The weather had gotten warmer and warmer as Summer drew near. Engell stood with Tehndarinth at the edge of his Alskyran domain, overlooking the ocean. The waves rippled below the cliff side, and the silvery white dragon draped his paws over the edge - while his rider looked on from the parapet of his Alabaster tower.
It is a beautiful day, my rider, Tehn said. Perhaps we should fly. I feel like flying.
"You always feel like flying, my friend," Engell responded. "The question is, how much trouble are you going to get me into this time?"
The Ryslen-born dragon puffed himself up to his full (very small) height. I am not going to get you into trouble! How could I ever do that?
Engell began to list off the weyrs, caers, nooks and nexus sites they'd been to recently - each with a little bit more sarcasm than the last. As he did, one flitter or white friend that had attached herself (or himself) to Engell perked up when they heard the name of the locale they'd come from. They each seemed to know their place, that was sure.
Well, maybe I have helped the girls find some interesting new... friends. Tehn admitted.
"Ah hah!" Engell said, dislodging two of the white flits and scattering the others into the air as he stood up with his finger pointed in the air at the dragon. "So you DO admit it!"
But it is only because I think you are -- Tehn stopped himself, looking away. The silvered-white Flurry dragon could not quite bring himself to speak.
"Lonely," Engell said, "the word you are looking for is lonely. Isn't it?" His tone was flat, but not angry. How could he be angry at his dragon? The one who shared every private thought and whim? Who knew how hard it had been all these years watching Kyl grow up and bond his own dragon, after his mother Karen had died? Even though there were women - young and mature - with whom Engell had shared his thoughts and his body over the years, none of them would remain by his side. None of them really knew the ache.
There is another who knows, Tehn gently reminded his rider. He felt the exhasperation and slight resignation at the thought of Kalkin. Tehn added, he was with you then, and he would rather be with you now.
Engell groaned, "he'd rather have been 'with' me all along, Karen kept him at bay." He sighed, "but I know you're right. We're just two sad, lonely," eyebrow lifted high, "extremely attractive riders."
Sixth says he is bored and wants to do something interesting that involves 'a lot of alcohol'. Tehn tilted his knobless head, his tall crest making him look comically young again, what is 'alcohol'?
Engell's pale blue eyes broke wide and then squinched shut in laughter. "Remember when you went to fly at Lao Daemia?"
When you were all fuzzy around the edges and laughed a lot?
"That would be it..." Engell said, picking up Dandy and rubbing the Rukel's fur the wrong way. That would keep the little critter busy for another twenty minutes at least. Vain boy. Just like his owner. Just like someone else Engell knew.
***
Read Kalkin's current page to see what has been going on while they were just talking!
***
Kalkin tilted his head in a greeting to his pale friend, as he worked on a grimy machine in the Alabaster workshop. "Just let me get clean," the dark-haired rider-doctor-inventor grunted, "and we can go."
"Wait one moment," Engell said, as his flock of flitters landed in the rafters among Kalkin's three. "I didn't agree to go anywhere just yet."
Kalkin's muscular shoulders rolled forward, as he remained unmoving below the big mechanical object that he'd been fixing. "Of course you did. Sixth said so. Tehndarinth said you did, that's what Sixth is chirping at me right now."
It was true that the tiny blue dragon waiting under the shade of a nearby tree was chirping his little head off, but to Engell it sounded more like he was trying to learn to sing, than to communicate something as ridiculous as him agreeing to-
"Why would your dragon bring you here if you weren't ready to come along and get good and drunk?" Kalkin said, standing and wiping his hands off on an already dirty rag. He looked at himself suddenly with a measure of disgust, and then at Engell in his nice grey-scale clothing. And because they had known one another for the greater half of Kalkin's eighty years, Engell began to back away.
"Is it the grin? I swear," Kalkin said, as that selfsame grin spread itself across his thin lips and long face, "I have to work on my poker face. You know I would not get you all dirty - not while you're wearing silk."
Engell still held his hands up a bit, defense against the moment he knew that Kalkin was half-apt to throw his grimy long arms around him and make him all embarrassed. However there was no one else in the area: and that was what probably saved the slightly younger Lord Rider from a greasy fate. No one would be laughing, so why waste the effort?
"I'll get cleaned up, and you should look into where we're going." Kalkin said, striding into a corridor near the work shop. It led into the Alabaster buildings, which were more than halfway underground.
"... I don't know where we're going, I thought you had a place planned already!" Engell said after him, "We're not just going to fly around like we did last time, Kalkin. I can't follow Sixth through time and space like you want me to - he moves like a... like a drunken butterfly," Engell muttered. He knew that Kalkin had heard him - he'd always picked up the faintest whisper before. But this time, Engell lowered his voice because Sixth had approached him.
With curiosity, the tiny blue squeeked and whistled, and then his emerald eyes whirled sapphire-shiny.
I am sorry - I remember I can talk to you in your mind. We can go to Lantessama. They have pretty dragons there. I like the girls.
"You like everyone, Sixth," Engell said, scratching the blue's nose a bit. "And everyone always loves you two, you and Tehn. It's because you're small and cute."
Do the women at weyrs like you two because you are tall and cute? For humans, I mean?
Engell grinned, laughed out loud, and waited for Kalkin to get back out from the building.
***
Visit with Kalkin again, then you'll be off to Daverin and Brianna's page!
***
And then - DRINKS!
