Brightest Oleuni reigned high above, and was pursued by Enyswm. I climbed high above the hot air of the sifting town and again wandered the line to Hinte’s house. I didn’t rush, and relished the wind under my wings. Flight was luxuriating, and???—??while it was completely cloying to say???—??it lifted me after a morning in the Llygaid Crwydro.
Which story do you think Gwymr/Frina would rather hear?
that was the stench.
worst day to work at any shop that isn’t the east market. A whole day of almost nothing!”
gwee-mer-ee.’
gwuhmr vree-na.’ (How was her pronunciation so much better than mine?), “is a mix of plain-dwellers, cliff-dwellers and canyon-dwellers. It is why the natives here are a mix of browns, reds and oranges.”
affected whine. “I was just being descriptive…”
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A short ring later, we crossed the canal, climbed a cliff-face and crept toward the lake. It gave us some privacy and something close to a sense of moving fast enough???—??if only to me.
Hinte — yanked my tail. I was halted in the air, and floundered for one tense breath before scrambling for my feet and some balance against the cliffwall. My fangs were cloying and I sputtered awhile before spitting out a coherent objection:
not just do that!”
jumped down toward the ground, at least to start, beginning at the most solid, most easily gripped outcroppings of rock and leaping to another and another. Then he missed and skidded down the face and hit smack the bottom.
weren’t slow lines, it turned out; it was the sheer volume of dragons entering and exiting that created the line. It was enough that you heard that murmur of crowds rising like smoke.
tight, considering everything.
late,” he said, in an almost unnoticeable lilt. Now some seriousness like a mist was arising in his tone, now.
slow.” I glanced at Hinte, and the wiver mercifully didn’t react. Unless those scores in the gravel by her feet hadn’t been there before.
was obvious???—??but what was underneath it? Why harp on this point and not just get the job done?
protectorate, and our name isn’t just a title, unlike some countries. There is no end of threats to some orbiting stronghold, or militant insurrection menacing our freedom. More impressively, I served in the skirmishes against the spiders in the caves far up north of the canyons, and grounded the Ragan Mountain back when the Constellation was still making trouble.” He flared his frills and licked the wistfulness from his tone. “Of course, what I do anymore isn’t the same kind of interesting.”
defected from the Concordat of Stars! We???—??the Constellation has been peaceful for hundreds of gyras!”
funny, then, how consistently the sky gets these so-called rogues? Or how sky never deals with these defectors on their own?”
true. The Severance of Earth and Sky promised that no sky-dweller would land on surface-dweller land, and no surface-dweller could enter the skycities.
request.
The Saumsanra? My Oma speaks of him as if he were dead.”
* * *