahamth replied, as he made the effort to go between.

The wyer was so dispirited throughout the next few days that Grahamth began to hum the infectious tune of his dreams just to keep himself from falling into the same depression that gripped his wyermates.

In my mind and in my car; we can't rewind, we've gone too far...

What is a car? K'rry asked. We've all been wondering.

All? Grahamth inquired, a little shocked and embarrassed at the thought that his silly, meaningless ditty had been heard by more than himself and K'rry. I... don't know....

And abruptly, he was in another vision, this time of driving over a red metal bridge in the dark confines of the metal cart. The avatar-Grahamth reached over to the center console, near where his partner's hands gripped the wheel and fiddled with a dial. Music began to resonate throughout the moving cart, the same song that Grahamth had been singing.

"I don't know how you listen to this crap, Kingsley," the K'rry-twin said and adjusted the glass in the side of the cart so cold sea air filled the inside.

"It's fun, Sal. This is my favorite song! 'And now we meet in an abandoned studio, we hear the playback and it seems so long ago, and you remember the jingles used to go....'"

"Shut up," Sal laughed and reached to where the cart's voice-box sat, idle. "I think I see a stranded motorist up ahead."

The cart slowed to a stop and the two Pernese climbed out. The avatar-Grahamth had his hands on his lightstick and thunder-maker at his hip. He walked over to the other cart...

"Grahamth! Grahamth! Come back, please don't leave me!" K'rry was crying, clutching the navy hide of Grahamth's left foreleg. "Please don't leave me alone."

I will never leave you, the blue replied, confused. I am always with you. You are my rider, I your dragon.

Grahamth felt Wraith's, Lithiuth's, and Risketh's mind tentatively touch his mind.

I'm okay. I think I wrote more of that song....