Friendly relations are to be kept between colonies. Being an outsider invites hostility, which births war. War is honorable and should not arise because of a neglected relationship.

This is Our Law.

~ From the Dragonling Grimoire

Dmitri and Alek weren't too happy that I spent a large majority the rest of the trip avoiding them. I had made a new friend among the court - Queen Gertrude's daughter, Elizabeth - and used most of my time to hang out with her or Derek. Liza was a smart girl; she showed me how to read star charts and how to use backhalls to evade anyone who would be looking for me.

I found the latter to be increasingly useful every day that passed. Dmitri had employed Leon to keep an eye on me and the redhead had shadowed me for three days until I confided in Liza about it.

We were in the library when I finally broke down. It was a beautiful place, just as grand and extravagant as the rest of the castle. At four stories tall, it wasn't as large as the libraries back in the Thunderstorm colony, but the bookshelves were made of heavy ebony carved with fantastic shapes. Each staircase was a delicate spiral with gray marble steps.

But the crown jewel of it all was a magic dome on top. Literal magic. Liza had explained that an elf had enchanted it hundreds of years ago. It moved to display the various constellations at night. We were using it to help me learn where all of them were at the moment - Liza would point to one of the maps on our table and I would have to say what constellations were closest to the indicated one. I loved it, but Leon made it difficult to focus.

"It's just weird." I hissed as I glanced over my shoulder. Leon was hovering in the corner, eyes zeroed in on us like he was hunting his prey. Liza glanced up, her pale blue eyes widening in surprise.

"I didn't even see him!" Liza whispered back frantically as she scooped up the charts and rolled them up so we could put them back in their holders. I began to help, picking up my favorite - Lupus - as I watched Leon from the corner of my eye.

The fyn was watching us with increased interest, his jade-colored eyes trained on us like a hawk watching a mouse. I hated feeling like a mouse. "Is there any way we can, you know, lose him? Secret passageways? Maybe a magic cloak to turn us invisible?"

"That's just ridiculous." Liza said as she tucked a chestnut brown strand of hair behind her ear. "No, we can just take some of the servant's hallways. They're crowded and bend a lot." She put the scroll holders back in their places on the shelves and took my hand, practically dragging me out.

Servant hallways? Why did servants need special hallways? But, now that I thought about it, it made sense... I hadn't seen many servants throughout my stay. I blinked as Liza pulled me around a corner. How oblivious could I be? That made total sense once I actually stopped to think-

Damn! Immediately, I tried shutting down my overactive brain. Thinking. I wasn't supposed to be thinking. I was a Ryn - I was supposed to be doing. Ugh. Stop thinking, Anita. Stop thinking- and there I went again, thinking!

Harshly pulling my attention from my own thoughts, I focused on my senses. Sights, sounds, smells. Was there something amiss? I glanced around briefly, noticing how fast Liza and I were really going. Oh. Oh dear.

"Slow down." I said lowly in Liza's ear. There was a lot I didn't know about the Lira, but it was obvious that she had no training in the art of not looking suspicious. "He knows we're up to something."

Liza made a strangled noise and stiffened her body. I inwardly sighed. Now Leon definitely knew. She glanced around nervously before darting down a narrow hallway filled with various Mora and Inas. I hurried after her, grabbing the pale green shirt of her tunic so I wouldn't lose my friend in the crowd. At the same time, I focused on sharpening my senses to try and pinpoint where Leon was.

Mistake.

Dragonlings pressed in all around me, darkening the room and making it hotter at the same time. The noise seemed to amplify in the enclosed space and the smells. It was awful - sweat, mud and dried blood assaulted my senses. Frustration and anxiety built in my chest as I looked around the living mass of moving people to find an exit. Suddenly, we were out. It felt like leaving a river.

Liza was grinning at me, the freckles on her usually pale cheeks standing out against the flush from the exertion from our little run. "Told you. It was weird, wasn't it?"

Weird didn't even begin to cover it. I felt a little... crushed, like I had been the victim of a cave-in. "Sure." I mumbled with a small shrug, trying to hide how shaken I was. After a second I realized that my hand clutched the pommel of my sword desperately, knuckles white from the strain. Mentally cursing my abrupt and irrational terror, I let go and began massaging the blood back into them. Liza didn't seem to notice. She was smart alright, but she lacked basic observational skills. Maybe that's why I liked her so much.

Or maybe that's why Liza could stand to be around me.

Either way, the wyk just took my arm again and began to drag me down the hallway. I braced myself for more oppressively full corridors, but mercifully we were at our destination. I hadn't realized it at first, but, now that Liza was not pulling me around like a dog on a leash, I recognized the door as the one leading to her quarters.

"Come on. We can hide here for the rest of the day." Liza grinned at me as she opened the door.

Despite being a princess, Liza's room was relatively simple - it lacked the wondrous multitude of silks and furs that lined the rooms that I had visited within the court. Instead, plain wooden desks and tables were cluttered with star maps, magnifying glasses, ink, quills and writing charcoal. Books were stacked from the floor to my waist in erratic piles everywhere, often accompanied by worn out journals.

I had never been the studious type, but the smell of aged paper and dried ink made my stomach lurch with a sudden homesickness every time I visited. As much as I liked opulent capital of the Kestraldive colony - rather, the indulgences that came along with it - I missed my organized and reserved home.

It struck me as I sat down on one of the wooden stools that I had come to think of Queen Dominique's city as my home. I had only lived there for a season, not even a year, but... it was as much of a home as anywhere I had stayed before. The training academy was cold and devoid of compassion - intent of turning us into soldiers so we could survive the brutal world we lived in. Lord Edgar's city held nothing but dark memories. Tracing the constellation of Shepherd with my finger, I silently promised myself to never think of that haunting place as a home.

Liza plopped down beside me, stirring me from my thoughts. She flashed a toothy grin at me and put a hand on the star chart I was fondly stroking. "Shepherd was the first constellation I ever learned. It falls in the winter and rises in the summer. Come fall, follow his staff to return home."

Thus my lesson began once more. We studied the spring constellations - Hare, King Icar, Equus - well into the night, until the painted stars blurred together in my exhausted eyes.

I had asked Liza to teach me astronomy just as an excuse to avoid Alek and Dmitri until they decided to get along, but within an hour of my first lesson I found that I loved it. Each constellation had a story, had a meaning, had a purpose. Though I told myself - and my friends - that it was just a practical navigation study, I knew it was the legends behind the stars that interested me the most. It reminded me of the stories of heroes and villains that we were told as draggies.

It was nearly midnight by the time we finally called it a day, the candles extinguishing themselves in their own melted wax alerting us to the late hour.

Struck from my reverie by the sudden darkness, I cursed and jumped to my feet. My legs complained at the jolting motions, but I had to just shake it off. "Liza, I gotta go." Collecting the traced drawings of the charts, I gave her chaste kiss on the temple, a tradition in the Kestraldive colony when saying goodbye. "It's late. Alek and Dmitri are worried about me." She glanced up at me in surprise, before glancing down at the charts again.

"Alright." The princess hummed lightly. The dark circles under her eyes gave away the exhaustion her voice was hiding. "I'll see you tomorrow. Mother says that there's to be a feast. Some dignitaries are coming or something." She scrunched her nose up in distaste. "It's gonna be boring, as always." I laughed at the absolute displeasure on her face before leaving. Liza was a rock among diamonds, that was for sure. Maybe that's why I liked her so much.

It wasn't until much later that I realized throughout the night I hadn't cared about not thinking.

I wandered back to my room in an exhausted daze. Dmitri was fast asleep, but Alek was reading by candle light. He glanced up and offered his arms out to me silently. I collapsed into them with a contented sigh, closing my eyes as he shifted me in between him and Dmitri. There was a small thrill of satisfaction that they were forced to hang around each other, but I was too tired to comment on it. Snuggling against my mates, I let myself drift off to sleep, intending to sleep tomorrow away.

My peaceful morning of sleeping in was interrupted by a series of rapid knocks on the door. I groaned and lifted my head to glare at the door, attempting to make the intruder leave with pure spite. No such luck.

I debated not moving - the silks felt nice against my skin, the feather pillows were soft, Alek's head was resting near mine and Dmitri had pulled me against his chest. His gentle snores blew warm breath on my neck, making my eyelids heavy. The knocking had stopped. Maybe they went away...

Bam bam bam.

Nope.

With a heavy sigh, I untangled myself from my mates. Dmitri - who could sleep through a hurricane - just mumbled and rolled over. Meanwhile, Alek propped himself up with his elbow. "Ani?" He asked sleepily. "Who's that?"

"Don't know." I replied as I stomped over to the door. "But when I do I'll hang them from the window by their ankles and- oh." The threats died on my lips as I threw open the door.

Mako stood there with the biggest shit-eating grin I had ever seen. Vermilion eyes alight with glee, I could tell by his messy cinnamon-colored hair and tired, lined face he must have just arrived. He was dressed in a pale blue and white uniform, the colors boasting his colony as Iciclecrash. Not his style, but I hardly noticed as I almost tackled him in a hug. "Mako! You stupid lizard! Don't you know not to wake people up at such an unholy hour?"

The Lira's grin remained as he detached my arms. "Unholy hour? It's nearly sunhigh! I came to take you for a- holy shit." I followed his stunned gaze into my room, where Alek was watching us with an emotionless face and absolute murder in his eyes. 

After waking Dmitri and a hurried introduction, Mako whisked me off to go hunting with him. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed his company - in just minutes I was reduced to giggles as he regaled me with his tales of pursuing fyns and dodging the women who fancied him.

"I'm telling you, they're crazy." Mako continued as we rode the warm spring drafts. "I tell them I only like fyns, they just want me more. Where's the logic?" I dove under him, twirling around in a graceful arc.

"They're blinded by your... actually, I'm not sure." I called loftily. "Maybe the fact that you can't be theirs? It's not your face, of course. It sends most wyk screaming."

"Excuse you." Mako sniffed, craning his head to glare at me. His scales rippled red and orange across the lovely emerald green he had chosen. Alek cloaked his scales in muted colors like lilac and jade, or the occasional elegant ruby. It was strange to see a Lira change his scales so liberally. But Mako was always peculiar like that.

"You're excused." I said teasingly, brushing my wing against Mako's neck. He snorted and nipped at it before diving down suddenly. Tucking my wings against my body, I followed his path downwards towards the grassland below. A herd of strange deer-like animals I had been told were called gazelles ran below us, spooked by our shadows.

Mako plucked one up by the horns, snapping its neck with the movement, before gliding off to a nearby stream to eat. I followed suit and soon joined him at the sandbank.

It was a rather secluded spot, with high grasses nearly reaching Mako's shoulders as he settled down. The water was crystal clear, tiny multi-colored fish zipping about above the pebbles that created a mosaic of grays at the bottom. A single long snake-like fish, which Liza had told me was a rather deadly creature called a needlefish, slid down through the water, snapping up the jeweled fish that swam too close.

Setting my gazelle down, I lapped at the clean, cold water. My reflection stared back at me, distorted by the ripples, but something seemed off... oh. Huh. I hadn't noticed the scar that had formed across the base of my neck. My first scar.

Dragonling scars were far different than the strange hardened tissue that occured in other animals, a fact I had learned from Alek. Because our scales fell off and regrew, real scars happened very rarely - only when the skin underneath was mutilated bad enough. Scales grew back darker and slightly sharper. Older Ryns like Dmitri had entire patches of spiky scales. I briefly wondered if I would ever reach that point.

"Ani," Mako's voice cut through my thoughts, "stop looking at yourself. We get it. You're pretty."

"I was admiring my new scar." I said matter-of-factly. Well, it was close enough to the truth. Mako just stared at me in amusement. Damn my wandering mind. Making me look like a fool.

"Well, whatever you're doing, I'm gonna start eating." Mako bent down and breathed out a stream of fire to cook his meal. He laid down, stretched out luxuriously, then tore into the gazelle with what I could only describe as grace. I had almost forgotten his strange but precise eating habits. What a dork.

I settled down beside my friend, leaning against his side as I seared my gazelle. He lifted a wing over me like a light blanket, as we had done a thousand times when we were younger. After a long minute of comfortable silence between us punctuated by the thudding of striped horses (called zebras) as they ran across the high grasses, Mako turned to me. "I've heard you had a hard time." He began quietly.

Without thinking twice, I began talking. I told Mako of returning to Lord Edgar's estate, hesitating before I told him about Dmitri and my eggs. "Go on." He urged gently, eyes soft and understanding. I stared at him in surprise. Everyone else had side-stepped around the problem, backtracking whenever they accidentally stumbled across my bad memories. But Mako had never been like that. He had always tramples across emotional barriers.

Suddenly, I found myself spilling everything, from my immense debt to Dmitri and Alek's fighting to my frustrations over Queen Dominique. It came so easily, as if we had never left each other. The past few months - only months? It felt like years - fell off my shoulders like a discarded cloak. Things I hadn't even realized I was frustrated about came pouring out - Morgana and Cody's antagonism, the absolute failure of my short-lived schooling, my inability to stop thinking like a Lira.

Evening was spreading across the sky, golden-yellow like honey from a broken beehive. The sounds of night bugs began to rise as I continued my story, warming up their bodily instruments to my confession of confusion and heartache. A lion pride passed by, the male watching us with suspicious tawny eyes as his lionesses drank the water. I finished my tale and stood up, scaring the great cats into a dash to the other side of the stream.

Mako was silent for a long while. He tipped his head upwards to watch the sunset, his face a mask of contemplation. I felt my scales itch with apprehension. Would he judge me? "Well," he finally began, "you've had quite the time." With a sigh, he heaved himself up. "Ani, don't try to change yourself. Maybe you have a higher calling in life than just to fight."

I tensed, staring at Mako in bewilderment. A higher calling? Me? No way. But... his words struck a cord deep inside of me. Did he really think that? Before I could ask, he continued. "Everyone faces troubles, though you seem to attract more than your share." He slowly began pacing. "I'll talk some sense into Dmitri and Alek for you. They're probably just jealous. Dmitri lost his eggs too, remember that. It must feel like he's losing you too."

For the second time in less than a minute, I was stunned and confused. Dmitri? He hardly ever mentioned the eggs and, when he did, it was emotionlessly. It dawned on me that he probably was just as upset as I was. He was just better at hiding it. Damn. What an idiot I was.

I shuffled to my feet sheepishly. "I'm sorry." It was all I could say, but Mako seemed to understand. He looked up at the sky again. "Come on. Let's go catch something else to bring back to your niche. I hear the hippos here are good. Something like a whale, I think." He tossed me a wink, breaking the tension. "I know how much you love whales."

"You've lost your mind." I gagged, thankful for Mako's playfulness. "Whale is rubbery and nasty. Polar bears and seals are better."

"You've only visited home a few times." Mako teased, elegantly rising into the air. His scales turned a beautiful coral. "You don't know what you're missing out on!"

I launched into the air far less gracefully. "Yeah, sure. You just can't taste things. That's why you eat so weird."

"You know I have a sensitive stomach!" Mako gasped in mock indignation.

Laughing, I shot off towards a lake, wondering if the 'hippo' creature would be there. Mako followed after me, snickering to himself. For the first time in a long time I felt... happy.