If there was anything she’d never be sick of, whether she was here or there, it was the taste of a balmy summer evening. Air cooling, birds rising to roost for the coming night, little ruffles on the lake – it was wildly cathartic wandering between the trees, humming softly to herself, watching the shadows pull further away from the trunks and the out-hanging roots. She could always taste the faintest bit of orange on her tongue, carried on a southern breeze or the wings of dragonflies as they zipped by in colorful arcs. Hardly an hour ago the heat had been as good as a yoke around her neck, but now? She had garden soil in her hooves, a little crown of rosemary wound in her hair, and the first stars were winking through the pastel-streaked sky. It was times like this she could just close her eyes and forget what she wanted, what she had lost.

“Oh—” Of course, reality was fond of its little checks and balances.

Ultima was hardier now, her muscles catching up with her long, limber frame – she felt gravity take hold of her front end and instinctively flared her wings, beating them once, hard, and using the updraft to right herself. It was still an effort; her flapping ability was deplorable, said half the ladies at flight lessons; but if it kept her from crashing face-first then for now, that was enough. Not a knee touched the ground. Not another scrape to her name, proud to say. Kicking her long, coltish legs and shaking her neck to displace the shock, though, she had to admit that she could really do without all these roots. Sniffing to herself, the girl trained her eye on the ground a moment, mapping out any possible obstacles on the road back to her nest.

Another root there. A stone here, and something that looked like an old beehive. ‘We’ll take the long way around that,’ she thought. And—

She stuttered back with a squawk, wings flung out, witherfeathers very much on end. “Wh—” The thing – she thought it’d been a stone, too, until it jiggled – gave another shudder and fell over. Ultima doused around vainly for another person, her head flicking left and then right, but there was no one – just her and this “Egg?” and the sun hanging low in the sky.

♦ ♦ ♦

graasvoel

The hulking vulture was quiet this evening. He was not actively searching for the warmth of a woman; nor for the amusing (if cryptic) words of his small, hyena friend. (Though, he was relatively certain that Imani would snarl at the thought of a winged Korofi as a ‘friend.’) No, the hedonistic man sought his pleasure in languid movements of warm breezes that stirred the thick, tawny feathers of his legs and ruffled through the true, warmly mottled feathers of his massive, heavy wings. The ever-snarled, wavy strands of black, brown, and white swayed in the luxurious summer puffs; a relief from the day’s heat to the thick-coated stallion.

The only movements were the occasional sway of his knotted tail around his cocked hocks—warning away Tallsun’s bloodthirsty insects. Despite their annoyance, the vulture still preferred the evenings to daylight. It was cooler, of course. But, perhaps more importantly, there (generally) was more fun to be had beneath the star’s undiscriminating, gentle light.

But then the hushed whisper of wings; but these were large wings; sounding slightly different than the usual cadence of pegasus beats. Starkly white skull rose, pale ears moving from their nest of thick, snarled forelock. Though his eyes remained half-mast, the vibrant irises of red and yellow lazily peering through the balmy, misted night for the source of the sound.

Though his eyes fully opened at both the sound of the squawk and the source of such a noise. Through the thick, old trunks was a vision, a pale woman wreathed in misted glow. Pastel colors of the vibrant, southern seas splashed across her coat and wings—two sets?

His now-perked ears caught her question, and his raptor gaze (reluctantly) left the slender lady to the pale sphere that nestled among gnarled roots. He didn’t spend much time on the thing, eyes eagerly (greedily) returning to her gold-adorned face. Large wings ruffled, shifting the mist, as he began to slowly approach the surprised woman.

“And a large egg it is, lovely lady,” his deep, gruff voice split the still that had settled after her incredulous question. “What do you wager is in it?” His bright, sharp gaze grew mischievous and joking, “Some say dragons come out of eggs like these.” His voice implied danger, as if some beast might emerge from the seemingly harmless, fragile oval at their hooves.

She had no idea what Korofi was like or what a man described as Korofi entailed – and perhaps this was for the better, as she was a delicate, well-bred (read: wildly naïve) thing and would’ve been scandalized by the information – and so when such a man approached her, she paid the detail little mind. Aside from surprise, that is; she’d been so intent on the egg, which was rattling now, and stuttering back and forth amongst the detritus. Hairline cracks had begun to spring to its pale surface, like ripples too slow to vanish, when a voice sounded off very, very close by – “And a large egg it is, lovely lady.” Ultima’s head snapped up sharply, her big gold eyes searching out the stallion’s face.

“Isn’t it, though?” she said, quick to recover. Her expression was best described as perplexed. An egg in a nest was one thing, but one on the forest floor, covered in a few dry leaves and cradled a buttress root? It didn’t look like it’d been laid by any bird she knew, and she’d met all the birds who’d come through the wood, predatory and passerine alike – regardless, if it hadn’t been abandoned or misplaced by its mother, she rightly didn’t know what to expect. “I suppose it ought to go back into whatever nest it’s popped out of, but— Pardon, sir, did you say dragon? Oh, no. No, no,” she said immediately, as if she’d been asked about the weather – no, it really doesn’t look like rain, sorry; smell that air, it’s dry as kindling. “The oddest thing it could be is a bat, that’s what Tilney—” and then rather uncharacteristically, the girl stopped.

Kindling. With it being so preposterously hot this summer, the entire Edge was practically just that. And if the woods went up, then the garden— Pursing her lips, she regarded Graasvoel for a long, serious moment, her fine brows knit. “Dragons? You’re positive?” She’d only ever seen one before, sunning itself on one of the big rocks by the river that passed through the Wood. Foals took a moment to gather themselves after being born, as did chicks – but dragons? What did she know about dragons? “Can little ones even breathe fire yet? Is it like swimming, do they j—”

Her teeth clacked shut. That was an awfully big crack. That was, too, and that was assuredly a piece of shell. Ultima inhaled slowly, sidestepping towards the other Pegasus, her gaze never wavering from the egg. “If it is a dragon, and if it’s small enough,” she said quietly, “Would you mind stepping on it? Your hooves are wider than mine,” she added practically. “I’d rather not have to explain to the King how it is we lost half our acreage, and – oh, God (and may He Dream forever)—”

Another flake of shell pinwheeled in the air, the early evening light revealing little aside from a somewhat active, fidgety shadow. Deep inside the egg, crammed wall to wall and feeling not too keen on its housing conditions, that shadowy something gave another irritated punch and flopped into the waiting world. 

And it mewled.

“Oh, it is so tiny—”

Ultima was rather quick to forget scares and other such slights and wrongdoings, so long as she was properly appeased. “Have you ever seen anything so wee—” For anyone who might’ve been taking notes: a kitten, apparently, was an appropriate offering.

“—a precious bitsy Snapdragon—”

♦ ♦ ♦

graasvoel

Cracks began to spread like off-white webs across the egg’s surface—though Gaal paid it little mind for the woman’s golden eyes were suddenly upon him; her thick lashes wide in surprise as he startled her. A grin spread across his dark lips at her sudden, immediate denial of the egg housing a dragon—instead saying that their Moon Doctor had another such creature hatch out of a companion egg.

“A bat?” There was a dubiousness in his gruff voice as he parroted her claim—given the choice, he’d prefer a dragon to a bat. Surely mares were more likely to be impressed by a mythical winged lizard than a small, furry bat? At least, the vulture thought so.

His large, bearded skull nodded in affirmation as she questioned him about dragons. His grin grew to a mischievous smile, “Yes, I believe even the little ones can breath fire—“ but his answer, like her question was cut off by a large crack coming from the egg. His gaze riveted towards the hatching egg. Though his attention and body did not miss the sidestep the woman took towards him.

And so, naturally, he took steps towards her, more than happy to provide some semblance of a protective knight in that moment—though, truth be told, he was as far from a ‘Knight in Shining Armor’ as any. Though his ears laid back as she asking him to kill the dragon, should the egg, indeed, house such a beast.

“No,” the word was out how his mouth before he could even consider the ramifications of denying the beautiful woman her request. His head swung towards her, brows furrowed in consternation, “I will not kill a baby dragon just for its birthright.” There was something deeper that rang beneath the roughness of his voice— but that was buried by years of harsh blows from his father and cold chiding by his mother.

Though his stern denial was immediately softened at the sight of the pale, blue-marked woman’s excitement as she peered into the egg. Her words were gleeful as she (knowingly or not) bonded to the companion.

“And I think the Edge’s kindling is safe from your Snapdragon,” a gruff chuckle accompanied his words as his eyes glided over the woman and her new companion. A small curiosity piqued in him, “What does it feel like? The bonding?” He had been told that companions and their bonded shared parts of their souls, and he wondered what sensation that sent through the body. Was it pleasant? Strange? Tickling or pinching?

For a man obsessed with bodily sensations, the vulture was not sure that he’d ever tie another to him like that. It was too much commitment; to much shared.