There was a hunger that festered in Xela's mind at all times, crawling and keening, and scratching at the edges of it like an empty box that one was trying to scrape the last of some longed for snack that it had once contained. It was a feeling that most would find difficult to ignore yet harder still to sate. So much want was nearly unbearable on a good day. Today, wasn't a good day.

"What is it, love?" Xela stepped out onto her ledge where her lifemate was curled, her tail swishing back and forth like that of an irritated feline. Cubath turned her delicate head towards the woman for a moment, her nearly permanently purple eyes flashing with amicable greens and blues for her beloved before she looked back out onto the sands. The stone of the ledge rumbled faintly under the irritated thrumming of the dragon. I am lonely today, myXela. But look at them all, I do not want them. need oozed around her every word, like hands desperately clutching onto the front of a shirt while one begged for help.

Cubath's want was like a plague sometimes.

Stepping to her side, Xela reached out with one hand to offer soothing scritches along Cubath's cheek and neck, earning sweet kreels for her efforts. "I see. Are your favorites not out there right now, then?" the woman inquired, patting her chest so the green could nudged her head up against it, where it was cradled in her rider's arms. The question caused the already flicking tail to thump with a snap against the stone. They're not my favorite anymore! she decreed privately to her rider, who looked at her with an innocent tilt of her head. "And why is that?" She knew the answer, but she also knew Cubath would absolutely tantrum if she didn't ask. Because I want a new favorite! she asserted, as though it was something everybody did.

Which of course meant it fell to Xela to pick out a dragon from their ledge to perhaps plant a seed of interest in. "And you still don't want to look at any of the Weyrlings, hmm?" the clutch from the last turn was almost fully grown now, but they'd been considered unripe fruit the last time she'd asked. This time, however, Cubath took a long moment to consider where they were out doing their drills. One of the blues or the browns, maybe. The bronzes were much too big for her tastes right then, but she'd change her mind on that in a week and then want one of those too.

"Well be nice with them, then." perhaps Xela was being a bit too much of a yes-man, but it was a quality that Cubath appreciated in her girl - as long as it was only for the green, of course. And what would you like today, myXela? Xela answered the same every time, but Cubath asked anyways - she would have pulled apart the very sky if it would keep her beloved from feeling want in this world. "I'm fine for now, love."

Content in this answer, and not prying to see if perhaps her beloved was lying to keep from being a pest - she knew it was true in her very bones, after all - Cubath instead turned her attentions out towards the bowl again. Hmmm, what was she feeling more today, a blue? Or a brown?