In the background Cera and Erebos talk about his bonded animal, the weird red fluffy thing with the banded tail, but in time he answers my question with his wisdom and I return the kindness with a smile and an eager expression. Within my lessons, I’ve learned to enjoy being right, mostly because it meant praise rather than shouting or glum expressions, and this is a lesson in its own ways. I hadn’t known about the history of the Throat, why it was called such a thing, why dragons bonded with equines – until now. It was all very fascinating, and I was thankful that Aithniel, for once, was involved in the learning, too.

The conversation is moving fast; Sia makes a jest at the King of Spies after Aithniel takes an essential crotch shot at the man, both calling him lazy, Sia saying something about dragon scouts during the day. My golden eyes look upwards for their figures and find none, and I haven’t seen any our entire walk up here – but maybe dragons are harder to see than I might have thought, and Sacre’s outcry makes me suck back a laugh with an odd choking sound that I’m sure he’ll understand the meaning of, anyway.

The colt native to this land scoffs but then seems to withdraw the sound into himself and my eyes flicker to his lithe frame for a moment; maybe it really doesn’t rain here, I think, until Sia answers again and wipes the idea from my mind. Birdsong? We’d missed the less than horrible times by an entire season. I could groan, loudly, braying complaints into the heavens – instead I merely grimace.

When our names tumble out into the desert air, they are met kindly and with many smiles and winks, and I giggle in good humor at all of them being silly for our sake; I guess they really could think we are as awesome as they are pretending, and I guess we could be for having come so far without our parents – but surely they know that we are being naughty and poking our noses where they shouldn’t be, and that we are only children. No child anywhere ever got the respect of an adult.

Cera talks about the land and what’s beyond the endless sand, and my eyes grow wide at the mention of an oasis. What’s an oasis? But it all clicks together by the time he’s done talking about it, my little brain working away at the pieces until I’ve contrived that an oasis is an awesome place in the middle of a really shitty one. It sounds like it’s a good thing the Throat has one or there wouldn’t be anyone out here but bones and really, really thirsty people delirious from lack of fluids.

As he stretches his big, odd wings upwards, I watch them rise with my eyes pinned on the tips, admiring their sheer size – but I guess they’d have to be pretty big to hold up a body. It’s apparently tiring to fly, which is a good note; I don’t think momma has really told me much more about the nature of a pegasus than that they should be avoided or murdered at all costs. It seems odd to demand two totally different things like that; you couldn’t avoid and kill anyone. It had to be one or the other, didn’t it?

And then he asks if she wants to learn to fly. Horror strikes me deeply; it’s a long way to the Throat, and what if she leaves me to be among those that can fly like she can? Why couldn’t she learn from Kyst? Surely momma could capture a flying person to help teach her too. She didn’t have to come take lessons so far away, did she? I’d get to see her even less.

Dismally looking over at her, I say nothing in objection – it’s not really my place to boss her around even if I want to, even if both my parents say that sometimes she’ll need it because her head is full of feathers and bat poop (I’m not a very good at listening when it involves Aithniel, you see)…

The king of spies takes my attention away from the really depressing thought of Aithniel leaving me and into a swooning wave of empowerment, a grin blooming across my face and lion’s tail twitching in pleasure. We were brave! He also tells us that he was once a member of the Basin too, which makes me feel many things at once; I am proud that he is one of our kin, curious who his family is and why he no longer lives with them, and if this is a common occurrence – the thought of leaving mother is deeply amusing to a devious boy such as myself.

Erebos voices one of my thoughts aloud, and so I don’t continue to shout them out at the red backed man who is both of the Basin and the Throat. Running my eyes across his build, however, I do recognize him in a way, my little mind pulling away at drawers of memories seeking for the person that looks like him, and unable to find it.

Frustrated and giving out on my decision to not hurl questions at the poor man, they tumble forth anyway. "You’re family is still there, yeah? You look sorta like someone I’ve met but can’t remember right now."


@[Aithniel]
[ OOC: HOLYCRAP Rikyn did something. :o I've only started/stopped/exploded this post 54584574 times. ]