Kiah sighed tiredly as she slumped against a rock and slid to the ground. An only slightly less quiet Rais flopped down right after, followed by two more flop noises for Zeke and Shiva. (Shiva herself, full of youthful energy, didn't actually seem to be that tired. But her 'daddy' was, and darn if she was going to miss out on an opportunity to flop dramatically.)
It had been a long day with nothing to show for it but sore backs tired from carrying their loads, not to mention the emotional load that the bags contents kept stubbornly reminding them of. Most people could hardly recognize Nicol's writing as a language at all. The pattern of it wasn't similar to anything spread over enough worlds to have become an established language here. The three of them were refusing to say what they no doubt all suspected - that the sole speaker of the language was gone, and the odds of someone else from his native time and place suddenly appearing were... well, it wasn't happening.
A third strain chewed at Kiah, making her run her hand through her hair and look pleadingly to the sky for answers, which of course offered her nothing but dusky afternoon blue. Guilt? Fear? Both. The sudden loss of Nicol, the house, and all their progress still had everyone shaken, and Kiah's desire to mourn and be miserable was at war with the fear of how easy it would be for all of them just to sink into it, sink and sink and sink....
A distraction would be nice. Can I have one of those? Something to break the uncertainty and silence and make it feel like I'm not being glowered at for being an insensitive bi-
"Boy are my shoulders tired," Rais yawned while sliding his pack off with some difficulty and only halfway obviously trying to break the quiet. "Men aren't ment to carry the weight!"
"....."
"What're you looking at me like that for? They're not in my species." He fluttered his tiny, delicate wings to demonstrate the point.
"I'm pretty worn out too, now that you mention," Kiah agreed while taking her pack off as well. "I don't know why it's so heavy, it didn't seem this bad bef- ai! Look, I never did take that weird rock out of my bag."
Zeke perked up curiously. "What kind of weird rock?"
"I dunno, just a rock. It fell out of the sky and tried to give me a concussion, but I was too fast for it," she chuckled while fishing it out of the bag. "Here it... woah. It is weird. What the blazes kind of stone is this? It's gone green and spotty." Kiah held it out aprehensively by her fingertips, not entirely certain that it wasn't about to explode.
The looks of unreserved shock from Rais and Zeke were not reassuring under the circumstances. "What? Should I drop it and run or something?"
"I don't believe it...."
"Is it really... is that..."
Hearing all this interest Shiva finally looked up, went wide eyed, and broke the tension- plus a few eardrums- with a long squealish squeak of excitement, followed by hopping and shouting of "EGGY!"
Kiah went pale. "Eggy? Tell me the kid doesn't know what she's talking about, Zeke?"
Zeke cackled knowingly and tapped the 'rock' with a fingernail. "It sure feels like an egg to me. Besides, Shiva is a dragon. Dragons know their own kind. Though of course it's not a bunnydragon like she is. 'S far too small. And it doesn't look tyedyed." He turned to share a wide, warm grin with Rais, gave the egg a pat, and then pushed it gently toward Kiah. "What're you still holding it like a bomb for? You have to show it some love!"
"Why am I- it's a DRAGON? That's WORSE than a bomb!"
"Well I mean, it's probably a dragon. I guess it could be like, a gryphon or something.
"Hey hey hey," Rais inturrupted, padding over to give it a gentle nuzzle. "You want to lower your voice. Unhatched dragons are just about the most impressionable creature in the universe. Er. Universes." And then, in a softer tone, "Shh, shh. Don't you worry in there. She just needs to get used to you."
"I... buhwuh... why is it mine?"
"You found it!"
"It fell at me!"
"'S him," Shiva put in as if offended on her semi-bretheren's behalf. "No iiit. Heeeeem. And dragon f'sure." And, as an afterthought, she reached out to tap the egg and "boop!"ed softly.
Kiah gulped and looked at the thing in her hands, trying to come to grips with it. "So... I have to like... what do I do? How do you know it-"
"Heeeeem!"
"-he isn't going to pop his head out and rip my arm off, in like, five seconds?"
"Bah! Oldstyle thinking! I shal give you a tutorial." Zeke jumped to his feet and put a fist to his chest, as if speaking as an embassador of a misunderstood people. Shiva copycated the pose almost immediately, though with less of the complete seriousness and more of the giggling. "Dragons are no more horrible rabid beasts any more than all people are treacherous villans! To raise a dragon is a vast responsability with unparalelled rewards! Trust! Friendship! Love!"
"Rais, did Zeke overdose on his super-happy-land pills this morning?"
"His what?"
"Nevermind."
You're holding a dragon egg, Kiah. Try paying attention?
"So Zeke, what you're saying is that if I treat it well it'll be a happy, healthy, productive member of society."
"And if it's a race that takes bondmates, a closer companian than you can imagine."
"Bondmates?"
"Well, here. Lets test it out. Close your eyes. ...What? No, really, close your eyes! Oh, come on." Zeke waited for Kiah to reluctantly shut her eyes and keep them that way, and then quickly leaned in and gave the egg a light but sharp flick.
"Gah!" Kiah slapped a hand to her forehead and blinked in surprise. "What... how..." Her eyes widened with new respect as she realized what had happened. "Oooh-ho-ho. I did not sign up for that."
"It'll probably wear off once it's-"
"HEEM!"
"-he's hatched and out. You see now how aware they are, even so young?"
"Yeah. You're lucky he doesn't seem upset, or he'd be coming to rip your arm off once he's hatched."
Kiah sat a minute pondering the gravity of all this, while the others readied a camp of sorts. Well. Less a camp and more a warm fire with smoothish ground to sleep on around it. They were quick at it from long practice, and soon they all sat around the warm orange glow.
"Er... Kiah? You okay? You've been awfully quiet." Rais poked her gently with a paw, startling her out of her thoughts.
"What? Yeah. I was just thinking. So he can probably hear me and everything? Even with the shell? And some of his personality is being determined like... right now?"
"You got it!" Zeke beamed proudly. It wasn't every day you got to teach a newb draconic etiquitte! "You ought to- where are you going?"
Kiah rose slowly to her feet on sore legs and dusted her pants off with her free hand before using it to heft her now lighter backpack. "I'm going to give him the most beautiful sound in the world to listen to. I'll come back before it gets too dark."
Watching her back as she dissapeared into the trees, Zeke couldn't have looked more proud. That's my newbie.
-------------------
"Okay, now see, the fins on the ends of the arrows aren't supposed to be all ruffled and bent like this," Kiah explained in an aside to the egg sitting in the open pack beside her feet. Days of being crammed into a too small bag hadn't been kind on the arrows. But who knew, maybe they'd be twisted enough to make her hit the target for once.
"Not that you can actually see, or anything. At least I don't think you can," she amended. "Now listen here. It's probably easier to hear from the target's end, but that'd just be poor judgement. Sense of judgement is the most important thing you'll ever have, you know." She sighed and lowered the strung bow to point at the ground for a moment. "Gods this is silly. Allright, allright already. Just listen close." She raised the bow again slowly, drew the string back, aimed carefully at a nice broad tree trunk and let fly-
Swish-thunk!
Tears threatened to well up in her eyes at the memories that came unexpectedly flooding back. "Oh, I've missed that sound...." She stopped and took deep breaths with closed eyes, waiting until the urge to madly fire one arrow after another while sobbing hysterically had passed. "It's no good to let emotions control you, either," she sniffled resolutely, talking to herself as much as the egg. "There's nothing wrong with having them, but a clear mind and good judgement, that's the thing." Close enough to calm once more, she fitted a second arrow to her string and fired at the tree again.
Swish-thud, went the arrow into the dirt, and Kiah couldn't help but chuckle.
"Lets try that again, shal we?"
-------------------
"Kiiiiiaaaah! Oi, Kiah, where'd you- ow! Eesh, it's minus ten to spot in here. Kiiaaah! Come back if you can hear me! It's too dark!"
"Eeeeegggyyyieee...."
"I'm here!" Kiah hurried to collect her arrows and put them away, for some reason not wanting Zeke to see them and want to give her bow a try. "How long has it been, as best you can tell?" she asked the relieved looking pair as they made it into her archery clearing.
"At least an hour."
"Yegad, are you serious?" Kiah guaged the soreness of her arms while wiping the sweat from her forehead. "Yeah, I guess it was about that, wasn't it? Sorry I worried you."
Rais did an absolutely terrible job of hiding his relief upon the group's return to the fire, and Zeke claped a hand on his shoulder with a laugh. "Have a little faith! You really thought I'd get lost that easily? I'll have you know that I was a ranger, once."
"A what?" Kiah tilted her head curiously while sitting down with the egg in her lap.
"A ranger. That's something I wanted to talk to you about. Can I borrow the egg for a little bit?"
Kiah held it closer protectively and would have been surprised at the reflex in herself, if she'd realized that she was doing it. "What for?"
"Well I mean, I know he's yours and all, but I kinda wanna, you know..." He scuffed a foot in the dirt, suddenly sheepish. "I want to tell him some stories and stuff. I know lots of good stories."
"Mmm, I can hardly say no to that. I could use a good campfire story myself. I was going to read i- him- some of the battle tactic essays from my book, but I can do those tomarrow." Kiah pushed some fallen leaves together into a cushy little pile next to her and started to nestle the egg into it- but then again, hadn't it come from somewhere snowy? On second thought she pushed the heap a little further back and sat herself between the 'seated' egg and the flames. Don't want to confuse his developing little mind too much.
As it turned out Zeke did know lots of stories, and good ones at that, though if he'd been paying attention to his audience he'd have noticed some lack of enthusiasm, though the egg looked like an attentive listener. Rais and Shiva had heard most of the tales before, and Kiah was less than in love with the whole "righteous paladins weilding blessed swords to strike down the evil tyranny of villanous opressors" genre that Zeke's mind seemed to live in. And she still hadn't quite figured out how to respond to his's insistance that he'd seen these things himself and done quite a few of them with his own two hands, ignoring the fact that almost every tale conflicted with the last one. Any inturruption questioning which story-planet was his own and how he'd gotten to visit so many others was brushed away lightly, often with an odd mention of something called "seperate files". Although it did somewhat help explain how in the world he knew so much about dragons.
Yep, Kiah thought to herself and her charge while Zeke was risking his life to defend about his sixth innocent bystander, we're definately doing some good solid military thinking tomarrow. His heart's in the right place, but real battles don't have happy candy fluff like this.
Ah well. Morals are crucial, so maybe it's just as well. She layed down on the cold grass, too tired to even think a complaint, curled up in a ball and scooted possessively closer to her egg. Take that, you sadistic excuse for a planet. This one's mine, and I'll teach him to be determined to find the back door out of here. Nyeh.
So great was Zeke's love for bardic ranting that he kept going even after everyone else had clearly fallen asleep, lying on his back as the fire faded and preaching to the stars above. Once he even saw a new star blink into the darkness, borrowed from some other world, and grinned sleepily. It was always hard for him to feel anything but optimistic after mulling over so many stories with such good endings. "Now if that's not an omen of good luck, I don't know what is," he muttered through a yawn before finally passing out.