"Is it hard to get time away from your bakery?" Rhysel asked Kilaer.

"Not really," he said. "We make things in huge batches early every morning and let the staff deal with the minutiae. Much of the day is free."

Rhysel nodded. "Seems like an enjoyable career choice."

"We like it," said Tsuan.

"It's not one I ever considered, but I do enjoy cooking."

"Well, if you decide you get sick of doing magic all day, you can come and work for us," said Tsuan, taking another bite of pie.

The hostess smiled. "Thanks for the offer."

"You're welcome."

"Course, I have a tendency to cheat with my magic while I cook," she grinned. "I can control the temperature a little more accurately if I'm using magical fire, for instance."

"Doesn't bother us," said Kilaer. "We have a fire mage on staff. He does that much of the time."

"It is useful. Is there anything in particular you'd like the recipes for?"

"If it's not too much trouble to write them up, everything," Tsuan said, grinning.

"Not a problem in the least. I'm rather flattered."

"You should be," said Tsuan.

Rhysel smiled. "Thank you. I'm glad you enjoy the food."

"More?" said Runa plaintively, having finished all of her allotted dessert.

"No, Runa," said Keo. "You have had enough."

Runa pouted.

Rhysel smiled. "Runa seemed to really enjoy the presents she got at the naming ceremony," she remarked.

"Oh, she does. She's been playing with yours a lot," said Keo.

"I'm glad she likes it."

"Which?" asked Runa.

"The glass ball with the fire inside, Runa," said Keo.

"Oh, shiny," said Runa. "Pretty."

"I'm glad you like it," Rhysel repeated to Runa.

The infant reptile smiled toothily.

"You communicate rather well, Runa," Rhysel commented.

"Smart," the dragonet agreed, nodding.

"Yes, and cute." Rhysel said.

Runa nodded again, very self-importantly.

Rhysel laughed merrily and looked over to Kanaat and Narax. "How are things progressing on the wolfrider program?"

"Everything is on track to enroll a dozen pairs next semester," said Kanaat. "We've refitted some dormitories to allow the wolves to move around freely within, although it will take longer to make all of the rest of the buildings wolf-accessible - though that won't be necessary right away, since the wolves probably won't be coming along to classes - and Keo's going to be teaching them Leraal, since she's uniquely equipped to understand them without spells."

Rhysel nodded. "I see. And Narax will be involved in actually teaching them?"

"Some of them," said Narax, "but we aren't going to restrict them to courses I'm teaching, and some of them may not be in any of my classes at all."

She nodded. "And you'll be teaching courses with no wolfrider students at all as well?"

"Yes. They'll all be first tiers, and I'll be taking on some higher-level classes."

"Makes a certain amount of sense."

He smiled briefly.

Rhysel looked over to Tekaal. "Were you going to keep teaching wizardry classes as well, or just my magic - at least at first?"

"I will be less busy next term than I am this term," Tekaal said, "so unless we have so many interested students that we need to offer four or more introductory-level courses - which I wouldn't advise to start with - I will probably teach at least one wizarding class. Speaking of being busy," he added, casting the time spell and frowning at the 6:50 that appears before him, "I must be going now." He leaned over to give Rhysel a quick kiss, and then nodded to the rest of the dinner guests and teleported away.

Korulen giggled.

Rhysel looked at Korulen with amusement in her eyes. "I still don't know why you find it funny - although your reaction certainly is."

"It's just - he's old. And a teacher. And Ar Kithen."

Rhysel grinned. "He's not that old - equivalently, about as old as I am - and I'm not a student."

Korulen sighed. "He's still Ar Kithen. I can't imagine him actually liking anybody, and he just actually kissed you."

Rhysel shrugged with a smile. "He is a bit formal, but he does like me."

"I mean, okay, he's probably got feelings in there someplace. I mean, he's related to some actor. I don't remember how. But still!" giggled the thudia girl.

Keo supressed a laugh.

"He's actually quite nice," said Rhysel, grinning impishly at Korulen.

Korulen just sighed.

"Got any boys you're interested in?"

"I dunno," said Korulen, poking at some crumbs on her plate with her fork. "Not really. I mean, there's plenty of cute ones, but most of them aren't very smart, or they'd shrivel up and die by the time I was a hundred and fifty, which would suck."

Keo looked at Kanaat. He looked back.

Vara looked at Pilar. She looked back.

Narax looked tempted to bang his head on the table.

Tsuan and Kilaer both sighed deeply.

"Um," said Korulen.

Rhysel just looked mystified. "I don't know that I'll ever get used to that difference in culture." She changed the subject. "What do you think of the theory class so far?"

"Oh, it's cool," Korulen said. "We're getting into more interesting stuff now, not just, "This is how you pull a hundred units. This is how you pull a hundred and one units," and the pronounciation systems."

"I've found it rather fascinating, even though I can't do any of it."

"Yeah, there's all kinds of neat stuff."

"Do thudias get the same benefits from a drake familiar as dragons do?"

"Sometimes. Not consistently. I'm getting one anyway, though. A Vessial spotted. They're really cute."

Rhysel smiled. "Onion's certainly a cute one. Although I don't know her breed." She looked at Narax with a smile.

"Corenta red," supplied Narax.

Rhysel nodded. "She's adorable."

He smiled slightly. "That she is."

"Vessial spotteds are mostly gold-colored, with white scales here and there," said Korulen. "They've got horns like a gold dragon, whiskers like an obsidian, and spines like a violet, and they're really small. Sooo cute."

Rhysel smiled. "You seem quite enthralled already."

"Yeah. I can buy one soon. I'm not sure if I want an egg or a hatchling though."

"Why's that?"

"Well, there's variation even within the breed," Korulen explained, "so if I get a hatched one I can make sure to get one especially cute. But if I get an egg I can imprint it on me and it'll be easier to train."

"Ah, I see. How long after an egg is laid before it hatches?"

"Depends. I think Vessial spotteds take about twenty days to hatch."

"If you could see inside the egg before it hatched, would that allow you to pick a cute one?"

"It's dark inside eggs."

"Well, yes. But if you could."

"If I could see into an egg all I'd see is dark," said Korulen, sounding confused.

"If you could see what it looked like inside the egg, in spite of the dark, I mean."

"Oh. Yeah, but it would have to be a late egg. They don't really grow the scale patterns and stuff until they're almost ready to hatch."

"Could you buy one at that stage?"

"Sure. But it'd have to be from a major breeder that usually has a lot of eggs around, or from a place that usually sells them as hatchlings, since most people who want eggs get them early and there aren't likely to be a lot of them to pick from at a little breeder which'd make getting to peek pointless."

She nodded. "It's up to you of course, but if you give me some time to get a little more proficient, I could sort of see into an egg and display what it looked like for you."

"Oh, that'd be cool," Korulen said happily. "I don't need one right away. I just need one soon enough that it's all grown up by the time I need to make it my familiar."

"How long does that take?"

"They're all grown in about a year."

"So you could wait a few months?"

"Sure."

Rhysel smiled. "I'll leave it up to you, if you want to get one before then, but once I know how to do it, I'll let you know."

Korulen grinned back.

Rhysel looked to Vara and Pilar. "How have things been for you two?"

"Fine," said Pilar. "My brother's wife just had another baby, and we've been doing a lot of sitting, since he's in the army and she's often busy with other things."

"Enjoy having a baby around?"

"Sometimes," Pilar said. "We wouldn't want one to live in our home, but they make pleasant visitors."

Rhysel nodded.

"Well," said Keo, "thank you very much for dinner. If it's all right with you, I think Runa would like us to bring home the lemon pie..."

"And let's bring the cheesecake," said Korulen.

"And the coconut cream one," said Keo with a smile.

"I want the apple pie," said Tsuan. "Kilaer?"

"The apple was my favorite as well," her husband said.

"Take what you'd like," Rhysel said with a smile. "Vara, Pilar, Narax?"

"If I could have the cherry," said Narax with a faint smile.

"I like the berry one best," said Pilar. "What about you?"

"The cream puffs," said Vara after a moment.

"Certainly." She smiled. "Oh, Narax, would you mind staying a few minutes' more? I won't keep you all that long."

"All right," he said, sounding surprised.

"I can help teleport people back," said Korulen. "If you'll let me, Daddy."

Kanaat smiled. "Granted." Everyone picked up their pies. Keo scooped up Runa and Kanaat offered his hand to Pilar, and Korulen teleported Vara away. Kanaat and Keo then reappeared without their passengers to get Keo's parents. Narax waited, holding the cherry pie, and looked at Rhysel expectantly.

Rhysel sighed as she started to speak. "I'm sorry to hear about you and Samia, and I hope I wasn't a part of the problem, whatever it is."

He frowned. "I really don't think that had anything to do with - well, it did, but honestly the - problems we were having would have surfaced eventually, and honestly, I'm glad they did before we did something permanent about... her lifespan."

"Would you like to talk about it?" Rhysel asked. "I'm all ears, if you would. If not, I won't pry."

He sighed and puts down his pie. "Well," he said, "she - she'd always been upset about the fact that I would outlive her by so long. I don't think it helped that when she met my parents neither of them ever talked about the humanoid spouses they'd had before meeting each other - she took it as a sign that they'd effectively been forgotten, that she'd be forgotten too. After you suggested turning her into an elf, she initially liked the idea, but things had been rocky even then, and, well, she'd deny it, but I think she wanted to go through with the Vow because that would give her a hold on me in addition to letting her live as long as me.

"I disagreed - there are so many things that could go wrong with the Vow, and I think there's a reason that dragons who marry other dragons early in life frequently divorce - and we had an argument. I - we aren't used to having to resolve problems verbally. It was always just a quick mental exchange, we'd come to an agreement, and we'd move on."

Rhysel nodded, still listening attentively.

"We couldn't seem to do that about this, not out loud, so she dragged me to Keo and started begging her to reestablish the link. Keo got very - I don't know if there's a suitable adjective. But she told us that she regretted ever linking us back up after Samia had been found, that it wouldn't solve our problems, that it would just lead to another separation and it would be worse every time, that if we couldn't get along aloud we wouldn't get along living in each other's heads."

She nodded again, in full agreement with Keo's viewpoint, but still not saying anything.

Narax sighed deeply. "I can see her point. But - I argued for it too. It's addictive, the link. Before - the shredding, when Samia and I were just barely married, it was like, I don't know. Like the air turned into love and I was flying around in it. It got very hard to live without, but I got used to being without it in ten years - and then it was back, and I cut her off - that was so stupid of me - and I don't think either of us were over it being gone again."

Rhysel nodded again. "So how did that lead to you two separating - even temporarily?"

"Well, we still couldn't resolve the fight," he groaned, leaning back in his chair. "She got very loud, towards the end of the argument. According to her I'm afraid of commitment, I don't want our child to grow up in a stable family, I don't really want to be with her for the rest of my life, and I wasn't happy to hear she was alive."

Rhysel shook her head. "She can't really believe that, can she?"

"Not the last one, no," he said. "That one she'd have noticed when we were linked up, if it were true. She might actually believe the rest of them."

"Even still. I find it hard to believe that she could truly think that of you."

"From her point of view, I've turned down three options for extending her lifespan for what she considers inadequate reasons," he said.

She shook her head. "I never should have made that first offer. And I can see all sorts of problems with the Vow myself - but what's wrong with the third option?"

"She isn't convinced I'd stay with her," Narax said. "She'd probably have the same objection to the first option if it were still on the table, but we were linked up at the time and she wasn't quite so insecure." He sighed. "Is that all you wanted to know?"

"Actually, that wasn't what I've been wanting to talk to you about at all, but I figured you might enjoy a friendly ear."

"Oh. What did you want to discuss?"

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it - where do I stand with you, what with everything that's been going on? I'm not looking for romance any longer, but you're the first friend I had here, and I'd like to know that friendship can continue - if you feel like you can do so."

He gave a half-smile. "It can hardly hurt anything at this point," he said, then he shook his head. "Sorry. I didn't mean that. I'm not going to be in the area very much until the start of next term, and even then I'm planning to just keep my house in Imilaat and teleport to and from. But I'm happy to be your friend, if you want."

She smiled. "Thank you. My door is always open for you, then. And," she hesitated for a moment, "if I can help at all with what's going on between you and Samia - I don't know how, but if I can - I'd like to."

"If we get back together, it will be because she calms down and wants to take you up on your offer to have her turned into an elf."

Rhysel nodded slowly. "Would you mind if I went and visited her at some point? Or would that likely just make things worse?"

"I don't think you're likely to worsen things - unless you carry on talking about how it's just a cultural difference and how in your world people are sensible about lifespan differences. I think that annoys her."

"No, I wasn't planning on it. It mystifies me, but I can accept that's the way it is here." She gestured helplessly. "I'd just like to be her friend too, if she'd have me."

"She may. I don't know."

She nodded. "Other than that, how have you been?"

"Oh, other than that, peachy," he said. "Working on syllabi for the classes I'll be teaching next term. Working on a couple of new spells. I've begun showing up to teach at the nearest school in Imilaat every now and again to get back into the habit of teaching. It's not the perfect practice environment, but it's something."

Rhysel smiled. "I think you'll make a great teacher, personally."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. I only hope I can do half as well. I've had some difficulty in that regard just teaching Tekaal some of the basics."

"That's Ar Kithen's first name?"

"Yes."

"Quiet guy."

"He's very reserved normally - which is part of why it throws Korulen so much, I think."

"I suppose that would do it."

"There's more to him than that, though."

Narax nodded. "If that's all," he said, "I should be getting home. I didn't tell Neris to feed Onion and she'll be getting hungry."

"Yes, that's all for tonight. Thanks for coming." She gave him a hug.

He accepted the embrace with some startlement, but returned it and smiled at her before picking up his pie and teleporting away.

Rhysel smiled to herself as she put away the remaining desserts. She took the time to scribe down her recipes for Tsuan. She then headed upstairs and read for the remainder of the evening.

---

Home Table of Contents Dramatis Personae Setting Gallery News About Us Contact Us